At the sound of the opening notes, Dave's head whipped around to take in the sight of his classmates organized in perfect formation, amidst a cloud of truly atmospheric smoke, the lot of them looking like models for Halloween costume catalogues. They made a truly spectacular sight, Dave instantly acknowledged, all of them dressed up to the nines, moving in choreographed synchronicity to the undeniably compelling beat of the music. The performance was so epic, in fact, Dave found himself moving from his hiding place at the corner of the bleachers toward the 50 yard line, where he could take in the show more clearly.
Lights flashed, music blared, voices rang out, hands and arms and legs moved in unison to create such an enthralling spectacle it was impossible not to be taken in by it. In fact, the only thing in the world that could possibly distract from such a performance was the audience reaction to it. The whole stadium was on its feet, dancing and clapping along with such unrestrained enthusiasm Dave was genuinely overcome by the sight of it. To see his response to the show so openly reflected by the crowd, it had moved something in him. And it had healed something in him, too.
For Dave had suddenly implicitly understood a reality that had previously eluded him, up until that point. His fear of dancing had never actually been predicated on the fact that it might make him look gay; it had been predicated on the fact that, once again, the world was telling him that his pleasure was wrong. The horror of being called gay, Dave realized, did not lie in the fact that it iterated your sexual desire. The horror resided in the fact that, often, you were not only being told what your sexual desire was, you were being told that your sexual desire was wrong.
The word "gay," Dave suddenly realized, was not just a term for a particular kind of sexuality; it was also a code-word, for any and all pleasure you weren't supposed to have. It was THE designated term for misbegotten happiness. Finally, in that moment down on the field, Dave realized where the word had most probably come from. He now understood why homosexual people were called "gay" – because they had found a happiness, a pleasure, an ecstasy that was never 'supposed' to be.
And that was why it had hurt him so very bad when that other boy had said what he said: "Holy crap, they turned Karofsky gay." It was not his sexuality that had been at issue in that moment at all; it had been his pleasure, specifically his pleasure in dancing. Dave had found a pleasure he allegedly wasn't supposed to have, and whenever people do that, the word gay almost always gets pulled out as a way of policing it and shutting it down.
When that other boy had said what he had said, he had not actually been making an equivalency between homosexuality and dancing at all. He had not actually been saying 'you like dancing therefore you must be gay.' He had, in point of fact, been making an analogy, a comparison. To take pleasure in dancing was wrong, not because it made you gay, but because it was analogous to being gay. It was not that the two things were in any way causally related; the one was simply a metaphor for the other.
Dave had been told dancing was gay not because it was, in point of fact, homosexual. He had been told it was gay because it was a pleasure people apparently had thought he was not supposed to have, just like kissing other boys was a pleasure most people thought he was not supposed to have. But as Dave had stood on that field, transfixed by the cheers of the wildly approving crowd, he felt and saw one of his denigrated pleasures suddenly being venerated once more. What he had been told was bad, and wrong, was suddenly being greeted with thunderous applause, and Dave had had no words for how utterly validated that had made him feel. It was like a much need suture on a wound that had remained open and infected for far too long.
The swell of emotion Dave had felt at the sight of this scene had overwhelmed the whole of his person, and there had been absolutely no way to contain it. The field had been open, it had been his move, and his heart simply would not permit him to stay standing on the sidelines. The music had hummed almost violently through his veins and his body had absolutely begged, in that moment, to be set free.
Dave had spent that whole night trying to contain his impulses, deny his pleasures, and that had been painfully suffocating, both literally and figuratively. And as the music had called to him, Dave knew there was nothing for it but to surrender. And the release of it had been…orgasmic. Giving in just felt so good.
Dave was visited once again by that sense of his body being distinctly disconnected from his brain, or at least the part of his brain that existed to second-guess everything. His legs had seemed to carry him of their own volition out onto the field, to his place in the formation next to Finn. The other boy had greeted him with warm enthusiasm and Dave knew instantly that he had redeemed himself in the quarterback's eyes. And with that fence mended, he had nothing to distract him from the music, which was giving itself physical presence in the world through his body, guiding his every move as if from the inside out.
