Underage Dance Party

So there we were... Standing on the stage of the UAF Carol Brown Ballroom looking out on a sea of sweating, grinding, pulsing bodies wondering "What the fuck?" Alex and I stared slackjawed on this bizarre jungle themed extravaganza of students desperately reaching out, clinging to, and grinding on any body within their grasp through the thick sweat and pounding, pressing beats. The ballroom had maxed capacity at 350 and DJ Double X had the college kids lined up at the door desperately waiting to get in on the action, to get in to the clothed orgy of raw dance party excused public all but sex. There were grinding threesomes, foursomes, dry humping on the stage, writhing bodies with blurred lines where the concept of groups or couples had become indecipherable. The dance floor was a mass of bodies, a sucking vortex of grind, where at the center the crowd was simply grinding on itself. Embarrassed to be watching we couldn't help but stare, feeling our age and only slightly uncomfortable with our voyeurism, I found myself waiting to see which individual would get naked first or if as single sentient being the crowd itself would suddenly shed it's clothes.

Occasionally, I found it necessary to shake my head, regroup my thoughts, and let my gaze wander to the outskirts of the dance floor to the lonely outcasts. Those who were not accepted by the mass or perhaps those who simply found the scene a bit forbidding. There was the muscle head in a wife beater with fake dreads attached to a head band who hadn't spoken a word to anyone all night. Instead he had been alternating between whipping out the same four step dance move and staring with his arms crossed. Crushing him for best terrible dancer was a gangly tall nearly undoubtably computer geek with awkwardly flailing extremities and sweat soaked shirt. Waiting to request a song earlier in the night were three girls giggling and pointing at this quintessential example of flamboyant awkwardness. As the night wore on the dancefloor had necessarily engulfed all the energy in the room and those who had managed to remain outside it's dominating influence stood gaping and defeated, staring in awe at the pulsing, pounding, pumping being.

I sit here trying to think of some insightful observation to make about life, some simple statement that could succinctly tie this into a lesson about humanity but still several days later all I want to do is raise my cane menacingly over my head and yell at those youngun's to watch where they're putting their hands.