In his will, Milton’s founder Milton Otero left everything he owned to the bar’s new owners on a single condition: renovate the rooftop into a place with a dance floor. “Make a place to dance under the stars,” he wrote. They did as Milton Otero stipulated. Within months, a patron could drink and listen to music and gaze at stars over the dance floor, mingling among men gathering to meet, dance and let loose with other men. Milton’s afforded a happy experience.
Emerging on the roof instilled wonder. Viewed from two tiered grandstands on the sides of a large dance floor, the panorama of people dancing in motion made Milton’s the city’s most profitable—never the most popular—gay bar. When the owners extended hours, adding a cover charge, suddenly, a new type of customer started coming: the dancer.
The dancer was Natalya—a married Romanian woman who came nightly after working at her shift at a clothing factory; she danced the frug to every song while on top of a speaker; it’s the only move she knew or chose to do. The dancer was Tim—a bodybuilder from Southtown who stood in the middle of the dance floor and slowly turned while flexing his muscles to the music. The dancer was Vonya, who danced with Varya around the dance floor’s edge as if in a ballroom.
Shirley donned chiffon scarves while leaping near the periphery. Adam wore black eyeliner and a fedora every night, performing a hybrid of ballet and a mosh pit jump which he’d more or less made his own. Sossy, who was fit and trim, danced with a cane as a prop as though she was in a Fred Astaire movie. The dancer was Kat, a person of indeterminate sex who preferred to face the DJ and skip, jump and sputter to songs. The dancer was Armando, a diner busboy—Gil, an uptown lawyer who danced in a corner with his partner Bob, who managed the neighborhood grocery store—Gabby, a scrawny lesbian in a baseball cap who danced to rock and rap, which was rarely, though occasionally, featured. Dancers came and went to Milton’s. Dancers always came back.
One dancer many came to watch was known as Sammy. A slender man of mid-range height, Sammy entered Milton’s dancing and he came solely to dance. Even when he went to the bar for water or juice, Sammy moved in slow, sharp, sensuous movements. Sammy, who occasionally—though not often—flashed a bright, mischievous smile, arrived by ten. He left before last call.
Few could resist watching Sammy dance. This doesn’t apply to the pair of bearded foreigners who came to watch those watching Sammy dance. Surveilling Milton’s rooftop dance floor, these watchers sought to use Sammy for their own purpose.
On a Thursday in April, in mild weather, the DJ started the music smiling to himself as Sammy stepped out to dance. Some watched Sammy dance while drinking—some danced and let Sammy be—and some wanted and sought to engage him in dance, conversation or something else. The two men leaning forward while seated on the upper tier of the grandstand were in this category. They sought to exploit the happy dancer.
A cocktail waitress noticed the two bearded men wearing caps. One asked about Sammy in a foreign accent. “He always dances here,” she’d answered directly when asked which nights Sammy came in. The waitress, whose name was Peg, was used to patrons asking about Sammy. “Sometimes, he comes later,” she said. “He’s usually on the dance floor by half past ten.” Peg would later recount this exchange to police, the press and the judiciary in front of millions of people. She would be called upon to do that for the rest of her life. On that particular night, Peg simply told the two men what they said they wanted to know.
“Oh, sure, he’s easygoing. Don’t bother him when he’s dancing,” she chuckled after they asked about whether they could pay his drink tab. “Sammy comes here to dance.”
Peg went to the bar to place the order, giving the bartender, Nate, one of the men’s credit cards. “Open a tab for Sammy, please,” she told Nate. “Grapefruit juice and soda.” Nate came back. “Card declined,” he said. Peg shrugged, loaded a tray with other customers’ drinks and made her rounds. After serving drinks, she climbed the grandstand, as Sammy bounded into action during a guitar solo. Peg handed the card to the huskier foreigner on the top bench of the grandstand.
“Sorry, the card was declined,” Peg said. “Would you like to pay with another card?” She noticed that the men, whom she’d figured were a couple, looked at each other with alarm. The smaller, trimmer one reached into a jacket pocket and looked at a piece of paper. Peg could see that the paper was printed with instructions. He read from it: “Do you take cash?” Peg shrugged, “sure.” The bigger one handed her a large bill. The other one kept reading: “Keep change.”
Peg’s mouth fell. “Are you sure?” They nodded without smiling, which made her uneasy, and he replied: “Buy dancer whatever he drinks.” Knowing that the money could’ve covered twice the cost of what Sammy could drink in a month, Peg nodded as she pocketed the bill. When she went to the bar, Nate noticed Peg’s demeanor. He came over and slowly asked: “What’s wrong?”
