I am just the dancer. On this floor, I'll pirouette whilst your hazy eyes watch my every motion. Even from this distance I can see the lines around your lips strain with disapproval. I'll spin, oblivious to the rhythm and beat of this new song as another pair of arms grasp at my body. I cling blindly to my new aggressor yet another stranger. Here she is with your drink. I watch anxiously as you sip at the glass she has brought you. She entwines her arms around your waist and rests her head on your too-tall shoulder in an attempt to conquer your attention. You look to her because you know this is what she wants but she is not what you want. I turn my face to the spoiled floor ashamed at our moment of intense eye-gazing but no one has noticed our silent connection. When I look up again, she is kissing you. Your eyes are open and burning into mine. I can taste the sick erupting in my throat and my lungs refuse to breathe. I push away the pair of arms caressing me and pass through the faceless crowd towards the exit.

I can't move fast enough and the swaying bodies force me backwards. The pair of arms grasp at me again but I reject them, shoving them roughly away. I force myself through the mob and look up the carpeted staircase to the cold February sky that awaits me outside. I indicate the smudged blue stamp on the back of my hand to the overweight bouncer and hurry brazenly up towards the fresh air. I pay no attention to the screaming blisters on the sides of my feet as my toes curl inwards in my new on-sale shoes trying to avoid the freezing temperatures of my hostile environment. The hair on my skin rises with the goosebumps attempting to insulate my body with a thin sheet of warm air. I shake the soft man-made curls in my hair. It smells of drink and smoke and drugs.

I ask a passerby for a cigarette and a light. He obliges after a quick look at me. I watch the end of the poisonous shaft glow a fiery orange before inhaling a tar-filled breath and letting the cigarette ash grow long once again before I clumsily tweak the butt allowing the grey soot to fall and stain the untouched snow. Not a star in sight. The careless light comes from the red IKEA bulbs used to spell out UNDERGROUND above the club entrance. I lean against a graffitied grey wall after walking a little way down the dark alley and take another drag of nicotine. Its calming, relieving, toxic. I relax my neck touching the crown of my head with the frozen cement and look up to the black night. I close my eyes.

Footsteps echo off the narrow, containing walls. My skin is frozen and my body immobile. I recognize the rhythmic tapping of the heel of your black, tattered dress-shoes. The footsteps approach and your arms pull me further down the dark alleyway. My eyes remain closed. You wrap one calloused hand around my non-cigarette bearing hand and the other, you place at the nape of my neck.

"Open your eyes," you whisper.

My eyelids force themselves open and I take another drag before the remains of the white tube falls to the ground. Your eyes are mad and your breath smells of gin. We can hear the drone of the techno coming from the doorway. You pull me further into the darkness. The snow hasn't yet been cleared.

"You don't love me," I state.

You don't reply. We have been through this before. You stare blankly into my eyes as your lips approach mine. I can never stop this spinning for I am just the dancer.