Lindzey B. liked to pretend she was in an indie film.  This habit originated in high school, when she decided to add the “z” to her name.  Her self-appointed quirkiness gave her a sense of superiority, which helped ease the awkwardness of situations she didn’t want to be in while simultaneously allowing her to look appropriately bored and thus, elevating her to a proper level of mid-twenties hipness.

Lindzey and Mac C. stood against the wall of the dance floor, watching what appeared to be the Bar Mitzvah from hell.  It was actually a post-graduation reception, a phrase that made the event sound far more dignified than it actually was.  The Queer-Dear poetry professor was Vogue-ing, Sugartits was gyrating in a dance that could only be described as the prison rape, and the gentle, dignified man in the tweed jacket who gave the graduation speech was swinging his belt around like a cowboy lasso.  Two words: Cash Bar.

Lindzey liked Mac because she found his hipness on par with her own, plus he was willing to admit that his single goal in life was to write a werewolf novel, something few people in their MFA program understood.  He held a locally-brewed beer she could barely see through, and Lindzey seduced a Coke off an awkward graduate student who reminded her of a marriage between her ex-boyfriend and an old horse destined for the glue factory.  He stammered and shuffled and spent his last six bucks on her drink, having to bum another six off a friend in order to buy his own.  He chugged half of his before lowering his voice and inviting her to join him in filling his glass from the fifth of whiskey in his car.  Lindzey knew better; she read too many headlines involving parking lots, strange men, spiked drinks, and waking up the next morning realizing that you did it with Mr. Ed.  That, and she couldn’t stand the cheapness of his method.  She expected a better ploy from someone with a Master’s degree.  Lindzey thanked him for the offer and slipped over to Mac the instant he vanished out the door.  Mac didn’t offer to buy her a drink, but when she returned with her virgin Coke, he tipped his pint to hers for a toast.  They drank in silence and watched the grown-ups try to reclaim their  futile youth to the strains of Rick James’ “Superfreak,” standing by in horror as one of their own professors, Mr. Jamison, ground his pelvis into the hippy hips of the program supervisor.  This bizarre spectacle toyed with Lindzey’s emotions.  After all, it was not every day that Mr. Jamison, always so serious in his black suit, danced like a gypsy monkey.  She finally laughed, doubling over on Mac’s shoulder.

“Don’t do that,” Mac said, choking.  “I almost shot my eight dollar beer out my nose and I can’t afford to waste it.”

“Sorry,” Lindzey apologized, not meaning it at all.  They toasted again and resumed viewing in silence as two poetry professors began a tribal sort of jitterbug.  Lindzey hoped it wasn’t a rain dance; she had a plane to catch in the morning and didn’t want to be there a moment longer than she had to be.

Tobias, on his third gin and tonic, lined up next to Mac and they tipped their glasses to the newcomer.  Tobias started off as a poet, but immediately saw the error of his ways and switched to fiction, where he succeeded in alienating himself from both groups.  He was infamous for his ability to speak at great lengths about Tolkien, usually at inconvenient times, such as in elevators.  Tonight she was just glad to have allies.  Hip as she was, without them, she looked like just another weird girl no one wanted to dance with.

Lindzey turned her focus to the graduate student who bought her drink, back from his car with a newly-full glass.  All liquored up, he took to the dance floor half bent backwards, eyes closed, knees at ninety-degree angles, hands waving in front of his face.  Lindzey thought she might be in love.

“I might be in love,” she said to Mac, gesturing with her red drink stirrer to the object of her affection.  He hovered on the edge of a group of girls who made it very clear they did not want him in their birthday circle.  “He’s finally dancing and no one will dance with him.  He’s like a magician looking into his hat and realizing his rabbit is dead.”

“What a dork,” Mac said.

“I know,” Lindzey agreed.  “And I think I’m in love with him.  He did buy me a drink, after all.”

“You owe him,” Tobias pointed out, setting down an empty glass that was immediately swooped up, hawk-like, by a starched member of the wait staff.  “Take one for the team.”

