1995: it's the music
music. sometimes it's everywhere, and sometimes it's crap. sometimes it's both. as i am sitting in this bus, i wonder how people can listen to a kind of music where the lyrics talk about a man being happy being unfaithful to his wife, or about another man in his early 30s whose fantasy is shagging a forty year-old lady. that is not my kind of music. the kind of music i like it´s not played everywhere, and most people think it´s crap, at least in this country. beats, samples, snippets of other songs stolen and transformed into a new shape, a new pitch, a new dimension, by people who were high on drugs when they were composing this music. we are supposed to be high to feel the music's meaning. i don't care a shit about its meaning and i don't want drugs inside of me making me dance without being able to control my own muscles and bones. i can act crazy on my own and i can dance wherever i want to.
1998: it's still the music
last sunday, i was at a rave party, held not in a warehouse but in a bar with a plane hanging from the roof and star trek crew members working as bartenders. thomas was not at the rave (did i mention the organizers not only held it in a yuppie bar, on a sunday, but that it also started at 5 p.m.?) and neither was nick, leaving me, my sister and the rest of my closest friends surrounded by a familiar crowd. in this part of latin america, one won't find a lot of people at raves. the first one was ok, i knew about half the people there and that gave me some kind of hope. after a few raves, there is little or no change of faces around me. same old thing, same young girls, same young guys and the same porn stars, as andrew and thomas call those girls in x-rated outfits...
except for watching a couple who was literally fucking in the middle of the dancefloor, i was having a nice time, looking at one small, attractive girl. she must have been my age (not a young girl anymore but in her late twenties) and she was incredibly sexy with her flat tummy and a small, black bra covering her small tits. i was looking at her while i danced to the rhythm of some drum'n'bass mixed with tablas (bloody good music), and then a girl appeared out of the blue between steven and me. steven is a good-looking guy and he and i were there, along with andrew, richard and tori (my young sis who must have been at that time making out with dj something during his break). 
anyway, i looked at this new-comer as if she were covered with puke, 'cause i have to admit i do hate people approaching me without my consent, invading my personal space. then steven turned to me and said: "don't be mad at me ian, but you act exactly like this girl with the pretty girls around here". i didn't get mad at him. i realized the girl was a poor bastard just like me, who came with some friends and was looking for a new face to smile at her. i am like that, no doubt about it. i think my friends are good guys, but i don't feel attracted to them (or to any guy in general) and i prefer to dance with a girl i know i'll never talk to instead of having one of them lads in front of me. it's that simple: i like girls and that small girl over there was looking at me again (i checked my fly, just in case). but she was more like the dream girl i wanted for a one night-stand, not the girl i am still looking for to wake me up with a kiss every morning for the rest of my days. when i thought about what stevo said to me, i stopped dancing for a while, 'cause i thought i was making some people feel uncomfortable with my presence around them. then i said to myself, "fuck it. i am here to have fun and that's exactly what i am going to do, fuck everybody else and whatever they might think about me". that night i sweated to every beat, and i enjoyed it to the fullest. i wonder if the girl that stevo said was just like me had this much fun.
all this happened in my home country, costa rica. we're surrounded by salsa, merengue and those rhythms that turn american suburban housewives in lusty whores with their latino gardeners. we were born here by accident, that's for sure, but we managed to get together and give us hope. our friendship makes it possible to keep on swimming upstream. we're nobodies in this society, and we would be nobodies in london, too, but we would have the music. here, we're nobodies and losers.
this story by f.j. brenes (C)1997-2002 home totaldominion.
