Last night, in a dream borne of faded memory, I danced. Years ago, the real scene took place. Id nearly forgotten it all.

I don't know now why I was out with my bosses and colleagues that night, except that we were a close-knit group and often in one anothers pockets. We ate sushi and laughed and swapped clothes and cooked really good vegetarian meals and drank wine together. We watched each other fall in and out of love. We gave one of our number away to a man who felt just like one of us, and waved good-bye as he took her across an ocean.

But on the night I dreamed last night, for the first time together, we danced.

I can't remember whose idea it was to take our newest member to New York Citys biggest tourist-trap nightclub, but I remember protesting, loud and often. I campaigned in vain for someplace more exclusive. Yet, The Tourist-Trap was free (for those in the know, like us) and it was banal enough not to frighten off a recent immigrant from the wilds of Colorado, but still cool enough not to be a total waste of time.

I went along because I was more connected to these people than I had ever before felt towards anyone I worked with. But, me being Tara, I grumbled about the venue right up until we walked out onto a balcony overlooking the main (and empty, as we'd arrived early enough to give the $25 cover a miss) dance floor.

While our Coloradan exclaimed over the vast space, the really tall women and the cage dancers, we let her enthusiasm slough off our cynicism. I found myself enjoying her joy, if not the club itself.

And then, the music surged through my veins and I could barely see my friends for the desire firing every nerve in my body. My boss, seeing Id become a race horse at the gate, pushed me off.

Go. Dance, she mouthed. And I did.

I drank the music. I breathed melodies. I became the pounding beat and stormed the world away with its pulse.

I was light and darkness and moved like mist. The world-that-wasn't filled with more light and darkness and colors that writhed around and through me. And we were one, but we weren't. And we were all beautiful.

The world drifted back in. A sheen of sweat coated my heated skin and the floor heaved around me with bodies moving in unison and not and though I still heard the music, I wasn't the music anymore.

So, I grinned at the mist and light and darkness and colors writhing around me, but no longer through me, and went in search of my friends.

Though it felt as if I'd been music for a lifetime, just over an hour had passed. But it was enough to stop me complaining for the rest of the night.