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Noah Stetzer

The park lodge where you're dancing on Memorial Day Weekend is over capacity and has no A/C. The music is coming from speakers that reach twelve feet up the corners. What you don't know is more than fourteen thousand die this year — someone named Miss Kitty from something called Gunsmoke dies this year. What you know is the heat inside the lodge is thick and damp — there are bodies everywhere. And you know that this song is the song of the summer and the DJ keeps spinning it out farther. You understand: no one is leaving the lodge. More people are coming inside to dance. The song keeps circling back to its chorus and everyone’s arms are in the air. And here’s something else: on top of a speaker in the corner is a shirtless boy with a mohawk dancing in cutoffs and combat boots. Because it is so crowded we are all dancing in place, feet planted, and only bouncing from our knees — you have to know that. And so we’re bouncing as the DJ spins up one last escalation into the chorus and as all our arms go up you feel the floor give beneath our weight. This is what you must know: we are bending the floor.

 

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