Writer: Rowland Wells
Disclaimer: I am in no way any part of Marvel Comics or any affiliation of their enterprise. I do not own the X-Men or any Marvel Characters.
X-Men
: single
-only
"not to covet"
'Dancing. Should be dancing – like it's nineteen ninety nine [1999] – like it's the new millennium again. Such a flurry of energy and graceful vigour that display was. I never saw so many wasted youngsters – papa's poppin' e's, kids on whiz, darlin's on charlie come together for this party; to celebrate the festivities by pulling each other and joinin' the 10 mile high lovers in the crowd.
It blew me away – even though I wasn't there to mesh with the rest of them.
Now it's all different; different from how it was in my day – memory's a bit hazy – but I loved the rioting "parties" I went too. We got smashed in every way – drugs, drink, the sex – the scent of a woman in sex… my god… and it was all in the sixties. You see we look back at that time now and think it was swinging and innocent, but I lived through it, and I tell you in my personal way that it was fucking mad.
Today, I'm feeling out of my depth with all this insane clubbing shit we've come across. I claim to be a raver, but this breather I'm takin' is for my own good. It's like someone decided they'd create a music epic – a grand opera for the new age of youth – and take it out of even the best of us all-nighters. I mean I can keep goin' all through the night an' all – in every sense of the damn phrase – but followin' them round these bars and dance floors has sapped my strength. It returns of course, but I can say now that I've sweated right through my shirt.
The girl I was with is a naughty one too – a real nice piece of ass, and a fantastic mover, but as soon as I revel in the "ambience" of the appropriately placed bar, she's off with another all-male entourage.
Swaying hips and pouting lips just turn me on – that crowd there seems to love it as well.
The ground is shaking; this epic is building, similar to a roller coaster, only with more sweat and adrenalin. I can feel the mood overcome my prey on the well-paved linoleum dance floor. Drinks are spilled in the hustle to gain space: nobody cares.
They see one another, wavin' and floating in blissful ecstasy as the silence is perforated by the beginning body-pop beat of some hip-hop sample. It is wonderful, like poetry in real-life living, breathing switching, twisting motion. I feel nauseous; down my drink – it's gone straight to my head, but like I give a pair. Something is pullin' my body over suddenly – not something… the damn music.
I just gotta be a part of this.
And suddenly the people who I've been watchin', tracking – stalking – all blend together in one violent unstoppable blur of shadowed colours and hues. Never before had I been so filled with passion. Every step I take just fills me with lust – all of life's problems – I just shake off. This is better than sex. This is sex! I taste the dissolved traces of the three and a half pills slipped into my swift drink. I laugh a sudden laugh without knowing it, and the vibrations course though the room as rainbow-coloured stripes and streaks. It's fast, the ecstasy, but there's no risk for me here pal. Not for me. Ever. The up-tempo beat speeds to a head suddenly and the wail of a mature lover's much admired voice gurgles high-pitched squabbling hip-hop mannerisms over the techno/drill and bass stutter of throbbing bass. It's tacky, but I can feel the damn music. Everyone can! It has suddenly become this incredible thud and stomp in your chest – breaking every bone and cutting each vein as the lights along the ceiling circle and embrace my tender mind. I'm so fuckin' lit up right now, I can't even breathe. The pulsing of electro masterworks grace my sensitive ears, and the music has become so loud, I can't even concentrate. My vision is fucked beyond belief. I can't focus. I snort copious mouthfuls of air through white-hot coal burning lungs as I attempt to flex and convulse to the ever-twitching, gorgeously perpetuating rhythmic bass-line. The sound is linked to the lighting and all around the jumping, warping crowd. You see, I've become a part of these people. I haven't me any of 'em before, but they're my brothers and sisters, and I love them so very ecstatically. 'Course, I got no idea where all this sustained lust comes from. I got pools of it – deep pools welling up inside of me like their about to burst out from within my fragile chest and I feel so wound up right now that I believe it might just happen given half the chance. I'm rambling, and I don't realise it. The atmosphere is so engaging – it engages their reserves and mine too. God, I want to fuck everyone in the whole room – the clubbing scene. Fuck it, I'm God and I'll fuck you all like goddamn fuckin' animals. My eyes cannot adjust, but I know what I'm lookin' at through the bizarrely twisting scope of colours and flittering, broken-streetlamp white-on-black-and-back strobe lights. My heart races that extra mile as through the eternal, fluctuating mist and mind-altering ether, I see the gorgeous redheaded, feisty girl who I've been following – dogging – since my eyes and body made love to her. We had sex. We fucked – and she damn well loved it, but with Slim now in the picture, I leave her be. I'm in love with them both. I gaze at the other stoned couples, the monged and rigid first-timers and the veterans, all carrying out this incredible ritual trance. We're in a state of permanent abyss, and my bones won't keep up. They won't break free; I join the rest of the kids to continue this quest for whatever the fuck I'm tryin' ta find… and we chant our love for the trusted dj, playing this epic over and over and over and over and over and over and over – continuously – leaving us – supplying us all – with this wanton abandonment that is our pure and concentrated and unsullied and unbelievable ecstatic anthemia.
