“Don’t tap the table, son.” The boy stopped himself from drumming his fingers against the desk—he’d not really meant to, but he couldn’t help himself, as he was lost in thought. “What are you doing?” his father asked yet again. It’s only Tuesday, yet they’re back stuck in the principal’s office for another attempted X-ray into the boy’s subconscious. The gurgling of the fish tank nearby is reminiscent of Maurizio’s compilation,the one his father likes to put on: the bubbling blends into itself until a haze appears, smearing and burning its way into your mind. The boy hated this music; its repetitions droned ad nauseam and seemed to evaporate into itself, creating a fog that hung between them in his dad’s car so that they couldn’t interact; in fact, they couldn’t even see each other. The boy wished they could leave but didn’t want to return and listen to those bass rumbles again. any longer. Their airy yet confined sound caused anxiety, which didn’t help his claustrophobia.
Meanwhile, his father only wished they could bond over something, yet everything he tried was met with disdain and resentment. To his father, the grooves brought back memories of the reverberations ricocheting off those garage walls back in the late eighties and nineties, when he went clubbing with his boy’s mother. Neither really cared about the principal’s updates: how his boy wasn’t “meeting expectations” or how the boy struggled with holding an attention span longer than Mr. Bubbles in his tank nearby. Who really cares? The principal entered, shook the father’s hand, and glanced briefly at the boy; however, not directly into his eyes, as if avoiding his student’s piercing, unfettered glare, as if the boy were stating directly with his eyes, “I know, far earlier than you ever did, about this game you’re asking me to play. The ‘career’ or the ‘good student’ nonsense is all made up; a fantasy; a jig.”
The boy believed that if the tracks weren’t so long, it would help. But the mood wanes the longer the electronic hiss lasts and the bitter distortion reels and whines—it’s a brain worm that refuses to eat its victim’s pink matter; instead, it insists on exploring the neighborhood: the brainstem, cerebrum, and cerebellum, a tasting counter that’s all too good to pass up before consuming the best portion of its meal last. He needed something that was hard-hitting and rebellious, or he’d settle for anything his father wouldn’t like. Outside, he saw a group of kids skipping rope at a perfect one hundred and thirty beats per minute—just like those ridiculous techno dubs. Nowhere was safe; references kept cropping up at every corner; in fact, corners were sharp and angular, much like the productions on Maurizio’s releases, which followed tight rhythmic feels reminiscent of sharp ninety-degree turns. The boy put his head into his hands, his foot irritably tapping, feeling trapped by the contagious, spacious auditory torture chambers his father was subjecting him to.
The principal’s update drones on longer than expected. No bother. The father already has his mental playlist prepared—a skill he acquired during his day job waiting for potential customers or talking with dull coworkers at the dealership. Who else but the great Maurizio? Those tracks from his M series compilation are lengthy yet infectious. They don’t lose their luster because they shift so slowly that he only notices their traces minutes later. “Is that a new cymbal or a synth tambor?” The principal pauses before asking the father, “I’m sorry? Sir, please. We’re here to discuss your son.” The father jolts out of his minimal techno-induced stupor before responding, “Yeah. Sorry. Carry on, please.”