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Hey Mr. DJ
By
Kemble Scott
Jake stared at the graffiti scribbled on the dirty wall. Smudged names with phone numbers offered sex, all of it vanilla. He wondered if these guys were serious, or if it was a prank. The tagging was in ballpoint. Had it been there for years, or just written that night?
Jake’s eyes drifted into a soft-focus daydream. Damn, even vanilla sounded good at this point.
He took a deep breath and released, the thick stream splattered into the urinal. He’d gone so long without sex that just a strong piss was sensual. He’d been filling up all night with an endless supply of Diet Cokes brought over to the booth by the hot barback.
Through the closed bathroom door, Jake heard the beat still pounding in the club. He knew every note of this song. At least six minutes remained in the cut. He had plenty of time to relax and let it all flow out.
How long had it been since he got laid? He’d met his last trick online, going all the way to Potrero Hill for some uninspired fucking. The guy was at least a decade older than the photo he emailed. Even worse, he had no class. He didn’t even offer Jake a shower when they finished. Everyone knows you give a guy the chance to clean up. If you’re the guest, you always decline. But not offering the shower, man, that was so lame. Jake remembered wiping himself off with the guy’s white T-shirt when he wasn’t looking.
That was six weeks ago. He’d never had such a dry spell before. No wonder the piss felt so good.
He squinted at one of the phone numbers. It looked familiar, but he didn’t know anyone named Raj.
He sighed as the flow tapered off. He was the DJ, dammit! The Resident. The Selector. The Star. They put his name in the listings in SF Weekly.
He was the reason for crowds to show up. You’d think at least one of these so-called fans would want to blow him. It’s not like he was old or ugly. He wasn’t even twenty-five, wasn’t fat, and just buzzed his head that morning. He left enough stubble so guys could see he wasn’t really going bald.
Why was he in such a slump? He wasn’t a loser. He had class. Like the fact that he never played
that song.
It was the line no self-respecting San Francisco DJ would ever cross. He couldn’t remember how it began, but they all agreed. If you resorted to spinning it, you lost all cred.
Groove is in the Heart by Deee-Lite.
It’s not like it was the worst song ever mixed. That wasn’t the point. It was just one of those infectious 90’s songs that was a gimme. A DJ crutch. It was guaranteed to get any crowd up on its feet.
Even the lesbians would dance.
Any DJ worth a shit didn’t resort to taking an easy out like that. Success was measured only one way: getting people out on the floor. Would a top chef resort to serving Kraft Mac & Cheese? No fucking way. No matter how good it tasted.
So Jake and the other top DJs made a pact. DJ integrity, they called it. No one had played the song in more than year, despite the heated demands of club owners.
Fuck ‘em. If they want to hear Groove is in the Heart, go to a Bar Mitzvah!
He shook himself off, zipped up and headed back out to the club. A bouncer held back a line of guys at the door waiting to get in. Jake felt a little guilty, but those were the house rules. The DJ gets to cut the line, and he gets complete privacy.
He climbed back up into the booth and looked down to the floor. It was dark with moving spots flashing beams of light onto the worn wood floor and the backs of people holding their cocktails. Their backs?
Fuck! No one danced. Only one guy was on the floor, and he just stood there barely moving to the beat. And not even to the beat. Jake studied the man. He wasn’t dancing. It was more like an involuntary twitch. Parkinson’s?
Jake had never seen it so dead at The Stud on a Saturday night. Shit! The place was
packed, but they just stood around. What held them back? There was no other explanation. It had to be the music.
His music.
He quickly segued into another tune, the latest from local house music favorite Barton. A few more people edged their way toward the dance floor, but they only dabbled at the perimeters, like someone daintily nibbling the edges of a cracker.
“Ed is pissed.”
It was the barback, with yet another diet Coke. Jake couldn’t remember the man’s name. When he introduced himself, Jake was too distracted. The guy had a rough, blue-collar look of jeans and no shirt. He smelled like sweat and had a big, worked-out chest covered in hair clipped neatly short. In his head, Jake had nicknamed the guy “Pecs.”
