There I am dancing with a man, dancing with George.

            My shoulders up around my ears. My eyes are like they aren’t mine.  I can’t make them look where I want them to. They’re off staring into space at some goddamned knotty pine, and I want to look at George.

            What I have to say to George, I have to look at him to say it.

            Granny’s eyes, the way they looked at you, there was nothing in between.

            I close my eyes tight, take a deep breath. 

            George is in front of me.

            Shiny black hair, suntanned dark cinnamon skin, his dark eyes. The gold bars in his dark eyes.  Thick lips the color of the rest of his skin.  His sweat, buckskin and flint in the back of my throat.  The part of the tomato that folds together red into the stem of green. Vaseline hair tonic.  Old Spice.

            I knew all these things about George but never up this close.

            Our hands are palm to palm on my right, my fingers in between his fingers, or his fingers in between mine. My hand so thin and pink inside his big brown hand. My thumb, how it lays against his thumb. Our forearms touch too. His skin, my too short brown suit jacket and my white shirt poking out.

            The slow roll of the dance, now and then the brim of my hat touches his head.   My brow and cheek bone, his cheek bone and jaw. Under my chin, my left thumb is on his red suspender.  My thumb is trying to get underneath the suspender.  I make my thumb stop.

            Under my left palm, starched white cotton and George’s shoulder.

            The low lamp light on his cheek bone. George’s ear. The breath from my nose into the hole of his ear. My nose only inches away from the place where his neck skin and white shirt collar meet. 

            My lips are even closer.

            The smell of starch and iron and cotton.  Warm breath, tobacco, gin and lime.

            George’s hand on my back his little finger just there at the top crack of my ass. We are touching all along the whole left side of me, the whole right side of him. 

            The slow roll of the dance, on that side our thighs touch, they come apart, our thighs touch.

            And something else down there, loose and full. 

            I’ll be seeing you in every lovely summer’s day.

            Just me and George and Billy Holiday dancing slow and close.

            I see it coming from a long way off.  His head is so still, his eyes on my lips.  His lips stick together as they come apart. Such a slow and graceful descent, the way his lips land just right on my lips, round and firm soft too.

            Whisker rub. His tongue in my mouth, a perfect French inhale. It is a kind of swoon. Something in George collapses too. Or we both do. Who knows, at that moment, you can’t really tell us apart.

            In everything’s that light and gay, I’ll always think of you that way.

            It is the longest kiss I’d ever kissed.