MY OLD HAUNTS - by Cormac Brown

It's great to now have Cormac joining the fray...

My Old Haunts

Oh, yeah, I love dancing. I've been dancing since I don’t know when, it seems like forever. I go to the clubs and some cats, they just leave. They know about my abilities and they split. I keep up on all the latest dances, though my clothes are falling a little behind the times, and I wish there was more I could do about that.

I like to hit my favorite old haunts and check things out. Women are a lot wilder than I remember, sometimes for the good and sometimes they bring out the prude in me. I love the hip-hugger and low rider jeans. The tight shirts, the thongs, all that, is all good.

I can’t appreciate, however, the piercings and the tattoos just right above their butts...I can’t handle that. Then the clubs? Everywhere I go, it seems like they’re playing music from another planet. I can hardly keep up and most of it doesn’t sound like anything I was listening to, just yesterday.

The ladies love me, though. I don’t come there to hit on them or to drink: it’s strictly dancing with me. They don’t have to listen to a bunch of lines or nonsense. We get down on the dance floor and it’s cool.

And when we dance? I can’t even describe it, but I’ll try anyway. It’s kin-etic, it’s elec-tric, it’s as close to sex as we can get. Sometimes it gets a little freaky, but we keep our clothes on...for the most part. And when I touch them? The ladies shiver...they always shiver. I got that effect on them.

So I always wind it up at the Beat Box, because all that has changed over the years with clubbing, a few people still know of me there. It’s almost closing time and I’m still going strong, the ladies dig that.

Like this one tonight? She’s been going on about how she likes my “retro” threads, whatever that means. I don’t know, it’s like sometimes we’re talking another language altogether, but whatever keeps the party going, you know?

She feels good during the slow dances, almost too good, you dig? But when the music picks up? She complains that she was working hard today and she wants to rest. That ain’t cool. So I know that there’s just one more dance to go before last call and she just turns her back on me. Not cool, I’m not dancing with that chick again.

“I’ll have a Seven and Seven.”

“I’m sorry, Lady. The last call is in two minutes and quite frankly, I think you’ve had a few too many already.”

“I’ve had only one drink all night.”

“Right, whatever. I still can’t serve you alcohol.”

“Well, let me have some mineral water and give the dancing fool whatever he wants.”

“Who?”

“The guy.”

“Who? What guy?”

“The guy I’ve been dancing with for the past thirty minutes.”

“Lady, you’ve been dancing with yourself all night long.”

“No, I was with a guy. He had retro clothes and old school hair. He looked like one of those disco guys.”

“Oh...Pierre, I think we’ve got another one.”

“Are you sure? Who?”

“This lady, right here.”

“What do you mean, “we got another one?”

“Did you dance with a guy in a blue polyester outfit and platform shoes? Did he have big, permed hair out to there?”

“Yes.”

“That was-“

When things get odd, it's my cue to split.

I wait outside and she keeps me waiting thirty minutes...I guess, I’m not sure, because I don’t have a watch. Pierre is walking with her and I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m scared of him or that I have any problem just walking right up to her and touching her on the shoulder, right in front of...

“Ohhhh, shit!”

C’mon Pierre, be a man this time.

This is ridiculous.

Look at them running away; you’d thought that they had seen a ghost.

Pussies.

Well, like I said. Oh, yeah, I love dancing. And I lovvve to hit my favorite old haunts.

BIO:
“Cormac Brown” is my pen name. I’m an up-and-slumming writer in the city of Saint Francis and I’m following in the footsteps of Hammett…minus the TB and working for the Pinkerton Agency. Some of my stories have appeared at Powder Burn Flash, Six Sentences, Flash Fire 500, Clarity of Night, Astonishing Adventures Magazine, and Crooked Magazine. You can find me at cormacwrites.blogspot.com