Everyone is a character on this date

Everything in this piece is true, except for the parts that I made up

Whatever it is, your definition of this date is relative. To this writer, Whistledown, this date was just any other day. It was 28th March 2022. It was a Monday, the resting day before the Fellowship Programme began again. To this character, this date was another day to write about exhilarated superficial humans throwing hands in the air as they "meet and greet", as they swayed their weary bodies to the melody of the night... sorry, melodies buzzing from the speakers - I forgot the night's melody is always silence.

But is that the same for other characters of this date? This date was not a date to other characters, it was a date. A meetup, an unwinding and unmasking experience. An expression and embodiment of unadulterated joy. To other characters, which I shall reveal soon, this date was Pure unimaginable bliss, you could tell by mere looking beyond their shades, the beads of sweat that form on their forehead and the smiles that were evenly distributed across their faces.

Might we start with our known but mysterious characters - Dennis, Bob, Amma, Jessie, Sunflower? Or do we introduce our new characters? As you might have known, I have a strong affinity with starting mysteriously, so here comes your writer stuck between his two openings, Veer and Snow-white. Or we start with Omarion? Or Lady Lux, Or Bop Daddy? Or Elu? Or maybe we start with the mysterious Lady in Black and dark red shoes, the lady shining like the morning sun. A fine wine that's only brewed for honourable men.

Veer and Snow-white, we shall start with. Two of the backstagers, like Whistledown, threw themselves softly in their knee-length gown to the songs of Burna Boy. They appeared on the dance floor like the shadow in the night - Snow-white in a flowered gown and Veer in army green. One moment, Veer was here rocking with Omarion or the Bop Daddy playing the Daddy figure to every fine wine on the dance floor. Another moment, they were gone - like how stars fall from the sky - to replenish their dancing energy.

On this date, there was no chance to be smitten with a dancing partner, especially not with the fine wines as they were like fireflies at night leading the path home for any gentleman. Every moment of a gentleman with fine wine was always a stint, and this was evident in the Lemonade, that fine wine who danced Salsa with everyone. Maybe not everyone, but how could her remarkable steps go unnoticed with her touch of red and her long braids that hastily dropped below her waistline anytime she twerked?

Only little things can go unnoticed, not Hooge things, and that went for the gentleman doing his church dance. Funny, right? Who attempts a church dance when the DJ jockeys Finesse? Maybe investors aren't meant to be gentlemen on the dance floor after all. But a complete opposite to Hooge was the gentleman flipping across the dance floor. He was like sea waves, intermittently unsettling before always mellowing out. This gentleman, let's call him Storm.

On this date, like Storm, all perfect gentlemen on the dance floor were in the oblivion of their intoxication. On this date, the bodies of gentlemen and fine wines were thrown into delirium. Their bodies kept score of every shot of Tequila, and like every good thing has its nominal threshold, it wasn't long before Storm flipped, not currencies, but bodies on the dance floor.

Let me take you back to the Alley Bar, to characters like Bob and Jessie, and a lovelorn cultivated from a club. But surprisingly, this lovelorn took a new form, it manifested on this date as a blissful and hopeful one. It had transformed to be less of perchance chat and dance, and more of affectionate stare and intentional communication. What was more noteworthy was that, on this date, there was Bob in more than two gentlemen and Jessie in more than two fine wines.

Among these Jessie's was this dazzling one. She was tall on heels, brilliant under the moonless night, and her skin that lustred under the neon lights like a finely mined sapphire made her hard to miss. And if this Jessie is reading this, pardon my use of the inappropriate pronoun, next time I consider writing about you, I will use the appropriate ones- them/they. About all Bob's and Jessie's on this date, would you agree with me that they are more deserving of a full-fledged epistle than two paragraphs in describing their tales of Romeo and Juliet?

Let's leave the tale of Bob's and Jessie's as it is. I know you believe romance is mundane and to love is to become an idiot. I must admit Whistledown shares that belief also, and I would be doing you a great disservice feeding you the boring tales of love when you could read about the gentlemen that masked as Vicar, the clergymen that brought fine wines to the altar to say them a prayer.

Take a deep breath and process this, if I say a prayer to you, what would you reply with? Amen? But on this date, Amen was not that sacred response to a prayer, Amen was embodied in the characters of some gentlemen. They wore an innocent look and said prayers for the fine wines on the dance floor, Magdalene being most of these Vicars' prayer points. But who is Magdalene? For a gentleman on that dance floor, if baptism was grabbing a fine wine by her waist and pulling her hips against his, then Zeer did more than baptising Magdalene. Maybe he showed her a prelude to fifty shades of grey.

Seated on the white pew, legs crossed with a glass of milk, on one hand, eyes shifting from one character of the night to the other, and brain shuffling between capturing the moments with the eyes and resisting the urge of dance from Sunflower. People like Whistledown only has one job to do; to create lasting moment and memories for other people, not themselves. People like Whistledown, unlike everyone, are made to write about everything and nothing, like the infatuation between Lady Lux and the Mysterious Lady in Black, the lust between Zeer and Magdalene, and the emerging love between Bob and Jessie.