stay cool, motherf***er, stay cool

Even though DJDP remarked, and rightly so, on Saturday night, “You write about the randomest sh*t on your blog,” in fact there is often a lot that I do not write about here. Some of this is because life goes by too fast, and it’s rather impossible to document each and every notable moment. Some of this is out of regard for other people’s privacy, or for my own feeble attempts at anonymity. And often, it does more harm to write in vagaries than to just remain silent. So silent I have stayed on some topics.

But not on the topic of my Saturday evening. I just have not managed to sum it up. Maisnon and I went to Dhamaal- there was a wink on her blog to the confusion both my brother and my friend SP demonstrated when I told them of my plans:

Take 1:

me: D & I are going to Dhamaal on Saturday night.
bro-seph: Which one?
me: Wha?
bro-seph: Which mall?

Take 2:

me: D & I are going to Dhamaal on Saturday night.
SP: Really? Are you looking for something in particular or just browsing?
me: Um, I’m not going to meet guys.
SP: Wha?
me: Huh?
SP: You know… at that mall on Saturday night?

I don’t know what’s more disturbing- that the bro-seph has actually been to Dhamaal before and still did not know what I was saying, or that he thinks I’d be gleefully telling him of my big plans to go to a mall on a Saturday night. I did a true count the other day, and since 2004, I have bought three pairs of jeans and two pairs of dress pants. Just one of the sacrifices I have made for The Goal. Okay, not really- I didn’t even notice until my friend M reminded me of a shopping spree she dragged me to in 2004 in DC. We got into a shouting match at Banana Republic because I would not try on a cardigan. It was not pretty.

Off topic much? So, I think Dhamaal is okay- it’s not necessarily my typical scene. Everyone there is usually too authentically desi, or too tragically hip- the middle spectrum, where I am firmly lodged, is usually absent, so that I feel like a square peg. But DJDP’s CD had won me over, and I was intrigued to hear what he would spin.

To make a long story short, you should know this about me. If you play Galvanize and Could you be loved in a 30-minute span, I will be so content that I will not be able to comment intelligibly about anything else. maisnon smirked at my inability to stand still during Galvanize, but DJDP soon discovered her Achilles’ Heel: reggaeton. Whoo! The girl’s got moves! All kidding aside, it was a good set, and the place was packed by the time the proprietors forced DJDP to turn the volume up and, in so doing, scared hoodrats like me up from the basement, desperately clinging to the little hearing I have left.

On the main floor, a man was performing Rang Barse live, much to my delight. Again, maisnon smirked. Sometimes, I think maisnon thinks I am a complete idiot. I am a complete idiot, so she would not be wrong to think that. But I’ve also learned that I am not a good judge of facial expressions: I similarly thought someone else was giving me the wtf, you’re a moron expression, and that caused a snowball-to-avalanche proportion misunderstanding.

DJDP emerged from the basement a bit later, positively glowing. This is important. The last several million times I have seen a DJ spin in San Francisco, said DJ keeps his/her head down, perhaps betrays a few head nods, but maintains an air of being so above it all. No such thing with DJDP. Every so often, maisnon and I would spy his arms excitedly swaying up above the audience, inciting them to move.

Such exuberance was always discouraged amongst my friends and family. Bro-seph and I once went to see The Roots out in Concord, and their set was so ridiculous that I was dazed, walking back to the car, repeatedly saying, “They broke my brain, they broke my brain.” Bro-seph gave me this look, this mildly annoyed, patent, bro-seph look, that said, Not Cool all over it. As a result of such incidences like this amassed over time, I myself am not entirely comfortable with unfettered geeking out. As usual, I find myself somewhere in the middle- I am not the sort of person that needs to make a scene everywhere I go, but I also don’t want to be the person sitting in the back corner sipping on a drink while everyone else is dancing. I wish there were more people that fell somewhere in the middle. Come to think of it, that applies to a lot of aspects of life.