Sleepless Night 1

Normally I watch movies, but this time I decided to just write instead. I decided to write what comes to mind. I guess I'll continue this story at other sleepless nights.

I don’t know what I do here. Partially I am not here because I want to be, but then again I am here because of my own free will. I am Jack, and quite obsessed with myself really. Other people would say I have a fairly large ego, even though I don’t see it that way. But what do I know about myself. Not in the least to say, what do I know about myself when things go wrong?

It’s not that I’m a d****e or anything. It’s just that I feel entitled. I don’t know why others don’t. They should feel entitled too, but I guess they want me to feel more entitled than themselves. I gladly take them up on that offer. The poor needs to support the rich; the low dwellers in self-esteem need to support the confident raging rockstars like me.

Let me get one thing straight from the start. High self-esteem or confidence is not the same is feeling really entitled. I used to feel shy when I was younger, but I learned a thing or two since that age. I started picking up the guitar and play a few tunes. Folks seemed to like it, and my confidence grew. And now, here I am: fresh, shiny, elegant and a little bit eccentric maybe, I don’t know.

As you can read I’m a talker. Preferably I like to talk about myself, like almost everybody else. But I can listen too. I can listen when it’s needed, which is when I need to save my a*s. You could guess this situation occurs mostly with women, but I wouldn’t phrase it that way. It’s just that women actually want to be listened too, men don’t, but when they do, then men are the worst. I am the worst. I want to be listened to, but I have the feeling nobody really does. Hence I write. Or that’s what I tell myself anyway. My best friend Dana doesn’t seem to think so.

I met Dana in Cuba as a kid. I was one of the lucky few with a double passport, since I’m born in Germany (don’t ask, I’ll come later to that story), and my mom is originally from The Netherlands. She came here, because she thought that her problems would go away in the land where you can be who you want to be. But it appears that Amsterdam and Los Angeles have a few things more in common than she thought.

The story of getting to know Dana starts just after arriving at our all-inclusive hotel. My mom liked traveling a lot (she met my dad while they were both backpaking in Australia), but my dad liked beach resorts more, and since he was paying, my mom didn’t have a choice. My dad wasn’t even with us in Cuba. He was too busy anyways.

Back to the hotel. When we arrived we heared music coming from the hallway of the building where our hotel rooms were. We saw buildings everywhere, surrounded with paved paths and palm trees. There was a swimming pool here and there, and the beach was behind 20 meters of palm trees. Everyone was strolling at a leisurely pace, like they didn’t have a care in the world. They probably really didn’t, most people go on vacations to escape from their lives.

I walked towards the music. I tried to find the music, but I didn’t hear that it was coming from the hallway. Sometimes when I think I hear a sound from the right, ti’s from the left. So I was walking all over the place. You should’ve seen my mom, she was surprised seeing her kid walking around so pro-active, like a mad scientist looking for his secret theoretical formula which he is about to experiment with, while he knows that his whole concoction will blow up in his face anway.

Eventually I found it. I didn’t know what I was seeing, where to begin! There was one lady on the left - who looked like a cleaner - bouncing up and down, like Snoop Dogg himself was giving a private concert to her. The lady next to her was singing in Spanish while shaking her head like she was in some kind of excorcist trance. Then three other cleaners - I realized they were all cleaners - looked like the three musketeers dancing together giving rhytmic vocal and verbal approval to the one singing whose evil demons were definitely being excorcised. Her spirit looked more uplifted by the minute. And then there was a woman in a finer cloth, the manager, cheering.

She was cheering to a 12 year old boy who was beatboxing. My mouth fell open, my eyes widened and I just looked at the spectacle. I realized that this boy had made more connection with the personell staff than all the other tourists combined in a year. In my mind, I still can’t differentiate this experience from a real party.

I felt so inspired. Just 2 months prior after having watched a couple of movies about rap (kids and movie marathons these days), I wrote my first rap lyrics. I never listened to rap before, but I liked the idea of words rhyming together. I played with the words, which is what rap is to me.

After one other euphoric shout of the excorcist cleaning lady I got possessed as well. A spirit came upon me. It felt magical. A dark cloud above me went away when I was touched by such a highly sentient being. Imagine what kind of path such a highly regarded entity must have walked. Or, you could also just call it enthusiasm. Either way, it touched me. I felt my muscles tensing up, my gaze fixed at one point, and my legs were moving fast. Like a predator, hunting for music. Before I knew it, I was spitting my first and only written rap. And even though it wasn’t Spanish, the audience got berserk. This is how I met Dana.

Dana and I immediately clicked. We hung out every day, all the day together, when our moms didn’t want us to do other things that kids need to do with their mom. It wasn’t only his beatboxing, it was almost everything. We had the same humor, outlook, (kind of the same) hobbies and we were both 12 going to high school the next year.

I remember he was trying me how to beatbox, so we could switch and form a rap duo. I kind of learned it a bit during that vacation, just enough so other people would love to see us switching beatboxing and rapping, but not good enough that you could actually have the illusion I was making drum sounds. We sure enjoyed it. Rap allows you to get to know another person a lot more quicker. I mean when someone spits lines like:

Call me crazy, but when dad is hazy

from the night before it’s like he betrayed me

not from the liquour, cuz I get that

Life ain’t easy as a city trader, it is stress packed

in a private rap session, then you seen begin to realize that you’re not the only one having family issues. These issues live long with you after they have gone away. In any case, Dana doesn’t seem to think so.

Author's Note

I'm just curious what you think.