And, no, I don’t understand what he’s saying. He’s not making any sense at all. Which probably means: “Xavier, you rolling?”
“Like a Mofo, baby. The only steady girl I date is Molly, you dig? Anyway, babes, the Deep House DJs for the night, well, they had a little date with Johnny Law, comprende? Tough love, tough love. Anyway, Randy’s freaking out. The dude spinning at the moment goes too much into the commercial shit. Good for an opener, but not for the whole night—if that were even humanly possible—and not for House Market. Randy takes pride in his parties. And, well, the House Market label has also just come out as well, so, the parties bring in sales.
“All the big names are booked for the night. He’s desperate. He wants some classic stuff for the night, ’cause that’s what he promises people. So I put in a word for you because I know you can spin that shit in your sleep.
“Randy usually never listens to me on these things. I mean, I’m just nothin but a consultant, dig? But, hey, desperate times, un’erstand?”
Consultant. Mm-hm...
My mind is a whirl. “Xavier, what exactly are you getting from this?” Silence from him. “X. Speak to me.”
“Look, Blaze, you know me, OK? Don’t ask that stuff of me now. Just...accept the help. I’m not gonna admit to no shit—but I’m also not gonna plead complete ignorance. I understand what happened, and it sucks, and we all suffered.” I note his referral to our greatest mutual loss merely as “it.” I also see that he’s in his Dr. Jekyll form right now. The one that regrets. The one that is human. “I’m reaching out, and I’m offering you something I know you need. Something that DJ Heaven-Leigh needs. Remember when we came up with that name for you—the three of us?” Don’t go there, boy. Don’t go there! “Good times, good times. Anyway, Blaze, I ain’t gonna beg you for dis. You take it or you leave it. I don’t need it. You do. I know it, because even though we ain’t spoken in a year, I know I ain’t seen your name headlining at Output or Nine-Ts or any other hot New York club yet. And you know that getting into House Market is like getting into a virgin’s holiest of holies—a catholic virgin on top of it.” Gross. “I don’t need to explain that to you, or explain that if you do a good job on it, you’re in the door—everywhere. It’s all you’ve ever wanted. But I am explaining it—like you’re stoopid or something, because if you didn’t have the opinions you have for me, you prob’ly woulda jumped at the opportunity already. Now, take it or leave it. I ain’t gonna beg you. And I sure as fuck ain’t gonna admit to something you know isn’t true about Savva either just so you can take the gig on a ‘clean conscience’ or some shit like that. Ya dig?”
“Uhm, yeah, I dig.”
“Now, aside from the great exposure, the gig pays five hundred. Less than the guys who were gonna be here before you, but, hey, you’re an unknown.”
Or you’re taking a commission. Which starts to explain things a little, and which sounds a lot more like the Xavier I know. But I can live with that. And I can also live with a bone being thrown my way, no matter who’s doing the throwing.
I think about my rent.
I think about Mamah.
I think about being cold at night.
I think about Mr. Bernstein’s letter.
I think about Savva’s final note, her last words to the world—“it”:
I believe in you, baby. I only wish I believed in myself as much as you do. I’ll be looking out for you from below. Don’t be such a screw-up like I was.
Your best friend, in this life and in the next,
Savva
I scratch my eye. “I’ll take it,” I say.
“Awesome. Now, baby, you gonna have to brave the fine streets of Brooklyn to get here because, well, I’m a little incapacitated at the moment, and there ain’t no train that comes this way. If I picked you up it’d be DUI in a whole new way of seeing things, if you catch my drift. Got some good shit for you if you want—”
“Xavier.”
“Sorry. Old habits.”
“Where’s the party?”
“Abandoned warehouse on Grand. By the Newtown Creek Bridge. If Randy accepts you, you’ll be on at about one A.M. He’ll want to hear you play for him beforehand. Thirty minutes or so. I mean, he’s desperate, but he’ll never put an untested DJ on without hearing him first. Sorry, her. And he’s willing to do the set himself if it comes to that. He’s not the best, but he can spin a few tracks if worse comes to worst.”
“How long’s the set?”