“They gave me $1,000,” she said. “That’s for everything Sammy drinks.”
Nate laughed. “Sammy never spends more than $10,” he said. Peg leaned in. “They said to keep the change.” Nate reeled back. “Whoa,” he said. She leaned closer and asked: “Drug money?” Nate poured grapefruit juice as he shrugged while Peg waited. “Maybe they’re Middle Eastern,” she said. “I’ll look out for Sammy,” she said, as if to herself. “Good,” Nate said, setting the glass on Peg’s tray. “I’ll ask Genghis to check them out.”
Genghis was Milton’s house detective. He stood by a pool table with hands folded in front wearing street clothes. When Nate waved him over, he stepped to the bar, listened and started up the grandstand. By the time he made it there, Peg had delivered Sammy’s juice, which Sammy downed in a few gulps during a dance break. The bearded men were no longer in the grandstand. Genghis patrolled the rooftop. The bearded men were gone.
Genghis left for vacation the following day and was not scheduled to return until after the cataclysm to follow. By then, his return flight would be cancelled in an air traffic lockdown. The foreigners returned to Milton’s. By their third visit, they designated Sammy as the target.
“Infidel confirmed and secure,” the beefier one spoke into a two-way communicator.
“Blessings be upon Allah,” came the scratchy Arabic reply.
Weeks passed. The pair came and went from Milton’s without notice or incident. They sat in the grandstands on the top tier. They filmed Sammy dancing.
Peg didn’t work on those nights. Nate was busy at the bar. Vacationing Genghis didn’t get the opportunity to size them up. By the time anyone’s suspicion might have been aroused, the men surrounded and grabbed Sammy on the dance floor, taking him by his arms and dragging him to the side. The bigger one put Sammy in a headlock while the smaller one wrapped a vest on Sammy until the dancer was fitted with wires, motion sensors and a low-grade nuclear bomb.
Sammy was strapped as a weapon of mass destruction.
“You’ll explode after a few seconds of idleness,” the smaller one told him. “We can detonate you—do not try to dismantle or deactivate weapon or you kill everyone—city go ‘boom’.”
Sammy replied: “What do you want me to do?”
“Dance, infidel,” the taller one said with a sneer. “Dance or die.”
Milton’s evacuated, leaving Sammy and the terrorists alone on the rooftop. The terrorists filmed Sammy’s every move. “Drink water,” the smaller one said, using his foot to push a bucket next to a water bottle and pile of rags on a strip of masking tape. “Use bucket as toilet,” he said. “Dance.” He backed away, holding a phone to Sammy as he spat words in Arabic. Sammy nodded as he matter-of-factly replied: “I’ll try not to kick the bucket.”
Media and academic leaders rushed to address the terrorism. “We deplore the situation,” a beady-eyed head of the nation’s oldest university declared at a televised press conference. “We denounce oppression. The filmmakers are also victims of oppression.” This apologist view dominated institutions. The Vatican condemned “violence,” expressing empathy for those opposed to depravity, including dancing at a gay bar. Rabbis and the Dalai Lama followed suit.
“Patriarchy is tyranny,” a feminist leader proclaimed. “Male sexuality is oppression.” Others concurred, including fundamentalist groups. Orthodox Christians and Jews declared themselves in “common cause against sexual perversity.” Every branch of government decreed protection for those practicing Islam. Police were dispatched to protect mosques.
“Citizens,” the American president said in an emergency address, “remain calm as we await demands. Find peace in Islam, have faith and do not judge our Islamic neighbors. Live in peace.”
Sammy had gasped when he felt the straps tightening as the terrorists attached the crude weapon vest. Feeling additional weight on his frame and ribs, his first thought at hearing the command to dance was whether heavier weight would affect his agility. Factoring his status as a human destroyer, Sammy decided to contemplate what he could do in various circumstances and, in the meantime, dance. Sammy decided something else, which the terrorists could not have known.
“May I speak?” He asked as they both live-streamed his performance. “Yes,” replied the smaller one. “When I have to urinate or drink water—or if I fall or stumble—will the bomb explode?”
The burly one held up two fingers. The other terrorist, whose voice was deeper, read from the notepaper: “Give peace sign if you pause. The bomb’s on manual and remote control, Allah willing. We can delay—and detonate at any time.” Sammy nodded. “Don’t be cowboy,” the shorter terrorist said. “Dance,” said the taller one. As he did, Sammy turned to the other one.
