disco balls of steel
Dance For Your Life
Tales from the trenches of latex and sequins
Those were happier times, if not simpler ones. That was before the walls caved in, before all the paths of escape were closed to us.
Before the party ended. Before life as we knew it changed forever.
There was no time to prepare. No time to pack. We left with the clothes on our backs. Cherry-red satin pants, leotards the color of a blood-orange moon. The entire escapade was cartoonish and grotesque. We threw on yellow trainers and black stiletto heels to flee marauding hordes of Paratrooping Party Poopers.
Before the storm, we danced.
We drank champagne from oversized bottles. We ingested prodigious amounts of disco nose candy and oh how we laughed. We laughed and we talked.
We talked of making plans; of building things. We blathered on about startups and bitcoin. We talked about making minor improvements to the disco-ball dwellings in which we lived.
We sniffed as we talked but we meant what we said. One day soon, we’d be free from the petrochemical tyrants.
We talked about making love, making babies, starting families. Those who weren’t talking moved their jaws a lot.
But always, there was music and dancing. We shimmied and twirled as if our lives depended on it. Until, one day, they did. We were freethinking hedonists. Lovers, not fighters. Who knew one day we’d need to defend ourselves with whatever was at hand?
And one ruddy dawn it all came crashing down. Two by two we fled. We straddled oversized corks, propelled as each new bottle popped. Those on the ground made Molotov cocktails, stuffed Veuve Clicquot with discarded satin and bright-orange leotards. The nose candy gave us superhuman strength to heave massive firebombs at the drably-attired army of automatons.
And those who couldn’t fight or flee huddled in makeshift shelters. They banged on oil drums, improvising rhythms with faux-gold medallions, cracked baby rattles, serrated soup cans, coke spoons. KC & the Sunshine Band of Sovereign Defenders. They rallied the ones who stayed behind to fight — fight for the right to dream and screw and laugh and build and plan for a future free of tyranny and oppression.
And you, in your bubbles, we don’t envy your repose. We can’t rely on a world of casual indifference. Your distance, your safety, your comfort is illusion. We don’t have the luxury to stand on the sidelines, to let forces beyond our control decide our fates.
We did not ask for this fight. It came to us. We will defend our homeland and our right to sovereignty. We on the front lines say to you in your bubbles — beware! Be vigilant. The forces of repression, barbarism, and hate are not only outside your door. They’re already inside your house.
Until we meet again, we will dance and we will sing by the light of the fiery, blood-orange moon. Bang on your oil drums and tap on your soup cans, brothers and sisters of resistance! Heave your bottles of Dom Perignon! Fashion your caviar tins into weapons! Viva la disco and down with the tyrants!
