She sat on the couch, her homework in her lap as football stats rolled over the screen directly in front of her. The loud bass assaulted her ears and she nodded her head in time to the beat. She tried hard to block the sounds of the horrible singer as they drunkenly tried to “follow the bouncing ball.”
To her left people from around the club competed in Texas Hold ‘Em for fake chips and bragging rights on a TV screen. She leaned slightly to the right as a pool player nearly tagged her in the back of her head with his stick. “Sorry!” he shouted a little too loud as the song abruptly ended.
“All good,” she replied back. The DJ called her name and she stood to make her way to the dance floor. Tonight was different. She wouldn’t cater to the crowd. She was too depressed for that. Tonight she would sing to feel.
Her newly butchered hair hung slightly in her face. She was told it looked really nice on her…that wasn’t what she had been going for. She rolled her new tongue piercing around in her mouth as the into began. People stared in confusion as the words to “Broken” started rolling. It wasn’t anything like what she normally sang.
She never looked at the words as emotion filled her notes. The regulars got up to dance in couples around her as she swayed to the beat of her empty heart. She couldn’t even call it broken anymore. You can’t break something that was not there.
She should have asked someone to sing Seether’s part because the version was meant for a duet. But she never found anyone who could do it. No one knew how to harmonize…No one could match her voice. No one really knew the song.
Tears started rolling down her cheeks as her voice threatened to crack. She hit her knees just at the chorus erupted for the first time. They buckled under the weight of her sorrow. No one took notice.
Were people deaf? Did they not hear the pain the poor girl suffered? Would no one help her from her knees?
The song continued and she paid no attention to the filling dance floor. Her mind was concentrating on sending the message to the keeper of her love. Trying hard to communicate through her emotions. Did he not see how he was slowly killing her? Could he not feel it? Of course not, he thought of her no more than one thinks of the mound of ants crawling in the backyard until they come into your house to bother you once again.
The climax of the song mounted and she practically shrieked into the microphone “I’m Broken and I’m Lonesome, and I know that I’m not strong enough.” No one took notice of the lyrics change. The tears flowed freely down her face as she finished the song, but her hair was just long enough in the dark club to mask them.
No one clapped as she rose, confused at the pain and emotion her voice carried. Where was the fun loving care free songs she normally sang of sex and parties? She walked the microphone to the DJ booth as the silence loomed in the club. An abnormality to be sure. Silence in a dance club.
It started as one clap, nearly like in the movies, only followed by whoops and hollers and the boom of bass returning.
She heard nothing as she sat back on the couch to watch football stats and fake poker, playing with the idea of doing her homework. She didn’t perform for them…she performed for herself. Fuck the bastards who couldn’t understand the meaning of the words like she did. A tormented soul finds solace in the strobes, colored lights and chest vibrating bass. Fuck the mindless zombies who couldn’t tell a void from a broken heart in notes alone. None of them were hers.
The dance floor was her medical office. Her microphone her therapist. The music of others that she only dreamed of writing a medium in which to expel her demons for a few more hours. She felt the weight on her shoulders lift a little and put her pen to paper once again.