THE NARRATIVE ARC
A Night of Dancing With the Cool Kids
I’ve never been ‘cool’ as a teenager. I try to experience that now
He is tall, slim, princely; he dances like a pop star. Beside him, a similarly tall and slim woman with a crown of salon-groomed, curled hair swayed. She looked like old money, like the rebellious daughter of a major real estate developer, or the illegitimate child of an oil tycoon who doesn’t neglect his child support.
Later, after the party, the organizers began posting photos of the attendees on Instagram.
The guy was shot in black and white, his arms in the air, his eyes behind a pair of Tom Ford sunglasses. The organizers had tagged him. I checked his profile: It had the usual follower count of relatively famous people and a blue checkmark beside his name. His bio included a Spotify link and the email address of someone from Warner Music.
He is an actual pop star, after all. An up-and-coming one.
I found the lady among the photos too. She’s a model, a foreigner. She has graced the usual pages; Vogue, Esquire. She has been to most of the world’s high-profile cities too.
With a bit more digging, I discovered both are twenty-two years old.
