"The DPJ" - a short, 100% TRUE story about DPJs, classical music, my sisters, New Jersey, prostitution, etc.

[frankfrank]

PREFACE:
It's STILL like this happened YESTERDAY, though it happened three years ago.


My two sisters are entirely peripheral to the story, but they ARE brought into it. Embellishment, I guess.


Meanwhile, when I let my mind take THESE kind of trips, that doesn't help me catch up with old emails. And, no, NO unusual substances involved here...in fact I'm also half starving, been so busy I didn't even eat today except OJ and a candy bar.


Oh, and by the way, and entirely off topic, what in the hell did the Quakers in Wilmington, Ohio ever do so wrong to deserve having Donald Trump speaking there on September 1, 2016??


THIS IS EXACTLY THE SAME THING I SENT TO A FRIEND NAMED B., SO IF YOU SEE TWO OR THREE COMMENTS THAT YOU QUICKLY REALIZE DO NOT PERTAIN TO YOU, REMEMBER IT'S SPECIFIC TO THE GUY I ORIGINALLY SENT IT TO. (Actually, since I sent it to him, I added a few more comments, but this is still my original flow of consciousness.)
*********************

• Fasten your seat belt. (There's a bit of Godstuff in here, but only minimally, but integral at least to the concept.)
  Frank
  
