The first thing I look for in a rave: who needs it and, among those who need it, who can handle this need?
I sit outside for a while. In the courtyard, where it’s cooler. My crippled feet throb. I’m leaning on… something, or someone. Delicious tiredness. Rest your feet, drink some water. It’s getting day. I consider whether to go home. I lost my group – let’s call them Z and E. I think they’re still here somewhere. Everything is fine. A moment alone, without being alone.
I watch the crowd. The small groups of people standing, sitting. I seem to see B and H and maybe A. I like it: it’s mostly the crowd of those in need. I’m chemically predisposed to sympathy. The MD has been kicking in for a while now and I’m hurled straight towards the edge of the precipice, where I then roll off in the dust. Even in this annoying light they seem like people I want to be with. Being a middle-aged transsexual raver isn’t always easy. Right now I’m in a situation where I’m neither rejected nor the center of attention.
This situation started when I saw the poster. Not a physical poster; my friend Q DMed it to me. A square of visual information. I marked the date on my calendar and canceled the next day’s plans. It’s a queer New York rave that has been around since 2015. The posters hint at a certain hidden pocket of possibilities. It will be a rave, for sure. There will be incredible DJs. Perhaps it will be loosely themed. We don’t know where it will be held but we can guess.
The graphics, however, also suggest something else. Each poster takes on a certain style and reconfigures it. Which is the point of the matter. Take control of the space. Take control of the machines. Take control of the chemistry. Circling symbols, technology, the real estate market from within. At least for a while. The outside no longer exists, but perhaps together inside we can reach a fractal world. So yeah, that’s a good rave.
On a beautiful evening, in a beautiful rave, everything blends in a perfect tension between invention and intention. Everyone has a part. For some, it’s work: there’s W at the bar serving a mate soda. There is N carrying a screen on his shoulder. There’s S the promoter in full swing, handing out drink tickets. Here’s O, a big hug and a warm smile. But if you come just to consume their work, nobody enjoys it.
The New York queer and trans rave scene largely understands this. There are those who come to dress up; some come to leave their sweat on the dance floor. I am among them. I want to be enlivened and enlivened on the track. A knot in a chain reaction of carnal beings congregating around the pulsating air.
That’s the promise of a good rave: soak it up. Add yours. Vary it. Update it, refresh it. Add an accent, a movement, without haste. With or without our intervention, one moment will slip into the next. Rhythm machines tower over us. They are relentless. They deposed what used to be called History. There is space between the beats, though, to still exist.
The beats are calling me. I have to get back on track. I have given my crippled feet enough rest, I can go back in and get some more. I make my way through the mass of bodies scattered across the courtyard. I cross the threshold. Where there is dark, heat, noise, a mist infused with light dawdling. The beats call out to me. They call upon me at this time within the machine which contains us all, which goes on independently of us, but within which, in this lovingly constructed situation, the fruit of the craftsmanship of many hands, we will burn with animal fury, until will stop.
I dance under the Goth DJ Jafar. There’s this girl next to me – let’s call her F. I don’t know what we are. Fuck friends, maybe? Or maybe now we’re just partners at occasional raves. Be that as it may, tonight…she’s rocking it. And I don’t mean just with a full variety of mushrooms. Pure movement, pure joy. She needs it. Shimmers with sweat. I go into mom-rave mode. Not that she can’t take care of herself. In her previous life, in another genre, she witnessed armed clashes. I touch her shoulder. When she turns to look at me, I mime and yell, “Water?” Nod. I provide.
Beside her is what my rave friend B calls punishing but, as we shall see, not of the worst kind. The punisher is a person who, in one way or another, makes it difficult for you to let go. He stands in front of the DJ looking at his cell phone. Then he turns to a friend, another punisher. They chat loudly. Then one lifts the beer can and sprays the contents on the neighbors. When I return with the water, F has moved away from him.
Raves respond to many needs, interests, desires. Distraction, entertainment, exercise, dating, cruising, and so on. But those can also be satisfied with other practices. I’m interested in a specific set of needs and a particular range of people whose need is the rave itself.
I’m not interested in punishers. Least of all what H, another rave friend, calls there colleagues: people who want to spend a night out only to then talk about it in the office on Monday. After avoiding the punishers, we are now stuck next to a colleague. He goes for it, but a little too much. Not that I want to judge – I know how it feels. But dancing next to him is impossible. Super-fast, unpredictable movements, he darts everywhere, as if he were the only person there. We move again.
I’m interested in people for whom rave is a collaborative practice that makes this life bearable. I could come up with a lot of metaphors: rave as addiction, ritual, performance, catharsis, sublimity, grace, resistance. But we’ll get there – right now, let’s not take too much for granted. We let some concepts about rave emerge through participation and observation. I will take you to dance.
Adapted from raving by McKenzie Wark (Nero Edizioni, 2023).
