I dont dance. You might know that I’d you’ve ever gone out with me. I don’t dance.

You know the trope of the girl in the red dress? She’s always called Daisy or Emily or something.

Tonight I met the cutest couple. James and Hannah. They’ve been together for a decade. Ten years. “That’s a prison sentence.” that’s what James said. He said it with love.

Earlier in the night I’d listened to a lady tell me about how she’d won a competition, the second (but most important) leg. I kept calling her “Winner” for the rest of the night. God she was gorgeous, like the bbc2 idea of a gorgeous woman. Her neck a mile long.

The New Penny sells these horrible little coloured vodka shots in bottles, the girl behind the bar kept promising the strawberry one was special. They were all disgusting. Strawberry was disgusting. Green, yellow, pink, other pink, blue. All absolutely disgusting.

There was this incredibly gorgeous 90ft tall trans girl at the New Penny. I’d made part-time friends with her best friends (for the night), A and J. J was a very funny lesbian girl who didn’t seem to give any amount of a fuck about anything, and A was just gorgeous. They invited me to dance with them. I couldn't. I sat in the corners trying to rev myself up, trying to learn to be someone who dances. I couldn’t get off my seat. I wanted to dance with the tall girl so much I could taste iron in my spit.

H came right up to the bar and took my hand the moment she walked in. I offered her the worst drink she’d ever drink in her life. I got her a green one, a yellow one for me, a blue one for her boyfriend JJ.

She took my hand. We started dancing. We danced, i sweated. I danced.

I couldn’t stop, this woman was a force of nature. We danced to song after song.

There was a moment that I am not a good enough writer to put into words. She’d was dancing with another person. A nice person. It was shortly after James had called me her muse, called us each others dancing muses. And told me about how she’d just turned thirty and was worried about the “3”, and we’d all sat down together in the blue felt chairs in the back.

I was trying to dance near A and the tall girl while H danced with a man she had some moves with we had never met, i fell. On my butt. I played it off as best I could like i’d just decided to suddenly sit down and take a sip of my drink. But it was loud, and everyone turned to look at me on the floor including the 900ft tall girl. H walked across the dance floor in this silent moment, held her hand out, picked me up, and then the two of us awkwardly twirled each other for a while. The magic of it is we couldn’t quite make it come together even though she’d made the big gesture. A few songs later we figured it out, tried again, danced again.

Winner was standing by the bar crying, girl in the red dress. It’s kind of impossible to overstate how bbc2 beautiful the girl in the red dress is. A couple of guys at the bar were gently creeping, telling her not to cry etc. I went over and stood beside her and ordered a blue and a pink terrible little vodka drink. I interrupted, telling her “you and I are about to drink one of the worst drinks you have ever had the displeasure to put in your mouth” and handed her a little blue vodka shot. We cheersed, i drank mine, and she said “oh i thought we were going to kiss first”. So then we kissed for twenty or thirty seconds, i bit her lip which she didn’t seem to enjoy. she drank her drink. She grabbed me, she shouted in my ear “you are the only person in this world ever to have seen me”. We were still holding each other when JJ came over, “we have a taxi coming. H is outside and she is not having a good time”

Nothing existed suddenly, not the girl in the red dress or the bar or the dance floor or the world outside. The only thing that existed was “H is outside and she is not having a good time”. I ran out the door. I shouted “H”, i found her sitting on the curb. I jumped on her like a dog being reunited with a soldier. We held onto each other. We rolled around on the floor. The bouncer came over and said “you can’t do that”, she screamed at him “we are HAVING A MOMENT”. JJ arrived and told the bouncer “They are Having a Moment.”

When I got back in the girl in the red dress wasn’t crying anymore, she had recovered. I apologized for abandoning her. She was not overly interested in the apology. Either was I. I stuck around a little longer talking to a pretty film student by the bar. She wants to be an editor. Afterwards i went to the only 24 hour McDonald’s in town and ordered every chicken nugget they have.