Sudden Weightlessness

“How did the DJ break his hands?” *

It goes back way way longer than from when he started spinning disks. The fracture began at age seven. He had fallen in love with her and she had told him how much she loved rocks. He had no back yard at home, so he begged his mother to take him to the “beach,” which was not a beach but some carved out place by the river. There, there were rocks. At first he collected small ones—the size that would fit in his pockets—but the girl was unimpressed. “I like them bigger. Rocks big enough to block a doorway.” So he kept going to the beach until he found a rock big enough to do the job of blocking. But as you can imagine, this put a strain on his growing body, and by the time the fracture was identified it was too late to repair the damage. She never told him why she needed to block a doorway with something that big and heavy. She just stopped coming to school after DCS moved her to a different home. And he, like everyone, mended what was broken inside of him by listening to music.  It was then that he said. “I can do this. I can make it spin.”  And he did.  Admittedly, it was many years later, but it was still while he was spinning that she walked onto the dance floor. “This one is for the lovely lady who loves rocks.” And as he gave her his music, his sudden weightlessness disturbed his balance, and he fell.  That’s how.

* From “For Crying Out Loud” by Terrance Hayes