The Goddess Effect Act III, part four

How a day rave (or two) inspired my novel

Here we are, the unofficial first Friday of summer, and we’ve got a scoop of artisanal ice-cream (insert your flavor of choice, mine is the saffron pistachio I recently had at the Americana outpost of Salt & Straw) to whet your appetite for the weekend. By that I mean that we have another installment of The Goddess Effect Act III, the perfect distraction if you’re stuck on the Long Island Expressway, the P.C.H., or at any of earth’s airport gates. It also works if you’re not in travel hell. Get you a girl that can do both!

Chapter 21 finds Anita back at The Gig. She’s achieved a tenuous working relationship with Max, but she’s holding on to her grudge the way you hold on to the pole when the A train revs around a bend. The housemates of The Gig are preparing for a day rave that was directly inspired by two New York Times stories I reported, one about lunchtime dance parties and another about early morning dance parties. Dance parties, so versatile! You can literally have them whenever you want.

The lunchtime dance party enchanted me for a variety of reasons: it was my first New York Times assignment, and I was as Professional as I’ve maybe ever been, on high alert for anything that might be notable and quotable, generally intent on doing the job as best as I possibly could. To quoth Eminem, I only had one shot, and if I missed, I might never write for the New York Times again. (I’ll dive deeper into this when I do a New York Times version of How I Did It.)

By the time I wrote about Daybreaker, in 2015, I was jaded. I wanted out of tech-adjacent culture and the Bay Area, where I was living at the time, and Daybreaker felt tied to all of that. My personal life was in a tailspin but I remained hell bent on working, both because I needed the money and because I preferred work to fixating on a series of messy decisions I’d made. Another topic for another time! (We’ll get to it, I promise.)

The trend of people wanting to party productively stayed with me, and as I was drafting The Goddess Effect, a day rave emerged as an ideal way to bring together the housemates and weave in outsiders like Stacy, who shows up with a mink thrown over her sports bra. So Stacy.

Felix, if memory serves, is a German-born Gig resident who works for Tesla. The below has been lightly edited to eliminate some cringe turns of phrase.

If you’re catching up, I’d suggest reading these first:

The Goddess Effect

Act III, part one

Act III, part two

Act III, part three

21

“Miguel?” No response. Anita extricated her head from the cavity of the refrigerator and raised her voice. “MIGUEL? WHERE THE FUCK IS THE ALMOND MILK?”

Miguel came running into the kitchen, a fuchsia feather boa wrapped around his neck, an admonishment to chill written all over his face. “Gurl. I put it in one of the carafes for the party, in the ice bucket, by the sink.” Anita shut the refrigerator with a huff, fumbled around for the correct carafe, and poured it into her coffee. It was 6 a.m., too early for a disruption of her newly adopted morning routine, which involved an hour long, caffeine-fueled brainstorm with Max about their Gonzo assignment.

They would be leaving for Evolve in three days, and since the meeting with Emilia, they had developed an effective, if tenuous, working relationship. Max, true to his word, let Anita run the show — she perused Evolve’s roster of attendees and events and put together a schedule of potential interviews and happenings to shoot. Max suggested possible sponsors for each footage opportunity — what if they stacked cans of Pepsi’s zero calorie carbonated coffee in the background of a GonzoDrip drop (the platform’s term for videos) about the panel on the future of on-the-go sustenance? Max knew the heads of marketing for a lot of Fortune 500 companies, or at least knew the configuration of their firm’s email addresses, and Anita was quietly impressed by his ability to come up with ideas and actually act on them. Neither of them had brought up the altercation in the kitchen the night before the Goddess Effect retreat, but Anita maintained a degree of removal, cloaking herself in oversize hoodies and deflecting Max’s attempts to get her to dish about her Venus exposé. She could play polite, but she relished her grudges. She would let this one marinate for a while. 

Two sips of coffee made her a better person. She joined Miguel at the kitchen island, where he was ladling a large vat of chia seed pudding he had made the night before into disposable bamboo bowls. “Sorry Miguel. I’m a monster without caffeine. Max and I have to work on our Gonzo thing for an hour, can I help you after that? When are people coming over?”

