New York City Subway stations are perhaps the ugliest in the world. It's not the cat sized rats or the smell of urine soaked into everything. It's the stale air; the way dust and smog get caught in the system and have no choice but to settle on the floors, walls and tunnels like soot and sludge. Attempts to clean  it off are so far into futile they need to coin a new word for why-even-bother-trying?  There's one sanitation worker in New York for every 1,500 people walking, smoking, dropping gum wrapper paper feces, trekking mud, spent transmission fluid, and poop in around the boroughs on their shoes and beings.

It's a foul city.

DeKalb Avenue is like most other subway stations in the system, perhaps a bit cleaner and brighter but only marginally. Some Scottish guy apparently decided to remodel his bathroom to look just like it-- tile mosaics and black soot ceilings and all-- otherwise there's nothing especially unique about it.

But it is close to the border between North Brooklyn and South Brooklyn, and a major transfer point for very long subway lines, so I suppose it is the natural place for a silent disco.

Markie wasn't hard to find once I got off the subway. He had his big Panasonic DJ earphones and was wearing black liner. Even in New York City, even in Brooklyn, boys in eyeliner stand out.

“Hey,” I grunted. There was quite a crowd gathered on the platform, although most of them looked like normal people waiting for the next train. I was scanning the crowd for iPods and headphones. Five ... six ... at least seven besides us, but it was also late and it seemed unlikely that all these people would simply be waiting for a train.

I checked my watch.

“You ready?” He asked.

“Yeah...”

“Did you listen to the playlist?”

“No...” I knew better than to succumb to that temptation. The experience is much more intense if you have no idea what's coming up next.

“Good, me neither.” He frowned when I started unwinding my earbuds from my mp3 player. Yeah... Yeah I know...

“I thought you'd bring those,” Markie clicked snottily. “Look I brought a spare for you--”

“No.”

“But the sound quality--”

“Is fine,” I snapped. “And I like my ear crud too.”

Markie sulked for a moment before I tapped my watch and shoved the earbuds in place.

Unless you're using a unified system-- some kind of broadcasting equipment or maybe a Wifi based DJ hub-- promptness is essential in a silent disco. Otherwise you're not in sync with everyone else and having the exact same playlist becomes pointless.

Markie, still frowning at my earbuds, begrudgingly slipped his headphones on and held his iPod up in his right hand like it was the detonation device for a bomb he had strapped to his chest. I copied the gesture, then found other hands raised with thumbs on ready buttons.

Tick-tock ... Press play.

At first there was no sound, which made my glance flicker anxiously down at my hand. When you're expecting a powerful experience, you don't take to subtly well. But then I heard it: a tiny pinging sound working in a regular pattern over and over again like the twinkling of stars made audible. It turned out to be the perfect start, as it mimicked the feeling of distant trains approaching the platform, their headlights just a flicker in the dark tunnel before a gradual crescendo of light, sound and force makes you take a step back in anticipation.

You could see the secret smiles on the faces of the selected iPod wearers, smiles that helped us identify each other and quick introductions were made with sparks of eye contact.

The light tinging sound trilled like chirping birds and grew louder still. The sounds of something lurked behind it-- an accidental drum rhythm like a train rocking on its tracks-- before being cut off by the note of a big band arrangement clicking perfectly into place.

It was layered music, the twinkling, the big band, a baseline like a jazz bass twanging away and the shake of a dance beat threading in and out of the melody. Here with the chorus, out with the verses.

Then the sound settled, all but the base gone. Silence save for that steady rhythm and the vocals echoed and vibrated like out of a bad microphone. By that time we were already dancing-- a handful of us gathered in a makeshift group, another puddle of people a short distance away-- and bodies lulled, anticipation high, bouncing in your knees ... listening, a mental kerning heightening the sensation of waiting for the music to flow back in like a flash of light.

It did, just as a train blasted its horn and flew through the station. Then I laughed at the wonder of it because it was perfectly timed but couldn't possibly have been planned.

We danced. The feeling of the eyes of others on us was electric and more so when we successfully lured a few civilians into our numbers, dancing to music they couldn't hear by following the rhythm of our bodies after the fact.

The first song cut off unexpectantly and returned us to Earth and its awkward dirty silences.

Knock-knock-knock.

That sound was disorientating and I thought a hallucination until a Spanish guitar and seemingly random notes being stabbed out on a piano answered back. The second song had a delightful jerky Creole feel to it, all witchcraft and damnation. It possessed us, silently mouthing the words to a song that was as foreign as we were to each other.

A train pulled up to the station and the doors opened invitingly. No one questioned it, some went, some stayed. Markie extended his hand to me and twirled me into the car with a kitschy Broadway spin borrowed from the Lindy.

I laughed, clumsily tripped over my own two feet and nearly landed in the lap of a startled black kid with a cardboard box full of peanut M&Ms. Another staple of the subways: people making money. Some preaches, some fundraisers, some beggars, unassuming street performers, unappealing social dredges, there are more people than the MTA charging admission to ride the underground.

