Boomp boomp boomp …
I jumped onto the first crate to mild applause. And to my own astonishment, I found myself doing Billy’s moves.
You have to remember that the last time I danced to any song whatsoever was to “Like a Virgin” in an Ibiza nightclub when I was riding a cosmic wave of some IQ-killing party drug in an attempt to land this girl from Liverpool with scientifically unaltered tits like musk melons and wearing a bright yellow dress. But it all went wrong because she passed out and I had to carry her into the chill room—which you’d think might have led to a cheerful grope of some sort, had it not been for the skinhead muff-snacker in charge. “You, Mr. Fuckingperve, get your fucking hands off that girl or I’ll personally come and slice off your testicles with the opening tab from this can of lager.”
Ah, memories.
Wake Island.
Crates.
Demented cunts.
Check, check and check.
Showtime!
Now, I suppose we’ve all had a dream at some point in our lives about kacking our trousers in public. It must surely be universal. So imagine you’re having that kacking-your-pants dream, except instead of shitting yourself, you’re dancing in front of two hundred barbaric airmen in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and you have no idea how to dance, but there’s no waking up here, and you’re light-headed from lack of sleep and bad diet, and you’re realizing that being an actor/dancer/performer is hard work. It really is. Hats off to every bender who’s ever trudged his way through Swan Lake or a production of Lord of the Dance, and even to those heartbreakingly deformed little Oompah-Loompahs in Willy Wonka. Tough line of work, dancing.
At first, there was little audience reaction. Maybe the people in the back rows couldn’t quite see me, I thought, so I hopped up onto a third crate, arching my feet and making some kind of go of it.
And then I had a moment of pure bliss when I realized I really didn’t give a fuck whether I ended up locked away in a forgotten prison until global warming drowned me.
… And then I was hit on the head with a grape.
I snapped back to reality: they were booing. Not good.
Another grape.
And then increased booing.
Well, what else was I expecting, up on the fifth crate, shuffling my body around like a tard?
Suddenly, cheering broke out. ¿Qué?
I looked down to see Neal, fuck him, stealing my limelight. He was already on the second crate, doing a flawless “Angry Dance” for an audience of baboons who had at least stopped throwing food at me, and who were showing distinct signs of feeling genuinely entertained.
Shuffle-shuffle. Neal leaped up onto my crate. Tempted as I was to shove him off, an instinct for survival got the better of me. I thought, Oh Christ … I’m going to have to be comic relief. Well, worse things have happened.
The crowd, of course, had completely fallen in love with Neal. I could see the women in the front row holding up their hands, trying to guess the size of his member. Heterosexual men behind them were figuring out ways of adding him to their sports teams. Moreover, in the midst of his truly accomplished dancing, Neal was somehow managing to mock me the way mimes mimic passersby: he caught my slumping posture, my grimacing facial expression and my doomed efforts at dancing to the beat perfectly. Even I had to smile.
Then, at last, it was over.
Thunderous applause.
Waves of love.
Thank fucking Christ.
As Neal took deep bows, I scuttled off the bottom crate, crab-like, over to a buffet table now devoid of food save for saltine crackers in little cello wrappers. I pocketed as many as I could, then turned around to find the canteen almost empty; the audience had fled. Neal was standing with Jennifer, who was all smiles for me: “Raymond! I had no idea you and Neal were planning such a sensational performance. I underestimated you.”
“Well, you know, uh …” Finally, I’d caught a fucking break. I changed the subject. “Neal, where did you get the new clothes?”
“Jenny here gave them to me. They belonged to some French bloke.”
Jenny?
She cut in. “Arnaud du Puis, the world’s leading radio telemetry expert until last Bastille Day, when he jumped off the dock directly onto a Portuguese man-of war the size of a child’s wading pool.”
Neal added, “One of the lads told me last night that a clump of poor Arnaud’s lymph nodes washed into the lagoon, but an albatross ate them before they could be landed in a net.”
“Neal is the same size as Arnaud,” Jennifer volunteered, “so fortunately the clothes won’t go to waste.”
Pinching his jacket material, Neal said, “Everything’s made by Paul Smith. The fabric breathes.”