“Here,” said Sammy, handing over a device showing his playlist. The dancer’s voice was soft and calm with a slight quiver. “If you play this on the DJ set-up, I can dance.” Both terrorists showed a flash of surprise—they had practiced with pre-recorded music in drills—and ceded to Sammy’s request. The shorter one connected the device. Their filming resumed.
The taller one spoke into his phone: “The infidel shows Western depravity,” he said. “The deviant demonstrates why he must be slayed.” Sammy did what he always did at Milton’s. He danced. Sammy could not have known that those who admired his dancing were among those watching. This is because, in any given second, Sammy’s single thought was a song and a dance.
Skava Rosenbaum watched a breaking news broadcast at a desk far from Sammy at ground zero. Afterwards, he walked to a window overlooking the ocean a half mile from his campus office. Skava drew a breath and went into his thoughts about time spent with Sammy after they met at Milton’s. “Miss Wilson,” he spoke into an intercom while watching a wave crest and collapse onshore, “call Lacy Van Clements.”
“Skava,” answered a voice sounding both tense and relieved. “You’re watching Sammy on TV?” Skava replied without hesitation: “Lacy, I have an idea.”
Lacy was Sammy’s best friend. She’d been part of Skava’s and Sammy’s circle of friends and had evacuated from the city to her parents’ home. In detail, Skava explained to Lacy a scheme he had in mind. Lacy, standing in her father’s garage, which was like an automotive workshop, listened as she muted a TV and reached for a pencil. She started taking notes on a notepad. When Skava stopped, she said: “I can do this. I’ll start. Can I call back in an hour?”
Within the hour, Lacy reached everyone she knew Sammy knew. These were people from varying walks of life—a chairman of the board who’d seen Sammy dance, and formed a friendship, which led to Sammy persuading him to go for addiction recovery, which saved the businessman’s life—a truck stop waitress who’d patronized Milton’s, studying Sammy from the grandstands before summoning the courage to work double shifts to afford a new, second doctor’s opinion and recover from a stage four cancer diagnosis—a ballerina who observed Sammy from the bar, which inspired her to adopt a new technique resulting in the best review of her career—a fireman whose romantic split left him in a suicidal state, until the night he went with his sister to Milton’s and watched Sammy dance. Others also answered Lacy’s calls.
Lacy called Skava back. “They’re in,” she said.
“Great job Lacy,” Skava replied, walking in long, fast strides to the chancellor’s office for an emergency meeting. “Can you set it up? I’ll confirm launch time in about 15.”
“Done,” Lacy said, ending the call. She firmed herself on her father’s workshop stool, typing on a keyboard as fast as Lacy could type. Lacy kept typing all evening.
A video montage aired on the private university’s channel that night. Lacy kept typing—promoting a press release and video link to sources with media feeds—as strangers and reporters re-broadcast the video. Within minutes, Skava’s video replaced or accompanied the terrorists’ video streams of Sammy dancing with a bomb strapped to his body. Soon after, the terrorist propaganda was reduced to a smaller box within a video of Skava Rosenbaum speaking in front of the university logo—emblazoned with a silhouette of the Greek god Apollo and the phrase, Optimus Maximus (“the best of the best”)—and broadcast around the world.
Skava’s speech was a plea:
“…Those who know the dancer, whose name is Sammy, want to tell you why Sammy represents the good about our country, civilization and this world, which is the only world I know,” he said. Skava gravely added: “Whatever becomes of Sammy and the city under siege, the dancer and his dance shall triumph.” Skava looked into the camera: “Listen to those who know him tell you who is Sammy and why he dances.”
One by one, from the fireman formerly in despair to the waitress with cancer, Lacy and the ballerina, those who valued Sammy spoke on his behalf. They spoke with lucidity for Sammy’s life, dance and ethos. Each of nine speakers testified to Sammy’s value in his or her life. Lacy’s video ended as she looked into the camera and said: “For Sammy’s sake—for the sake of the living—just dance.”
A worldwide audience watched the nine testimonies on screens people held in their hands or viewed in public above city squares and in bars, restaurants, hotels, airports and stadiums or in homes. Mystics and terrorists watched in bunkers and caves.
