borrows the title from a book he's never read. the idiot goes dancing alone. he roofies himself with vodka and soda water and beer.
and the idiot acknowledges the law of diminishing returns, almost. until he meets a girl with blue hair. he kisses her in a photo booth. there is a photo booth involved with a picture the next day sent to his phone to prove it.
and at differing flashes in the night, the idiot goes up to a bunch of millenials and they are dancing and so is he and he tells them that we have to dance we have to dance because they forgot to tell us to do so as children and so now we must.
and it takes him forever to realize the wedding at the church downtown is on valentine's day. it takes him forever to connect the significance. he eats a pizza with egg on each of four slices and watches the wedding through windows while drinking a beer.
sure the idiot likes to get a little drunk before going to the bookstore. sure he rushes out when he sees the same girl from the week before. sure because the mirror seemed better in his head. like all mirrors do.
then haphazardly is time, the way it moves with the drunkard in the raiders hat next to him. he says "her money is my money and my money is also my money." and the idiot gets him going on one of those agreeable stretches of drunken sermon, amen, amen, and he has the raiders hat guy in amen agreement while the idiot in his idiot clothes delivers something sinister in his elocution masked in exactly the same tone but unmistakeably biting in it's precision, and it shakes the room
and even after nodding to the sermon all this time the drunkard notes the words and stops, can't help but stop even as the room orbits, lets it linger, "i mean it's not like we're gonna be on this earth much longer anyway, right?" the idiot says heartily, chuckles as though nothing has changed, smiles big raising his beer up to take a cheery glug.
"right?"
the idiot didn't feel great about it. about the way the drunkard's face fell. but he didn't feel that bad either. it needed to be said. reminded. gratitude needed to enter the world. and the raiders drunkard melted away because this new guy to his right, this ladies man to his right with those lady killing bright eyes on tan ethnic skin, is with a lady, a pretty lady who else? and he asks the idiot what he's been writing in his notepad, cuz he's been thinking of writing too.
and the idiot gets tangential about art and expression and he needles the conversation around in figure 8's until he finally finishes his routine in a way that's not all that bad actually, when he says
if you want to do it bad enough, you'll do it.
and the idiot does, or maybe he just did, i don't want to bore you with time, the time is haphazard and he does a stand-up set at another bar downtown and he gets convincing on stage. and it's not all that bad either. and the energy is not all that bad.
and so he goes back to the bar with the gigantic white horse on it and he dances. he dances because it's about that time to dance. and the ladies aren't loving it at first but it's not about them. and it's not about the parents. it's not about the finite nature of living and all beings. it's about being. it's simply about being. and while being another human being lights up his eyes with her dark eyebrows and oceanic blue irises and chemically dyed attractive boyish matching hair, he - in this fluid state of moving being - he steps off the stage and finds her and they sway, they dance and shake and press lips and knock hips and mumble and whisper and yell over the music and scoot away to enjoy the space and it ain't pretty and he is an idiot but it is poetry and everything is swaying
and days later he is on the beach in the morning jittery but profound in digging deeper and digging into himself and sand and picking up litter everywhere cuz there is three-day weekend litter everywhere on the beach and he dislikes it but is grateful for it in his hands and in his heart and in the trash can with a lid on safely over it and he prays for the long loving health of his loved ones and the fragmented ones and all the ones until they are one and he brings them all whole in his heart as best he can
and the idiot drives to get a burrito and laundry coins, quarters is what he calls them, like everyone else he calls them quarters.
and he talks to his little sister on the phone and he hears the unbelievably perfect tone of her voice, even as she is home with the flu, the tone of that pure hearted child who won't ever know how pure hearted he knows her to be because she is too pure of heart to play at it and he loves her for it
and he drives home with groceries in the backseat and invisible tears of gratitude streaming down his face in rivers unseen
and he thinks to himself to the point of writing it down
I am so happy. I am so happy. I don't know why but I am so happy.
