It's Only a Dream

The club is deep underground. There's a girl hanging high on the stairwell as I walk down. Stare for a second directly into her eyeliner caked, shiny glazed icing eyes, but I can't get past the first line. For a flashing moment blinking true I wonder who she is, who she thinks she is, who she wants to be. Goth punk princess can't choose between two outsider trends that never really wanted a 16-year-old cokehead from Midwest suburbia in the first place.

Belonging nowhere between home and this stairwell, she survives on her riches, shoving snow up vital passageways, accumulating potential brain blockage like unforgivable debt, wondering if it's really worth it, forgetting how she got here. The lying, the desperation, trying to woo the DJ from his turntables long enough to coo idiocy through through the hard house hitting his headphones. His eardrums can handle the stress, his whip-quick mind dissects the acceleration of one entity, matching it to the beat, lining the grooves with precision.

I can hear him spinning the same old records, still ignoring the daylight, his social skills merging with the unpredictibility of soundwave vibrations, his mood following the peaks and valleys of the dance floor response. To the girl on the stairwell he's a celebrity, a conquest made possible with sponsorship, generous donations of attention, cocaine, crystal, alcohol, pillows, penetration. But I know this DJ. He doesn't go down that road because he used to live there. He used poisonous fumes for life support. Try as she might, he might teeter on the edge of temptation but won't likely crack. At least not tonight. At least not while I'm around.

As I lower down the stairwell, leaving the girl in a cloud of identity crisis, my legs are unstable, the nervous nerves spread throughout, my entire body an entension of spine-tingling. Does reunion mean we'll be unionized again? I breathe in, notice the heartbeat thicken and deepen. I'm getting closer as I reach the bottom, drawn in by the force of the wind tunnel. Expectation regression. Preventing my restless mind from nostalgia, my focus shifts ahead. The music is getting louder now. I can't recognize it yet but my senses vibrate, bass pounding, hooks intensely catchy moving every five seconds to the left, eventually swelling to fill the gaps between my ears that weren't sure how to feel. Fond and destructive memories that once made me indestructable become limp, useless powers. Obese beats take over, tame my wayward anxieties as I turn the corner, entering his scene with the assurance of connection.

He controls the room with his looming presence, responsible for every action and reaction, each impulse feeding back into his energy, choosing the next track, and every track for the rest of his life until the playlist is slightly altered. As I move forward I scan the room casually on the outside but frantically on the inside, looking for the man behind the turntables, the one who not only controls the room but controls me. Or does he? This pounding bass, relentless beat, is nothing but doped up frequency. When the DJ used to look at me, his eyes locked mine up in a safe. But two years can alter your perspective. Go ahead. See if he can look at you like he used to, see if you're still lovers, best friends, or forever destined to be on ex, not MDMA but the former state of mind.

When I wake up I can still see the girl on the stairs, I picture the club underground, I hear the house music and the DJ scratching. It's so vivid driving me so insane that I have to write it down, meticulously editing every frame to the beat. But even though I saw his blue in my rapid eye movement sleep, I can't quite look the DJ in the eye just yet. The scene has not begun. In two weeks maybe, two months, another two years, when I can stop dwelling on his memory and move on to find another piece to the puzzle. It's pointless to edit because we haven't even begun filming. Remember my permanent ink? Four pieces symbolically, illogically linked. It may just be a design, but I'll keep looking as long as it's alive on my back.