“As long as you can stretch it, and as long as NYPD don’t shut us down. You’ll basically be covering for two other DJs. So, who knows, could go till seven, eight. You sure you don’t want some uppers?”
“I’m sure.”
“Can you get here?”
“I’ll be there in twenty. What decks do they have?”
“CDJ one-thousands.”
One model below mine, industry standard. I pause for a second, feeling like I’m looking down from the top of the Oro 2 Skyscraper.
House Market. Regardless of mine and Xavier’s history, it’s an opportunity like no other. Hell, I’d do the fucking set for free just for the exposure. “Xavier, I hope you’re not too trashed to appreciate the full gratitude I feel for this.”
“Yeah, well...maybe I owe you. Who knows. Now hurry that ass of yours before Randy gets cold feet. No matter how high he’s flying, his head somehow always stays straight when it comes to business—and to music. Or maybe it’s his heart. Dunno. My skills don’t work on him when it comes to the music and to these parties. I know he loves these parties more than he loves the goods. Anyway. Get here. Before he changes his mind.”
The goods. From a “consultant.” With “skills.”
I stare at the phone for a second after Xavier clicks off. Two lights are on in the apartment building next door. Her apartment building. The rest have been vacated. Soon those two will be gone as well.
My skin goes cold.
I pack my MacBook Air in my backpack—also given to me by Patryk the Painter after he left. When I get downstairs, I ponder—as I always do when I walk the streets at night—how disastrous it could be for me to be robbed of it. Not even Craigslist and eBay have good deals for the models I own.
But what would life be without risks?
TWO
HEAVEN-LEIGH
-1-
Declan Cox
“PAAAAAARTY!!!!!” I close the door of my newly bought second-hand 2010 XL Ford F150 truck. The thing’s a bewt. Silver, no scratches on the body, purrs like a horny kitten.
Hard work. Hard labor. I earned this baby. And now it’s mine. As is the profit I turned last week after three and a half years of fighting to keep my head up from water. Three and a half years since moving out of that cesspool of an apartment with pops and his squeeze in Canarsie. Three and a half years of lugging furniture.
And here I am. Making it. Not rich, but making it.
“Yo, Deck, let’s get walking before you have an orgasm, bro.” That’s my best friend, Trev Perkins. Baddest QB to ever play for Penn State. Baddest QB to play for all of college Americana in my opinion. Good thing Penn State had their scholarship sanctions lifted in 2013. Trev took them to two back-to-back Bowl Championships (ahem, College Football Championships as they’re now called), throwing a mind-staggering five-thousand-two-hundred yards last season!
That’s another thing we’re celebrating.
Or maybe we’re just celebrating that he’s up here for winter break. I could come up with many other reasons to go out tonight and trash my mind on this freezing Saturday night.
Trev, Skate (another homes of mine that I play Semi Pro with), and I head on over to the House Market party. Randy Dhawan’s baby. I cross the chain-link fence of the abandoned parking lot and already I feel the anticipation in my blood. The anticipation of the fresh rush of E under my skin, sending thrilling goose bumps across my scalp and over my flesh. And I haven’t even taken the thing yet!
“So, Trev, you’re on gr
ound control, right?” I ask.
Trev’s eyes flicker briefly toward me, then away. I can tell he was maybe hoping I’d be going it clean tonight. “Nothing’s changed, bro. I still gotta get that college degree.”
I don’t push him. He used to drop a little with me before he made it to Penn State, a few party-pills maybe twice the entire year, but then stopped. Too afraid someone would find out and not renew his scholarship. Makes total sense. College has always been his dream. I can respect that.
Me, I’m a chipper (that’s like a baby user) all the way. Never done more than five times a year since I left home. In high school I did a little more. But things were different then.
Tougher.
“No sweat, homes,” I say, “so I’m definitely rushin tonight, in case you were wondering. Skate here, too.”
“I figured. Like I said, I’ll be the ground man.”
“You know I respect that, right?”
“Say what?”
“I mean, you know I respect that you don’t drop ’cause of your scholarship an’ all, right? Actually, if you were to come to me and say you were gonna drop, I think I wouldn’t let you. You’re the smart one, Trev. You always were.”