I once saw a man juggle on the subway. Not balls either, but full out juggling pins.

And I can't even stand up straight without holding onto the pole.

I grinned at the fundraiser-- who seemed to be on his way home rather than eagerly selling-- flashed him a dollar and took a pack of M&Ms which I opened with my teeth. His eyes grew a little wide, betraying his innocence despite whatever posturing he made for his high school basketball teammates.

Deep background vocals moaned like a chain gang behind the sweet feminine acoustic artist. I think I might have waved him forward, but I don't remember exactly. What I do remember is the subway pole pressed against my back and his hands-- one politely on my waist, one laced with my own. It wasn't a dance like you see in rap videos: all sexed up, gyrating and rubbing against each other. It was simpler and older like a waltz with a little more grip. Our hips hovered together but never touched. The train jerked and he might have dipped me like something out of a tango.

The doors opened again and I could feel Markie jerk me out with a laugh. A laugh that was silent only because the music was blotting it out.

We stumbled across the platform and into another train car waiting for us. Passengers startled at the way we fell in, giggling, laughing, sheltering each other from the impact on the floor before spring up and breaking out into solo dances. Again they watched us, innocent shimmies (more him than me, showing off moves from his future drag act I guess) and parody moves from seventies line dances and Laugh-In episodes.

Without the music it probably looked like a seizure, but it was perfect. Rocking until I made myself dizzy spinning around.

New Yorkers have seen everything at least twice. Drunks, lunatics, taxis on fire, killers and saviors; it doesn't matter, they will stare at you once and then stare straight ahead and pretend you aren't there while they silently pray. Everyone who lives here receives an education in this undeniable fact: stare and you only provoke the beast. You only ensure that if this person (or people as the case may be) are in fact crazy, that you'll be the primary victim of their craziness.

I realized after a few minutes that we had a follower. A girl, our age, thinner than I thought was modest and dressed in jeans that made her look even thinner with a tank that was designed to look old and worn but only in the right ways. Around her chest the fabric had none of the vices of old worn out clothes and it highlighted the shape of her perfect-- albeit a little small-- breasts.

That was okay. That was good. I grinned and followed the music over to her. She had been watching us, but now she played coy by pretending not to know we were in the car with her. And yet when I moved one way she mirror the action until-- hips to hips-- we danced like intimates.

Being more masculine than I was-- am-- was no problem, the euphoria had opened up my senses and I was on the hunt.

She tasted okay-- too bitter for me-- pain and anxiety that the music couldn't relieve and the rebellion couldn't drown leaving an after taste that I didn't like. Plus she wasn't pure, so the energy was like swallowing a lead knot.

Not to my tastes at all.

But that wasn't necessarily a problem. All you needed was a set of conditions under which a person properly loses themselves.

There are only a few viable options. And on a subway car? The list gets even shorter.

Oh God Markie, you were so right, I had forgotten. But you were wrong about this: Jake hadn't domesticated me. Domestication, after all, has to be bred in. The first generation of wild predators will always be wild. We can be tamed, but our instincts never suppressed.

I wrapped my hand around her wrist and tasted her lips-- red wine and vaseline, she had needed to start the night early to drown out her unhappiness. Then I led her over in a half-skip/half-stop dance routine (jerk forward, clap, wiggle back, slide around the pole) and nearly jumped on Markie (obliviously curled in on himself in a tight worrisome headbang).

God ... it would be so much more reasonable if we were high... Or drunk. But we weren't. At least not Markie and me. I don't know about our new admirer.

For a few stops we just danced together like grade school friends at our first school dance. The music wouldn't stop, couldn't slow down, didn't pull back. It was jacked right into us and flowing like an electrocution.

The taste of her was making me sick. There's only so much self pity and self hate one can feed on really. So I licked my teeth and curled up against Markie as the car jerked and we fell back into the bench seating. I breathed against his jaw, my fingers ice cold against the skin of his collar bone. His eyes opened wide then he hissed, though I didn't hear that. I fed him the little bits of her I had picked up in our brief flirtatious contact because I knew what it would do to him.

Anything I can pull out I can also push in.

I pulled myself back on my feet and back on the pole, sliding my leg around it provocatively with a smile that was all carnal. What had he called me before? The Virgin Huntress?

Here I am. As I always should be.

I wasn't hungry really, but when you walk in on a delectable feast you take up a plate and sample. It's the natural thing to do really.

I pulled our girl into an awkward latin dance-- awkward because neither of us knew the moves and it took her a few steps to figure out that I was playing the man in this arrangement. We pulled out steps from what we assumed such a highly sexual dance would look like. I spun her, hands releasing like cable snapping and letting her tumble down into Markie's lap.

