A Perfectly Safe Space
An Against the Grain Adventure. Part 1.
1
In the beginning, a young man fumbled in the dark with a gods damned fog machine. The boom of bass, the high hat’s cut, and low, white ceilings tarred with cigarette smoke surrounded him and his dark labors. The speaker-wall separated him from the dance floor, hiding his frustration from partiers who wouldn’t care in the first place.
The young man’s name was Steven, and he never gave a last name. He didn’t have a use for one. A wise man once asked what’s in a name? Nothing the viewer doesn’t provide. No doubt, he had a full name once and certainly the authorities believed he still did. But the name only brought trouble he didn’t need. Legal trouble. Bad trouble.
The thought passed, replaced again with the infernal machine’s refusal to cough up even a single emphysemic puff. He checked everything he knew to check, beaming a small flashlight held in his teeth at the thing. It had electric juice, it had fog juice, the machine had everything it needed to get going. It just didn’t go. He needed it to go.
Steven reached deep through frustration, produced a few choice curses, and slapped the damned thing hard enough to cut his palm open. He lifted his hand into anemic light and watched a single, boldly adventurous drop of blood fall onto the machine. The bloody contraption gave a sputter and started like an angry, startled cat.
He sighed in relief at one job down. He had a few jobs this evening. Working the late-night door from two to four was up next and he checked his watch. Up right now, it seemed. Too bad to miss the hard house and trance sets but money was food, and a growing boy can’t grow on nothing but drugs no matter how hard he tried.
His employers for the evening went by Punic Productions. At least, that's what they printed on the fliers. Steven doubted they were incorporated. He hadn't met any of them. They worked entirely through Paul, a handsy, date-raping local DJ. This was odd, given the party was in full swing, but hardly the strangest gig he'd ever taken.
Back when he had a legal identity, he'd been paid to call strangers during their dinner and ask them if they used toilet paper in the bathroom. If they did, how many squares graced their derriere? Did they fold the paper prior to application? If so, did they fold it square like a hamburger or long like a hot dog? He only got to ask the last one once.
It wasn't a bad job. People yelled at him and called him names - mostly unkind - but he got a regular paycheck and only a few coworkers had tried to rape him. Still, that number was not zero and he had no legal name now, so that gig was a thing of the past. These days, he worked what he could, tax free, in dark and unexplored places.
So long as he got his jobs done, they'd pay him in cash and hash under the table no questions asked. They'd offered gash rather than cash, but Steven knew eating pussy or cock didn't actually fill a stomach any more than drugs did. Still, he'd demanded half his pay in drugs and spent it that night. Where else does one fry but at the rave?
The acid armed its first volley as his feet readied to float and a strange, mildly metallic taste on the back of his tongue began to rise. He welcomed the symptoms of poison as an old friend and pushed through the curtain behind the DJ booth to plunge nose first into pure madness accompanied by the insanity of absolute abandon.
The dance floor seethed with sweating bodies, waving their arms about, leaping up and down as neon lights and glow sticks pierced the air. Some dancers pantomimed rolling a ball of liquid around their bodies, their heads, their necks. The DJ spun hard house on one turntable and toasted over the music with a monologue from the other.
“Jack is the one who gives you the power to jack your body! Jack is the one who gives you the power to do the snake! Jack is the one who gives you the key to the wriggly worm! Jack is the one who learns you how to walk your body! Jack is the one who can bring nations and nations of all Jacks together under one house!”
There were more than a few great dancers leaning hard on the Drugged Observer Effect. Just make a few choice gestures here, a rhythmic pop and lock there, keep it mostly in time with the music, and the acid fills in the rest. In an hour, Steven would actually see it clear as water. Too bad he had to work the door.
More importantly, he could see the laser show bounce along the fog filling the space now. Red, green, yellow, and blue light beamed rudimentary figures in the air. Stick figures animated and danced above flesh and bone creatures doing the same. Who was imitating who? Whom? Womb? Tomb? His mind dipped its toe into the LSD again.
He ascended the cramped wooden stairwell to the ground floor, the music dimming to a dull roar behind him. The party was raging in the basement of a clothing store catering to women who liked to feel cute but dangerous. So far as Steven could tell, that seemed to be all of them. Obviously, the clothes were stored away for the party.
