And then we can do the dance

Something in the air in the last weekend of July. Happens every year. People realize

one more month of summer fun, and the stickiest of months, the least pleasant. Better make something happen.

It feels at first like a good natured collusion, people calling people, reaching out, no desperation in their voices (yet), still hope because technically its still July.

But when August hits, ho boy. Things are going to get kooky. The itch to make good on promises promised every time thinking about summer when off-season. What to do, so that we can all leave the sweet months behind with a memory or two, a downhill bike ride, a kayak trip, a leave-it-to-Beaver montage. A laurel wreath constructed solely from other people's merit. A fictitious ferret like creature climbs around the bar, sniffing at drinks, paws and claws in people's spaces, an inching around, an anxious hunt for fun. There's more than one. Again, people seem good natured starting the night, hopeful to find their summer love, but it can turn ugly.

Its turned ugly in me, twice. I get short-tempered. I get tankard. I need a lanyard that says "don't get too close" or, the way things have been as of late; "if you can read this sign, my eyes are up here."

Ladies, I know you need a little summer thrill, but I'm not the type, necessarily. And the more you ogle my torso, the more I feel inclined to go somewhere else with my wares and withdraw from public. I'm not a piece of luggage for you to store your emotional needs. I'm not a physical play gym for the worldy-despondants who think me the angel incarnate for a one time orgiastic fling.

I could be. But woo me softly. No onslaught of the genial towards a quick seduction. Keep it light at first. Make me laugh. Buy me a drink. It helps me relax. I want to have fun, too, with you and your friends, in the bedroom, feathers and french ticklers and the cat o' nine tails. But I have my own baggage, luggage, I lug around, and I can't just jump into your sensual world without first entering the neutral head/ heart space of friendship. I need to see myself transcendent of my past hurts and hurrahs.

And then we can do the dance.