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Sunday, January 12, 2011

Ceci

Yes! I absolutely want to hear the story!


Jack

The brutal truth: I'm at Oberlin College pursuing a girl crush who is devoted to modern dance, not me.

As a by-product of chasing her, I am pulled into the Dance Department and taken under the wings of some of the coolest girls I will ever meet. Most are from NYC. East coast. They are like angel hipsters.

During this period, performance art and modern dance nearly converge so that a modern performance can be anything from dancing in unison to throwing feces and naked puppet sex. These girls take delight in exposing me to everything from film and underground music, to art and skinny dipping. My life becomes an adventure guided by mermaids.

Then we graduate. I'm supposed to start law school. But the economy in Detroit sucks. Sucks bad. I can't pay-off college, or my student loans, or start law school. Which is not too bad, maybe just a delay. What sucks more is I'm back in Detroit, living with my parents, crap job, friends all gone away, driving mom's car, and painfully missing the company of cool girls.

My closest modern dance buddy from college calls. She set up a bed for me on the floor of her apartment and has a job lined up. I just have to get to New York City. I load up my 1964 Ford (total value $275) and drive to the bank to cash my last paycheck. Right then, the rust holding my rear wheels to the car disintegrates. The back of my car drops onto the pavement.

Trip cancelled.

That fucking sucks, and, although I'm not usually down, I probably am at least melancholy. Back to my parent's house, and mom's car.

That night, I retreat to the Clutch Cargo's club in Detroit for a weekday dance night. There are about seven people there. Dark. Cold. Beer stank. But two girls walk onto the empty floor and begin to dance. They are being ridiculous, kind of goofy.

Now here, Ceci, you have to trust me for a moment. There are lots of loud blowhards that claim to be trial lawyers, but the reality is that the most elite and lethal are not blowhards at all. Just the opposite. They are often quiet wall-flowers. It's counter-intuitive, but the best trial lawyers are not the best talkers. They are the best listeners and watchers. I mean, how are you going to learn and communicate the intimate truth about a client who is fighting for his life, if you're talking all the time?

Anyway, I am watching these two girls dance. Watching close. Reading their movement like code, like dialogue. Slowly, it starts to become clear that one of them is possibly the coolest girl I have ever seen.

It's you.

After the song, you sit back down.

I wait for my chance. A better song. It comes. I get up. Walk over to where you are sitting. Ask you to dance.

You smile. Nod yes. Smile again.

The other girl (Eileen) is kind of surly. She's rolling her eyes, but you coax her out onto the floor. The three of us dance. No one else. I become pretty sure you are the coolest girl in Detroit, maybe the galaxy. The song ends. We part and go back to our separate seats.

I have no name. No number. Nothing. But I go home happy because, like an idiot from a small college in Ohio, I just figure I'll see you around. Then, maybe in a week or two, we can see what unfolds, naturally, like fish spawning in the wild, or whatever sea turtles do.

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