(no subject)
For someyoungpup (with love and squalor), in response to a meme posted almost exactly a year ago and nominally inspired by Fall Out Boy's "Dance, Dance." You have been warned.
“Okay, okay. I thought of another one.”
“Oh yeah?” Jeff says. He steps to the left, casually obstructing the path of a would-be cutter. People surround them, bright and puffy in their winter clothes, surging inexorably toward the skate rental booth. The mass they form can be considered a line only in the purest, most mathematical sense: it’s endless. “Hit me.”
“You have to turn around.”
Jeff glances back over his shoulder.
“All the way around,” Alan says, whipping his hand in a circle by way of illustration.
Jeff obediently executes a full three-sixty.
“You know what I mean.” I don’t whine, Alan’s told Jeff, but a quiver of exasperation steals into his voice. Chalk it up to excitement, an excess of hot cocoa, the proximity of skyscrapers. “Face me. You need to stand facing me.”
Jeff turns around and faces him.
Alan sighs. His shoulders slump; he smiles the sardonic half-smile wiseasses are forever tossing back and forth to each other. For an instant he seems sapped of energy, content and exhausted, as if convincing Jeff to follow simple instructions is some sort of grueling athletic event. Then, straightening up, drawing in a deep breath, he asks, “Do you collect stamps?”
“No,” Jeff says.
Alan lunges at him, a sharpness to the movement that catches Jeff off guard. Without thinking he backpedals, knocks into a stranger’s elbow. A fraction of a second later Alan’s foot tramps down on the patch of snow his boot has just vacated.
“Hey, unfair,” Alan gasps, disheveled now-wind rifling through his coat, wool hat in the process of sliding off his head. He tugs it down. “You’ve heard it before.”
“Nope. Those were just my badass gym-teacher reflexes. What are you trying to stomp on my foot for anyway? I said no.”
“It doesn’t matter. If you say ‘yes’ you get stamped on, obviously; if you say ‘no’ you get stamped on and afterwards they tell you, ‘That’s to start your collection.’”
Jeff gives an appreciative snort. “Crafty. Too bad you’re not faster on your feet.”
“Yeah,” Alan says softly. He studies the week-old crust of snow under his boots. “Too-“
This is his mistake: he looks up. A quick glance, assessing and oddly hopeful, as if he’s peering through a keyhole at a cache of unwrapped Christmas presents. Then he springs and Jeff, forewarned this time, allows his foot to be squashed.
“You were saying?” Alan smirks, comes down on the last word like it’s some hapless victim’s foot.
“Ow,” Jeff says, stone-faced. “The pain. The unbearable pain. If I don’t make it, tell mother I loved her. Give my regards to Broadway.” He drops the act and grins. “I can show you a better way to do it.”
“No, you can’t.” Alan pauses. You can almost hear him counting down the seconds. “Because it doesn’t exist.”
“Oh, right. I forgot you were trained by the masters in the mountains of Tibet.”
“Shut up! It’s not like there are thousands of different ways to step on someone else’s foot. There’s…maybe two if you count doing it backwards.”
“Okay.” With a shrug, Jeff turns back to the jostling, wind-beaten throng. “Whatever you say.”
They pass a few minutes in silence. Jeff slips into it easily, shuffling along, claiming each new fraction of an inch as it's made available. Alan digs into the snow with the toe of a boot. He cups his hands over his mouth, huffs air into them and jams them in his pockets. He stares at the back of Jeff’s coat with such fixity that, were the weather a touch warmer, smoke would surely begin to curl from it.
“Fine,” he says through gritted teeth.
“I never really noticed before, but this line is long.” Jeff gets up on tiptoe, tilts his head at tortured angle. “We could be here for”-flat on the ground again, he ponderously counts off an irrelevant number of fingers-“hours.”
“Fine. Fine fine fine fine fine. Show me how.”
When Jeff turns around he’s smiling-not the bright, stiff smile every teacher wears like armor (armor made of tinfoil), but a real smile, one that contains the promise of trouble. He sets his feet shoulder-width apart, one slightly in front of the other, nods approval as Alan follows suit. “There’s two steps to this. First, a jab.” With a crunch he stomps down inches shy of Alan’s toes; Alan twists away, jerks his foot back, but before he can muster the breath to give voice to his triumph Jeff strikes with his other foot.
“Then, when they least expect it…” Jeff’s slab of a foot rests lightly atop Alan’s, exerting no more force than a stern look.
