Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Flashdance reunion movie drag queen

I'm sitting in a crowded movie theater.

I talk with other people there as a film starts; this is a special showing of a movie that came out when I was in high school or college, sometime in the 1980's. Some of us, including me, appeared as extras in the movie.

The movie is a musical and looks something like "Flashdance" except that it takes place in a high school. It has lots of disaffected punk kids in it -- sort of like "Flashdance" meets the Sex Pistols on the set of "Grease".

As the movie progress, people in the crowd gasp and say "Oh my gawd" or clap and cheer when they see themselves on screen. Some groan at their bad hairstyles.

At one point in the movie, there's a big dance number that takes place in what looks like a nightclub.

People in the audience get up from their seats and walk into the screen. I join them.

I find myself wandering around the nightclub in the movie -- everything around me has film grain and scratches, like a movie come to life.

I wander through this multistory nightclub, moving in and out of the crowd, listening to the synthesizer-based 80's pop music blaring and seeing the lights flash and pulse all around me.

I am at the edge of what looks like a gymnasium floor. It is empty, people crowded around the periphery of it. The music plays, the lights are all around.

A spotlight points at me.

Next to me is a drag queen I used to know, Monica Marlowe.

"You should dance," she says.

"No," I say, a little embarrassed. "If I went out there and danced, I might run into myself. It would tear apart the whole space-time continuum of this dream."

Then I woke up.