Never ask me to play “Last Friday Night” and other 2010s anthems

For the first time in my young Halloween history, life handed me its own proverbial trick or treat: Halloween in college, on a Saturday. As you can imagine, a college town like Austin has its status quo completely upended on a weekend like “Hallo-weekend,” with uncertainty and mistakes more abundant than wholesome, costume-clad trick-or-treaters. I was also lucky enough to stumble onto the chance to play my first DJ set. For a while now I’ve been completely enthralled by electronic music. Most people lump all of it together as “techno,” but the sound I loved most, and most wanted to play, was dubstep.

To my dismay, procrastination and a flurry of exams got the best of me, leaving just two days to find songs, practice and, frankly, learn how to DJ. With my trusty companion and co-DJ, I dug up remixes of songs we wanted to hear and bob our heads to, and honestly, we had more fun doing that than playing the set itself (as I’ll explain). The function we were supposed to DJ was at a house in West Campus, which during Hallo-weekend was closer to a battlefield than student housing.

The clock struck twelve, and there I was, having practiced the set over and over from 2 pm to 8 pm that same day. I felt ready, excited and somehow not even a little anxious. This was going to be my moment: my debut as a DJ, and a pioneering night of non-traditional party music that would (in my head) convert everyone to the religion of high-tempo EDM and dubstep.

As we started setting up, we noticed one of our songs hadn’t loaded. Sad as we were, we moved on. “How much can one song matter?” we thought. How wrong we were. One song that didn’t load became two, then three, then four, and when the fifth refused to load onto the controller, I knew this was it. To sweeten my dismay, weak speakers, irritated partygoers and, for some reason, a really well-lit party (like, too well-lit) all worked in harmony to tell me the one thing I dreaded: tonight is not your night.

With my head down, I accepted it. What I felt, though, was a deep-rooted sadness I hadn’t felt in a long time. I kept trying to rationalize it: “It was a small party.” “No one even cared.” “No one noticed.” “There will always be other opportunities.” But underneath, the regret wasn’t about the attention I’d missed out on. It was that I never got to hear the music I wanted to hear at that party. Even the thought of listening to anyone else’s music at any other function made me sick to my stomach. And with that, a strange sense of pride came over me: I had never loved something this much.