280 bpm: Creative non-fiction for CW
There was a time, almost 9 years ago now, when my first summer spent at raves in Las Vegas kicked in. At first, I regarded ravers as dope addled idiots, day-glo clowns listening to horrible electronic beeps and boops, spouting asinine terms like PLUR to the media. And so it started, the point where one from the out-set slowly became one of the group.
I should note that at the time, my view of ravers was colored largely by views of the artists I favored then (digital hardcore and noise mainly) and by the naïve viewpoint that any person will have regarding a clique or subset when they view from a long distance. Up close of course and in person, the views and points and stereotypes started to bend and after some amount of pressure, finally break.
It was, almost ironically, the last summer that the local rave groups would consider a good one. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, every second, every minutes and every hour, it seemed that there was something going on. Not even a rave necessarily, but something. Raves begot after parties which melded into meet-ups which would break into house parties and from there you’d go to the club, or push your tired body back home, sometimes (luckily to be sure) with a prospective lover to wake next to, befuddled and sleep deprived at five in the evening. You’d sit there, look at the girl or guy next to you, maybe kiss passionately, or awkwardly remember the truths you spoke earlier, which now seemed both cheap and fake in the lowering sun. It went both ways and every ways, and even now the memories blur and all I know is waking up to a beautiful face, framed by a window, which itself was alight with the slow, churning miasma that is the smog laden sunsets of a Las Vegas summer.
These were the only years in which I felt part of something, not bigger than anything and no more noble than any group, but in all ways more insular and famial then high school had ever been. You knew the names and nicknames and personal habits of hundreds of people, you’d meet them at parties or on Strip nights, you’d trust them with your time, your thoughts and with some, your life. I still have people I’ve met, that I, to this day, have never seen in the sunlight. They were just that girl, or that guy; the ones you always saw at the party, on the Strip, in the clubs. But you never saw them at day.
So, it was the best summer for me, and the last good summer for others, and that I came to the party late at twenty one years of age never seemed to matter. And so it went on and on.
It was non-ending, this one summer, there were more production crews throwing parties than ever, on any given weekday there was at the very least a house party or even a small rave, and on the weekends you’d have as many as 4 raves to choose from, followed by 20 after parties or after hours clubbing potentials.
Some people, like the almost invisible Smokey, were remembered as the go-to place for both me and my best friend at the time Kimo. After every rave, trying hard to stay awake after hours of amusing ourselves (body art for me, dancing for him), we’d jump into what was well known as the ‘Tenno-mobile’ and less known as the ‘Nine Inch Nail Battlewagon’, a battered ’84 Volvo replete with necessary adornments - ATR, NIN, AWOL - and jet off to Smokey’s (house? mobile home? shack? does it matter?) to sit and drink cheap beer and listen to DJs spin whatever music could be wrenched from the household vinyl. If you were lucky, DJs from the last rave would show up, crates in hand and spin the newest hits from across the seas or the classics from last year, the year before, the past. You’d sit, you’d sip, or dance as the mood hit you. You’d watch club kids (house, trance) and candy kids (happy hardcore) or junglists (oddly enough, jungle, drum’n’bass) commune, talk shit, make out, fight, black out. The drugged, the merely tired and the plain crazy, bouncing in a small whatever, on some street, somewhere in Las Vegas. You’d live life at your own pace at 8 in the morning, and three hours later you’d stagger out, blearily regard the noonish sun and drive home blasting Bomb20 and drinking Red Bulls.
We would separate, make our ways home, sometimes crash at the same place, and hours later, we’d be back on the road after a shower and a change, ready to fork over cash for another chance to see our friends, hear them spin, draw body art on more kids, shuffle our feet and wave our hands. It was a fast, vivid time of neon lights, lasers and fast, almost at times harsh, almost at times melodic, all the time harsh, all the time melodic. It was forever and it was over all too soon. It was mixed, spun and packaged for us by loving production crews, by production crews that only showed for the money, by production crews that left before the party ended, before the cops came, before the sun rose, before we were done. It was brought to us, part and parcel by people that didn’t care, cared too much, and made like bandits, made not a dollar, made a fuss.
It was at times a bitter little sweet we had, but we gobbled them up the same way the media depicted kids gobbling pills, like every kid that went to a rave was a shit grinning drug machine, shiny with Vicks and sweat, shrieking their new perspective as they tore into what they paid money for now, and in blood and pain later.
I think it was that view that the media had that was the most wrong.
Raves have, and always will be associated with chemical fun, but there were just as many sober exuberant people lining up to get body art from me as there were slobbering idiots, mumbling shit about colors before blacking out on top of me, deep black streaks depicting their movement as my permanent markers dragged along their arm. Sometimes, if they were lucky, I’d draw a huge penis on their face. You know, for the memories.
So, there it was. A perfect summer.
Things changed, as they always do, or at least that’s how it always seems on the inside. People dropped raves in favor of clubs when they turned 21 and they could get their fix of music and chemicals in air-conditoned opulence and glass bottles. Others dropped off the map, sometimes even good friends, as they got older, got pregnant, got clean, got AIDS, got the fuck out, got into harsher drugs, got smart, got dumb. Got damn.
You might see them later, but as the events got smaller and the production crews cannibalized each other or ran out of money, the rave scene turned more and more inward, it was after all a scene that depends on the twenty four seven people, the younger kids that will have the same bright spark of energy when the gates open as when the gate closes. You lose that. No matter what, the way things are you lose that.
But that is what it was all about. A perfect summer. A while I would never call the scene dead, the same as a corpse isn’t really dead when you kick it. It’s all decaying cells, subdivision, maggots and flies and finally mulch to feed whatever comes after. It is no phoenix, rising from the ashes, more the hydra; growing ever more outward whenever the head is split; but you never get the same perspective on it.
You consolidate. You get sick or well. You keep or drop touch. You go on. But I always have that, the memories of a time, where everyone was accepted, where you’d see the same faces and meet some new faces until you had your ocean of heaving colors and light. You’d get out there and just live at a speed far from normal.
You’d just live at two hundred and eighty beats per minute.