Trev gives me his best Will Smith smile. Then he punches me on the shoulder. “You’ve become so emo since I left you. Or are all white people like that? Besides, you know that ‘you’re the smart one’ crap is running old by now. Lincoln woulda never accepted your out-of-zone ass if you didn’t have nothin up here!” He taps his forehead.
“I still think they took me because they knew you’d have no hopes on the football field without me.”
He hits me again! So I try slap the back of his head, but he ducks, and before I know it I’m in a headlock! I struggle and land a light punch on his ribs. “You bastid!” he says.
He lets me go and then ruffles my hair. “Hey! Watch the do!”
Skate is standing back, hands in his pockets, blasé and bored. “Are we gonna go to this fuckin party or what?”
Now both Trev and I run after his ass!
But we give up quick, because the music’s calling, and I can already hear it from here.
The air is icy. Nothing compared to that Polar Vortex shit we had back in ’13, but still, it freezes my pores as I head bravely through it in nothing but a sleeveless tank and some denims. I’ll be overheating in less than an hour, so I left the jacket and sweater in the car.
We parked about a ten minute walk away. I can hear the thump-thump of the bass. We pass a gutted warehouse that looks like it might topple over from the wind, then a shuttered Deli on our left. Then two places I assume are auto shops. There’s pictures of cars on the brick walls but the signs are in Chinese or Japanese or Korean...
The music’s so loud now I can almost taste it. I see two babes with electric blue hair, and less clothes on than me, standing out on the sidewalk, sharing a smoke. They check out my sleeve tat, and I let them. I give ’em my best smile and they smile back. Oh yeah, it’s gonna be a good night, baby!
A dude in plastic shades drinks Modelo beer from a can. I smell the cloying stench of weed, see the zombied-out faces of artistes leaning against the wall, baked on Downtown Brown (because they can’t afford the good shit.) You know: Because art and self-expression and all that “are all above the fundamentals and laws of basic economics” and shit—yeah man, wow, peace.
And then I see the lights from the dilapidated warehouse’s cracked windows—blue and red and strobing in time to the beat. House Market. We visit the dude at the door who is probably supposed to be the bouncer (I’m twice his size, Trev almost three times) and show him our Approved for Entrance tickets. We get inside. Outside it might’ve been freezing.
But in here, I’m already sweating.
-2-
Skate sees the Candy Man and brokers me the X. White strobe light glimmers off his shaved head. The snake tat surrounding his neck pulses.
Trev’s already jamming next to me. Dude can dance, I gotta give him that. He scopes out a ready-for-it blonde and starts grinding against her. She grinds back—yes, like that. I’m about to drop The Doctor, the pill already on my tongue, when the music shifts...
And so does the dance floor.
And so does my heart...
Little did I know, that in less than twelve hours, so would my entire world...
-3-
I pause, the round white tablet, with the little engraving of a heart on it, poised between my front teeth. I look up at the DJ box, see only smoke and laser lights, covering it in a hazy glow.
Could it—?
I squint my eyes. Too much smoke, too many strobes.
The energy in the crowd has already lifted. There’s a lightness in the air. A power of some sort.
Who is this DJ?
Meanwhile my heart sings. Trev’s going wild next to me, blonde babe ever getting closer to him. Because the shit coming through the speakers now is not that Electroclash New Wave Synthpop Dubjet grimy crap that’s so dominant in the commercial club scene in NYC right now. None of that speedcore skank-mank trash that you need to be tweaking on fifty keys of glass just to discern a rhythm out of.
This stuff has groove.
An angel sings from the speakers, backed by a deadly thump that’s so old school we could be in one of those Deep House underground parties of way back in the nineties that people like you and me only get to read about. Or hear about. Or watch a YouTube video about.
Then the beat changes again.
I crane my neck, wrapped in the warm sound-blanket reeking of Chicago House buried in a bassline so resonant that my legs can’t help moving to it.
I take the E from my lips, stick it in my pocket, look around at the dance floor. A circle has formed. A babe in high denim shorts swings her legs in the center of it, cheered by the rhythmic claps and drumming hands of ecstatic dancers.
“Oh, yeah!” someone groans.
