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enjoy this Kyle Hemmings writing in the free Down in the Dirt Tax Day 2011 PDF file chapbook Cat People				You can also order this as a 2011 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book Cat People

Order this writing in the book Prominent Pen cc&d edition		get the 332 page May-August 2011 cc&d magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Dancin’ Across the U.S.A

Kyle Hemmings

    Kat and I are doing our version of The Bubblegum Strain before 17 million viewers around the world. It’s the show How Many Legs Have You Got? Slinking and slow-burning, we combine old hip-hop routines with improvised House four-to-the-floor. We do half-time and dubstep. Kat is kick drum; I am snare. Kat is synth-stroked climax; I am deep in spacey futurism. Kat is dressed as an eighties Madonna, long skirt with tie-up boots. I am a slender Hercules on a diet of parallel worlds. The audience claps. The judges give irrelevant critiques and scores. Judge No.1 gives us a 7. He says I lack attitude. No. 2 gives us a 9. She admits it’s hard to adapt to dubstep. It’s like crashing gates. No. 3 gives us a 6, claiming that our grime was too complex and jerky. I can feel the sweat from Kat’s palm traveling through my lifeline. “Wait,” says Kat, “it’s not over. The second dance is always better.” She stares each judge in the face. I’m about to go Kode9. The cameramen are giving each other strange hand signals. Kat shuffles to the edge of the stage and flies. She floats over the audience, under hot colored lights. The people stand. Their heads roll. Their eyes trace crazy fish patterns across the ceiling. The judges rise and guffaw. No. 1 says Is she Mary Poppins? No. 2 says The craziest shit always happens when it’s not in the script. No. 3 asks if there are strings attached to her. Kat returns to the stage, perched before the judges. She looks at me with her big Barbie-Girl aqua eyes, the only thing about her that is not breathless. I’m walking on a mist. The audience can’t stop cheering. The judges stand and collectively fire themselves. In the backseat of a taxi, I hold Kat’s hand and look into her eyes. There are bruises below each. Does she punch herself in her sleep? I think of what a friend once said about the mind being an invisible jukebox. Kat smiles like a ballerina returning to her average life hanging from strings. In her eyes are miniature porcelain swans forever stuck within their gelatinous spheres.

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