Page 34 of Your Only Fan
“Different things,” I offer.
It’s not necessarily a lie. It’s just an incomplete truth.
If he doesn’t like my answer, he doesn’t say. He jumps off the counter and looks around my kitchen.
“You’ve been to lots of places, huh?” he says, admiring the magnet collection on my fridge.
I hope they don’t give me away. But then again, Isaac Rivera isn’t the only guy on the planet to have travelled to Bali, New Zealand, South Africa, and Nepal.
But to be on the safe side, I shrug it off. “Some of them are presents from friends.”
“Music?” he asks after a long pause, and I smile as he takes his phone out and puts on a playlist I’m sure I’ve heard in his videos.
“House, huh? I never got the fad,” I tell him.
He cocks his head and smiles. The cheeky way.
“Really? House is life. House is… theater,” he says.
I pause over the stove and bite my lips. “Theater?” I ask.
He’s got my attention.
He nods and sets his phone down beside me.
“Yeah. House is rhythm. A lot of ancient theater incorporated beat into their performances. It was part of the experience,” he says.
I cross my arms in front of my chest and watch him dance, literally, to the beat of his own drum.
He does some kooky moves, like screwing the lightbulb or flossing, before he moves to the more typical clubbing dance moves.
“The music stays the same. It’s repetitive, yes, but your body reacts to the beat; it answers an almost primal call. Repetition is part of theater. Dancing is repetition,” he says slowly, soothingly, getting lost in the moment.
He doesn’t look like he has a care in the world, and it’s so beautiful to witness. Literally dancing like no one’s watching.
And he’s not wrong, either. Repetitionistheater. Theater is many things, but repetition is one of them.
Some forms of theater even have repetition of moves or words at their core. There’s a mundane, trance-like lure to repetition, and I guess that’s what the repetitive beat of house achieves.
I get so carried away watching him, drinking his essence, admiring him, that I almost forget the food.
Thankfully, I save it from burning before he drags me into him and urges me to dance by putting his hands on my hips.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how you dance to music, but it doesn’t matter. Who’s watching us, anyway? It’s just the two of us.
The two of us.
Boy, that sounds good.