“Oh. Hell. Damn!”
And then, almost like a lion on Crystal getting fucked sideways—and having a groaningly good time of it—someone growls: “Oh, GOD!” Only, GOD becomes a Germanic sounding three syllable word of “GOWAHHHET!”
The music wraps its fingers around me. Who is this DJ!?
I recognize the vocals in the song: Gabrielle Aplin, Indie rock. Mixed to a House beat?
Fucking genius...
I need to get me a mix tape of this jock before I leave.
But not now. Now, I start swaying. Trev’s dark skin shines with sweat. The blonde he’s now with wraps her arm around him and her tongue’s inside him faster than the next beat can hit. Skate’s rushing—or maybe not, I didn’t actually see him take The Doctor.
I’m swinging, bass ripping into me. The crowd shouts and cries and—
Aw hell, this is so hot!
There’s still smoke from the smoke machines ahead of the DJ box, blocking my view. Then it moves over a bit. I make out long blonde hair on one side, streaked with pink and green. The other side is shaved. Weird for a dude. And he’s skinny. That’s all I can see. That and a headset sitting kitty-corner on his head, one ear covered. The DJ sways, engulfed as much by the music as the rest of us. The bass dies... A siren appears... A tinny base pops up.
The smoke disappears.
And then I see...her.
Oh, mother, it isn’t a dude.
The bass crashes down.
The crowd. Goes fucking. Wild.
-4-
The DJ is a babe. Like, female-Babe, and also hot-sexy-babe-Babe.
I stare at her for a while. She’s in a black tank, sleeveless. But she has a tat sleeve. Her left arm sprawls with colorful designs.
Just like mine.
I can’t see from the middle of her forearm down, but from that point up I can see she’s inked to over her shoulder. The only piece I can make out clearly is the one on the shoulder itself. A huge red flower with green leaves. Not an entirely original piece, but it always works on woman.
Beautiful.
/>
I start dancing, my eyes constantly locked on her jiving body.
I forget about the E. I think I don’t take my eyes off her for another two hours.
Skate says in my ear, “You empty? I’m gonna go get us some more.” I shake my head, dig into my pocket and pull out the E. He frowns at me. “You didn’t take it?”
I shrug, still holding the pill up in mid-air. He snatches it from my fingers! It disappears into his mouth. He shouts, “Snooze you lose!” Then he smiles at me with all the love in the world. When you’re flying, you just don’t ask any questions. Things just make sense, even when they don’t. “Thanks, bro! You’re the best!” He wraps his arms around my neck and hugs me like he loves me more than his own mother.
Right now, he probably does.
My eyes lock back on the girl.
Locked completely.
-5-
Into the third hour. The babe’s golden hair is a matted mess of tendrils sticking to her skin, the blonde parts now the color of hay because of the moisture, the pink and green streaks now bright as glow-sticks.
And still she sways, she swings. She puts her index finger up, rocks her body back and forth, bites her bottom lip, lowers the beat...
Slowly.
Slowly.
I feel the surge of the crowd before it hits. Goosebumps climb over my skin as she brings them up through towering bliss. Skate is going absolutely ballistic. I think the dude’s found true Music Heaven. He roars when the bass hits, as does the rest of the crowd.
I’m getting tired. I haven’t raged all night without an upper in a long time. And never with so much pleasure.
Trev is back from wherever he and that other blonde disappeared to—a big grin on his face. He stretches down to the two backpacks inside our dance circle, pulls out three Orange G-Series Thirst Quenchers. He throws me one, hands the other to Skate. Then he grabs three packs of Jack Link’s. One for each of us to munch on.
Skate’s brow is dripping. He’s flying high and out of control, a gentle but aloof grin plastered on his face. We need to keep him hydrated, because he’ll forget. I can only imagine what he’s thinking, what he’s seeing. All the love and joy and pleasure that will come tumbling down like a thick mudslide on his head when the Tuesday Blues hit. Because I don’t think he took any pure-grade shit tonight, I think he got the stepped-on stuff. He never buys from the thoroughbreds, always gets the cheap shit from beat artists who cut the junk up with low-grade H and maybe even a few household chemicals.
Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) Page 2
