When was the last time you were at a house party? Not a party where
house music was playing, but a bona fide push the couches to the walls,
set up a table for the DJ, and pile beers into a cooler house party? It’s
probably been a while. Now throw in a pajama jammy jam theme and see
if you can’t almost literally blow the roof off the apartment.
That happened to me not too long ago. A friend was having a birthday
party and was soon vacating a house that was the site of some epic
parties over the years. This was the last one.
For no other reason than to make the point that we all get along, I will
mention that the party was a mixed crowd, but a predominately African
American crowd. I also mention the point because I was in the minority, a
situation I find myself in often and have no issues with.
My buddy was the DJ and had the task of keeping the party going, but
also adhering to the desires of the birthday girl and host. I was hanging
out in the yard where a game of dominoes was in constant motion. I
don’t know the game, I knocked over dominoes as a kid, but never
learned the rules. As I tried to perpetrate an urban attitude in my 20′s I
wanted to learn the game that is a fixture in black films and black
culture, kind of like gin rummy for white people during hurricanes,
blackouts, and vacation cottages with no cable TV.
I had tired of trying to figure out the rules on the fly and went inside
where the music was bumping. The DJ had a steady group of people
moving to mostly hip hop and R & B, the hostess had a wireless
microphone and was hyping the crowd and rhyming over the music. As
per her request the DJ worked in some 80′s songs, and I was taken aback
when Cyndi Lauper’s “Girl’s Just Wanna Have Fun” rocked the crowd, it
got even more heated when he transitioned into Bon Jovi’s “Living on a
Prayer” and the mostly black crowd was feeling it.
I took it upon myself to rant and rave about how cool it was to see this
cultural overlap. I ran out to the yard and started shouting, “This story is
never told, there’s Bon Jovi inside, and dominoes on the outside, we’ve
been sold a bill a goods, this is what really goes on, but people say it
doesn’t.” I heard a few people saying I was crazy and others laughed, but
as the music cut back and forth from genres the domino game shut down
and the whole living room was bugging out to Nirvana and Lunix, and
Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth and Metallica, and it was a Top 10 party of my
life.Free your mind and your ass will follow.
Leave a Reply