“S’all good, sweet thing. I know you’re a superstar now.” As a wrangler of unicorns, flattery and unflappability got him far. “The rave starts at 8 so maybe 7:30?” He paused, mid ladle, and looked around the great room, suddenly aware of the furniture that had to be moved, the balloons that had to be blown up, the confetti that had to be tossed about. Anita embraced his slim shoulders and kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back and I’ll bring Max. Team effort.” She skipped up the stairs, leaving Miguel to his chia. 

Recently, day raves had become a thing. Jaded by traditional nightclubs and the attendant annoyances — long lines, expensive drinks, the ever present risk of being date raped or accused of it — 20-somethings in New York had started renting out cavernous clubs during the early hours of the morning and throwing dance parties lubricated only by cold pressed juice and caffeine. In the early days, there were some paid hype men and women in the mix, professionals who dropped it low while the cubicle-bound masses encircling them rubbed the sleep from their eyes. As day raving caught on, the early morning dance parties spread from established nightlife venues to museums, docked cruise ships, and places like the Gig, which charged a nominal fee in exchange for breakfast, tunes, and good times. Regulars harped on how day raves helped “build community” and brought dancing back to its roots “as a vehicle for genuine human connection.” Miguel, in a five minute pitch to Max, harped on how hosting a day rave would help the Gig make between $700 and $1,000 in two hours, which could pay for someone to come and look at the shower heads and maybe a Nespresso machine. That was all it took for Max to say yes.

Miguel was halfway through the vat of pudding when he heard a dramatic yawn. Felix sauntered into the kitchen, a shearling robe thrown over his red plaid pajama pants. “Thank GOD,” Miguel cried, “a man with muscles.” He let the ladle slide into the chia and hugged Felix. “Can you pretty please do me a favor? I need you to move all the furniture out of the great room. Put some of the chairs on the lawn, if these queens don’t want to dance, they can rest their tired old dogs out there. You do that and I’ll make you your red eye, just the way you like it.” Felix nodded and clomped toward the tufted teal armchair, hoisting it up without complaint. 

Miguel turned his attention to decor. A day rave was only as good as its theme — Miguel had been to a sorry vernal equinox one that featured plastic daisies and no olfactory experience at all, he thought the least the Planet Protectors of the Palisades could have done was get a Glade plug in. But then, seasonal themes were so basic. Anyone could cut snowflakes out of construction paper for a winter wonderland or microwave breakfast nachos and call it a Cinco de Mayo fiesta, but it took a visionary to translate the women’s movement into rave form, and Miguel had risen to the challenge. He spent the previous night folding hundreds of pale pink pipe cleaners into little Ws, which he now scattered throughout the great room. Online, he had found confetti in the shape of the women’s symbol and vaguely abstract vaginas, tiny, glittery odes to Georgia O’Keefe destined to get stuck in hair and on sweaters. He tacked a large sheet of brown craft paper to the wall by the dining table and at the top, with a red paint marker, scrawled “I am woman, hear me roar,” and below that, in smaller script, “The patriarchy’s not home, leave a message after the tone.” He arrayed a dozen markers in different shades of pink, purple, and red on the table.

“So is what they write actually going to go to the patriarchy?” Constance had appeared behind Miguel and was staring at the banner, her head cocked to one side. “Oh girl no,” Miguel laughed. “Who is the patriarchy, even? I keep seeing their name on Facebook.”  

Constance frowned.“Then what’s the point?”

Riley sauntered in wearing a dusty rose kimono. “To give the people a voice, come on Constance, why do you always have to question everything?” She held a steaming mug of macha tea in one hand. “It’s all about intersectionality and speaking truth to power.” 

Constance narrowed her eyes at Riley. “Can you define those terms for me? Like, use them in a sentence?” 

Riley whipped around to face Constance so fast that she nearly scalded herself with tea. “Whatever! How can you criticize a bunch of people who want to get together and dance and maybe change the world? What could possibly be wrong with that?”

Constance shrugged. “Look, we’re throwing a day rave to raise money so we can maybe have better water pressure and a real espresso maker, which are totally worthy causes in my book. I don’t see why we have to pretend everything is about the women’s movement when clearly, some things are not.”

Miguel hopped down from his perch on the dining table. “These are so NOT the vibes that we want in this room when we welcome our guests. Can you bitches stop bickering and blow these up?” He threw them each a packet of balloons shaped like breasts, a sex shop staple usurped by the resistance. “I’m going to sage this place.”