“So it’s a fake,” Alan shrugs, sliding his foot out from under Jeff’s. “I’ve thought of that.”
“Kinda. It’s…if I go to step on your foot, what’s your first reaction?”
“Don’t ask questions like that,” Alan says, “please. They make me want to hang myself with my shoelaces.”
The lower half of Jeff’s face undergoes a series of painful-looking contortions-like he’s trying to regurgitate a wad of gum he just swallowed-before settling into a smirk. “All right,” he says, “but only because I hate seeing good shoelaces go to waste. Anyone who sees you trying to stomp on their foot’ll move it out of the way, right? But the thing is you can’t move one foot back without-yup, without planting the other.”
Alan’s already testing the assertion, dodging an onslaught of invisible feet, stepping forward, back, forward again, as if rehearsing a dance. He switches feet, slows his pace, but there’s no getting around that sliver of a second it takes for one foot to follow the other. “You’re right,” he says, surprise ringing high and clear in his voice-he’s yet to be schooled in its concealment. “How’d you know that?”
“A gym teacher never reveals his secrets”-casting a glance to either side (confirming they’re still caught in the swell of the crowd, feeling the tug of its current), Jeff beckons him closer-“but you know what…”
They move almost as one (later, color returning to their cheeks, voices overlapping like feet, they’ll argue with mock indignation over who had the idea first): Alan stabbing his leg out, all the energy he’s stockpiled watching people shuffle forward uncoiling like a spring; Jeff executing a playful, practiced little one-two. Alan laughs-the cold air crumples up the sound, tosses it aside-and stumbles away, one arm flung out for balance. Jeff’s foot comes crashing down again and he hops back with both feet, counters with a feint to the left (Jeff evades with a deftness that seems to Alan both unfair and impossible) then blunders across the toe of Jeff’s boot. He hesitates-a fatal mistake-and someone drops a block of concrete on his foot. There’s a chance Jeff’s holding back, but tell that to Alan’s aching foot and the pain reverberating through it.
They mark out an arena of battle with the patterns on their boot soles. They tumble into someone and Jeff yells “whoops” over his shoulder without a hitch in his footwork. Alan falls down twice and his socks turn to a soggy mush that wells up around his toes with every step. He has to sniffle to keep snot from leaking out his nose.
And he never wants to stop.
“Okay, okay. I thought of another one.”
“Oh yeah?” Jeff says. He steps to the left, casually obstructing the path of a would-be cutter. People surround them, bright and puffy in their winter clothes, surging inexorably toward the skate rental booth. The mass they form can be considered a line only in the purest, most mathematical sense: it’s endless. “Hit me.”
“You have to turn around.”
Jeff glances back over his shoulder.
“All the way around,” Alan says, whipping his hand in a circle by way of illustration.
Jeff obediently executes a full three-sixty.
“You know what I mean.” I don’t whine, Alan’s told Jeff, but a quiver of exasperation steals into his voice. Chalk it up to excitement, an excess of hot cocoa, the proximity of skyscrapers. “Face me. You need to stand facing me.”
Jeff turns around and faces him.
Alan sighs. His shoulders slump; he smiles the sardonic half-smile wiseasses are forever tossing back and forth to each other. For an instant he seems sapped of energy, content and exhausted, as if convincing Jeff to follow simple instructions is some sort of grueling athletic event. Then, straightening up, drawing in a deep breath, he asks, “Do you collect stamps?”
“No,” Jeff says.
Alan lunges at him, a sharpness to the movement that catches Jeff off guard. Without thinking he backpedals, knocks into a stranger’s elbow. A fraction of a second later Alan’s foot tramps down on the patch of snow his boot has just vacated.
“Hey, unfair,” Alan gasps, disheveled now-wind rifling through his coat, wool hat in the process of sliding off his head. He tugs it down. “You’ve heard it before.”
“Nope. Those were just my badass gym-teacher reflexes. What are you trying to stomp on my foot for anyway? I said no.”
“It doesn’t matter. If you say ‘yes’ you get stamped on, obviously; if you say ‘no’ you get stamped on and afterwards they tell you, ‘That’s to start your collection.’”
Jeff gives an appreciative snort. “Crafty. Too bad you’re not faster on your feet.”
“Yeah,” Alan says softly. He studies the week-old crust of snow under his boots. “Too-“
This is his mistake: he looks up. A quick glance, assessing and oddly hopeful, as if he’s peering through a keyhole at a cache of unwrapped Christmas presents. Then he springs and Jeff, forewarned this time, allows his foot to be squashed.
