The Unquenchable Loneliness of the Closet DJ

Inspired by WNYC’s Public Song Project, I raided public domain stacks and found Django Reinhardt’s “J’Attendrai.” I do not pretend to be on par with Le Guitar Avec le Voix Humaine; I love the man’s music and I liked the juxtaposition of this song with how I remember that some of those drunken summer nights felt and sounded.

Ecouter, s’il vous plait.

Original Fiction: Listening Notes, Hip Hop Night, Summer 2006

The author thanks Nat Rae Kimber, Hollie Rogin and Sam Deleo, whose candor made this better.

If you’d rather listen than read, there’s an audio player at the bottom.

Listening Notes, Hip Hop Night, Summer 2006

Nov. 2004

Hip Hop Night was abandoned at the Harlequin because their GM hit the roof when their bathrooms got tagged up by BFD Crew. 

The entire building, especially BFD, were skied out of their faces because Lar-Lar showed up that same night after his shift at the steakhouse, inner blazer pocket stuffed with what was, for just $40 a baggie, exceptional cocaine.

Feb. 2005

Diggz and Snacktyme picked up the banner and charged, hosting a string of DJ sets and “rap battles” at St. Stilbern on S. Broadway, which was like a boat that got washed ashore by a storm decades ago and taken over by an alcoholic artist colony.

Those gigs drew a hungry roster for the first few weeks and produced occasional moments that will remain unforgettable to dozens, but the organizers did not have the sand to prevent Broknocks and his coterie from hogging the mic; nobody else wanted to come anymore and it was more or less Broknocks’ clubhouse until he gave the owner’s cousin a black eye and that was the end of that.

Aug. 2006

By late summer, the grinders of the city’s hip hop scene had coalesced around DJ MERKury cuttz, who once pocketed a begrudging $150 from the city’s biggest promoter for opening up for L’il John and, along with the rest of his DJ stable, kept things moving at a Broadway club that gave them a spare Thursday to do what they could with the room.

Aug. 7, 2006, 7:21 p.m.

An early evening downpour had turned red plastic ashtrays on the patio, unemptied the previous week, into candelabras.

Aug. 7, 2006, 7:38 p.m.

Super Betrayal Chris and his crew were to headline. He was 1.8 miles away dressed entirely in things he had found over the previous 72 hours and being fawned over by everybody in a quick-service restaurant.

Aug. 7, 2006, 8:05 p.m.

The last thing Jason did before he left the apartment — after one of the summer's many bristly discussions with Tandy about how much of his severance was left, which was, on this evening, $0.00 as opposed to the reported $1,137.56 — was call the automated customer service line on the back of his VISA card, verifying that he was still a generous $211.10 away from his $16K credit ceiling.

He got downtown and parked his sunsetting Del Sol, popped into the side entrance and said hello to Angelina at the bar, where he secreted a shoebox full of giveaway CDs for later. He was already overhungry, scanning the dozen or so patrons for nascent energy.

He had flung a press release for MOe Flex and Durkee at an old colleague at a Paper of Record, which produced nearly 1.5 column inches on the morning's inside cover. This made him particularly antsy.

MOe penguin-walked in with Durkee. MERKury cuttz ran at them, waving the torn inside cover of the Paper of Record. There was loud crowing between the four. MOe took the clipping from cuttz and walked it around the bar to show people. Jason opened a tab for the three of them, as he had done for the last six months. Jason: Knob Creek press; Durkee, Amstel Light; MOe Flex, well bourbon.

Three repetitions of this sequence conjured their riff-donkey, Slappy T. They would invoke Slappy T as the source of all problems, and when complaints had run out of air, he got extra mileage by being cast in scenarios where his solution was slapping people.

Durkee’s generous mitts would hit the bartop and he would bellow, especially when Jason would shudder and bend, holding his face as if just being struck, and quaver, “W-w-why’d ya do it, Slappy T?”

Aug. 7, 2006, 9:02 p.m.