She laughed and slid on top of him, lip ring trapping his mouth open as she kissed him. He panted lightly as the subway rocked and her hips slid against his and he mouthed 'I prefer boys' as the music provoked them through his thick DJ bubble headphones.

I stretched out, arms across the top of the bench seating, fingers playing with the rough edges, legs spread and thug slouch all masculine in a very female body. I drew in the energy coming off them in waves with pleasure. They didn't know it but a mix of alcohol, sensory deprivation, biological lust, and law breaker's euphoria were making them blare like sirens. Their energy cut through the air, through a scene that without them was dull and quiet and possibly passing for the dirty inner city version peace.

Under these conditions I don't need to touch, don't need eye contact, don't need any contact at all. I could have been sitting across from them on the train as I was, or I could have been in any one of the buildings in the neighborhood our train was cutting through.

I tilted back, lights and colors and big painted signs for businesses that existed forty years ago zipped passed the window behind me. Windows to apartments and offices whipped through my vision like living light boxes displaying random scenes of the dirty functionalities of human civilization. Lights, cheap street oranges, yellows, white-blues hanging like berries from hollow metal branches. Rails running through the metal canyons of buildings and churches and highways. Astoria. Our subway-- no longer sub at all-- ran like a Disney World ride, the thrill being not so much the course as the elaborate scenery jumping out at you from every angle.

Our car had been empty for a good long time, a few shady characters on the other end mostly ignoring us out of fear and annoyance and waiting for their commute to end.

The train jerked unexpectantly and the girl roughly fell to the ground, her head phones spilling and skidding around the floor, plunging her back into the real world with its hard and dull necessities.

The moment was shattered with her fall, suddenly Markie seemed to remember that he went the other way generally. It was like the music stopped as soon as the connection broke. He took off his own earphones and asked her if she was all right. She was still on the floor of the subway, laughing hysterically.

We got off at the next stop and I elected to walk home across the tiny, decrepit bridge that crossed the river. The river that keeps stuff out.

It felt good. It felt right. It felt like the way things were supposed to be for me, but I had forgotten how poor the feeding supply is in the club scene. Most kids who club don't do it for fun exactly (although that is certainly what they convince themselves night after night), they do it to drown out some kind of pain. To convert that pain to something less pathetic.

It is a land of incredible impurity, but not because of the sex, the drugs, the binge drinking, or anything like that.

The silent disco reminded me of what I had lost, but it also reminded me of why I had left in the first place. Jake, for all his faults, was strong and pure. It was the difference between filet mignon and a Big Mac.

We could have some version of what he wanted, but he (same as Lily) needed time. What feeding takes out, takes time to recover, the little vulnerabilities it cuts into you to make you mine so that I can feel you-- your thoughts and your emotions-- even when you're not around, take time to close up. It's all about moderation.

Still the hunt was quite clearly in my nature. My stride was longer, more confident. I felt like I was glowing, soft and smooth and utterly perfect. The doors to the elevator opened on my floor and I cut through the empty hallway like a runway model at the biggest fashion show.

I turned the corner-- and there it was.

There he was.

Lying like a pile dirty socks, back pressed against my door, rumpled and unkempt like he hadn't slept for days. Jake smiled softly at me as I stopped dead in my tracks.

“I wanted to apologize ... for the other night.”

I shrugged, made a show about digging for my keys so that I wouldn't have to look him in the eye for more than a few seconds. “Nothing for you to feel sorry about.”

His blond hair was splattered all over his forehead in a completely disorganized nightmare of a bird's nest. He was still smiling-- untroubled, with his annoying optimism and idealism bleeding off him like bad cologne. “I feel like,” he said. “... I freaked out--”

“That's because you did freak out.”

And who could blame him? A breach was just about the worst thing that ever could happen because your first instinct is to assume that whatever horrible thing you saw, did or felt is a reflection of your true desires. So you search yourself for this evil, thinking you can kill it and escape what you believe to be a future where you turn out to be some psycho killer who strangles pretty girls with his bare hands.

He did not respond to my sarcasm. “And that must have hurt ... to have someone close get so skittish and then avoid you.”

My mood soften. I shifted nervously on my feet like a colt testing its wobbly stick like legs. “It's okay. It was a scary thing.”

“I came by and you were out, but I didn't want to leave this for another day.”

He leaned against the door and slowly slid up and back onto his feet. He had a lopsided boyish smile and a shy but hopeful look in his eye. He touched my arm and I felt nothing but skin on skin. The heat of his body was unreadable, whatever feelings or thoughts in his head were securely in place right there, where they belonged.

Dragon's Blood and chilies and High John and Borage. A perfect shield to separate us. I was ecstatic with this result.

But I will never forget the look on his face: bewilderment at first, then a frown, his grip tightening just a little-- the same way you might tap a button on an ATM harder when the first touch doesn't register-- then his eyes widened, his mouth opened with a soft breath and he turned to me with unanswerable questions hanging off his tongue.

I smiled. Everything would be different now.