Tour of Homos: Alan Gold's or Hey, Mr. DJ!

Ever hang out at the bar in the Days Inn in downtown Chattanooga? You haven't? Oh. Yeah, well neither have Edith and I. But if we had then I would know that it was a high class establihment that offered all the trimmings. Cigarette burn holes in the plastic table cloth? They've got multiple... at every table! Stripper pole? It's on the raised stage! They thought of everything except customer service. I wondered why it was taking 30 minutes for our waitress just to take our order. Then I realized it was because we were literally the only occupied table in the place, so clearly she was swamped.

Ever hang out at night under an overpass in an unmarked, windowless van with the door open almost as though you are waiting for something, say, a victim? You have? Then that must have been you Edith and I saw in Chattanooga. I hope I'm not embarrassing you when I say that your aura of Holy-Shit-I'm-Going-To-Die is unparalleled. Because, holy shit, I thought I was going to die on our walk from the hotel to Chattanooga's gay bar, Alan Gold's. Little did I know that the danger lied not with the rapist troll under the bridge but inside Alan Gold's. That's where I died. On the inside. From prolonged exposure to obnoxiousness.

It's rare, but occasionally Edith and I will come down with boogie fever. When that happens the only prescription is salt. ... and her friend, Pepa. As any good American citizen - nay, any good citizen of the world does, we like to push it. Push it good. Push it real good, in fact. Unfortunately, the DJ did not realize how afflicted we were so we traversed the empty dance floor and explained our predicament. "So you see, Mr. DJ, it's a medical emergency." And that's when we were told that he doesn't take requests unless you tip him. Excuse me?! I suddenly understand why Wild Cherry was so hostile towards the white boy when he didn't play that funky music. This request surcharge seemed outrageous to us considering we had the answer to his Empty Dance Floor Blues, but we were tourists and therefore suckers so we dropped some dollar bills into the jar and waited for our song.

And waited. And waited. And waited some more. But we never heard it. All we heard was the same unch-unch-unch beat with lyrics behind it - some recognizable, others unknown. Of the songs we knew, there were a few good ones but all of them were butchered by the thumping club beat. I don't understand the need for the techofication of perfectly good, already danceable songs. Britney Spears' songs, for instance, are genetically engineered to be played at dance clubs. Adding the standard dance beat to Toxic is like taking a seedless orange and removing the seeds. Layering one track over your entire MP3 collection does not a DJ make. All it makes is a tool abusing Garage Band. Good DJs dissect, remix, mash up, and pair songs all in the name of enhancing the music and dance experience. Shitty DJs make all the songs sound the same so as not to confuse and scare the coke-addled brains of the queens that wear Gucci because it's what fancy people wear, not because they understand fashion, quality, or style. One of those queens happened to be on the dance floor that night. And it's quite probable that he got his dance instruction from his As Seen on TV VHS, Darrin's Dance Groves 2: Jazzercise Boogaloo.

The clubs that hire these shitty DJs also tend to be the clubs that line every single wall with speakers and turn up the volume to ear bleeding decibles. It's like they're trying to accomplish going plaid. Keep the music on the dance floor, kids. Maybe this makes me an old fuddy-duddy, but screaming like Al Pacino just to be heard and straining so hard to hear Edith that I poop myself a little everytime she speaks is not enjoyable. Certain areas of the bar need to turn it down to a low airplane engine roar, right? Am I crazy to want to talk to the people I go out with or start conversations with people I may meet? Is this why shallow Abercrombie twinks only seem to go to clubs in homogenous groups? Because the conversation would have been so vapidly boring that not having it because the music is too loud is a better alternative? There is so much I don't understand about club culture. I should look into a continuing education course; something like Technofication 101. But not in Chattanooga. All I wanted to do there was stumble back to the Days Inn then drive the hell home.