Southern Gothic Online

Love Shack

by Kelle Groom

In An Angel at my Table, Janet Frame said, "I had little experience
of many people; I knew them only in my heart." At twenty-two,

she'd sewn an everglaze dress for her first dance at Town Hall,
recognizing the Maxima, Military Two-step, the Destiny from dances

in the hospital, thinking, "Ask me, ask me," & no one did. A customer
in the health food store said I should rent the movie of her life,

that Janet reminded him of me. I was embarrassed to see myself
so clearly on screen, someone scoured open, always in need of

a dark coat, a disguise to manage shopping, errands in the world,
& I came to dislike the customer for noticing. I was just a clerk

but everyone wanted attention, my beautiful ex-boyfriend speaking
from a room far within, letting me house-sit while he went to Paris,

building a raceway for Disney. His beauty attracted the agency
that left a message inviting him to be an extra in a TV commercial

at Pleasure Island, & in his absence, I accepted, inviting Billy
from the store-our job was to dress well & dance in the street all night.

I didn't think my dancing skills were good enough for television,
so I enrolled in the Arthur Murray Dance School, saying I didn't need

eight weeks of lessons, just a quick course for my acting career,
my teacher like a middle-aged waiter holding my arms like plates

in a mirrored room with bars like in ballet, alcohol on his breath
in the afternoon, guiding my feet through the maze of shoes

on the floor, like the chalk drawn feet of crime victims, though I was
fairly certain that these waltz-like boozy moves weren't practical

tools for my commercial. Billy picked me up in a suit-it was cold,
but I didn't wear a coat, just a black bustier dress, flounced skirt,

shoulders freezing, feet screaming in heels, dancing outside all night
to the same minute or two of "Love Shack," Arthur Murray not having

taught me any moves to the B-52s, but by then I didn't care, flailing
around when the music started. The only business open was a candy

shop, the only food, full of chocolate & coffee, trying to stay warm,
awake, only getting paid our seventy dollars if we stayed until morning,

the full twelve hours. Before dawn we were herded into a theater, fed
boxed lunches, then maybe thirty of us found an unlocked door,

a game room, & slept on the floor, head to foot, for warmth, the TV
people finding us like the police, making us dance until it felt

like a drug, the lamps at night indistinguishable from my own closed eyes,
my body at rest with everyone in the arcade.

© 2005 Kelle Groom

Kelle Groom (Love Shack, Recreating the Horse) lives in Orlando and was raised in Massachusetts, Hawaii, Texas, Spain, and Florida. Her poems have appeared in AGNI Online, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, Florida Review, The New Yorker, Witness and elsewhere. Her collections of poems are Underwater City (University Press of Florida 2004) and Luckily (Anhinga Press 2006).