On a hot mid summer night, the kind where the sun never seems to set even though you want it to, we held an orgy in the woods. Not a sexual orgy, although some snuck away, but a feast of the senses - night air, hot and heavy, stars like little gashes pricked through a blanket tent when we were kids, the earth mossy and steaming.
We brought fruit, lots and lots of fruit. Chocolate, bread, and dark beer. We were drunk, foolish, and heavy.
The group of people sitting around a campfire with oozing blobs of marshmallow on the end of red-tinged sticks looked like orbs of baby ghosts fluttering around our vitality.
I'd met Estelle before. All I really noticed of her that night was that she wore a dress (none of the other girls did), and had long hair. She didn't seem particularly beautiful or important, that is, until she began moving.
If ever a woman was made to dance in the moonlight in the woods it's Estelle. Someone brought out some bongos and another girl pulled out her flute. The music was basic and primitive, perfectly fitting the night.
Finally the air began to spare us and chill, edging us closer to the fire, casting dark shadows across our faces and lighting them up like a lamp in the fog.
Estelle stood, the flute twittered and the bongos thumped. She felt it - you could feel it pouring from her body, causing her to move with fluid motion that was sensual and slow. She moved deliberately at first, mostly to herself, but caught in the essence of the night, the dark, the tastes, the smells, the murmurs of humans connecting, Estelle danced for us. Part seduction, part innocence. She moved in a world all her own, yet she was aware of us. Male or female, we were all mesmerized, yet she barely looked at us.
Her arms above her head, her lithe body was slithering, somewhat like a belly dancer without her bells. Or a yago instructor on a bender. Or a twirling girl gone quiet.
Estelle was beautiful. Everyone was in love with her at that moment. Everyone wanted to be with Estelle , and everyone wanted to be Estelle. I pictured her slipping off into the night to live with nymphs and gnomes.
It was a shock when I saw her another day in the sunlight. She looked like a plain girl. She was not Estelle of the night and moonlight. I have to place her there, because that is where she belongs.