Article 155794 of talk.bizarre:
Path: chaph.usc.edu!usc!phakt.usc.edu!not-for-mail
From: pechever@phakt.usc.edu (The Heckler)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: Tipheret : Danseur
Date: 17 Jun 1993 22:03:38 -0700
Organization: 5150 Memorial Scholarship Committee (A wholly owned subsidiary of X Industries)
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Summary: first in a series
Keywords: qbl child king sacrificed god

The audience is small.  They dress unprepossessingly in middle-class apparel,
somewhat dingy.  The venue is well-lit; perhaps that is a bad move, as it makes
it all too clear that the stage is warped and dull, the walls dingy, and the
furniture tacky.  The venue is old, and marginally successful at best.

There is a certain tension in the air, however.  The audience is uncomfortable;
more uncomfortable that an audience composed of regular middle-class 
suburbanites ought to be when out on the town.  Uneasy recognition flickers 
from eye to eye; a fiftyish, greying woman turns around, looking for an 
assistant that is not present.

The audience is used to assistants being present, and it disturbs them to come
unattended to this rickety venue.  Without the ballast of a retinue, the 
audience members feel unstable, shaky; but they remain.  Lives and careers
and large sums of money have been put on the line in order to be here tonight.

This is where he comes, not frequently, to dance.  He is dancing here, tonight,
and CEOs, presidents and royalty have vied for the chance to be present.

"Good evening."  Abruptly, as always, the performance begins.  The only words
he has ever been heard to speak are "Good evening" and "thank you, good night."
The salsa beat does the rest of the talking.  The Latin drums speak in tongues.
Forked ones, like a serpent's.

He dances, and time stops.  He slithers, hips sensuously rolling in a cadence
utterly sexual, completely feminine.  He does not spill a drop of his 
masculinity in the process.  He is color in motion, there on stage: Brown.
Black.  White.  Red.  After some time, sweat starts to drip on the floor.
The tempo changes.  He is stamping now, sometimes whuffing with the effort.
A grin of utter joy spreads over his face.  The tempo changes, again and again,
and the rhythms of his body change with it--or is some unseen hand changing
the music to follow his motions?  No matter.  The dance _is_.  That is enough.

He is tiring now, spending his energy in calculated bursts.  The dance loses
none of its power.  Without a warning, the music explodes into a frenzy; a
groan escapes his lips as he summons the strength to match the request the 
drums make of him.  The effort makes him grimace at first; then, the smile
returns.  It is a different smile this time; it is serene, not ecstatic.  The
dance is dancing him, now.

The tempo, impossibly, accelerates again.  The dancer begins to glow, enough
to be noticeable even in the brightly lit room.  He is a bonfire.  A nuclear
fireball.  A blue-white star.

The music stops.  No fades, no winding down, no warning.

For an instant, his face becomes a well of loss.  He whimpers, once; an arrow
eased softly from the bowstring, a lover denied an orgasm.  The moment passes.
Perfectly composed once more, dripping with sweat, he bows to their genteel,
controlled applause.

"Thank you.  Good night."  He is gone.  He is never followed.

When they leave, they are all shaking.

heckler