Lindzey passed her drink off to Mac and walked to the dance floor.  She smiled at the graduate student as “Dancing Queen” began to play.  He was a worse dancer up close, but at least he kept his pelvis to himself, which was more than she could say for Mr. Jamison, who appeared to be impregnating Sugartits.  Lindzey suspected the only reason she came to grad school was to find herself a nice white man to have nice white babies with.

Lindzey glanced over her shoulder at Mac and Tobias, who raised their glasses.  She turned back to the man of her dreams, only to find that he had sat down next to the DJ.  For a moment she held out the hope that he was requesting some Depeche Mode for her, but when it became obvious he wasn’t coming back, she slunk home to Mac and Tobias.

“Bummer,” Mac said, handing back her drink.

“Burn,” Tobias added.

It was the jeans, she decided.  She wore her skinny black jeans instead of her short black skirt, a boy’s thermal instead of a thin braless blouse, Tiny Prince glasses instead of her contact lenses.  Tragically indie.  Oh well.  The heroine never got a date; she was too sharp, too callus, too dry.

Mac set down his empty glass and checked his wallet.  “Want another Coke?” he asked.  “I’ve got fourteen bucks.”

“Sure,” she replied.  It was a small consolation.

He retrieved the drinks and Jeff wiggled over.  She hadn’t seen him drink the same drink twice all night, right now it looked like he held a vodka tonic.  “Lindzey B!” he shouted.  “Get on the dance floor! Rock the Casbah! Whoo!”   He danced in a chicken-circle and Lindzey resisted the urge to follow him, to run her hands through her hair, lick her lips and shake her skinny booty.  She reminisced about the ice trick she used to do during undergraduate dance-hall days before she converted to hipster, running a wet cube around her collarbone, leaving slick lines to drift down into her cleavage.  All the ice in her glass had melted and anyways, she wasn’t wearing a low-enough neckline.  A wet thermal collar was not sexy.  Besides, she was determined not to have fun.  Fun wasn’t indie.  Fun was for the old, the moronic, the drunk.

Eileen, the beautiful Tolkien chick, which until now Lindzey thought was as mythical as Tolkien’s own characters, smiled at Tobias from her corner of the dance floor and he immediately abandoned them.  They watched as he tried to cover his physical awkwardness with silliness; the Running Man, the Lawnmower, the Farley.  Jeff perfected the art of drinking and dancing on one foot, a strange sort of step reminiscent of David Byrne.  Mac and Lindzey were now the only people in the room, aside from the wait staff, who weren’t on the dance floor.

Her eyes focused on the microbrewery label on Mac’s bottle, Lindzey realized that she could not name a single indie film she actually liked.  She hated the forced irony, the calculated coolness, the commercialized misery she wasn’t interested buying in to.  She’d never even been to Brooklyn.  She wanted to smile.  She didn’t want to spent hours coming up with sardonic retorts and witty wisecracks to lines no one ever said.  She found no perks in being a wallflower.  It was time to break the fourth wall, tear up her contract and walk off the set.

“You’ve had enough,” she said.  “Come on, let’s dance.”

He looked at her and laughed, tipping down the neck of his bottle to meet the rim of her glass.  They took final swigs and set down half-emptied drinks, claiming their three-tile inheritance in the last empty corner.  Lindzey vowed to Wang Chung tonight and every night for the rest of her life.

Mac did the white-boy shuffle with an embarrassed grin, Lindzey rocked back and forth on her hips.  Mac winked.  Lindzey licked her lips.  Jeff cheered and hopped.  Tobias stepped in a little closer to Eileen.  Lindzey smiled.

Libby Cudmore is currently an MFA student with the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. My previous publications include a stint as a music columnist for St8ke magazine and essays at Blogcritics (including a review of Eric Stuart’s In the County of Kings, quotes from which were included in his national press kit). Additional publications include Hardboiled Magazine, Crime and Suspense, Sage of Consciousness, the Subway Chronicles (Essay of the Year 2005) and Long Story Short (Author of the Year, 2005).