This Song Will Save Your Life

“Oh, really?” Char laughed. “What are your problems? Chem class is that hard?”

I kept my thumb on my wrist and said nothing.

“Anyway,” Char replied, “you came all the way over here to learn to DJ, not to hear about all the ways that I’ve screwed up with girls.”

“Go on, then.”

“Okay, like I said, there are two things every great DJ needs to be able to do. One is to master the technical skills. Which you’re doing. Good job. Unfortunately, that’s about ten percent of what it takes to DJ right.

“The other part, the part that really matters, is that you need to be able to read a crowd. You can’t just play whatever songs you like. You have to figure out what people are responding to, what they want to dance to, which songs they already know and like and which songs they’re going to like once you have introduced them. Every crowd is different, and even at Start, every week is different. That is why I still play ‘Girls and Boys’ sometimes. It doesn’t matter that I’ve heard Damon Albarn sing the word girls more than sixteen thousand times. As long as people still want to dance to it, it is still worth playing.”

“Okay,” I said. “So how do I do that? How do I figure out what people want?”

“You watch them,” Char said. “You stand in the DJ booth, so you’re near them but not part of them. And whenever you can, you look up from what you’re doing and you see how they’re reacting.”

Char’s words made me think of all the magazines I had read, all the movies I had watched, all the blogs I had studied, trying to figure out what it is that people want me to do. “I don’t think I’m very good at reading the crowd,” I said.

“That’s because it’s an acquired skill,” he said. “It takes practice, sometimes years of practice. And sometimes even the best DJs get it wrong. I think it’s natural to just want to play your favorite songs and force everyone to love them as much as you do. And sometimes, in the right context, they will. Over the past two years, I have turned everyone at Start into a huge fan of this random oldies song called ‘Quarter to Three.’”

“I don’t know it,” I said.

“Exactly. And the kids at Start beg me for it now. But it took a while. Most people don’t immediately like new things. They want to dance to the songs they know. As DJ, you obviously know more songs, and better songs. That’s why it’s your job. But you can’t always be teaching them. Sometimes you have to play along with them. It’s a balance.”

“So you just stand up there and look around the room and figure out what will make people happy?” I asked.

“Pretty much. So, go on. Give it a shot.”

“Okay.” I looked down at my computer, then back up at Char. “Wait, who is my pretend crowd?”

“Me.”

“Oh.” I frowned around his room for a moment, then put on “Born Slippy NUXX.”

“I do like this song,” Char said. “What tipped you off?”

I pointed to the Trainspotting poster taped to his wall.

“Great movie,” he said. “Great sound track. Okay, let me have a turn. Pass me my laptop, will you?”

So I did, and then when “Born Slippy NUXX” was over, he put on an upbeat song. “This is ‘Quarter to Three’ that I was telling you about,” he said. “It’s good, right? I found it on some oldies compilation. It’s only, like, two and a half minutes long. You can play something once it’s through.”

I started searching through my music collection again.

“You know, you can sit down,” Char said.

“Where?” I asked, looking around in case he had hidden a couch somewhere in this twenty-square-foot room.

“Here.” He patted the bed beside him.

I hesitated, then picked up my laptop, carried it over, and sat down next to him. I thought it might feel different because it was a boy’s bed, or because it was Char’s bed, but it just felt like a bed.

“Hey,” Char said abruptly, looking over my shoulder at the thousands and thousands of songs on my computer, “do you want to DJ at Start? I mean for real, not just because I’m dealing with a Pippa crisis. You could have, like, a half-hour guest DJ slot every Thursday, and you could play whatever you wanted. Except for ‘Girls and Boys.’ Okay, fine, you could sometimes play ‘Girls and Boys’ if you really wanted to.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m totally serious,” Char said. “I saw you on Thursday, and you’re a natural. Plus,” he said with a grin, “I’m your teacher.”

“But don’t you need, like, permission? From Pete or someone? Can you just do that?”

“Hell yeah, I can do that.” Char leaned back on his elbows. “I’m the DJ. It’s my night. I can do whatever I want.”

I thought about it for a moment. I thought about how tired I had been, waking up Friday morning after only a couple hours of sleep. I thought about how my back hurt from standing and my ears rang. But I also thought about how exciting it had been. How powerful I had felt, knowing that I alone had the ability to make people dance, the ability to make them happy.

“You’re smiling again,” Char noted. “You can’t make me like you that way, now that I know your tricks.”

“Char,” I said, “I would love to DJ at Start.”

“Then it’s settled,” he said. “You only have four days until your first gig, so you better start practicing.” He nudged me with his shoulder and nodded toward my computer.

I played a Cat Power song, and Char said, “This is good. It’s kind of sad, but I like it.” And then he played a song that I didn’t recognize, and he said, “I can’t believe you’ve never heard Big Audio Dynamite. You’ll love them.” And then I played a song, and he played a song, and we kept going like that for the rest of the afternoon, just playing each other music that we liked. The sun was streaming in through his curtainless windows, and his bed was soft and comfortable, and I would pinpoint this day, afterward, as one of the last times that things were as perfect as they seemed, before everything came tumbling down.

8

When I agreed to DJ at Start, I forgot one important thing: my parents.

It’s not that I was going to ask for their permission to walk alone down abandoned streets to DJ a warehouse dance party at one a.m. on a weeknight. I didn’t feel like that was any of their business. However, I did need permission to stay at my mom’s house on Thursday night. And not just this Thursday night. Every Thursday night.

I asked my mom first, since I figured she would be an easier sell than my dad.

“Why?” she asked.

It was later on Sunday, after my magical afternoon at Char’s. Alex and Neil were in their pajamas, watching half an hour of educational television before bedtime. My mom was in the study she shares with Steve, clicking away on her computer.

“I just want to spend more time with you,” I said.

You know how manipulative you are. You always know. I love my mother fiercely, and some days I even love spending time with her, but in no way did I have so powerful an urge to spend more time with her that I would request to change the custody schedule that we all agreed on when I was a kid.

Plus, time with my mom is never just time with my mom. It invariably means time with Steve, Alex, Neil, Bone, and Chew-Toy, as well. We had exactly seven minutes left in this one-on-one conversation before she would go into the family room, snap off the television, and send my little brother and sister to bed. Otherwise they might accidentally be exposed to more than half an hour of television, which would presumably turn their brains to Silly Putty on the spot.

I knew that getting more quality time with my mom was not my goal. But she did not know that. I saw her cheeks glow as she raised her eyes from her computer to look at me. “But then your father only gets you Wednesdays and Fridays,” she said. “I’m not sure that’s fair.”