Steven floated his way between clothing racks to the windowed storefront and its front door. Karl was there, big and bald in his boots, jeans, button down collared shirt, and suspenders. Bushy red mutton chops snaked towards his chin and struggled to keep his scalp from flying off through an extreme effort Karl didn’t seem to notice.
“Well, well, well,” Karl smarmed audibly over the music in his roaring voice. “Thought you weren't going to make it. You’re late. Druggies make horrible employees.”
Steven grinned and nodded at his best friend. “You know it. Damned dog machine wouldn't stop.”
“Dog machine?” Karl raised a bushy red brow.
“Yeah,” Steven rolled his eyes at his friend’s dim understanding. “The thing with the smoke.”
“Oh. Right,” Karl laughed. “You’re high already, aren't you?”
“Of course! Had to make sure their check didn't bounce. I’m not a complete idiot, you know.”
It was Karl’s turn to roll his eyes, settling them on a gaggle of girls walking towards the glass doors separating the storefront from the street. They wore the popular girly clothing of the veteran party kid. Bright colors, pacifiers hanging on a necklace, short skirts, and glowing neon bands around their wrists with their hair done in wild styles.
Karl pushed the door open for them and welcomed them with his winning grin and all the enthusiasm a horny teenaged boy could muster. Which, as anyone familiar with teenaged boys can attest, is quite a bit. “Ladies! Welcome! Twenty dollars, please.”
A blond in pigtails, looking vaguely like a popular anime character asked as she waved a glossy flyer for the party, “This is the rave, right? We got this from the underside of a Shari’s table. Another flyer under a Denny’s table told us to grab one at Shari’s. It’s like a quest! So cool!” She wriggled and squirmed as she spoke, showing herself off.
Steven thought she hoped Karl noticed. She would be in luck. Karl always noticed that kind of thing. Karl was an animal, and the ladies always seemed real interested in that kind of thing, too. More than once, Karl had happily picked up and ran with the women Steven rejected, which was every single overture any had ever made at him.
“You got it, kitten,” Karl replied. “Welcome to Black. Been to one of these before?”
When they each shook their heads slowly, unsure whether to expose themselves as new or not, he continued. “This a perfectly safe space, ladies,” Karl assured them with his winningest grin. “The only outright rule to follow is no alcohol. Stuff makes people angry more often than not. We don’t allow it. Nothing but love here.”
They dutifully pulled bills from somewhere and handed them over. Steven wondered where they’d kept them. Women’s clothing was a bit odd to him. Very little utility in a skirt without pockets, but they seemed to carry far more than most men he knew all the same. Steven only carried holes in his pockets, discounting his giant pocket watch.
The girls giggled in unison, bounced a step forward, presented twenty bucks each, and scored a stamp on their upturned wrists. Thus marked, they wriggled and giggled their way between the boys and followed the signs to the music. Trance music by now.
“Bunch of tramps,” Steven accused, putting on his best SNL Church Lady impression.
“Motherfucker,” Karl exclaimed. “You're a god damn tramp, dude. Literally!”
“That is very, super, maybe definitely true,” Steven laughed briefly. It died in his throat as he spotted two uniforms approaching the door from outside. “Pigs,” he declared as solemnly as a crow warning its murder of approaching predators. “We let them in? I don't really want to. They're scary.”
Karl hesitated a moment as he watched them come within six feet of the glass, locking eyes with both. Then, he simply locked the door, laughed, and sprinted away through the storefront and down the stairs to the party. Folks would have to use the backup door to get out now. A small price to pay to keep cops out of the place.
Steven stood staring wide-eyed at the cops. His face expressionless and static, the only movement his rapidly widening pupils. He held his breath and their gaze for a few seconds before expelling it in a laugh and turning his back on them and their frantic shouts to open up. “No,” Steven yelled over his shoulder. “I don’t think I will!”
He sprinted after Karl down the stairs into the foggy maelstrom of music, screaming, “Exploration of space! Exploration of space!” He took the steps three at a time before the acid took hold entirely and poured him into the basement and the middle of the floor. He danced, one amid two hundred, and lost himself to the music.
Tomorrow, he was just another homeless kid with no prospects, no roof, no parents. But tonight, he was music, motion, and life.
Hey! I wrote something you may like! A short story at a rave in Los Angeles, late 90’s. This was a cool piece.
https://open.substack.com/pub/ericaphillips/p/the-temple-of-beats?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web