I Want to Dance with You Forever

This is part of a cycle of stories that I keep returning to that form kind of a mosaic of the experiences of a group of characters centered around a fairly rustic bar. The stories use different narrators and can take place at different times between the 70s and the 2000s. The stories are not told in chronological order, although once enough are up I suppose I can put together a concordance; they likely won't fit in the same category - the next one, "Aphrodite," up in a week or two, would be more likely in the non - erotic section, although it does deal with sexual themes. Some of these may need a little retconning, as I have been putting them together over a number of years. I have put the subtitle "A Huck's Place Story" on all stories in this cycle to distinguish them from my other stories.

Yes, these are the characters introduced as boys in the story "The Rope."

I Want to Dance With You Forever: A Huck's Place story

By

Richard Wark

April, 1981

Kimmie had been gone for a good fifteen minutes and none of us knew or really cared where she was until we heard the crash outside. Then we all stopped what we were doing.

Chuck, the bartender, all of sixty-five, turned away from the blonde, all of thirty, he was chatting it up with; Lit and Chris paused in their shuffle bowling game; Denny Manners, at the near end of the U-shaped bar, took a brief respite from slamming his glass on the bar and shouting "Fuck!" every few seconds; Lynn and Brenda, across the "U" from me dropped their voices - and we all figured out at the same time what had happened.

The girls got up and headed toward the heavy wooden door at about the same time Kim shoved her way in, bringing with her the heavy hot air from the humid night. She paused a moment, ready to either scream or cry. In her right hand was a pack of cigarettes. In the back of that hand was also a gash that dripped gouts of blood onto the concrete floor. Her blouse was flecked with shards of broken glass. "Where's my fucking drink?" she said, as Lynn and Bren hustled her into the bathroom.

Things got back to normal fairly quickly - Chris turned on the jukebox and Eric Clapton agreed that he couldn't stand it, Chuck was back to talking to the unknown blonde, and I was sipping a fresh beer - when Billy came in a few minutes later, redfaced and sheepish, tucking in his shirt. He moved to the bar and signaled Chuck for a beer. We all loved Billy, but we really had nothing to say to him right now. I mean, you don't fuck your ex-girlfriend in your car outside while your current girlfriend is inside.

"You're a fuckin' goof," Chuck said as he slid the beer across to him. "You know that?"

Billy said nothing but ran his fingers through his sweaty hair and drained half his beer. Lynn and Bren stepped out of the "Queens" room with Kim just behind them, toilet paper wrapped around her hand. None of them looked at Billy as they sat down together and Chuck brought them their drinks. Lynn looked across at me, brushed her short blonde hair across her forehead, rolled her eyes, smiled and shook her head almost imperceptibly.

I pushed myself away from the bar and moved through the doors into the gravel parking lot that surrounded the place. It was warm and sticky outside. Billy's white Chevy was just to my left, near the street, in the red, blue, and yellow glow of the neon sign that had, years ago, said "Chuck's Place" but now, after years of inattention had caused the "C" to fizzle out, identified the bar as "huck's Place."

The front window on the passenger side of Billy's Pontiac was broken and the neon lights reflected in the small pieces of glass beside it. A girl with long black hair, wearing a rumpled brown blouse, barelegged and barefoot beneath a blue jean skirt, crouched against the open rear door, a cigarette in one hand, feeling under the car with the other. I stepped through the gravel toward her.

"What the hell, Janie?"

She glanced at me and continued her search. "Oh, shut the fuck up and help me find my panties." After a couple more passes with her hand she collapsed against the car, sat down, and reached for the bottle of Old Style resting on the ground next to her.

I crouched down and leaned against the car by her side. "Sure you were wearing 'em?" As casually as possible, I reached over and pulled her hiked-up skirt down over her pubis.

She shrugged and took a sip of the beer and handed it to me. "She wasn't trying to hurt me," she said. "We were in the back seat. She smashed in the front window, said 'I just came for my cigarettes,' took them from the seat, and left. She just wanted to get our attention."

I took a sip of the beer. "Mm-hm."

We sat in silence for a while as the song from inside the bar changed. I could make out the words

"Young love born in the backseat

Two hearts pound out a backbeat."

Robbie Dupree, He was a big deal last summer. "I thought Chuck would have gotten rid of that one by now," I said.