Something shifted. Those watching Skava’s broadcast became invested, as if vaguely aware that nine speakers were saying something different than what they’d heard from media and academia; suddenly and with urgency people wanted to watch what might happen next. Most were curious about the testimonies. Many were titillated, drawn by spectacle more than anything that was said. A small segment were moved—a smaller subset knew why—a faction among them sensed why and acted—and the smallest band knew and could articulate why the testimony mattered and acted on principle. These individuals filmed and posted new video in support of Sammy’s dance.
Meanwhile, the terrorists’ rooftop footage confirmed what most watching Sammy dance concluded: Sammy’s performance—alternating fast, sharp moves with slow, sensuous strides—was exhaustive, euphoric and indefatigable. In perfect pirouettes, exaggerated bends and pivoting shoulders, hips and head—beginning with steps of his feet—Sammy was in constant motion. As people watched videos about Sammy’s impact, they marveled at his moves.
Sammy’s stamina faltered. This was not true of the gaiety in Sammy’s expression, poise and disposition. Whatever the tune, instrumental solo or vocal crescendo, Sammy’s mouth, eyes and body conveyed lightness and joy in alert, controlled strength—often slightly ahead of the music; as if he was dancing a tap too fast and letting the audience in on it with a knowing sense of pride. Dance, gymnastics and athletic scholars as well as kinesiologists gathered in lecture halls, broadcast studios and gymnasium panel discussions as audiences spontaneously gathered to examine and marvel Sammy’s solo, motion sensory, bomb-ticking marathon.
“Fatigue,” a ballet master explained, pointing to Sammy’s visibly trembling tendons. “His body cannot sustain the stress, demand and movement for long. Sammy’s is a dance of death.”
Those planning the state-sponsored terrorism from camps, mosques and caves became giddy in anticipation of Sammy’s exhaustion. The mystics regarded this happily dancing homosexual with puzzlement and contempt. They’d become fixated on screens waiting for the rooftop to go blank, followed by video of a nuclear explosion over the city.
Milton’s rooftop terrorists sensed that their time was about to expire. Their demeanor was gleeful as they waited for Sammy to stumble, stop or collapse. As the ordeal wore on, with Sammy’s breathing and eyelids getting heavy, a rain of pages suddenly fell to the rooftop from the sky. The shorter terrorist snatched and read a sheet of paper: Dance, Sammy, dance!
Before his keepers could tell him not to, Sammy grabbed and read one of the leaflets.
The metal wired, bomb-laden vest had weighed on his body for hours. Sammy kept sight of the city skyline. Thinking of everything he loved, refusing to let himself think about, or begin to imagine, the consequences, Sammy resolved to focus on letting only music and dance come into his consciousness. He knew this was opposite of what the terrorists sought. The duo wanted Sammy to submit to fear, surrender that which he loved and cease dancing. Sammy knew that to express himself with vitality—which he knew could risk incurring the terrorists’ wrath—might spare killing millions of people, starting with himself.
Three printed words—Dance, Sammy, dance!—stirred in his mind. The message allowed Sammy to conjure friends and an audience of admirers seated in Milton’s grandstands. This was where he had seen faces smile—eyes narrowing or widening in wonder, erupting in laughter when he entertained with a jump-kick, drop or use of a prop. Sammy closed his eyes, burnishing the leaflet’s words into his mind. The dance floor was wet from morning dew. His shoe soles felt plastered to the bottom of his feet, which had been shuffling, stretching and extending for hours. Dance, Sammy, dance! Religious terrorists had delivered the words as a dictum; the leaflet let Sammy regard the phrase as a dare—a cheer which became to Sammy like a solemn oath.
A new song started. The anthem fired him up as Sammy tightened and turned from a closely held base—ballet’s fifth position—summoning strength and maintaining momentum in his step. Sammy let his head fall as his chin grazed his jugular notch. He rolled his head back and around to the song as he turned in a single, extended—slowly controlled—pirouette. Closing his eyes, Sammy felt as if he floated in triple pirouettes. In easy, loose turns, Sammy went around, around and around.
Keeping shoulders aligned over his hips while holding his ribs in place, Sammy held his head up and came out of the final pirouette in a surge of energy in which he opened his eyes and looked at the camera—as if inviting the viewer to play—and, remembering Dance, Sammy, dance!, he flashed a smile. His smile was at once natural, benign and exuberant. In that moment, everyone watching—from Lacy, Skava and Milton’s dancers to those looking up at huge screens—froze in captivation.
