Let’s Rave On: The Novel: Chapter 2: DJ Etiquette
The basic law of themes is that something has to happen three times. If something happens less than three times, it’s coincidence. If it happens more than three times, it’s coincidence. Three times is the law. At least, this is how it is with fiction. If something happens in a book three times you know it’s there on purpose, and you know that whatever it is is one of the things the author is trying to say in between the lines.
Always, authors have more to say than they can say on the page. This is why words always have more than one meaning.
Like Adventure.
Like Love.
Like Destiny.
Three times. Watch for it. That’s how you know the life you’re living is fiction, even if it’s not. That’s how you know that you’re in the middle of a story, even if all you’re doing is sitting at your breakfast table reading Snoopy and eating cereal. My problem is, I always think I’m in a fiction. That’s because I’m a fictionist. Some people look at their lives as shepherds of the lord. I look at my life like at any moment there could be an awesome chase scene. At any moment I could meet the girl I have to fall in love with. Someone really important could die.
All this stuff happens to real people living real lives, and it’s all very real, until you begin talking about it. As soon as anyone begins telling a story, real life suddenly becomes fiction. Because no matter how good a storyteller someone is, it’s always a little off.
I looked at the list I had, the list of rejections. Melissa. Denise. Kat.
I met Melissa at a gay bar. She wasn’t gay, and neither was I, but we both had gay friends that liked to bring us out to these things, and we were both passive enough to agree. I mean, really, what else are you going to do on Tuesday night? There’s never a good concert on a Tuesday, unless you live in one of those small towns where Bruce Springsteen passes in order to play Boston on Friday and then Jersey the following Friday. But most bands just take Tuesday off. No real good DJ’s get Tuesday nights (let alone Monday nights). We were both smoking out on the patio, she came over, we exchanged names, and she asked which guy I was with.
“That one over there,” I said, pointing to Allman, “I’m the DD.”
“Me too,” She said. “Do you often go to bars and reject the notion of getting hammered and later screwed?”
“Only on Tuesdays,” I said. And just like all my relationships, this one began with the girl being forward and me being funny. Or at least acting funny. Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes they just take another drag of their cigarette and look off across the street where the exact same party was happening on someone else’s dime.
“I wonder what’s happening over at that party?” I said.
“Yeah, me too,” I said. Sometimes, girls did both things at once.
“That’s sort of like the neighbors grass, you know? How it’s always greener on the other side.”
She shook her head. “It’s like what?”
“You’ve never heard the phrase ‘The grass is always greener on the other side’?”
She said, “No.” I couldn’t believe this.
“I can’t believe this,” I said. “How can one go their entire lives never hearing that phrase?”
“Explain it to me?” She asked.
“Okay, we’re in this club, right?” I asked rhetorically, but she still looked around and said ‘Ok’. “And the DJ is sort of sucking wind, you know, playing that Ciara track that’s stayed around much longer than it should have, and in about two minutes he’ll play the new Kanye West single, because you can tell just by looking at him that he’s a little desperate to get everyone up on the floor. It won’t work, of course, because Kanye West’s stuff isn’t really club material. I mean, sure, it is if the place is already hot, but you can’t rely on Kanye to start a party. He’s not opening band material, you know? He’s too artistic to be that simply categorized. It would be pretty much the same thing if he suddenly began to spin ‘Idioteque’ by Radiohead, you know?”
She blinked. Condensation dropped from her glass of water and dripped on the floor next to her heels.
“So, anyways, we’re both out here on the patio, knowing the music isn’t going to get any better, and we’re watching the party going on over there. And they’ve got pretty much the same people over there as here. And they’ve got the same price on domestic, and the same lame ass patio lanterns adorning the place. The only real difference is that we can’t hear what the (almost certainly) equally shitty DJ is playing over there, and because we don’t know for sure, we think that there’s no plausible way it can be quite as bad as it is in here. In reality, he’s likely spinning the new Sean Paul track, which means that while people are dancing right now, the summer has been sort of low on giant hits, so he’s got nowhere to go but to maybe play some Missy Elliot or hand it off to the midnight DJ who’ll just play house. And house doesn’t impress anyone anymore. That, in essence, is the grass seeming greener on the other side.”
More blinking. After almost thirty seconds of this, she looked around and said, “Well, okay.” and excused herself. She found her friend, who was nowhere near my friend, and they took little time in leaving. I saw them go out the front entrance, across the street, and into the club with the greener grass.
Allman had apparently noticed me sitting with the girl. “What was up with that?”
I didn’t want to say ‘Maybe it was something I said,’ so I said, “Fuck if I know. What’s a girl doing in a gay bar anyway? She must have been lost.”
