In Which I Abandon A Conceit

Dr, X posts this from a bottle of Night Train, somewhere south of Market:

"Another quiet Saturday night in suburbia. My wife had dozed off during the late movie, the rescued, revitalized, and re-issued Chan is Missing. It was just at the part where the old guy notices that everything is ambiguous when my cell phone rang.

- X, is that you?
- Oh God. How did you get this number?
- Hey, are you still gigging? I've got 200 paying customers and my DJ's passed out.
- Call someone else. Call Jane.
- Naw, she's all fucked up.
- Living on reds, vitamin C and cocaine?
- Yeah, it's too bad. Look, I'm desperate, I'm calling you.
- And I'm retired.
- Can you come up? Three hours, three grand. Easy crowd, play whatever you like.
- Are there any IQ points out there? Don't have to do the same old same old?
- Whatever you like.

"Skeet knows my weakness. I'll play a gig now and then, if I can get a good crowd, some folks who can pick up some of the jokes, people who maybe can tell when you're quoting The Jazz Messengers. Those are special times, when you can pull together disparate and diverse musical elements and reassemble them on the fly into a rich and meaningful synthesis that brings you and audience together, if only for a little while.

"Yeah, right. Meanwhile on Planet Earth I was stepping over the body of my predecessor and slapping away from the equipment a lemur-like creature that was attempting a Yes/Monkees mashup.

- Know your limits kid. Play within yourself.

"And then I kicked him in the head.

"I donned the headphones and started off with a riff from that Beastie Boys album they released only in France. On the other turntable I was doing a little flare I learned that time I sat in with the Invisible Scratch Pickles, getting ready to warp into some fresh Birmingham drum and bass I'd picked up from London club guy I know down in L.A.

"Things were getting off to a trot, and as we revved into second gear with some choice Blue Note samples I looked out at the crowd. My heart sank: Japanese. They were all Japanese! And I didn't have to read kanji to know I'd been conned into playing some kid's birthday party. And they didn't know the name of anyone who hadn't played Budokan.

"It is a dark moment of the soul. It comes for all of us, that instant when all the little lies we tell ourselves are exposed for what they are. Looking out on a sea of uncomprehending Asian faces I realized that, like Richard Gere in American Gigolo, I had hit rock bottom. And I could walk out, or play the game.

"Well, I'd come all that way. And I'm ashamed to say I knew exactly what to do. God made Fatboy Slim for a reason, right? As the opening chords of Rockafeller Skank boomed through the basement, the place went up like The Steps of Rome on a World Cup goal by Italy. We had, as they say, learned a little about one another. One by one I pushed out the hits - the Ibiza stuff, the Top-40 "Remixes", the Acid House anthems...and they ate it up and begged for more. Modesty prevents me from sharing all the horrible things I did, not that I could remember them all. I recall playing the B-52s - really, you haven't lived until you've heard the youth of Japan shout "Honee Buns!" I played that Cantopop tune about the girl who's not sure if this is the right guy for her or not, too, you've probably heard it.

"I'm not proud of what I did next. I had "Crockett's Theme" on table 1, and started mashing it up with "Smooth Operator". I swear to God, I saw two kids fall in love right there. And then I flared in "Love Shack", firewalled the master volume, and walked out.

"I made for the door, trying to make the car before anyone noticed I was gone. But I wasn't quick enough - the path was blocked by a gorilla in a 'Ninja Please!' t-shirt.

- Boss wants to see you.
- uhh...ok.

"And I took the walk of shame to the back room, my ears assailed by 200 Japanese esophagi clamoring for us all to 'get together'.

- Hey
- What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK?
- Yeah, sorry.
- I had no idea you could DJ missionary like that.
- Seemed like a Disney crowd.
- Well, your Disney crowd just tipped us 10Gs!

"Ok, that part I had not foreseen. Nor this:

- Here's your half.

"As the great man once said, a better man might have been angry. A better man might have been hurt. But a better man never would have taken the gig. I stuffed the envelope in my attache case.

"Back home I wept in the shower for what seemed like hours. As dawn broke I lay on the sofa, listening on my headphones to Cheap Trick's At Budokan.

"Maybe, I thought...just maybe..."