“JUST AROUND THE CORNER THERE’S HEARTACHE.”  (John R. Cash)

We are at a pagan festivity unfolding in a cavernous building — once a 19th Century tobacco warehouse-cum-distillery of whiskey, now defunct. The structure’s walls remain original brick — exposed and distressed over passing years — now in vogue for these clandestine celebrations.

Those hands! That pose!

Our subject simulates the middle stage of universal sexual experience — as I decode the image — unsettling the male spectators and perhaps a few female onlookers too. Absorbed in her own erotic imagination, the woman dances with a boyfriend definitely not her equal considered from any angle you might choose. He shows up in deep silhouette in our right foreground, vague on details — the prototypical case — a Nice Guy born to lose in this circumstance, without hope he will make even a short-term companion for the likes of this lady.

[ Unfortunately the non-descriptive young man has doomed himself to a near-future filled with pain and longing. ]

The leather on her wrist, the odd treatment of her hair — leaving her skull corrugated like a warrior’s helmet — give the scene a military flavor, insinuating a prelude to battle. She moves with unchallenged confidence, alone and deep in her own consciousness. She is not dancing for her partner, enticing him; on the contrary her mind points someplace else entirely, and makes the reader of this image wonder for what audience she is performing.