Tapping my Toes

When I walk into a bar, especially one I have never been before or one that is the kind that working class folk go to after work, it takes me a minute to order a drink. I have to walk around like I know where I am going, enter the bathroom to put my hair up to better suit the mood of the place or maybe check the score of the game and shake my head at how bad our team is behind.

Then I gauge the drink that allows me to fit in yet still be comfortable in my own skin. I sit down because I am always too early for the band I have come to see and there is nothing to do but get acclimated. I always forget that I never quite know how to be in a bar, unless there is music I can dance to, and yet everyone seems so much more comfortable not dancing.

And then the music starts and my heart starts to beat in time and I stand up with the same feeling as if I were greeting my love after a long separation. I wonder briefly when music itself, not one group or song in particular, has claimed me as its own...and then I start to dance.