Sean

            I have thought of Sean often since college, his Irish pallid skin that flushed red at the neck when he was startled, his course black hair swooping across his forehead like something edgy and alluring. He might have been mistaken for Goth in his style of dress, mostly tight pants the color of a moonless night, charcoal or stark white tees, chunky biker boots. He edged his eyes with kohl and when he smiled, which was often, his pearl teeth gleamed, his tongue pushing its way through the gap between his two front teeth, creating a sardonic, rictus grin. He was just punk, and Catholic, and gay.

            I was attracted to him like a teen girl gloms on to her favorite rockstar. He was the leading man, the creator, the one they all came for at the concert venue. I wanted to be close to him, to soak in his radiance like sunlight after a long winter. Sean was the first man I could be around in my fullest flesh. I was fat the summer we became friends and although this represented a social barrier for me, Sean had no qualms befriending me. He introduced himself at a raucous kegger in the basement of an upper classman’s house off Wayland Avenue. I watched as he danced over to me, his movements coy and preening. I was standing near a stairwell that led to the outside, the merest of breezes fanning my warm face, holding my requisite red plastic cup full of stale beer. It was impossible not to smile back; I suppressed the urge to run my hands down his bare, pink arms.

            “Let’s dance girlfriend!” he yelled at me, “you KNOW you want to!”

            And he grabbed my hand, just as Prince belted out from a corner stereo, the first few lines from ‘Kiss’:

Uh

You don't have to be beautiful
To turn me on
I just need your body, baby
From dusk till dawn

            He shouted his name at me while I followed him into the middle of the room. I mumbled mine back, unsure if he heard –

“Both Irish!” he answered gleefully. We landed as one on the sticky floor, the middle of a thick circle of inebriated young women gyrating, tossing their long manes of hair off sweaty necks, shaking their booties in the direction of a gaggle of admiring boys, clapping their hands and falling against each other in hysterics. Sean stood close to me and whispered.

            “Mirror me!” His grin was both wicked and indulgent, as if I was a child and he the adult who would show me how to play a giant prank on my sister.

            And then he started to dance.

            At first, I pantomimed him, as if he was a mirror I could see into in the dank, grey light of the basement. A mirror that reflected joy and passion; not an awkward young woman holding her flesh tight. Sean was a dancer; I could see that after having taken six years of ballet myself. His body was muscular and firm, his movements precise yet fluid. His concentration, his total immersion in the movement flew off his skin and on to mine like an invisible force – I felt it wrapping around me, twisting me, turning me, my own hair, my own body on fire.

            I was no longer a body I wanted to peel away from my bones; I was no longer hiding beneath my folds. I abandoned myself to the dance, meeting Sean periodically face to face, our movements synced, our glee entwined. It was the kind of freedom I have never known, the closest I had ever felt to someone up until that point. It was pure, hypnotic joy.

            All that summer and into the fall, Sean and I were attached at the hip. We smoked weed, and we danced. We cooked curry or stir-fry, and we danced. We held hands when we walked down the street and Sean told me I was gorgeous and pulled my hair. His attractiveness was magic; men and women wanted his time, his attention. He gave it in doses, always laughing, hyping up any story that was shared with him, gossiping like an old woman at her weekly card game with the gals. He was curious and brilliant and mysterious, asking mischievous questions and refusing to elaborate after offering short quips of his own. I knew I was his wing-woman; I knew he had his eye on a couple men who he became suddenly shy around, as if the air had been sucked out of him, a stomach punch.

            Towards the end of that summer, I met that man who would later become my first husband. Sean saw he was all wrong for me long before I would ever come to see it on my own. He never said anything, but I felt his withdrawal like the change of seasons, from late fall to early winter. He started edging away from me at parties, and then turning down my dinner invites, claiming he was trying to get ahead of the fall semester reading list (he was an English major and it was true, the reading list was copiously long). I started spending more time with my new boyfriend, basking in his attention, forgetting to eat and losing weight. As my skin began to deflate so did my heart. I missed the dancing, and I missed Sean.

            At twenty-one I had no skills for confrontation. I had led a childhood strewn with people who left me and who didn’t always come back, or if they did, came back as someone I did not know. I saw Sean drifting away and felt powerless to stop him, as if I had untied the rope that held him and his boat to the dock, myself.

            At the end of my senior year, I attended a party with another friend of mine from my freshman hall. The party was LGBTQ themed and my friend was going with his partner and they both suggested I join them. They liked to travel in threes, as much as they were besotted with each other. I was once again the wing-woman, but I didn’t mind. My boyfriend was out of town and I felt strangely light, unencumbered.

            At the party, a rainbow of strobe lights and a disco ball lit up the dance floor. The three of us ventured on to it and started to dance. I stopped to watch my friend and his partner in their stilted but loving dance together, their limbs jerking like marionettes as they looked into each other’s eyes with bliss. The song was ‘Girlfriend is Better’ by Talking Heads:

I got a girlfriend that's better than this
But you don't remember at all

As we get older and stop making sense

You won’t find her waiting long

Stop making sense, stop making sense

My eyes roved around the room and there was Sean, laughing uproariously at something an attractive person standing close to him had just said. As I watched, his hands ran over the person’s arms, pulling them into the middle of the room to dance.