Lar-Lar was in the bathroom in mirrored sunglasses laying out fat rails on top of the wall johns and jawing and laying out even fatter rails for each new person that showed up. Lar-Lar remembered the routine Jason started two years ago at the mall with Durkee, the Welcome Back, Kotter theme, but always changing the reason why They Tease Him a Lot. That day, it had been MOe: Yeah, they tease him a lot/’Cause he sells his CDs at the mall/Welcome baaack

Tonight: Yeah, they tease him a lot/’Cause his kids call him bumbleclot/Welcome baaack

They tease him a lot because seagulls took his lunch. They tease him a lot ‘cause he had a stroke and he can’t talk. They tease him a lot because he got raped at boarding school. So forth.

Aug. 7, 2006, 9:48 p.m.

Ghoasts had the stage darkened per request and were doing their best with the red triple headlamps they wore on stage. Their flow was every bit as good as the last four times Jason had seen them, but there were still more people on the patio than the floor.

Somebody was selling Hip Hop Soap in the lounge area.

Aug. 7, 2006, 10:40 p.m.

Jason went up close to the stage, ready for the world to finally see what he had heard coming out of the splintering speakers on the Del Sol doors at the curb at 2:12 a.m. outside the Solo Bird so many months ago, when MOe passed over a hand-lettered CD of the album he and Durkee were about to put out.

It wouldn’t just be him who saw the golden thread from their voices to the Best that Ever Were.

No, no, no. 

They were just shuffling around again with the mics, not doing the entrance, “DJ” sitting there bored waiting to press Play on the fucking CD player.

Somehow there were even fewer people inside now.

The ones that were there barely turned their heads when Durkee poured the first few bars of “Industry Goons,” except for the same three MCs Jason knew from the same three house parties, and they all had CDs with hand-drawn covers they handed out at the mall.

He tried to exhort them at the end of “Goons,” but somehow his hoot sounded too reedy all by itself and he pivoted the hands cupped around his mouth into a turning motion to look on purpose.

Aug. 7, 2006, 10:41 p.m.

Out on the sidewalk were three times the people as inside, several deep around Betrayal and his friends.

“I wrote this song in 1938,” Jason heard Super Betrayal Chris say from inside the circle. 

First I inflicted on you seven entertainments and it got better from there.

“Why would the universe make such a piece-of-shit thing?” KemTrail spat into his Nokia after Betrayal’s verse fizzled out. He was at the nucleus, leaning on Betrayal’s Audi. “Fuck you, the world!”

“Uh oh, somebody got betrayed.” It was the guy with the LED belt buckle.

“How is that betrayed," said the one with the shaved line in his hair that was from a rulebook only he knew.

“No, we established that as a betrayal…” said Belt Buckle.

“Yeah, you said the universe was betrayal at, like, the molecular level.” KemTrail said as he twisted his phone in two and neatly one-timed both pieces into the curbside drain.

Jason circled, incandescent with hatred, trying to match the mouths with the voices through the screen of bodies.

Oh shit, right, like I dropped this cufflink the other day and there’s of course no way it could simply drop and land somewhere that is realistic," said the Haircut Pioneer. "It betrayed itself all the way over on top of a vent, like, halfway across the room.”

“Mult…ma…matter always seeks its n-natural state of betrayal.” Whoever said that then managed an efficient one-spurt vomit off the curb.

“I know, it’s like can I just take the lid off the food without it just spurting out of the jar before I even do shit, everything’s like a Multi-Betrayal Warhead blowing up in my fucking life, like, every single day,” Belt Buckle groaned.

“Bro, one of those guh…guhsploded on me yesterday?” It was One-Spurt.

“Oh, shit," Belt Buckle, now half-interested because he wasn't the one talking.

Did One-Spurt's cigarette butt lope into black end-over-end behind the passing car or into the half-down window? Jason felt like he was the only one thinking about this.

“Multi…fuckinnn' multi-betrayal warhead. Just taking the lid off the fucking Chapstick, lid’s like, fucking suicidal or something. Ber…bounces off the center console of the car and goes right into…I don’t even know…”

“Haaaaaa.” Haircut Pioneer liked that one“I just threw the stick away. That cap disappeared and I was just like, ‘F-fulk it, you betrayed, I’m not looking for you. Not rewarding that kind of shit.’”

“They design that part on purpose, like, where cars have crumple zones and betrayal zones,” Jason said.

