HERE’S HOW I SEE IT. I’M THE STAR DJ AT THE city’s most elite club, Fever. I lounge on a long, red velvet couch in the VIP Room chatting up friends and flirting with beautiful girls. I go by the name Lord.
When midnight strikes, it’s on to the DJ booth, a huge room with a floor-to-ceiling window looking out over a massive dance floor the size of a basketball court.
The vast space below looks hollow and dark, empty and depressing. But then I start pulling records, releasing light and color into all the empty spaces. My music circles the room, spreading smiles onto hundreds of faces. The crowd sways to the beat and hollers in approval as I draw them to the floor, making them feel weightless and alive and sucking them farther and farther from their real-world problems.
Every person in Fever falls under my control, giving me sole power over every movement they make, every step, every shift, every turn, every head bob beneath the bright, flashing strobes. The bass line throbs and pulses like a heartbeat, exploding from deep within, then flowing out in a mad, endless rush. I have the power to pump people up, to mellow them out, to make them fall in love. I am everything in this moment, and everything can become anything I want it to be.
Suddenly a fight breaks out in a far corner of the club. The crowd’s attention turns and everyone moves in that direction as people pack in tight around the brawlers, craning for a better look. Several bouncers rush in and quickly drag the guys outside, but the flow of energy on the dance floor has shifted and the mood is totally disrupted now. It’s up to me to pull the crowd back in.
I needle a new track, smoothing over the tension as rays of sound pour from the speakers, bounce off the walls, and echo in energy. I drop a booming, confident beat that pounds in the shadows, doubling in time, then falling hard, shaking the floorboards below as the two sounds blend together in a hypnotic mix of electro house.
People dance and cheer at the beauty of my unique mix, the fight long forgotten. Yes! That is the kind of power a DJ has.
A sexy cocktail waitress stops and smiles at me. “Care for a drink, DJ Lord?” she asks with a wink.
“Champagne,” I instruct, winking back, cooler than cool, my voice deep and confident, my headphones hanging about my neck like jewelry.
“Cristal, right? Only the best for DJ Lord.”
“Of course,” I agree. “Only the best for the best.”
That’s how I see it all going down whenever I picture myself spinning at Fever.
But I’ve only been there in dreams.
In reality, the closest I’ve ever gotten to that club is the sidewalk across the street.
Six nights a week, when I’m done busing tables and washing dishes at Spazio’s restaurant, I walk the two blocks to Fever and sit on the sidewalk across the street from the club to eat a crust-free tuna fish sandwich and drink a can of cold Mug Root Beer while eagerly taking in every bit of action, every detail that might give me a hint of what’s going on inside.
I know there was a fight tonight because I was watching when the massive bouncers in the matching black Fever tees exploded from the front entrance and threw four twenty-something guys out into the street. The guys made their way to the corner, where they continued to go at it until the cops rolled up.
I know the infamous DJ Lord was spinning because I saw him exit a taxi and enter the club, a girl wrapped around each arm. I don’t know what the guy likes to drink. Cristal just seemed right, since it’s expensive and only important people drink it. There is no one more important in a club than the DJ.
I’ve never been inside Fever. I’m not old enough to get in. But sitting across the street from the hottest club around keeps my dream alive.
Five years from now I will go to Fever and see the real DJ Lord in action, see what the inside of that place is really like.
That isn’t the dream, though. The dream is to bring my own records to Fever and get paid for dropping my own beats on the ones and twos.
Someday it’ll be me up in that booth controlling everybody’s good time.
Then it won’t be about DJ Lord anymore.
It’ll be all about DJ Marley.