"I mean, I don't blame her," Janie went on. "Another two minutes and she'd have gotten a real show. I mean, we hadn't exactly started yet." She kicked a little gravel with her toes. "What the hell am I going to do?" Her voice cracked a little. "I mean, this was stupid. Just fucking stupid."

"Coming back in general or just coming here?"

A single tear made its way down her cheek as she flicked her cigarette way. "Both."

I resisted the urge to put my arms around her and just handed back her beer. Her skirt hiked back up, exposing her thigh, as she pulled her knee a little closer. Her sweat-drenched button-up blouse clung to her breasts.

"What happened in Tulsa?" I probably didn't want to know but knew I had to ask.

"Actually, Stillwater. What do you think? He was a dick. So you guys were right. I tried for four goddam months-"

"Five." I held my hand out and she passed her bottle to me. " Closer to six. " Of course she would know I knew.

"Five, asshole." She pulled a crumpled pack of Salems from her pocket and pulled out a particularly crooked cigarette. "...moved out, left my home, left my friends and he turned out to be a total piece of shit."

She reclaimed her beer and took a longer drink. "I went through a lot of shit - Mark would take my money, disappear for days, and I put up with it, but yesterday, when he fucking hit me, I had enough. I threw all my shit in my car and drove back. He probably doesn't even know I'm gone yet." She touched the right side of her face. I could make out a small discoloration on her cheekbone.

I pushed away my brief fantasy of pounding Mark's head with a baseball bat, took the lighter from her hand and lit her smoke. "When did you get in?"

"About 3 this afternoon." She finished the beer and looked at the empty bottle.. "I probably should have stayed in and slept tonight. I left last night about 6, stopped at some rest stop in Missouri at about 1, slept for a few hours, and then decided to turn around and give him another chance."

"Are you shitting me?"

She took a deep drag from her cigarette. "Nope. I drove back for about half an hour. Then that stupid 'I Want to Dance With You' song came in the radio and I got pissed off all over again and turned around." She kicked the loose gravel with her heel. "I should have thought things through first."

I looked around the parking lot. "How did you get here? I don't see your car."

She pointed to the corner farthest from the street. I could barely see it behind the old panel truck that was always parked there. "I wasn't sure if I wanted anyone to see me. I pulled in here, sat behind the wheel, and smoked half a pack of cigarettes before I got the courage to come in."

"You didn't know about Billy and Kim?"

"Yeah, I did." I watched as she pushed herself up. I lingered on the gravel for a minute, watching her pantiless butt as she stepped away from the car. She turned and rolled her eyes. "For Christ's sake, Dan."

I got up and took a step toward her. From inside the bar I could hear female laughter. "Sorry," I said, though she knew I was lying.

She tossed the cigarette into the gravel. "Anyway, I just came in and there he was and I kind of flashed back to a few months ago." Her face was pink from the flow of the broken neon light as she looked toward the bar. "Obviously, so did he. How's Kim?"

"She's ok. She'll get over it."

She started to say something but her voice was drowned out by the sound of Mike C's mufferless green pickup truck peeling off the street and into the parking lot, gravel flying from its oversized tires.

"They must have gone to see 'Cannonball Run' again," I shouted to Janie.

As it passed I could see Mike at the wheel and Joey next to him, holding on to his red baseball cap for dear life. It skidded to a halt two spaces away. A woman on the radio in the truck was singing about Bette Davis's eyes. "Janie! What the fuck!" boomed Mike's voice from the driver's side.

"Hey, guys." Janie took a step toward the truck.

"When the hell did you get back?"

Before she replied, she looked across at me. Her face got serious as she started to say something in my direction, but stopped as I smiled, shrugged, and headed back toward the bar. I heard her say "This afternoon" to the guys just before the door closed behind me.

Once again, something had gotten in the way. She and Mike C had a history, too.

Denny Manners was beginning to nod off at his spot. Chuck was hunched over, still chatting with the unknown blonde. Lynn and Brenda were now playing the bowling game; Lit and Chris had finished their game and were now sitting next to my empty stool.

In the far corner, almost hidden in the shadows behind the jukebox, were Billy and Kim, talking quietly. They pretended not to notice as I stepped up and punched a couple of numbers into the machine. Kim was against the wall and Billy was stroking her arm with his hand. She looked up at him, gave a half-smile, and kissed him.

