Fly Girl in the Soy Milk

So there is this Armand Van Helden song, "Flowerz," that I first heard at this spot in ATL called 10/50. Across the street and slightly south of Kaya (now Diddy’s Visions--colored folk always add an s on the end see Krogers, Nordstroms, Boeings) on Peachtree. The club was snuggled between my fav inexpensive quaint Italian restaurant Pasta Da Pulcinella (since relocated) and a now defunct live music spot (name escapes me). It's a little like APT - the pretension and + an actual dance floor; great music, great ambiance, and intimate with just enough space to let limbs loose. Not so boho as The Revival, not so dance dance revolution as MJQ (or The Revival for that matter), and not so Prada, Gucci, Louis V-oriented as Liquid (before Buckhead turned straight ghetto).

I leaned over the second floor ledge by the DJ booth surveying and swaying to the selectors sounds stopping only to watch L sprint down the stairs after a hot boy ("a cutie with a booty or a hottie with a body" if you L, who went to CAU, I think, and later found love, in all of its complexity, with a friend). L, penny pincher that she can sometimes be had packed Luna Bars in her purse so we snacked on them as night gave way to morning. We were probably both getting a little tired. We both talk a bigger up in the club game than we do.

The bass crept down. I leaned/swayed/bounced casually feeling it but enough to expend any more energy. Van Helden’s songs always have these long engaging intros that are distinctive enough to ring familiar and incite feverish anticipation; tendon teases of what’s to come and invade inebriated flesh. (Clubbing is drinking. Heavily.) My Dutch friend Joost, who is probably off somewhere wrapping bloody hands around flapping sails, scoffs at my affection for Van Helden. Apparently over there he’s about as commercial as the Backstreet Boys but then again in that extended moment before we were friends Joost used to heckle me when I Deejayed Common Room parties at LPC. Not enough Tom Waits probably. Gems from that Trainspotting soundtrack a too obvious attempt to appease the disaffected Europeans. We beefed. We’re both strong personalities but somehow we ended up sitting next to each other in Mathematical Methods with advanced Hong Kong students looking for an easy 7 (No stereotype. Their math & science education is far superior to anything over here.) Sitting adjacent to each other scribbling silly or somber notes on our shared desk we easily failed together (yes my otherwise stellar academic record includes one failing grade but an unmistakably brown girl living on her own in HK is allowed an eff up or two).

I looked to the DJ intrigued. Queer black male voice (Roland Clark) walked in and over, swelling, compelling, and in the tradition of Ronzoni recounted a hetero story. Absurd? Funny. But incongrous as it was, it was. Sunday (kind of). Half a second contentment, anxiety-mongering insecurity, tiny honesty, expansive lies, and everything under the sun and in between. A course of events (give or take a few emoticons) that could have been changed, according to that wail, by flowers. No, really, literally, flowers. I could talk about the symbolism all day and it's as simple as it isn't. It comes down, too. Knowing. Shutting up long enough to listen. Shutting down long enough to open. Up. Basic shit. Leaplessness, trashed laterals forward movement. Baby steps. Nothing grand. Flowers.

So this one thing that I haven't always been able to depend on, that has me tripping, trips out and leaves or stands right outside my door. Endearing and trampling and in hindsight never salvagable despite the burly backtacking that lets the needle play it, lets the beat hit me. 2 roads always diverge and the less traveled is often the most intuitive. But I don’t trust myself. So the flowers don't bloom, they wilt at Bodegas or dazzle in peaceful though remote regions in frightful anticipation of soddity. Fertilizerhood. Unless the light that comes (harbinger of the end) boomerangs you upside the head to dump decaying rose petals Zamunda-style on swiftly unenamoring feet.

"Flowerz" is the choral chant that gelled the track. I remember racing to the dancefloor, flailing, pausing, racing to the DJ booth, making mental note of artist and song name, racing back to the dance floor, swirly south Australian-hip shake-2stepping some more until. The songs fades. I hadn’t worked up a sweat cause I don’t dance THAT hard and don’t ever intend to but I’m warmed so much so that sleep sounds really good. Lids lay low enough to know that its time to go.

So for me it's not literally flowers, you know. That's where the symbolism comes in. It's sweetness. Vegan cakes, brownies, Tofutti Cuties (Peanut Butter or Mint Chocolate Chip), Double Rainbow Soy Cream, stuff like that and sometimes stuff unlike but equally evocative. Despite that it's menstrual season, I haven't had any sweet things. Something wi(thin) demanded action and I have temporarily abandoned my beloved baked goods and I don't know if it really matters that I'm not eating 'em, just that I want 'em.


Me and the vegan brownie!
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By the by- I regret not going to the Sugar Water Festival in windy white Wantagh.