Fingers feet

My first thoughts on entering 7 dials alternative dance group was:

1. Wheres the bar?
2. Why is there a girl crying on the floor?
3. No, really, why is there a girl crying on the floor?

Also, I quickly realize no one is wearing shoes, plus everyone looks more like they're all having epileptic fits than they're dancing to the beat, and to top it all everyones looking at my shoes.

It felt like the day when we realized the amplifier in the studio was picking up a faint radio signal from a Pentecostal radio station.  Not only should the amp be unable able to pick up a radio signal but there were times when this almost silence would pervade your subconscious to make you feel like you might be dead but that you just couldn't be sure.

I watched the dancers from afar for a while while my friend Pete, who brought me here, is looking at me with a smile creeping into the corner of his mouth while slowly and silently removing his shoes.  He lowers onto his socks but rips these off slowly like this is part of his dance before he even gets onto the dance floor.

I watch him scan the room with sniper like eyes targeting the pretty girls, even the crying girl!!!  Socks off and he's away, immediately bumping and grinding into the middle of the pack like the big South African loon he is.  Yeah 'Ice cream and arse cream' I blow through the teeth of my pained smile.

The dated beatbox distorts a disjointed beat and no one is looking now perhaps as I'm bare foot.  I sort of begin to saunter out as though I'm holding a pint in my hand and edge into the peripheral of the dance floor because the centre looks like an event horizon.

Something pops into my head, Christ, what if anyone sees I've got fingers for feet?  When I was at art school we would debate the shapes of our feet, Pete had Hobbit feet, Dan had Pasty feet and I had fingers feet, the hours would fly by.  Now here on this cold Parkay flooring I realize I don't think I've danced in daylight since, well, ever.  At a festival maybe, not that I remember?  Daylight is always assigned for recovery and night time, well night time is reserved for the ever grinding pelvis of Pete.

I mooch about, hands close to my chest smelling people and watching what everyone else is doing.  Yeah, yeah, this isn't too bad.  I can do this, no problem, 30 minutes of this will be just like Wigan Pier used to be on... then bam, a girl enters front and centre, and clearly wants to dance with me.  'By the sweat of my teeth'!  She grabs my left arm and swings me around, back and gently holds up my arm and leaving in the air disappears into the throng.  My arm still upright I catch a glimpse of Pete looking at me laughing.

The music changes with a clunk and a scratch whilst the tempo rises and a thought washes over me immediately which is: why not?

Like shouting, "Bollocks!" very loudly at Reading festival.  At first you think, this isn't allowed, someone will arrest me, but then dimly across hundreds of tents, someone else shouts bollocks back, and then another and another, until the whole field is a chorus of bollocks.  Yeah bollocks, come on Tim, shake your money maker!

So I let fly, I think to myself I'm gonna have the best damn Epileptic fit you guys have ever seen.  Past the crying girl I fit, past the old guy with BO, past the couple who look like they're making out, even past the old lady dressed all in purple and even past Pete dancing with his hands on the ass of some eastern european girl wearing a spay-on.  I move slowly into the centre past the event horizon, there is no going back now and where I expect to find all mass becomes energy but all I see, are my fingers feet.