Hold Me Closer, Crazy Dancer

Story Sent in by Henrietta:

David and I had been friends for a little while. We had met at a party not long after I had moved to town. We had very similar musical tastes, and would sometimes hang out over drinks and talk about a new group or trade mp3s or whatever else.

He asked me out to dinner and a concert. While at dinner, he confessed that he had liked me for a while, and wanted that night to be a date. He was always nice to me, and I always looked forward to seeing him, so I told him that that was fine. I figured we'd play things by ear, but I remember being optimistic about the whole thing and wanting to learn more about him.

At the concert, though, my hopes unraveled a bit. A rock group was performing, but it wasn't really thrash metal. Still, that didn't stop David and a couple other guys from moshing with gusto. Whatever, I thought, as long as he's having fun.

Then, he came up to me, sweaty as anything, and asked, "Yo, does my head smell funny?"

I gave it a sniff, and to be honest, I didn't smell anything unusual, and I told him so.

"Damn," he said, "Be right back."

He left the venue, and so while I waited for him to return, a couple of other guys chatted me up, and we talked for a while.

When David finally returned to me, his hair was a wet, sudsy mess, as if he had—

"I just washed my hair!" he said, "Now smell it."

He shoved his head at me again. It smelled like a fruity flower garden, and he had a bit more rinsing to do. I told him that his head smelled great, but that he needed to wash out the rest of the shampoo or whatever he used.

He asked the nearby bartender for a glass of water, then dipped his fingers in the glass and ran them through his hair. Then, without waiting for me, he joined the non-moshing crowd and moshed like crazy. The band was playing a ballad, for crying out loud!

I excused myself from the people with whom I'd been talking and slid through the crowd to where David was in rare form. I asked him, "Who are you moshing to?" and he didn't reply. I tried once more: "Do you want to come over to the bar?" No response.

I left him thrashing there, and I returned to the folks at the bar. The band cranked up their next song, and it was at that point that David came back over, again, a sweaty clump. At that point, I noticed that something smelled, but it wasn't his hair.

"Hey," he said, nearly flopping against the bar. Then, taking notice of my expression, he asked, "What?"

I said, "Uh, you kind of do smell, now."

He looked aghast. "Seriously? I just washed my hair!"

I replied, "I think it's b.o."

He sniffed at himself, then ran his hands through his hair, stuck them under his shirt, and rubbed them around his armpits. "Try now," he said, holding a pit up to my face. It still smelled, and I told him so.

He shrugged, downed a beer, then grabbed my arm and said, "Come on! Let's dance!"

He was my date, and I was, actually, in the mood to dance, so I followed him out to the floor, and he actually danced like a normal person. However, about halfway through the song, he said, "I'm tired, now. I want to go home. Want to come with me?"

I said, "If the date's over, I might stick around–"

"No!" he said, "Then I'll stick around, too."

I stayed there for a little longer, alternating between dancing and talking with David and the small group to whom I'd been talking, before. Whenever I spoke with them, David silently brooded.

Finally, David and I left together, he tried to plant a wide-open-mouth kiss on me, which I successfully avoided, and we went home to our separate places of residence. He didn't ask me out for another date, although we still hung out in groups of our friends, and we're still acquaintances.