Danny

01:50:23, 15 FEB 2006 – Club Scene

BOOM-ts-BOOM-ts-BOOM-ts-BOOM-ts- The staccato punch of the music drilled it’s way through. The metal of the balcony’s rail drew in the sound, charged it, and resonated it back out to Danny’s hands in electrical pulses. He took it in and savored it; his mind at peace while the world outside spun in chaos. The balcony itself was shaking in rhythm as a couple thousand entranced feet moved in time. Below lay the dance floor - a writhing, undulating sea of heads and arms.
         At the head of the room, a DJ and a vid tech stood amidst enough equipment and cable to properly initiate a shuttle launch. The DJ had his equipment set up in an L-shape behind and to the left. The vid tech had his toward the back and right. It all looked like a huge U with a break in the middle. Out of the machines poured wires of all manner. Thick power cables, thinner controller cables running to more machines offstage, thinner wires connecting the machines onstage.
         STAGE RIGHT: A stack of video decks ported into the video mixer, which controlled the screens on all four walls. The tech on this was a true master. He kept all of the screens going with images that seemed to react to the music in perfect time. He dimmed the images when the music slowed, as if sight and sound were both losing power together. Then the beat would crash in, and the video would burst into over-brightness, and then settle back to normal. All this while constantly slipping video disks in and out of the decks and cuing up material for the next switch. Most amazing about all of this was that the guy made everything fit so well – the images, the effects, the changes – all on the fly. People flung songs at the DJ and he tossed them into the mix flawlessly at random. Somehow the vid tech seemed to know what was coming and be ready for it. They probably had communicators on each other so they knew where they were going, but it still only allowed for two minutes notice at best and the DJ hadn’t jammed up the tech yet.
         BACKSTAGE: Behind the scenes sat another member of the performance. This guy didn’t actually do anything for the show at this point, but his computer terminal churned endlessly. The Mac was little, but it was a powerhouse. All unnecessary software had been stripped to keep the maximum possible room for VurtFX 2.2, the program that would record the whole gig. Every piece of mixed video and every beat that struck made it’s way through this terminal before hitting speaker or screen. As soon as the night ended, this man would get to work and likely be going for two more hours. At that point the computer would stop recording the show and start dubbing copies for people to take home with them and play over and over. The box was hooked up to rack of recorders that took roughly 10 seconds to burn each DVD, then a robotic arm came and lifted the recorded disks, popped in blank ones, and dropped the ones ready to be sold on a spindle where they would wait for someone to drop them in an envelope and sell them to people who wanted them. It was a cool way for people to remember the evening, and a great way for the trio to supplement the crap they got for payment working this joint.
         STAGE RIGHT: The DJs arms were in a flurry amongst the disk-players, turntables, DATs. He was even mixing in stuff from a couple machines that, outside of these walls, could only be seen in a junkyard or a museum. His rack system held a reel-to-reel, a cassette tape machine, even an eight-track. He may not have used them all regularly, but each had its turn somewhere throughout the evening. And the sound! Any club has dance music, but this bumped it a level up. The guy looked loose and jaunty, but he handled everything with ease. No sound escaped without his say-so, and he was being generous with his permission this evening. A computer monitor sat at the front most section of his machinery. On top of the monitor was a shot-glass. He set the music to loop a three second segment three times, sidestepped, grabbed the shot and a slip of paper underneath, threw back the liquor and read the note, slammed the glass back on the monitor upside down, and stepped back into his realm with a fury. This was his sign that he had just taken someone’s request and would welcome another.
         Before he could get fully back into his groove, another request was on its way. A topless brunette stepped from the side with a shot of Jack and a new slip of paper. Giving your request topless was supposed to guarantee the DJ would pay attention to it. Some chick started it two years before, and now every request came with whiskey and tits. This particular minx was completely drop dead. A little heavy but perfectly proportioned, she sauntered across and laid down the request and the price of admission. Every straight guy and gay chick on the dance floor with their head pointed toward the stage lost the rhythm in their step for the time it took her to walk across and back. Even the DJ missed a rare beat when he caught her out of the corner. Her skin, a flawless sea of cream dotted with islands of strawberries in the right places, hypnotized a number of the crowd and then rudely awoke them when it disappeared again beneath her black silk top as she walked off of the stage.
         Danny was among the sleeping mass, and when her spell broke, he mopped a trickle of drool from his chin and focused back on the crowd. As he glanced down, he noticed a larger than normal number of jocks and dykes making a pilgrimage for the bar. He smiled, realizing that most of them wanted to be the first to buy the mystery lady a little something to dull her resistance. But they would be disappointed. She was nowhere in sight. She had managed to disappear, leaving only the fond memory of her image behind.
         Danny glanced back at the vid screens and noticed clips from A Clockwork Orange flashing by. He was just about to look away when he noticed the scene change – to a live recording of the brunette walking up to make her request. Her breasts bounced seductively, her smile lit her face and anything else within twenty yards, then she winked

