I. Hate. Most. Things.

Back when I lived in D.C, DJing is what kept me creatively alive while simutaneously crucifying my immune system. It always seemed like when the stresses of climate change reporting and diving through energy leglsiation were about to end me, my DJ responsibilities would save my life. Thursday nights on the second floor of Rock and Roll Hotel. Friday nights on stage at The Red and the Black. And when-the-fuck-ever at DC9, Saint-Ex and Marx Cafe.

But when I moved to Brooklyn, I had to start from scratch.

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2001 was pretty weird. I was 16, chubby, had braces and carried around a neon green Sony Discman CD player with obnoxious looking behind-the-back earphones. I was obsessed with Dance Dance Revolution, hair dye and hanging out in a digital world that consisted mostly of Starcraft and Internet Relay Chat on a sever named after creatures from Final Fantasy.

Kids at my high school in Ohio called me gay on the virtue that I carried a messenger bag as opposed to a Jansport backpack (nice purse, fag!) and because I had no passion for sports other than my aggressive pursuit of underage drinking.

As you can probably tell, I was pretty adverse to sunlight - so much to the point that when my parents would plan vacations to semi-exotic locales like Cancun or Hilton Head that involved venturing south of the Mason-Dixon, I'd skip out. Instead, I'd get a plane ticket to New York City along with a little bit of spending money. This happened annually for a three-year period, but the destination was always the same: my cousin Kevin's apartment; a third-floor walk up in a tenament around the corner from Liquiteria in the East Village.

Despite our significant age difference (11 years), we had been very close from the moment he threw a Genesis controller in my hands to play Golden Axe with him in the early 1990s. Looking back on it, I don't know how the fuck Kevin was able to tolerate the teenage version of me on an annual basis in his shotgun apartment for a week at a time.

My memory of exactly what happened is a little bit hazy. I remember sitting on Kevin's floor while his grey blob-shaped cat Quentin rubbed up against Sleater-Kinney jewel cases and Sega Dreamcast accessories. At some point, Kevin wandered over to his CD player and pressed play.

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