“You were saying?” Alan smirks, comes down on the last word like it’s some hapless victim’s foot.
“Ow,” Jeff says, stone-faced. “The pain. The unbearable pain. If I don’t make it, tell mother I loved her. Give my regards to Broadway.” He drops the act and grins. “I can show you a better way to do it.”
“No, you can’t.” Alan pauses. You can almost hear him counting down the seconds. “Because it doesn’t exist.”
“Oh, right. I forgot you were trained by the masters in the mountains of Tibet.”
“Shut up! It’s not like there are thousands of different ways to step on someone else’s foot. There’s…maybe two if you count doing it backwards.”
“Okay.” With a shrug, Jeff turns back to the jostling, wind-beaten throng. “Whatever you say.”
They pass a few minutes in silence. Jeff slips into it easily, shuffling along, claiming each new fraction of an inch as it's made available. Alan digs into the snow with the toe of a boot. He cups his hands over his mouth, huffs air into them and jams them in his pockets. He stares at the back of Jeff’s coat with such fixity that, were the weather a touch warmer, smoke would surely begin to curl from it.
“Fine,” he says through gritted teeth.
“I never really noticed before, but this line is long.” Jeff gets up on tiptoe, tilts his head at tortured angle. “We could be here for”-flat on the ground again, he ponderously counts off an irrelevant number of fingers-“hours.”
“Fine. Fine fine fine fine fine. Show me how.”
When Jeff turns around he’s smiling-not the bright, stiff smile every teacher wears like armor (armor made of tinfoil), but a real smile, one that contains the promise of trouble. He sets his feet shoulder-width apart, one slightly in front of the other, nods approval as Alan follows suit. “There’s two steps to this. First, a jab.” With a crunch he stomps down inches shy of Alan’s toes; Alan twists away, jerks his foot back, but before he can muster the breath to give voice to his triumph Jeff strikes with his other foot.
“Then, when they least expect it…” Jeff’s slab of a foot rests lightly atop Alan’s, exerting no more force than a stern look.
“So it’s a fake,” Alan shrugs, sliding his foot out from under Jeff’s. “I’ve thought of that.”
“Kinda. It’s…if I go to step on your foot, what’s your first reaction?”
“Don’t ask questions like that,” Alan says, “please. They make me want to hang myself with my shoelaces.”
The lower half of Jeff’s face undergoes a series of painful-looking contortions-like he’s trying to regurgitate a wad of gum he just swallowed-before settling into a smirk. “All right,” he says, “but only because I hate seeing good shoelaces go to waste. Anyone who sees you trying to stomp on their foot’ll move it out of the way, right? But the thing is you can’t move one foot back without-yup, without planting the other.”
Alan’s already testing the assertion, dodging an onslaught of invisible feet, stepping forward, back, forward again, as if rehearsing a dance. He switches feet, slows his pace, but there’s no getting around that sliver of a second it takes for one foot to follow the other. “You’re right,” he says, surprise ringing high and clear in his voice-he’s yet to be schooled in its concealment. “How’d you know that?”
“A gym teacher never reveals his secrets”-casting a glance to either side (confirming they’re still caught in the swell of the crowd, feeling the tug of its current), Jeff beckons him closer-“but you know what…”
They move almost as one (later, color returning to their cheeks, voices overlapping like feet, they’ll argue with mock indignation over who had the idea first): Alan stabbing his leg out, all the energy he’s stockpiled watching people shuffle forward uncoiling like a spring; Jeff executing a playful, practiced little one-two. Alan laughs-the cold air crumples up the sound, tosses it aside-and stumbles away, one arm flung out for balance. Jeff’s foot comes crashing down again and he hops back with both feet, counters with a feint to the left (Jeff evades with a deftness that seems to Alan both unfair and impossible) then blunders across the toe of Jeff’s boot. He hesitates-a fatal mistake-and someone drops a block of concrete on his foot. There’s a chance Jeff’s holding back, but tell that to Alan’s aching foot and the pain reverberating through it.
They mark out an arena of battle with the patterns on their boot soles. They tumble into someone and Jeff yells “whoops” over his shoulder without a hitch in his footwork. Alan falls down twice and his socks turn to a soggy mush that wells up around his toes with every step. He has to sniffle to keep snot from leaking out his nose.
And he never wants to stop.