Like a rusting tin man in a field full of the witch’s poppies I found myself in club land last night. John and I met out at Dressel’s for dinner and then went upstairs for drinks. By going upstairs we had apparently crashed a private Wash U party. The bartender waved us in as the students were mostly filtering out. They’d already spent the prepaid tab and according to our disdainful mixologist none of them were going to use their own cash for a drink, “They’re always like that, anything as long as someone else paid for it.”

Soon it was just us and the chip toting tender, who lives nearby the bar and is in the market for a car, he dropped out of Wash U when he couldn’t afford it anymore and now he works and he waits on his former peers. He pays four hundred for a one bedroom, utilities included, but he’d like to buy a condo or three north of Delmar in the hopes that the West End will spread in that direction. It might. It’s good to have plans. We sipped our neat blends for warmth and to allow time to pass, as it was too early to really be out.

Dressel’s is the sort of bar that would make sense to you: wood and polished brass, fireplaces, and the portraits of famous literary figures throughout. The other bars we went to might make less sense. Sub Zero is a vodka martini sushi bar. Sitting in the aquarium blue of Sub Zero I watched the very short traditional Sushi Chef in front of us order and then eat hot wings from Culpepper’s. You have to figure that he’s eaten a lot of sushi in his life. His bamboo mats for rolling sushi were covered in saran wrap. I hadn’t learned that trick before.

The two bartenders, one male and one female, must have been a cheerleading team in high school. He kept throwing her up onto the shelving behind the bar proper with waist lifts to get those hard to reach bottles. I always wondered what those skills would translate into. Lauren was our server, our glasses were large and the crowd congenial. Everyone there had shopped at Old Navy and The Gap. We left.

We came back much later in the night and actually had sushi, but when you’re in a district and on a wander the key is simply that – to wander – it’s all about the motion. We walked up to the Chase hotel and found ourselves among the suits in Eau. The tables at Eau are lit from within. The sidebar has a recessed surface that is coils and water in the afternoon, but in the evening it is a sheet of ice. It is redundant to think it cool. A wife at our table watched her husband flirt with a very young girl, who was also lit from within, and she told us not to be concerned because they went way back. The girl was too young for that to be chronologically true.

A curly-haired, head-banded fellow had followed us from Zero. He looked like an out of work tennis star, costumed. My camel hair coat and Viking hair cut contrast with the grays and blues of the suited circles, not a red head among the elite and very few women. The drinks were more expensive and the glasses were smaller than at Zero. Exiting the lower level marble bathroom I noted the elderly black porter watching the game on a small TV set. “Need a shine?” he asked. I did need one, but I didn’t take him up on the offer.

You know, I don’t want to write yet another bar wandering narrative. I don’t know what I want and am perplexed because of it.

I found myself on the walk back to the car with this feeling, this uncertainty. After much normal bar time listening to music at the Welsh pub Llywelyns and briefly dancing with a Kirksville girl, a friend of my former roommate Erin, and much good conversation with John, I found myself descending the stairs alone into Club Viva, paying the five dollar cover charge, and walking towards the dance floor to watch the experts. I was looking for something I’d lost.

A heavy set Latino man was dancing in the center of the floor with two women on either side gracefully matching his every move. Everyone on the tile, in various states of inebriation, slid around one another with an improbable spatial awareness and the oceanic fluidity of a shared tide: celebrating basement bars and salsa, glowing red and orange and warm in contrast to the icy blues of the street level bars. My bundled Nordic self stood on the edge, shedding first coat and then sweater. My silk shirt and jeans were still too blue for that crowd. I’ve been in that place before many times as part of that place, but last night I was snorkeling: one mask away from the reef.

I used to go dancing almost every night when I was in my mid twenties. Not dancing to meet someone or as foreplay, dancing just to dance, for the pleasure of the motion.
Now it’s occasional, in crowded bars without dance floors or in my own living room with the carpet kicked into the corner. I got very drunk once and kept repeating to Angela, “Dancing is my life.”

If I had to put my finger on the pulse of my dissatisfaction with the world, I think it comes down to simply this: we don’t dance enough just to dance, there’s too much furniture in the way.