The disco ball spun rapidly from the ceiling of the small community center, sending bright colours and dots careening across the white walls. The room was a small sea of flashing sequins and glimmering fabrics- silk, chiffon, and georgette whispering as the women shifted in their seats and brushed against one another. Some women sparkled in their outfits standing against the walls. They seemed quiet and unassuming, until you noted the loudness of their clothing and jewelry.
“Happy New Year!!!!” shouted a raucous middle-aged man. His wife tittered nervously in the corner, where all of the respectable women gathered. Most of the women had an indulgent, slightly worn air about them. It was anyone’s guess as to whether they were wearing out from work, preparing for the party, or from managing their children.
A little girl tore through the room, screaming as her friends chased her in a game of energetic tag. The adults deftly stepped out of the way of the bombardment, and the children disappeared into the courtyard. Nothing else changed. They were just children after all.
The men, one after another, quickly skulked across the deserted makeshift dance floor, holding tightly to cases of beer, coolers with ice and liquor, and what seemed to be a full assortment of barware. They too disappeared into the courtyard, beyond the reach of the disco ball lights and their wives. The women settled into what seemed to be a familiar, bored pattern of watching the children play and focused on amusing each other with small talk and gossip.
As the hours passed, the tension in the air eased. Perhaps it was not the time, but the amount of liquor which resolved the tensions. The men began to file in back into the community center, each followed by a sharp blast of cold air as the door closed behind them. They were now a loud and belligerent bunch, exclaiming over who was to pay for the entertainment and how to make the night even more fun for everyone.
Finally, they decided to do a model walk for the children. The women jumped into a frenzy of preparing the empty disco ball area into the semblance of a catwalk. Two of the men ran to the back of the room and prepared the sound system. One grabbed the microphone and the other ushered a child who wanted to play to the front of the room. After ten minutes, the adrenaline filled children forsook the adults and their strangeness. Let their parents be boring and model on catwalks.They would rather run around outside and fence with the strange looking forbidden metal things their parents kept opening bottles with outside.
Left without amusement, the men alternated between arguing over nothing, and taking trips to their temporary bar on the pretense of scolding the children. Eventually they cajoled their blushing wives to walk the fake catwalk, hooting and cheering as they stalked down in an exaggerated modeling style. At once the children heard the fun, and noticing it sounded much like their own, glanced through the wall of windows at the spectacle of their parents. Some scampered to the door and peered around the edge, tiny brown fingers curling around the door handle in an effort to hold the door open.
All of a sudden, a chant arose from the crowd “No gay! No gay! No gay! No gay! No gay!”
The children flocked inside, excited by the shouting. The men were throwing their hands in the air as if singing a popular song and an ugly dark energy threaded through the room. The laughs were no longer joyful, they were cruel. The men’s faces were puffy and red from the overindulgence, and their teeth seemed bared more in aggression than in fun.The two men walking down the catwalk laughed and joined in the chanting. For them, it was just a matter of joining hands for a few moments since their wives did not want to seem forward and crude. The youngest of the children danced around the legs of the adults, throwing his hands up in the air, piping in his tiny voice
“No gay!!!!!”
The teenagers, previously uninterested in the antics of both the young and the old, startled at the scene before them, but only for a moment. Shrugging their shoulders, they retreated into their cynical dispositions and smoothed a bored expression over their faces.
It was whatever. No big deal.