It morphs a third of the way through, turning to a simplistic, irresponsible, industrial mantra that turns us physically inside-out at the mouth-watering prospect of having the opportunity and ability and lust to dance to it – with it – with its beauty and raw grace. The lights flare suddenly, and then die as the strobe activates, and sends my vision and hearing and touch and taste and smell through the goddamn roof. I start to scrutinise the animals flocking about me. They haven't noticed, which is best, but I can't really focus on them or anything else. I'm fucked.
Contracting and expanding through the minimalist pulsing bass and percussion are Scott and Jean, the two most infamous lovers we have here.
I almost said I was one of them there – I'm not – I just follow this crowd to yearn to be one again.
The music slows, and with it, a furious ballistic electric, ecstatic, eccentric guitar-stabbing crash interrupts. Violently kissing each other in the embrace of raw and vicious emotion, the two stay in the centre, focussing intently as they flex to the music in their young exercised passion. I turn, angrily, almost too angry to contain the emotion, but the high surfacing in my blazing brain burns a brazen, simple hole through my chest – so much so that I think my heart has stopped. My god, my heart has stopped. Fuck. I thrash as the stabbing guitar echoes courageously resonate around the dance floor like flies and fleas in heat. It is so damn packed here; I find it hard to keep my eyes open for fear of the blurring colours penetrating my lenses – an' I tell you it's even more impossible when the amazing strobe flashes periodically beam their grandeur. The combined noise of the hip-hop/industrial bass line hits the crowd, and a roar of triumph issues throughout as the racing, unadulterated lead guitar glides over the two peaking aspects of this already-made classic.
The drug seems to be with every one of my brothers and sisters. It's affecting my senses – I see faces contort in carnal pleasure, limbs contract with overwhelming sense stimulation and pressure, and the screams go up and up and up. Further up than anyone can go. Even higher there. I'm so, so high now, and the best is yet to come.
Glancing back at Scott and Jean, both utterly lost in the swaying music and of course each other, my eyes search out more familiar features, all mute with gratification and otherworldly rapture. More whirling lights and strobe effects shadow then illuminate Warren and Betsy, necking and nuzzling like the goddamn music was gonna drown them. She is completely incredible. Her body twists and gyrates with each different sound effect and bass stomp on our chests, and her lock-hold around Warren's neck never moves as he forces down on her lithe, willing body.
I can see the others now too as the same music track begins to stutter and shift. I'm still jumpin', pumpin' and thrashing all at the same time, and as the strobe combines with the threat of the moulding, mauling white noise, Cecilia, Tessa and Ororo are all revelling in the sensations and emotions while Hank watches, gratefully hypnotised in his drunken state. His grin spears the stroking and storming black and white ether of it all, and a tall thin glass of something powerful resides nimbly in his large hand. He taps methodically as the drill and bass finally sweeps upon the sweating, pulsing mass of people. I gaze even more in a stupor as the enormity of everything settles easily with me like a blanket – a soft warm blanket to wrap my whole life in. I've become a contradiction of emotions. I can't talk properly anymore, and is it killing me or is it not killing me I damn well don't have one fucking clue. The crash won't affect me, but I'm lowering because the music is nearing its end. Is it? Whoever wrote it was a fuckin' genius. They should make him president of the clubbing scene. President of the country – no, goddamn it, goddamn everything I'm so out of it… they should make him president of the entire universe, so he can grace the rest of nature with his learned and hormonal touch.
It's not over yet, as the elegant addition of melodic beats, bites, spits and sparks and all round clenches, crashes and crushes incite another wave of ritualistic thrashing. We're cage animals.
The constant striking and spitting of drum patterns is getting to me. The colours twist and squirm as my hands weave across the atmosphere; I feel like I'm slipping into the fourth fucking dimension. Throw me a lifeline. Please. Throw me a lifeline. Throw me a lifeline. Throw me a lifeline. Now.
My limbs wind and warp around the floor. The insistent crash and bang brings the animal from me – I jump and shoot my head out – I can't control anything that possesses my body. The girls are all moulding into their guys, it's like they're a part of the lucky bastards. I can see Bobby and Piotr courting the young Kitty over there… she is fucking dressed to kill for a sixteen year old teenager. My lust and uncontrollable passion flare out to all the lovers – I can reach out through time – through the years of my past, my present, my future. It's all one big blur. She grinds against that big tractor-lovin' communist Piotr; he's taking her with him, and poor old Bobby's left to pop the pills he has in hand alone. He was the wizard who gave me this stuff! It's angel dust for me, and before I know it, the two of us have swallowed some more e's ahead of the epic ending.