"Holy shit," Lit said, as I sat at the bar next to him. The opening chords of "Keep on Loving You" flooded the room. "I thought I had charm. Not only is Chuck doing his usual thing, making time with these young broads, Billy gets caught screwing someone else and five minutes later his girlfriend forgives him. I'm losing it."

"Hate to tell you this, Lit," I replied, as Chuck brought me a fresh beer, "But you never had charm. Paying for strippers doesn't count."

"Fuck you." He pulled a Marlboro from a pack in front of him and tapped it on the counter. "Janie all right?"

"Yeah. Mike C and Joey are out there with her now. She's just kind of messed up."

"Did you tell her you love her and would crawl through twenty miles of broken glass just to masturbate in her presence?"

"Kiss my ass. Man, my sister dodged a bullet when she went to college" Lit famously had a longtime crush on my sister. It never came to anything but we all like to fuck with him about it.

Lit shifted his enormous, sweaty body on the stool and put the cigarette in his mouth. "I knew that guy was a fuckup." He reached into his shirt pocked for his lighter. "So did you. So did Kim. We didn't know anything about the guy, but we knew he was a shithead."

The song washes over me:

"And though I know all about those men

...Cause it was us, baby, way before then..."

# # # # #

I still can't remember how he came into the picture. He had some connection to Chuck, I think. Cousin to some woman Chuck was banging at the time.

It was November. Janie and Billy had gotten into some sort of fight and had broken up, which was pretty much a weekly occurrence. They would fight, swear they would never speak again, and then reunite a day later.

At some point, I thought, they would stay separated and I would swoop in and rescue her. I had known Janie - and Lynn, her best friend at the time - since my sophomore year. Janie had occupied my every thought for as long as I had known her. She was beautiful, with her long, black hair - it was longer at the time, running like a river down her back - and saucerlike brown eyes and the woman's body she carried through high school.

And she was independent as hell; she took shit from nobody.

And she was sweet enough to be friendly with high school semi-nerds like me.

But I was always just a little too late with her. Two or three days before I asked her to the Prom someone else asked her. I had managed, about the same time, to get tickets to see Led Zeppelin at the Stadium. When I called her to tell her, she had excitedly told me Mike C had scored tickets and was taking her.

I ended up eating the tickets and was perversely happy when Jimmy Page got sick and the concert lasted less than an hour.

Somewhere in the middle of senior year, Janie, Lynn, Lit, and I had discovered Huck's, in an unincorporated area just outside of the Chicago South Suburbs, a place where you were considered to be old enough to drink if you could sit on a stool and hold a glass. Our circle of friends grew as we hit the bar almost nightly.

My last chance came during the summer, when we all drunkenly migrated en masse to a spot in the woods we called the Point to watch the sunrise. This would be my opportunity to get some time alone with Janie and spill my guts to her romantically. As soon as we all got there, she and Billy went off into the woods. I remember wandering off into the woods to pee and spotting them together, their clothes in a heap on the side, Janie on her knees, Billy behind her, his ass rocking back and forth as they fucked.

Resigned to the idea of having lost her, Lynn and I had sex the same night; she wasn't my first; there had been Darlene, a girl from down the block, a couple of years earlier. But my encounter with Lynn was the beginning of my own on-again off-again relationship.

At any rate, this guy with impossibly blond hair and a tattoo of Pepe Le Pew on his left arm was already there when we all filed in that night last November for our nightly visit to Huck's. He sat at the end of the "U," like he was chairman of the board, chatting with Chuck, sipping beer, and sauntering up to the jukebox every fifteen minutes or so. Chuck was kind of close-lipped about the guy, but we were able to find out his name was Mark and he usually lived in Oklahoma.

Janie had come into the bar, looked across at Billy, who was sitting against the wall, scowling and drinking, and then at me. Lynn was sitting next to me, drinking rum and coke, her arm around me, leaning forward just enough to give me an unimpeded view of her breasts. This was one of those times when we were "on again."

We glanced at her as she took a place next to the new guy and went back to our business. I kept hoping Lynn would have to go to the bathroom or home or anyplace but here so I could take advantage of the opportunity to sit with Janie.

