In the flickering light I get flashes of your cat’s eyes, long teeth sinking down your jaw.  Snapshots of faces everywhere; lives experienced briefly and dismissed, like birds flying through one open window and out the other.  Bottles and chains, rings and shirts, the floor is sticky and slippery.

The bass breaks my ribs.  The treble stings my ears.  Onstage, a man in a sailor outfit rips it open to the navel with a surge of patchy hair and bubbly bad living.  Two women nearby look at his tits with distain.  I feel a tap on my shoulder and spin around.  In one motion you wrap your leg around my waist, grind the hem of your jeans into my thigh and twist my nipple hard enough that I drop my plastic cup on the floor, where it rolls languidly, lost with the others.

I look up but I can’t make out the ceiling, just pinging lasers and lit white smoke.  I stumble backwards against a table where two men dance, kicking me away.  You’re back with me again, a trickle of blood from a cut lip.  Before I can shout, you grab me tight as the song dissolves into scratchy atoms, lifting my shirt and pressing your sweaty midriff against mine.  We mingle but we don’t kiss.  We never, ever kiss.

Like an avalanche, the song restarts from a snowball and becomes a meteor.  We stand in each others faces, screaming.  Your breath stinks, and I don’t give a fuck.