Nobody Jason knew from the nucleus acknowledged his contribution, so he played off the sting by moving an extra three steps away to light the cigarette. He felt at the time that having it behind his ear and not having to fish it out of his pocket, then out of the pack, allowed him a speck of nonchalance.

Super Betrayal Chris did not speak once during the entire betrayal matter.

Aug. 8, 2006, 12:41 a.m.

Lar-Lar was still in the bathroom somehow. His baggies were inexhaustible.

Ayyyyy they tease him a lot ‘cause he look-a at da-cock

Ayyyyy

Jason’s jaw was working tight spirals, nobody would party again with Lar-Lar ever if they could hear the enamel vanishing limpid as THX instead of the stupid shit they were talking.

Aug. 8, 2006, 12:45 a.m.

All the napkins in the bar caddy were black. There were glossy promo cards about, but they were too packed with full-bleed images and text to allow for the room Jason needed for his big block-letter handwriting. 

Angelina bartended there every Thursday and had caramel cheeks and curly hair usually bound up in a springy bunch. In confident-looking strokes on a grid whose dimensions he felt firmly in charge of, he dashed his name and phone number onto the flyer with the most white space (prefix and remainder separated by dots) and told her that he thought she was a peach, was incomparable, made him quake and such. She was discouraged from fraternizing with regulars, and she told him as much.

The lights were thrown on. The three purveyors of Hip Hop Soap picked up the business cards and samples  that had been scattered around the cushioned bench that served as their promotional encampment for the night.

Jason wondered if the Pilsner Urquell bomber was left in the fridge (and the three fingers of Galliano in the cabinet fair game, too) and could he quietly drink the edge off the blow in the dark without waking up Tandy and maybe catch 3.5 hours of brittle sleep on the couch.

If not, the kitchen lights would come on and there would be a grilling instead and he'd have to zero in on something, like the filth on the blue shelf over the stovetop, to get them both along to bed. 

Jason experienced a microcrash, slicing through all the tissue, just the same needle of terror and static jabbing right through the chemical force field and into his center. 

Aug. 8, 2006, 1:11 a.m.

Super Betrayal Chris’ A4 was still in its coveted spot right outside, he and his posse were most likely invited up to Manager’s office after hours.

The wet streets were dying down and Jason looked for someone to text, find a room where somebody could hear what he heard, fall into the secret passageway to the land of giants just holding one person's hand. How couldn’t it be?

The hated box: He had been too lazy to tape that corner again, it had torn further down this week so that the CDs flopped this way and that, why hadn’t he taped the box or gotten one of those big padded shoulder-slung packs like real people had.

Aug. 8, 2006, 1:12 a.m.

Jason found a new relationship with his feet and poured around the corner of the building like his knees and ankles were on ball bearings. The cardboard box corner gave way one last unforgivable time. 

Aug. 8, 2006, 1:38 a.m.

Overhead, United Flight 1104 pulsed its taillights as it picked up altitude en route to San Francisco. There were 87 seats still available at takeoff.

Aug. 8, 2006, 10:38 a.m.

36 MOe and Durkee CDs were found on the other side of the brick-and-ivy fence that separated the club from the parking lot of the BBQ store, where Jamie Strauss, who opened that morning, got them all into a pile with the push broom, along with a cardboard fry boat with two fries and a pool of ketchup and a single sock in it

Sept. 7, 2006, 5:01 a.m.

Broknocks — a 250-word capsule kind of rapper — got a 1,587-word feature in the Alt Weekly of Note.

Nov. 30, 2006, 5:32 a.m.

MERKury cuttz moved to L.A after finishing his “MILE HI HOEDOWN” mixtape so he could be ignored in a place with more predictable temperatures.

Get Tight, Get Loose: 13 Paintings of a Man at Drink, Vignette 1

Vignette #1: Escape!

We meet Eric Devereaux for the first time. All he does in this part is sneak out of work a bit early to have bourbon for dinner, but this kind of thing can be exhilarating on the right kind of day.

Original fiction that our founder wrote a long time ago: semi-autobiographical series of word-sketches made of himself from 1999-2006.

First one’s free.

Donations required to unlock subsequent vignettes.

Trying to eat over here.