• AND NOW, IN ALL ITS NOTORIETY...
• "THE DPJ - Part One"
  No...nobody played the DPJ on us...I didn't play it on him...he didn't play it on me. God did it! I mean, otherwise it's not a DPJ. These kind of things happen to me occasionally as I become aware of them. This one was blatant. Probably the most blatant of ALL DPJ's that I'll ever experience.
  "What in the hell is a DPJ?" Read on.
  New Jersey. YouTube. Art from Germany. My sisters. Classical music. Prostitution. Albuquerque. A complete stranger in a foreign country who I'll never meet. A Canadian radio show from decades ago.
  [EDIT: Be prepared, because this so totally turned into a flow-of-consciousness account, far longer than I intended, as my memory of this is EXTREMELY vivid.]
  So, not long after I first started getting on computers, almost sure it was early 2004 (probably March), I thought that the computer would be a good place to find sex-for-hire, and I was going to Chicago. I did...of course I was looking for some type of "paragon" or "fantasy" guy which, in my case, was the "muscular hunk" type that I could only very rarely find even in my prime days when I was rather a hunk myself.
  We couldn't stop emailing each other for the few days before I actually went to Chicago, which was to include paying him for two hours. (I think we worked out around $250.) I did this to combine the stop with other things I planned, because that's awfully far to go just to have sex. Well, OK maybe we sent four emails in each direction or something, and a phone call that lasted about an hour, then soon I was in Chicago at the planned time.
  All those emails (before and soon after) are long-since-lost, as I hadn't formed many computer habits yet...really wish I'd saved them. I think he'd enjoy them too.
  The sex with Troy (generally muscle worship and such on my part) was all I expected, and more (and I think even this first time we went a good ways past the clock just lying around and cuddling), but let me backtrack a few minutes. The first thing I saw walking into his place (besides, of course, the "space itself" visible in something like a Chicago nanopicosecond) were some plants, and FRAMED LP RECORD COVERS (i.e. "cool artwork" ones - like the Jefferson Airplane "...Winterland" one, if I remember correctly) ON THE WALL!! As of earlier today you're aware of my DEEP ties with vinyl records. [Yes, some of you already know that selling records, which is STILL my only job, is something I was doing even before you were born.] Of course even a more instant "I really like this guy!" response within.
  As I coursed around, deeper inside his space after the LP covers, ***a poster print of the below Haas "Albuquerque" photo also on his wall*** (PAY ATTENTION TO THIS, because this is, uh, foreshadowing), which only reinforced my reaction, because YOU ALREADY KNOW about my fondness for travel and such.
  Fast forward a few years...September 2013...we're still in touch as great friends, and the sex part (which happened a few times over a few years, as I am NOT close to Chicago) has moved on and been transcended entirely...at this point we had already been often sending links and/or content back and forth to each other because of a mutual admiration of interesting and unusual music and videos. So, he sent me this YouTube link to this piano piece that he found there, and said I should listen to it because it is really beautiful, and I did. Totally minimalist music (nothing complex, none of that), solo classical piano, and worthy of tears.
  Erik Satie's "Gymnopedie No. 1." I think his very first composition.
  Good God, my mouth fell wide open immediately.
  It was indeed all that he said. This music, almost nothing at all to it, and it's sublime beyond belief. How can something so simple and so spartan also be so elegant???
  But not just that, and that's not even why my mouth went all agape on me. There was a LOT more to come. I simply wasn't ready for the crazy "coincidence" that was about to come in the next few minutes. Did I say coincidence? No, not really - just that most people will CALL it that. NO WAY. IT WASN'T A COINCIDENCE.
  A good friend in New Jersey, many years ago, came up with the concept of the DPJ, a concept which is firmly embedded in my lexicon (and ALWAYS requires an explanation whenever I use the acronym...or even the full-name form). I think it was maybe 2004 that he told me the concept of the DPJ.
  A "Divine Practical Joke."
  (BECAUSE GOD HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR). (If you have any doubts at all, consider the platypus, haha.)
  This was a pretty doggone blatant one, indeed. One for the ages.
  Anyway, yeah, I'm loving this piano solo, while instantly RECOGNIZING it...because of a radio show I used to listen to. A Canadian radio show, no less...on their national CBC "Radio 2." For those who don't know, CBC is like our National Public Radio, but is entirely run by their Government. This CBC service was, most of the time, pretty serious stuff...classical music, opera on Saturday afternoons, public service and discussion, showtunes, temporary music, some specialty music shows generally with an erudite approach (i.e. not only playing the music, but talking about it and about the performers etc.).
  The radio show I used to listen to was one of these. It started at midnight, when the CBC suddenly would go Stark-Raving-Mad and ran a three-hour show called BRAVE NEW WAVES, hosted by Brent Bambury. Some really crazy shit on THIS show...I lived for this show...they would play hardcore punk, hiphop/rap, reggae, singer-songwriter stuff, house, avant-garde/experimental/musique-concrete, techno, collage, maybe even the occasional headbangers...probably the most "tame" stuff they played (in the first two and a half hours) were things like The Cure, Simple Minds, Elvis Costello, Kraftwerk. I heard bands/artists such as Throbbing Gristle, Nurse With Wound, The Meat Puppets, King Crimson, Dead Kennedys, Rip Rig and Panic, The The, etc. One segment, usually more than half an hour long, was the interview part...and playing some of their music. I even remember an interview with Phollop Willing P. A. who was an avant-garde guy from Halifax. THAT is getting into the wickedly-obscure. Listen to the rare "Orphan Baby" if you can find it anywhere. SO rare that the interview and music, now close to 30 years ago, didn't even include this song. I found it inside a punk record shop in Halifax in 1984 and picked it up, because it looked interesting.
  Digression finished...the last half hour or so of the show definitely tended to "soften up" greatly, varying day by day, often he might play something like softer Hawkwind, Brian Eno "Music for Airports," Tangerine Dream, some classical, etc. USUALLY HE LED US OUT OF HIS MASTERPIECE-OF-A-SHOW with Erik Satie's "Gymnopedie 1."
  

 

[frankfrank]

If somebody can tell me how to EDIT my blog, I'd be grateful. I can't find anything about it. Mistakenly the paragraphs didn't show well on Part One, and I'd like to FIX them to improve the readability.

Meanwhile, also because I don't know hows to edit the blog, this is an image of the Albuquerque poster picture I saw on that escort's wall in Chicago.