CH. 8

8.

Back in Mexico, I went online. –“Xisani is getting married.”-

Took a car and drove the null line south carrying only what I was wearing and found her walking out of campus. –“If you’re going to marry someone, it’s going to be me, one day.”- -“It’s too late.”- She answered and I left destroyed.

I was a clothed mixer by then so parties were good and plentiful, and since we were in the center of the world’s narcotraffic state, drugs were too.

We used to cruise up to Juarez every weekend; all decent electronic gigs used to pass through there, and then crossed the border to El Paso and after party at one of our mates’ house. It didn’t take long though, for me to feel an urge to apply what I’d learned and actually produce some music. I figured that if I’d stayed and worked in order to save enough to buy the basic equipment I needed to do that, I would’ve probably turned fifty before I had enough pesos, so I went to Canada and to the dollars, Canadian, but dollars still.

Six months I spent in a junkie apartment on the sixteenth floor of the Georgian Towers, downtown Vancouver, that over spilled multicolored stained tissues out of every bin, since they liked to crush and snort those dam pills. It wasn’t all bad; there was that Akufen set inside the bread factory, The Presets and The Rapture, Lotus, and the rich anthropological experience that it was walking through East Hastings and the zombies, buying BC bud outside and on top off, or smoking one in the Amsterdam Café. I was a cement finisher hanging with a harness from the outer walls of tall buildings close to English Bay, carrying my chipping gun, making nineteen dollars an hour, twelve a day, six times per week; about the same that dad was making, with all his postgraduate studies and more than forty years’ experience. I did get a sound card, laptop, Serato, midi controller, and a pair of KRK’s; I haven’t really produced anything yet.

As soon as I landed back home I had my fifteen minutes; two or three sets a week, considerable extra pesos, and an according amount of ladies. When they opened the doors for Infected’s first appearance, it was me on the decks, a versus with Eskimo too, in which we literally blew the place away; second’s floor structure was so badly damaged that the place has never been used again, and warming up the floor for Satoshi Tomiee topped it all, he’s mighty good and we matched styles.

Suddenly I found some sort of triptych, with a neat image of a solar celled robot and a wind turbine, which read: Electronic Technologies Engineering. It sounded pretty flawless. When dad got home from the office that afternoon, he’d seen the same ad in the newspaper. –“What do you think?”- -“I think I like it.”- -“You want to give it a go?”- -“Let’s do it.”-

The first year was very good; I learned how much of a calming effect the challenging process of understanding science is to my psyché, still had plenty of work on the turntables, and girls at school were young, fit and fervent.

One day though, I was into my informatics architecture final, when a couple of jerk offs walked in and started reading numbers out of little red cards as if it was goddam football. –“The ones that have been listed stand up, step out of the classroom, and make your way to the institute’s treasury department.”-

-“What’s going …”-

-“Go”-

I stood at the back of a long line made out of expelled students under the dessert sun; sweating like a pig, anxiety, claustrophobia, finally made it to a desk. –“What’s happening?”-

-“Matriculation number?”- Bitch wouldn’t even look at me. –“You owe fifty dollars, medical insurance.”-

-“No I don’t; I have an outside policy. I filled a form online stating that I didn’t want no insurance, even brought a paper copy of my card.”-

-“You have to bring one every semester.”-

-“What? With what purpose? I only get a new one each year.”-

-“School policy”-

-“Okay, please bear with me one second, are you telling me that, after I promptly did all the payments of a seven thousand dollars semester, you took me out of one of the most difficult tests of my career, because of a fifty dollars insurance that I didn’t even want in the first place?”-

She exhaustingly pulled her face up. –“Do you realize how many people are standing behind you? Take the invoice, pay, then you can go back to your exam.”-

Obviously flunked the fucking thing; left it all sprinkled by perspiration and unfinished by irritation. I had to go all the way upstairs to the headmaster for that one.

-“You’re right; you’ve been wronged. I do apologize.”-

-“Thank you very much for listening sir, I feel much better now. So when do I make my test again?”-

-“You don’t.”-

-“Oh, okay, so when do I get my money back?”-

-“You don’t”-

-“Really? Well sir, then I must say that I want you to know that I’ll be filling up my transfer papers today, and will go to a different campus, as a result of what I consider to be a very clear injustice of the system on the student.”-

-“Have a nice trip.”-

I did, all the way south, aboard a dark blue Accord, with my records and my hard drives, and always satisfied to be on the road again.

I found myself the flat that I’m typing this at, couple of minutes away from college, hidden next to a forest that greens my view and swallows the city noises; Mexico City that is.

I thought it was going to be easy getting a residency or something; after all, I was kind of famous, at least back home. It wasn´t, it turns out that ever since DJ equipment became commercially affordable everybody seems to be one; demeaning. I did, eventually and on a Thursday, get a go at a place I always wanted to. Managed to pack it after doing all the promotion, and then the power just went fuck’o, for a long time, and for three times in a row until most left, so it was crap really. I did cocaine, Bacardi, a similar girl, and then fell asleep while driving; crashed a taxi, destroyed it and my car, not for the first time, that’s for sure. That was the last time I mixed to an audience.

Oliver called a few days before holy week two thousand and nine, said there was going to be a massive party; I said I was in.

He had organized a trip once before, rented a bus and everything; bunch of us music crazed ones went to a four day gig on a remote beach of the Nayarit coastline; a true moment of mass identification and positive vibrations. Buildings of speakers rammed the sand endlessly until each one had gone as far away inside of themselves as possible; a true rave wrapped up with Shpongle; hippie children dancing while barely standing.  

On the bus to Vallarta I wondered if it was going to be anything like that. Soon enough, the creatures that seemed to have only recently been pulled out of under rocks, made it clear to me that it wasn´t; it seemed as if all the glue sniffing buddies from Tepito had decided to go there, at the same time. It wasn’t on the beach, either, it was more like an empty dirt terrain next to the ocean, huge fence in between; couldn’t even see it. Coming out of the five portable loos that were arranged for about five thousand people, was a massive pod of feces water, Oliver noticed a totally fried girl refreshing herself while lying on it, huge smile on her broken face. –“What’s going on girl? Having the time of your life?”- He told her as I laughed my ass off.

We managed to group along with a triad of females on a good spot. I did a Hoffman Anniversary, a red Pisces, and a bowl of chronic; things started to go a bit on the reptilian side. –“Don’t look at them, focus on the stage.”- Music, besides everything else, was banging massive; I was tripping hard.

I noticed an individual that looked like a bum would’ve looked in the old Tenochtitlan, stumbling amongst the people, hardly making his way. He almost fell right in front of me but managed a hold of my shoulders, I froze. He pulled himself together very slowly, very trembled, very horrified, very lost, and looked at me in the eyes, a soulless man he was, and told me almost crying:

-“No encuentro a Juanito.”-