“Uh, what’s the problem?”
Pecs just raised an eyebrow and looked out to the crowd. Nothing more needed to be said. The room had no energy.
Like most club owners, Ed was impossible to please. If the music had the crowd worked up into a frenzy, Ed would bitch that people were too busy dancing to buy drinks. “Put on a slow song!” he’d bark to kill the fun and drive people from the floor to the bar. Then on nights like this, when people were drinking and not dancing, Ed would complain that no one was having a good time.
It was midnight. With San Francisco bars forced to close at two, Jake knew the party should have been at riot stage by now. If not for the cocktails, the place could have been mistaken for a junior high school dance, with boys on one side of the room and girls on the other… and a lifeless void in between.
Panic hit, or maybe all the caffeine from the sodas finally kicked in. Jake scrolled through his screen, suddenly desperate for something to get the crowd going. Saturday at The Stud was a marquee gig. If he blew it, word would get around.
He put on a classic Madonna. That always worked. Yet nothing happened. If anything, people seemed to be staring down at their shoes in embarrassment.
Jake didn’t even cross-fade out of the song, but train-wrecked into the new Kelly Clarkson. No one seemed to notice. Then he put on Christina. He went online to see what Billboard listed as the latest top dance club hits. He put on two of those. Nothing.
The door opened. It was Pecs. It had been thirty minutes since his last visit to the booth. He held another glass of Diet Coke, but Jake hadn’t even taken a sip from the last one.
“Ed thinks you need some inspiration,” Pecs said.
“Fuck, man. I don’t know what’s wrong,” Jake confessed. “Just a down night, I guess.”
Pecs grinned. “Do you remember your high school yearbook?”
“Uh, sure,” Jake said, confused. What did a high school yearbook have to do with anything?
“I got one of those superlatives.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, they said I was Most Likely to… Suck Seed.”
Jake froze, his mouth open. Ed sent Pecs up here to blow him? Even in his distracted frenzy of trying to get the club moving, Jake was jolted by the idea. He needed it so bad. Maybe that’s why he sucked tonight as a DJ. He had a creative block. He was backed up. To stop sucking, he needed to be su—
“But first, you know what you have to do.” Pecs smiled.
“What?”
“You get the crowd on that floor, and I’ll get down on this floor.”
“I’m trying, man,” Jake explained. “How about you, uh, inspire me first. Maybe that will do the trick.”
Pecs shook his head.
Ugh! Jake screamed inside. Nothing was working. He had no choice.
He reached into his backpack and took out a small glass vial containing two bright orange capsules. Suicide pills, he’d nicknamed them. They were made of rubber surrounding tiny pillows of foam. He slipped one into each ear.
If he never heard the song, then maybe it wouldn’t count.
He walked over to his screen and scrolled to the cut. He didn’t bother to mix. He just dumped the current song and the new tune started.
He watched the crowd from his perch. Faces lit up. Smiles beamed. Although he could hear nothing, he knew they were laughing. Joy enveloped the room and people darted out to the dance floor en masse. The party had finally started.
Pecs locked the door to the booth and with expertise befitting a yearbook superlative, fulfilled his end of the bargain. Jake gazed out into the happy crowd as he climaxed. His six-week slump was finally over.
Pecs looked up and grinned. He took the corner of Jake’s T-shirt and wiped his mouth.
Jake took the earplugs out.
“Groove is in the heart Ah-ah-ah-ah… Groove is in the heart Ah-ah-ah...”
Fuck! The song wasn’t even half over. Should he have held back? Made it last longer? He’d compromised his respect as a DJ for what? He’d barely made it up to the first chorus before he’d spilled.
If the other DJs found out he’d caved and played the song, they’d rip him for sure. He’d taken the easy way out. He’d crossed the line. He’d used the crutch.
DJ integrity. Screw that.
Jake looked down to the dance floor and smiled. Even the lesbians danced.
Copyright © 2006 Kemble Scott
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