“Sexual Healing”
Mrs. Fletcher“Sexual Healing” is the soundtrack to a dance between Margo Fairchild and Dumell, and its title lends their closeness a sense of significance that the scene immediately qualifies: it is, after all, just one song on Amanda Olney’s playlist. The track’s effect lies in that tension between an ordinary choice of music and the meaning the dancers momentarily find in it.
The Song in the Room
The song plays during the last dance of a gathering. Dumell dislikes having to end the evening, but it is a weekday and he has work in the morning, so he tells Margo that he must take her home before he turns into a pumpkin. Margo turns the joke back on him: it is his car that would turn into a pumpkin. Their exchange makes the approaching end of the dance part of its intimacy, while keeping the scene light.
Coincidence and Meaning
As “Sexual Healing” plays, Margo and Dumell dance close together. The song seems to them an uncanny coincidence, almost a message from the universe, but the narration undercuts that impression by noting its mundane source: it is another selection on Amanda’s iPhone, within a soul- and Motown-heavy playlist that has been playing for an hour and a half. The title acquires meaning through its timing, not because the music was chosen for them.
The Dance’s Surroundings
The moment is intimate without being isolated from the gathering around it. Julian Spitzer is very drunk and lurches about with his hands raised, a comic counterpoint to the couple’s close dancing. Dumell makes eye contact with him and returns to the practical matter of his car payments; Margo laughs and kisses Dumell. Against the evening’s jokes, obligations, and surrounding commotion, the song briefly focuses the scene on the two dancers and the meaning they give their shared moment.