The music was inside him, the dance was inside him, and allowing these forces free reign made Dave feel gloriously in-sync with himself. All the parts of him, which normally operated so painfully disparately – his body, his brain, his emotions – in this one moment temporarily aligned with perfect unity. And the astounding relief Dave felt from being momentarily freed of this perpetual conflict was a sheer joy.
Dave followed it through to the end and was still a bit dazed when his teammates enveloped him in celebratory hugs. He could hear their cheers, as well as the cheers from the crowd, only as if from a distance. His mind still felt like it was floating, suspended, blissfully placated and not in a hurry to regain fully attentiveness to the world around it. Dave followed his fellow footballers back to the locker room, where their heightened spirits from the victory of the dance were transformed into a unified hunger to win the game.
They returned to the field where through a combination of team spirit, practice, skill, leadership and sheer determination, they managed to eke out a dramatic victory in the final few moments of the game. As the whistle blew, affirming Finn's touchdown in the very last second, everyone on the field and in the stands erupted in cheers and the two groups merged. Yet through all the hustle and bustle and noise, at that moment Dave only had eyes for Kurt.
Although he knew the other boy probably did not give a whit about football, or even understand a lot of it, he was clearly ecstatic for this victory on behalf of his many friends on the WMHS football team – Finn, Puck, Sam, Mike, Artie. He jumped up and down, shouting and clapping with unbridled enthusiasm and Dave could not help the stab of longing he had felt in wishing Kurt was doing that cheering for him. Something in him wished with all his heart that Kurt had come tonight to see him play, watch him win, share in his joy at this glorious victory.
As Dave reconstructed the scene in his mind, in the darkness and quiet of his bedroom at 2 o'clock in the morning, he found himself rewriting the very end. Instead of following all his buddies back to the locker room to change, Dave watched Kurt rush out of the stands onto the field, straight at him. As the other boy made a beeline directly towards him, Dave did the same from the opposite direction, pulled by that magnetic force that vacillated between the two of them. With his eyes shining, Kurt would gallop up to him, throw his arms around Dave's neck and kiss him, jumping on him and wrapping his long lean legs around Dave as he did so. Dave would hold the other boy in place, and kiss him back, the two of them lost in a jubilant crowd that could not possibly have cared less.
It was an undeniably silly fantasy. A part of Dave felt utterly ridiculous for having it at all. It was so Hollywood, and so girly. Yet his mind could not help but cling to it, run it on repeat, add little embellishments here and there. And eventually Dave realized what it was about the daydream that so appealed to him: it was the pride on Kurt's face. Dave wanted Kurt to be proud of him, admire him, think well of him. He desperately craved the other boy's approval. His hopes for a reconciliation had been revived by the night's events and it gave him a strong sense of pleasure to think that such a scene was not totally out of the realm of possibility, if only at some point in the very distant future.
However, Dave was also feeling a strange sense of mourning. He had said goodbye to dancing tonight, and there would be no going back to it tomorrow. Thriller had been wonderful, but he knew social approval for it would not carryover indefinitely. Tonight the whole school had collectively agreed to overlook the inappropriateness of football players dancing to pop music, but Dave had no illusions that that was only a temporary thing. He could not fool himself that the social order had been permanently altered by this fluke. Tonight was an anomaly, but the old rules still very much applied, and he would have abide by them if he wanted to keep any of the respect that winning the championship had earned him and the rest of the guys.
Dancing, for him, was a misbegotten happiness and although he had endured no punishment for it this time, there sadly could not be a next time. For Dave simply did not have faith that the world would let him get away with it twice. It had been nice while it lasted, but pleasure was fickle and high-schoolers were even fickler and Dave was not ready to take the gamble that his fellow classmates would understand. He knew better than anyone that they were not a group of people worth betting on.