Sammy fatigued. Pained in his shoulders and neck, bearing the weight of explosives, Sammy, who was lean, fit and able, felt his eyelids falling. When another favorite song started, with the world watching his death-defying dance, Sammy paused, turned and peered into the lens.
Sammy jerked his chin upward with a smile—which broadened into a radiant, dazzling smile—as he tossed his head back and laughed. This startled the taller terrorist, who involuntarily shuddered. Seeing this reaction, Sammy made a hoedown movement driving his fists between his legs as he hopped on a foot to the left—switching feet and hopping in the opposite direction on the other foot—hopping on beat, then gliding and galloping like a cowboy across the floor as he performed the liveliest dance of his life. Sammy leapt, twisting and landing on his feet, pivoting at the waist and extending arms in front. Whirling around like a figure skater, he turned to the music in perfection, going around and around. Sammy’s were pointed, purposeful movements of triumph and jubilation. Sammy’s form was like a torrent at sunrise, casting a glow on his physique, face and jawline. He looked as though he danced on fire.
The dance at dawn had been watched by millions. By the time Sammy morning dance was re-broadcast, his audience quintupled. Sammy had performed a surprise for those watching to see whether he would die—wiping out a city—or dance as if he was either defeated or ready to die; instead, Sammy danced with worship, defiance and joy and always in step with the tune.
Demand for Sammy boomed. Street vendors in Teheran, Times Square, Tokyo, London, Paris and Athens sold trinkets with his visage. Top recording artists pleaded for Sammy to add their songs to his playlist. Crowds gathered underneath screens wherever his dance was broadcast. Rapturous audiences bought products with pictures of Sammy’s figure, face and smile. Sammy became an international sensation. Companies tallied exorbitant expenditures across media to pledge and promote support for a presumably doomed dancer, a threatened city and a nation in unity. Now a star, Sammy kept dancing.
In a mountain cave, after gathering around a device to behold Sammy’s face as he danced on an American gay bar’s rooftop, five mystics sat and grumbled against capitalism. Passing a pipe, the heaviest one exhaled smoke from his nostrils and snorted: “The infidel profits!”
The 79 year-old mystic from an ancient village blessed the gathering by rambling lines from the Koran before adding: “praise be to Allah.” He told the group: “May Allah bless the attack.” A 97 year-old ayatollah with crumbs in his beard, which hung between his crossed legs, declared: “Kill them all. Death to the infidel. End the world.” The chieftain replied, “we can kill the gay dancer…yet they cheer for the homosexual. A martyred infidel makes problem for Jihad.”
American academics sympathized. “Though we deplore the situation,” the university chief declared in a statement co-signed by 97 scholars, “we see all sides.” Again, the Vatican denounced seizing Sammy yet promoted a prayer against excessive dancing. Ministers, priests, rabbis, theologians and the Dalai Lama issued statements of sympathy—for the terrorists.
“Stop the dance,” the main feminist bellowed in a women’s broadcast, “Islamic culture rejects toxic maleness in the arts.” Fundamentalist Christians, as well as Orthodox Jews, concurred. Every branch of government issued new directives—ordering flags to be flown at half-mast for anyone “downed or damaged by Islamophobia”—including new programs to “re-educate” citizens to tolerate Islam. Police, again, were dispatched to protect mosques.
“Citizens,” America’s leader said in another address, “pray for Islamic neighbors.”
In a row house in St. Louis, an 11 year-old boy named Tom, seated on a sofa, waved his father off when called to dinner. “Not now, Dad,” he said, “Sammy’s dancing.” When his mother summoned him to eat, Tom protested: “No!” Standing up from the sofa, watching Sammy on TV, Tom started to dance, while his younger sister, Olivia, seated on the other end of the sofa, looked up, put her book down, picked and held up her phone and recorded her brother dancing. As Olivia disobeyed her mother’s edict to put the phone down, the video tallied 7,991 views. Within the hour, five million kids were doing what Tom did. America’s kids were dancing.
Natalya—Milton’s Romanian-born patron who worked in a clothing factory—posted video of herself doing the frug to Sammy’s songs. Videos posted by Tim, the muscle-flexing bodybuilder, Shirley leaping in her scarves, Vonya and Varya ballroom dancing, Adam in his slanted hat, Sossy swinging her cane and by Kat, Armando, Gil with his partner Bob and Gabby in her baseball cap—dancing videos were reposted many times over. Within minutes, millions of Americans (and several foreigners) posted videos of themselves in dance. Rallies and celebrations broke out in towns and cities across America.