Not too long afterward, the steady cranking of Rolling Stones and Lynyrd Skynyrd through the jukebox ceased and was replaced by the slow, maudlin crooning of some country star singing a slow, corny song called "I Want to Dance With You Forever."

Lynn nudged me. "I think Janie's over Billy." She pointed to the end of the bar. Janie and the new guy were dancing, slowly, closely, arms wrapped around each other, her head resting on his shoulder. When it finished, he went back to the jukebox and played it again. The dance continued. This went on for several replays.

Across the bar, Billy's stool toppled over. The rest of us jumped a little as he slammed his bottle down on the bar, put on his cap, and strode out of the bar, pushing the couple as he did so. Kim got up and followed him out.

The two of them were like that all evening - dancing to the same song, knocking down shots of Jack, and dancing some more. At the end of the night, they took off in his car, leaving hers in the darkness of the parking lot.

A week later, she was gone. He had gone back home and she had gone with him. I got about as drunk as Billy the night she left.

# # # # #

"Here they come," Lit said, as Janie, Mike C (Mike Conroy; we called him Mike C so as not to confuse him with Mike Kodacki, or Mike K, but at this point it was really unnecessary since Mike K had been dead for about a year), and Joey came in, sat down, and ordered beers. "Missed your chance again," he continued.

I shrugged and drank silently, my attention divided between Chuck and the unknown woman, Lynn talking to Bren and surreptitiously glancing at me; Janie, Mike, and Joey laughing uproariously as they knocked back their drinks; and Billy and Kim in their corner planting light kisses on each other's faces.

A few people filed into the bar, most of whom I knew, and every now and then Denny Manners would wake up, shout "Fuck!" and go back to sleep. Chris and Lit went back to their bowling game, leaving me alone.

There was a tap on my shoulder. I turned as Lynn slipped onto the seat next to me. "Hey there."

I gestured to Chuck to get her a drink. "What are you and Bren talking about?"

"Not much. She's getting a new job. She's fed up with First National. That's all. I heard you put on our song," she added, thinking the REO song had been for her.

I shrugged and faked a smile. "How have you been?"

"Good. Leah's out of the apartment this weekend. Her cousin's getting married in Springfield." She pushed herself closer to me, just in case I didn't know what she meant. "Nobody there. How about getting out of here? I miss you." Of course, she tended to miss me every two weeks or so.

I pulled her close to me and stroked her back. She was braless under her halter top. Of course, every two weeks or so, I missed her too. My growing hard-on was reminding me of that.

I looked across the bar. Janie was still holding court with the guys, every now and then glancing across at me. Billy and Kim were at the jukebox. I saw Kim take a sideways look at Janie. She smirked a little and said something to Billy.

I took another look at Lynn. Her nipples were pressed hard against her shirt. I reached for my beer. "I guess. Let's finish up and go."

I knocked it back and began to get up as he needle dropped and the sound of a country guitar filled the room.

I didn't place the song until I heard Billy and Kim laughing. There it was; the pseudo-Merle Haggard twang, audible above the slow slide guitar, singing that same stupid song. I looked down at the end of the U. Mike C and Joey pushed themselves off their stools, laughing, pretending to dance as they sang, loudly and off key while Janie stared off blankly, shell-struck.

"I'll never leave this spot, not ever/

I want to dance with you for-ev-er."

I watched as Janie's face turned red. She took a breath, balled her hand into a fist and brought it up to her mouth. The bar's dim lights reflected in her tear-filled eyes. Mike and Joey stopped singing and moved toward her. "Sorry, Janie, I just thought -"

Mike's voice dropped as Janie flicked her hand against her beer bottle, which tumbled over behind the bar and shattered on the floor.

Without a word she pushed her way through them, through the door, and into the night.

I slid off the stool and began to head for the door. As I passed the jukebox I shoved hard against it. The song ended with an earsplitting scratch.

She was halfway across the parking lot to her car, still barefoot, when I finally got to her. "Get the fuck away," she said, as I tried to hold her back. "I want to go."

I kept my pace a few feet behind her. "Where?"

"I'm going back."

"Oklahoma? With that dick? Are you kidding?"

"Fuck you. I can't stay here." She shoved me aside and moved forward, stumbling a little but keeping her balance as she headed to her car.

"I can't stay here," she went on. "I don't want to be here. There's no place for me. Everything's different. Or the same, but I'm different. Either way, it sucks."