Madame B - Desire

Before we go to dance, Lara and I share a huge plate of paella in a restaurant in the town square, marveling at the enthusiasm of the town's young people. Groups of beautiful young men stroll arm in arm through the square. Teenage couples kiss passionately, oblivious to the merriment surrounding them. Children, who, back home, would have been in bed hours ago, sit on laps, crawl under tables, or sleep on seats. Lara and I linger here, watching the people and absorbing the atmosphere. Even someone as uptight as I am feels the tension melt away, and I start to unwind. I feel my limbs loosen, and I'm even breathing more deeply, slowly, more relaxed. We stay at our table until the square becomes so full of people that I don't believe there's room for a single extra soul, and a very modern sound system starts blaring out Euro house. Those not already standing leap to their feet and begin to dance where they are.

"It's early," says our waiter as the clocks strike midnight and grandmothers dance with toddlers to the sound of a throbbing disco beat. "The night is… What are the words?… still young!"

Lara and I walk through the streets together, happy just to absorb this wonderful atmosphere. We turn heads everywhere we go, all the boys looking at Lara in her white dress. She looks like a bride, a princess. I feel like a ghost by her side. Lara nudges me in the ribs.

"Helen!" she whispers, excitedly. "You're a sensation!"

"Don't be ridiculous," I say. "They're all looking at you. They always do."

"Don't be so sure," replies Lara. "Listen."

As I listen, I hear "bianca guapa," which means "white beauty." When I realize that they're talking about me, I become a pink beauty.

"They've never seen anyone like you around here," says Lara. "You're a hit!"

Feeling a little more confident, I smile shyly at one boy in washed-out jeans and a pale-blue T-shirt. He's the only one not whistling or catcalling to me, but I like the look of him the best. He looks like all the rest of them-tall, lean, tanned, and chiseled-but he's silent, respectful, and there's something intense about him that draws my eyes to his.

Lara gets chatting to one of the guys. Her Spanish isn't much better than his English, but even I know what bailamos means. "Let's dance." And so a group of us follow him down a side alley to a little flamenco bar that appears to be carved into a rough hole in the wall. Inside it's more like a cave than a club, the whitewashed walls curving over to touch each other in the middle, forming a ceiling that hangs low over our heads. An old man plays guitar while the women dance and make animal-like noises, whooping and clapping, and I know that I've stumbled across real flamenco whose sexy, earthy beat has pulsed in this city for hundreds and hundreds of years.

All the local girls do the steps, managing to look sexy and elegant whether they're in high heels, sneakers, or flip-flops. This dance is in their blood; they were born to it. Lara doesn't have flamenco in her blood, but she embraces the spirit of the dance, nevertheless, letting one of the local boys whirl her around by her hands until her hair flies out behind her and her feet are a blur. Even I can tell that she's absolutely hopeless, but she's trying, and she's enjoying herself, and that's what people find so attractive about Lara. I order myself a glass of sangria, content to watch her make a fool of herself, happy to blend into the background here in this club where the walls are the same color as my skin and my hair. But the boys have other ideas. They grab me by the hand, refusing to take no for an answer. I giggle as a couple of them whip me around, my feet all over the place, but it's actually fun. Lara looks at me with pride in her eyes; I can tell she's pleased that I've begun to relax and show a bit of spontaneity for a change. Well, there's a first time for everything, even if I do spend more time keeping my vulnerable sandaled feet away from the stomping shoes of the locals than I do dancing. I'm passed from boy to boy, and the whole experience is a blur of denim, strong brown arms, dark curly hair, and white smiling teeth. And then, suddenly, I am still, and I'm in a different pair of arms. Whereas other hands had grabbed at my body, these arms pull me softly toward someone new. As if in a trance, I follow this boy in the baby blue T-shirt to a corner of the bar. My heart is beating fast as I dance with him. The chemistry between his flesh and mine has transformed me from a gauche, awkward girl into a real dancer. I am suddenly able to feel the music. My feet move in time with his, and my body is fluid and responsive. I have never been much of a dancer except at student discos and at friends' weddings, but here, in a cave in a small town, with a stranger and with only the most basic music, I feel my body open up, and I let the sound flow through me and tell my body what to do.

"This is amazing!" I say to him, breathlessly smiling up at his big brown eyes. "What's your secret? Who taught you to dance like this? Come to think of it, what's your name?"

He doesn't reply but smiles shyly back, and that's when I realize that his English is almost nonexistent. He speaks three words in a soft voice that makes me shiver from head to toe.

"Guapa," he says, stroking me, his tanned hand tracing the skin just above my cleavage and making my breasts tingle with desire. "Snow White." He must have learned that from the Disney film. I look at him and realize he's very young-he can't be more than nineteen or twenty. I press against him, trying to know his body and encounter the slim hips that only young men on the threshold of adulthood have. I let my hands wander down to firm, skinny buttocks and sink my face into a hard, warm shoulder. And all the while we're dancing, but it's something that might stop being dancing if we let this go on much longer, because I feel the kind of sexual arousal that I've only ever known after about six dates and twenty minutes of foreplay. Here with this boy, this stranger, I am shrugging off ideas I've held all my life about what's wrong and what's right because my body is taking over. I'm slowly realizing that there are a lot of amazing things I might be capable of tonight and that dancing is just one of them.

That's when the doors to the bar burst open and in throngs another band of people enter waving banners, carrying castanets and guitars, singing, and packing the dance floor tighter than ever. Before I have a chance to object, a guy pulls me into the middle of the room, where I carry on moving to the music, allowing myself again to be shoved from one partner to the next. But I don't lose eye contact with my favorite dancer, always making sure that I know where he is, not wanting to break the spell, knowing that I'll come back for him later. But then there's another crowd surge, and the dance spills out into the street. I can't believe an alleyway this tiny can contain so many heaving bodies, but it can and it does. I'm getting farther and farther away, and then I lose him, his wavy brown hair just another head in the surging crowd.

At that moment I see a face I do recognize. Lara, flushed cheeks beneath her tan, one of her shoes in her hand, a broad grin plastered across her face.

"Helen," she shouts, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me toward the edge of the crowd, "I've made a new friend! Come and meet Paco." She gestures toward a burly young Spaniard in a grubby T-shirt. "I know, he doesn't look like much," she says sotto voce, "but you should see the way he moves. There's something about a boy who can dance, don't you think?"

"Oh, yes," I say, more to myself than to Lara.

Paco leads us back through more crowds. Street lighting is poor and intermittent, so we have to rely on the odd light from a bar or club spilling into the street, illuminating just a few feet. It's hard for me to make out the features of the faces that pass by me in this half-light, and despite the size of the crowd, none of the men I pass are him-the only one I want. I pray for him to find me. I will it to happen. I feel that if he is near me I will know, that our bodies will draw together like two magnets. Now that he has awakened something in me, every body I touch as I pass makes my flesh tingle when they touch me, but none has the power to set my skin afire, not like he does.