Again, mystics met in the mountain cave. After watching Western dance parties, they pulled their beards and groaned. The chieftain began with: “Praise be to Allah.” Another mystic added: “The operation fails.” The ayatollah mumbled: “Death to infidel.” Everyone looked to the chieftain, who finally said, “blow it up. Jihad will prevail. Allah be praised.” They all nodded.
Coleman Drake, who had seen Skava’s and the kids’ dancing videos, sat in a conference room the top of the Drake Building. He listened as his company’s directors reported another record-breaking period of profits, product launches and expansion. As Drake’s thoughts wandered, he gazed out the window. Looking down on a rooftop garden with a swimming pool and a hot tub—on a smaller building he knew to be 35 stories tall—Coleman imagined what living in leisure might feel like. He had worked 12-hour days for most of his whole life and, as he imagined the sensation of stepping into a hot tub, he could only see the look on Sammy’s face while dancing.
As his gaze drifted back to the meeting, he caught a flash of yellow and red from a nearby wall screen. Drake looked up to see graphics flash the words “breaking news” against pictures of the rooftop dancer. As it became clear that the terrorist siege was losing—and Sammy was gaining—support, Coleman Drake suddenly excused himself, entered his office suite and conspired to send private paramilitary, explosives and medical squads in company helicopters to kill the terrorists, defuse the weapon and rescue Sammy from the rooftop. This is exactly what they did.
After news of the rescue broke, Jerome—whom his friends simply called J—Franklin reclined in a chair at his Virginia estate. Through his office’s large picture window, J, who had also watched Skava’s and the kids’ dancing, could see his daughters riding horses along the main trail. Between their riding and gymnastics lessons, he knew they were athletic. As J thought about their future, he read breaking news of Coleman Drake’s helicopter raid, which ended with two dead terrorists and Sammy being unstrapped and loaded onto a stretcher.
Deep in thought as he reclined, J. Franklin recalled what his youngest daughter had asked yesterday on her fourth birthday: “Why is that man dancing?”
J’s daughter had been puzzled by all the fuss over dancing. “The answer is complicated,” he’d told his youngest child as his wife and older daughters, who knew the whole truth, looked to J. “That young man is dancing for his life, which someone was threatening to steal.”
Reading about Sammy being buckled into a stretcher while looking up at his daughters—who were laughing and smiling as they rode horseback—J contemplated the future possibilities for his children and made a simple decision. Five days later, the capital city of the state sponsoring the attack on gays, music, dancing, America and Sammy ended with a boom. Dropping the bomb—as an act of preventive retribution by a skillfully executed military band sponsored three industrialists led by J—ended the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism. The siege was over.
Five weeks later, Sammy emerged from the hospital. Stepping in front of cameras and microphones in a flower garden, Sammy, standing in front of a cluster of large, colored balloons, addressed his nation and the world for the first time.
“I say this to every one who is strapped,” Sammy said, looking up, past and over the cameras. “Choose first to think and activate your rights.” Sammy thought of the balloons and cards with Americans’ greetings of love and encouragement as he smiled and softly said: “Find the good in what you enjoy doing and do it—express yourself—for your own sake.” As he turned and started to leave, a reporter yelled a single question—“Sammy, tell us what you think of the bombing—” and he stopped, smiled, raised his thumbs and turned toward the gathered media to say: “Thank you, Mr. Franklin, for acting to defend my beloved country. May every man be free to live and own his life and may no one be throttled and strapped ever again.”
“Oh,” he smiled wide as he remembered something and paused before departure, “Come tonight to Milton’s.” And, at that, he announced a new deal with his playlist artists and their companies from which he (and they) would profit. A limited edition collection launch party was planned tonight at Milton’s, he said, “the place to be.” Its title, he announced: “Dance for Life.”
SCOTT HOLLERAN, the first journalist to meet and interview Elian Gonzalez—America’s youngest defector from Communism—lives in Southern California and is the only writer to interview the hero who saved Salman Rushdie from an assassin about the act of terrorism. His poems and stories can be heard on his story podcast at Short Stories By ScottHolleran.substack.com and are published in books and publications. Read his non-fiction at ScottHolleran.substack.com. Mr. Holleran, who won Western Pennsylvania Press Club’s Best Sports Journalism award for his magazine article about baseball legend Roberto Clemente, also choreographs and dances every day.