[at Danny]

at the camera and turned on her heels to disappear. The image spun back to just before the wink, ran ‘til just after it, and looped about fifty times in sync with the beat. Those eyes – the eyes that positively grabbed and shook Danny with their power when they simply shone upon him – now looped into a wink that lanced him every time it went by. Then it stopped.
         The image changed, the music played on, and the crowd became aware of itself. As he looked around, Danny noticed that the whole room had gone still during the lady’s screen time. Now, the spell lifting, people looked around at one another and started to sway back into the beat. In another 10 seconds, the sea of bodies moved in full roil again – everything the same, but somehow changed. The crowd that had been intoxicated not a half minute before, still had a tingle, but more like the one you wake to the morning after a binge. Not drunk anymore, but not quite sober. Not ill or hurt, but not quite right. Not ashamed of something done in altered consciousness, but more curious about what could have been if things had been handled differently.
         Either way, the DJ had obviously missed the show on the vid screen because his jam never slowed. As he approached the point where he would splice into the next song, he cocked the mic into position getting ready to speak. Danny passively glanced at his watch and turned for the door. He knew the DJ was just getting ready to make last call, and He had no need to stay and witness the pairings as people prepared to go to all-night diners, after-hours places, beds (some in pairs or trios, some alone).
         Danny stayed to watch sometimes, just not that night. There were times he had taken a decidedly sick pleasure seeing how the nightclub castes divided themselves. The pretty people leave first. And why not? They’re coked up and they have places to go and sisters to screw.
         Then the average patrons filter out in a massive cattle-charge cramming through the double doors. Some of them are too drunk to drive, most will make it, some will not. Some rode the DD roulette wheel for a long time before stopping (abruptly) in the slot from which they would never leave. In the end, though, they all came to the stop; taking whoever they could on the way.
         The third crew out was always the playas and the non-committal sluts. The second-rate guys that are never quite good enough to leave with the pretty people take an extra long time to try and cajole a ride or at least a phone number out of a woman that is only passively interested. The chicks lead them on because they’re not in the mood to catch up with the friends that bolted for the door in the second wave, but they remain hesitant as if hoping to find a better opportunity before this guy shakes out to be the only option. Sometimes the guys get lucky and takes them home, sometimes they don’t, but it hardly matters. They get it Friday, or they get it Saturday – at worst they wait five more days and give it another whirl. This is, by the way, the most amusing group to watch. The guys are always about a decade behind in style, and the chicks always dance and glance like Chihuahuas waiting for a loud noise so they can puddle the floor.
         In the end it’s sadness. The last crew to leave is the die-hards. These are the people that either came here for nothing other than to get drunk, or found their reason to do so while here. There’s usually two of these folks at each of the three bars. They’re not talking to each other, they’re sitting alone either spinning the melting rocks in their glasses hoping to coax out the last hidden drops of whiskey or they’re listening for approaching trains on the Formica bar while attempting to peel the labels off of their beer bottles using only their thumbnails. Eventually, these folks get cleared by the bouncers. Often, as a last attempt at redemption, a couple of these will pair on the way out the door, thus graduating to the third level. Those who can’t graduate, however, are truly alone. Because the only thing more alone than one lonely person is one drunk lonely person, and these remaining few are the ones that will make the Sunday paper.
         Not that night, however. As Danny pushed through the double doors, he heard the DJ start to make last call, and had his headphones clamped to his head and the disk spinning in the player before the darkness swallowed the light behind him. He stepped to the railing and paused to feed his senses. NIN rolled through the headphones [insert witty Reznor here]; muggy heat condensed on the exposed skin; the club-street aroma of food, alcohol and urine crowded the nostrils; hazy streetlights barely shone the way home; the taste of beer breath would walk with him all the way.
         Backing from the railing, he pivoted left and began the short hike. Halfway down the block he passed an alley where an old man pawed the trash looking for dinner. He glanced over his shoulder at Danny and, recognizing him, turned enough to give a wave and then resumed the search. Danny came by often enough that the old man knew two things about him. First, if he was going to share any change, he would have done it already – asking was useless. Second, there was no point in offering an oral greeting because Danny always had the ‘phones jacked enough that he couldn’t hear anything else anyway. The old man made a lunge into the dumpster and smiled triumphantly as he began to lift something out. Danny caught this out of the corner of his eye as he rolled by and then it was gone, obscured as he passed on to the next building.

