Le soir doux-amer

A and W's corsage and boutonniere

Sarabande in 3/4 time:

1/4
It is a strange thing to dress up. It is even stranger to look at pictures of yourself and realize you are the one wearing the cosmetics and formal attire. Combine that with eating an expensive dinner down at Santana Row, and now you feel like a member of high society.

Beauty and she are not well acquainted. She knows she is not beautiful. Simply, she is not disfigured to the point of ugliness and not jolie enough to be memorable. Her face is a characterless terrain. So when the make-up has been done and she turns to the mirror, she does not connect herself to the girl in the mirror. It is a strange thing. She knows she can look jolie if she spends the time to change into beautiful clothes and apply the smoke around her eyes.

And she thinks this to herself as she scrambles to Jesyka's bathroom in order to wipe of all the make-up and change into a T-shirt and shorts as fast as humanly possible the instant she steps into the house. Comfort trumps beauty.

2/4
It is really funny and sad at the same time when a prude goes to a dance. She will dance unhibited with her girl friends, because with a girl there is none of the awkward sexual tension. When her friends begin freaking with their dates and grind her into a corner, she will promptly bolt and hang out with her fellow stags on the elevated floor. Which is fun but undeniably lame.

She has a strange relationship towards the opposite sex. There are a few that she is good friends with without being constantly aware that they are male. But other than those remote few, she is very uncomfortable with the others. There are the girls who have no second thoughts about dancing racily with guys they have no interest in. She, on the other hand, feels sick at the very thought. Without any sentiment of passion, it is just disgusting. Which cleanly sums up why she ended up going stag.

3/4
It is lame (but maybe not uncommon) when said prude has more fun at the afterparty than at the actual dance. The four or so hours spent rocking out to the Xbox 360 Rock Band zip past even faster than the three hours scuttling around the dancefloor in high heels. She hands the microphone to her friend J, who is lame in a different way. (Who in her right mind would bring a laptop to an afterparty so she can work?) Sadly, J cannot even hit the microphone on beat, and so she grabs the microphone and starts belting Are You Gonna Be My Girl? by Jet -- which she doesn't even like but can at least sing. She also attempts playing the drums, but eventually goes onto sing Say It Ain't So by Weezer, Welcome Home by Coheed and Cambria, When You Were Young by The Killers, Reptilia by The Strokes, and The Electric Version by The New Pornographers, not to mention all the other songs the others sang when it wasn't her turn.

The funny thing is, a year ago, she never would have sang anywhere in public. She had always told everyone she "sang like a frog." Why the change? The pathetic truth is, she became obsessed with Nana Osaki. Nana was ambitious and confident, an edgy beauty and a singer -- everything that she was not.

So she cut her hair short and never let it grow long again. The same year, she got her ears pierced. Most importantly, she began to sing. It was a gradual change. At first, she would sing alone in the car very softly when no one was around to listen. Her voice was terrible at first, but over time, her control over her voice improved dramatically. When nobody was home, she would turn her boom box up and sing without restraint. Finally, she reached the point where she would turn the volume of her stereo up and sing at a normal volume even if people were home. Hier soir was the first time she had enough confidence in her voice to sing for others.

C'était un soir doux-amer.