Day 24: How Have I Wasted 44,553 Words? With a Dance Sequence.

My novel makes no sense. I have no idea why I didn't advance the plot at all today. I am almost out of time to wrap this up, but that is not pushing me toward resolving any of the multiple plots that are hanging around unfinished. Anyway. Today I decided to write another dance sequence. Oh, and all the celebrities resolved their feuds, so there's that. 

“Wait!” Windigo Esmort shouted, just before they were about to begin. “this time, with capes- just as it was intended.” And Windigo, along with Berto and Gordon, hustled to the backroom and returned with enough waist length, sweat-wicking capes for everyone. “Of course, these are only practice capes,” Windigo said. “We will leave the real ones for the dress rehearsal and the performance.”

“Performance?” asked Cass.

“Yes,” Gordon jumped in. He had for some reason put the practice cape on overtop of the ankle length cape he was already wearing. Surprisingly, he pulled it off with aplomb. “This is actually the final dance number for Becoming Fantôme: Breaking Through the Paradox of Being Un-Alive and the Internal Panopticon.” Cass and everyone else (except Berto and Windigo) must have looked confused, because he continued. “This is the conclusion of the play, when everyone casts off their masks and becomes fully alive again, dancing away the demons that have haunted them, inviting life and blood back into their bodies.”

“I’m not wearing this,” Tanner sulked. Logan grabbed a cape, locked eyes with Tanner, and donned the cape, tossing it over his shoulder with an attractive flourish. “Y’all better buckle up,” he drawled, “this ride ain’t stopping.’”

“Oh it’s like that, is it?” Tanner asked, wondering how Logan had known about his surreptitious Chat GPT search for ‘cocky but calm things to say when driving a getaway car,’ how he had replicated it, and how he had out of context, pulled off the line with so much aplomb. Logan waggled his eyebrows at him flirtily and Tanner relented. “Oh, it’s on!” He said, donning the cape and turning to James. “Cue the music, let’s do this fucking thing!” 

And they did. And they all felt the indescribable joy that comes from moving your body in rhythm to Lil Jon’s beats, with your co-conspirators, with your comrades, with your friends. And in a world with so much ugliness, it might seem as though the performance of an expertly choreographed dance routine, executed with both earnestness and love, capes swirling in perfect synchrony in the dimness of the bar, meant little. But it meant everything. Their dance, in its simple beauty, was a rejection of that ugliness and kept the darkness at bay. And for a moment, it was enough. They were enough. 

And here is the big reveal from the celebrities:

Before the meeting got underway, Cass and the other teachers let the celebrities know that their support was welcome and appreciated- but that if they wanted to use their time for their actual intended purpose, which was to resolve their feuds, none of the teachers would begrudge them that. There was a moment of silence, and then the Rock, who seemed to have become the informal spokesperson for the group, spoke up.

“What feuds?” he asked, a wry grin lighting up his handsome face. And as Cass and the others looked around the large circle, she saw that somehow, by supporting the teachers, they had not only set aside their grievances, they had resolved them. Richard Gere sat next to Sylvester Stallone. Justin Bieber with Jeremy Roenick. The Rock with his arm around Vin Diesel. They were united.

“Shall we show them, guys?” he asked, and judging by the hoots and holler, he received the enthusiastic yes he was looking for. It was perhaps less smooth than it might have been had they not all still been wearing their capes, but the celebrities pulled off their t-shirts- half had been inscribed with “Celebrity Feud Support Group” and the other half had been inscribed with “Celebrities Against Celebrity Feud Support Groups.” Cass saw that underneath, all the celebrities were wearing matching t-shirts that read “Celebrities For Teachers Against Classic Liberalism.” All of the teachers were moved to tears, but especially LeRoy Butler, who wept openly at the appropriate use of the term classic liberalism.