I'm floating above the room. I'm invulnerable.
The hypnotic drill and bass invigorates the rest of us with its rhyming poetry and intensity. We all sway and weave violently to its ever increasing love and purity.
I cannot contain myself – we have the floor on – holy mother of god – on fire – the floor itself is actually on fire and I can feel the flames licking up beside me, testing me, teasing me like a demon on my fucking shoulder and the high has hit me so heavily that I might just pass out in the middle of the dance floor for all ta witness. I can feel the heat coursing through my veins. I'm alight with passion and furious energy – more than I've ever felt. This shit is frying my fragile brain, but no-one cares – especially not I. The drill and bass is reaching its climatic, explosive, uplifting closing end, and the bass-line starts to recede to its original hip-hop/industrial potential.
From the corner of my eyes, and past the club daze – the dub haze of such a frantic trance, I catch sight of Rogue buckin' and swaying amid the mass of bodies. She is a free spirit, unbound by anything right now, and orbited closely by that Cajun swamp rat Remy. I love 'em so much now it's just not true. Her body vibrates with such clarity as she steps in time with alternating bass breakbeats. Her waist and curvaceous hips are captured by Remy's slender wrists and twisting, searching fingers, and he guides her to a centre area of the floor. They're joined by Kurt at the last moment before he takes her away to a corner, and the German periodically flashes to and fro through the audience. His waving contours of flashin' brilliance light me up rapidly, and soon I'm with them – I don't fucking know how I got there, but I'm right there here and now – caressing the air with heavy hands leaning on static electric air.
The three styles are moulding slowly with each other and the speakers, wherever the fuck they are, all scream out my name in loving agony.
We're joined at last with Tessa and Ororo, both centring their movements to a flowing wave of their gorgeous, smooth bodies. They too on are this drug, but who am I to complain? I fucking love it. I fucking love it to fucking pieces and I can't stop fuckin' love it. We're in ecstasy as the track begins its final climax. I can almost the end in sight pounding on my body, coursin' through every vulnerable vein, artery, capillary and old track mark on my aging body. Bobby joins us in the rave, jumping wildly while Kurt tries not to flash in-between crushing bodies. The strobe is still on, alerting every sense and nerve I have; I'm almost dead on my feet… but not quite yet.
I can see Jean lead a dazed Scott off to the toilets in a swift rush of energy and lust-filled passion; but my jealously only serves to ignite my extra reserves of energy, and the mind-altering psychedelic drug pulls me back into room-melting, floor-moulding ecstasy. Drill and bass flies through the gradual, building white noise and all I see is swayin' hair and smooth, bare flesh. We're shedding our fucking clothes now. Goddamn. It's covered in fine sheens of energetic sweat – I wish it was oil – It is oil. I'm wish I could lick it all off with my moving tongue. I want to lick it all off. I'm so fucking aroused.
Ororo sways before me, her eyes aflame while Hank gets enticed into the fray. Kitty phases through the dancers, seemingly everywhere at once – even though I no longer focus on anything. Piotr jostles through, and joins us with his colossal frame. I stare around in a daze as the track starts to climax in a flood of beautiful noise. Warren has that purple-haired goddess against the far wall. They both buck to the music, but I see further into it, clearly. Leaving them while she succumbs to his tender manipulations, I concentrate as the last waves of the music hit us like tidal waves. The sun seems to rise as the lights flare in accordance with our actions, reactions and actions again – and my fucking mind burns.
The residual traces of the epic burst, and we surf through the orgasmic aftermath. I'm still so high, and I will not come down – I will not come down.
The club doors are thrown open as more incredible numbers get tossed onto the dj's turntables. Charlie cruises in on foot, followed by his grouped cabal of partying, high groupies; more food for this all consuming dance floor rift. Faces I don't recognise, I instantly adore – Neal, Bishop, Alex, Lorna, Moira, Tabitha, Sam, Berto, Sean, Forge, Dani, Emma, Everett, Jubilee, Angelo, Paige, Jono, Beatrice, Nathan, Monet, Rahne, Doug, Rictor, James, Stacy, Wanda, Pietro, Alison, Longshot, Amara, Meggan, Rachel, Sarah, Theresa, Nate, Jesse, Jamie, Guido, Illyana, and finally Pete. Plus Brian too. They're all here for this party.
And finally, ultimately, I feel myself slipping from the reality of the floor. The epic is over – it crested and soared like an eagle – and my mind soared right along with it, and out the other side.
Whatever I was on – it's still there, I can feel it, but now I need another drink before coming back to the floor.
I'm about to go, but just let me take this first. I've been slipped it, but no worries in the slightest. I'm resilient in my illusion.