myrtle1

There's an old couple at the fair, a little old lady looking at the booth filled with glass roses and an old man with hunched back and overalls following right behind. And a long long time ago she was the girl on top of the tables, and she was dancing with her hair flowing out behind her and her skirt rising up above the moral rights of the young men beneath her. She wore short skirts and pointed bras then, or no bra at all when the nights were hot. Men would come from all over and spill beer all over the table watching this girl dance. She had the best legs in all the town, long beautiful spider legs that worked their magic all across the liquor soaked wood grain tables. All the boys wanted her, wanted to smell her sweat soaked skin and dance across and then break in two her long glass legs, and even wanted most of all to pull out that long black hair, piece by piece and eat it off the ground so that they would never lose the smell of rosebuds and lavender that always lingered there. Except one, except that one boy that sat outside smoking his dried out tabacco, sat outside and murmured "Whoo boy, someone better stop that girl, somebody better stop that girl, someone ought to stop her." Then that man would stop and spit and shake his head. Shake so hard that all the evil that that little girl, up on the soaking wet table with the beer splashed up over and above her high black heels, had pressed into his brain would fall out. Shook so hard that he forgot that he never actually wanted her to stop, begged and prayed and cryed that she would never stop, and wished so hard that he sucked down 3 cigarettes a minute, that she would reach down and pull him up onto that table with her. Pull him up so hard that his body pressed into hers and he would have to grab onto her shaking breasts to steady himself. Pull him up so hard that he would never stop dancing either, and that they would dance together until the moon broke above them. But now he trails behind her, watching her eyes, watching her feet shuffle, making sure those legs stay concealed under layers and layers and layers of thick fabric. And now when he rocks in his chair he still prays, he watches her and begs and lets the tears well up behind his black rimmed glasses. Prays that she will one day push the readers digests off the table and tear off her long thick skirts, grab him up with her and press her curved bony hips languidly against his body. He wants her high black heels to dance so hard that the glass underneath them breaks, and for them to keep on dancing even if the glass cuts his feet, because even if he can never dance again at least he would have that one night and the broken table. And he stares at her, with her gray hair tight up in a bun, and her back hunched, and the mole above her lip spouting long black flowing hairs, and says to her "That dancing never did do you no good, just made you one helluva useless woman." and shakes his head and spits into the can next to his feet.