I hurt my self today, to s-

Pass on that one. Trent tended to get a little too preachy at times, and who could handle anything this quiet and maudlin on a good night anyway? Besides, after coming out of the club, it always took a little more power to keep the headaches at bay. Danny stopped walking and let another track roll for a little bit while he rummaged his left pocket.
         The left was the library, and he knew it all by touch. It wasn’t that he read the disks with his fingers or anything, more that his mind held things like a filing cabinet. He remembered the order that he had pulled the disks from their cases earlier, the way he stacked them in his hand as he did so, the way they lined up in his pocket.
         He walked his fingers over three disks, and pulled the fourth to swap into his player. This homebrew disk rocked from beginning to end. Sister Machine Gun, The Violet Burning, KMFDM, some from the Blade soundtrack, a little more from the Matrix – the mix never slowed and always thumped the way Danny preferred.
         With a speed that would have awed a gunslinger or card shark, he ejected one disk

[SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!]

and slid in another and hit play. Exhaling like a junkie who just pushed the plunger, Danny rolled his eyes and let the beat soak in before looking ahead and resuming motion. All was well in the world again, and he set himself back on track to his place.
         Two more blocks down, then right, seven more up a shallow hill, then a right into the lot of an old warehouse. All of it passed by unnoticed; Danny was never afraid in this neighborhood. One good thing about being the neighborhood freak is that people generally look for other marks before you.
         Shuffling through the lot, he looked down most of the way. Broken glass scattered in fan shapes over the cracked asphalt, having been tossed carelessly from the street. An orange-ish sodium light lent a curious cast to the scene. It hung from its crooked hanger at the far left corner of the warehouse, the lone sentry over the quiet yard and a guardian of the door beneath.
         Danny strode to the lighted door and slid a card through the reader to the right of the handle. It beeped once, he pushed a couple buttons on the keypad, it beeped twice, and he pulled the door and it grudgingly clacked from its seat in the frame. Passing through, he mounted the steps and the door crashed home before his toe touched the third. Not that Danny could hear it, by then the electronic phases of Bloodbath from the Blade soundtrack were pounding his tympanic membrane.
         One flight up, he turned and mounted the next. Topping that, he paused and looked out of the landing’s little window, appreciating the glass constellations on the blacktop below. Grinning and catching his breath, he turned for the final flight. As he crested, he slid another card through the slide beside the door and waited for the familiar feel of the clack that meant he was home, and that it welcomed him. The welcoming vibration came, and he turned the knob and pushed the door in.
         His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and picked out every point of light. The clock on the cable box, the one on the microwave, ready-lights on an impressive rack of stereo equipment, half a dozen red power strip lights: it really is amazing how much illumination there is when everything is turned off. He breathed in the darkness for a moment and then swept his hand over the light switch to the right of the door. The sixty foot by one hundred foot room illuminated. Regularly placed wall sconces provided the utility light, thirty or so strategically placed track lights – some colored – set the mood.
         Danny dropped his wallet and key cards on the little table by the door and picked up the remote. The whole place was wired, and could be controlled through this portable pad about the size of two handheld computers side by side. He used the remote to start the coffee pot, turn on his computer, and start the CD player. Only when he could feel the vibrations from the speakers did he switch off his portable CD and remove the headphones.
         He strode over to the computer and sat down to check over his e-mail and scan the message boards a number of his hacker friends frequented. He looked toward the kitchen and noticed the coffee pot had stilled. Getting back up, he wandered to the kitchen and grabbed a mug big enough to take better than half the pot, poured in a generous amount of sugar, and drowned it with the best Juan Valdez had to offer. Picking up the caffeine bucket, he went back to the computer and began plucking away at the keys like a master pianist.