Dan The Cocaine Hurricane

The 38

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I got into this crazy fucking situation when I was trying to score an interview with this wacko, right, and he makes it a condition of the interview that I join him for a dice game. That's how I end up hanging out with a group of drug dealers and miscreants at a gay bar in the Castro at 10 in the morning on a Wednesday. I show up not really knowing what to expect, and quickly realize my friend (the wacko) Gary has more or less set this whole thing up to put his seedy dice friends on display for me. It's a queerly deranged sitcom and Gary intends to be the star, until The Cocaine Hurricane steals the show. Gary knows the microphone will draw a performance out of all of them, and in fact, I believe that’s the point of my being there. They tell jokes, go on rants, and share the most personal details of their life, while I muse on the power a microphone has to draw people out.

So I spend three hours playing dice with a megalomaniacal hobo, a drug-addled über drivers and computer programmers, a skinhead, and straight-up drug dealers. We play dice and I’m amazed at how the microphone seems to cause a change in all of them. The booze and whatever substances they’re coming off of only exacerbate the effect I know that microphones already have (they help people be vulnerable). I leave carrying this guy Dan’s whole fucking life story on my recorder. Gary actually waits until afterward to inform me that they were all drug dealers and users and liars (especially Dan according to Gary). So I just held onto the for months, because... wtf do I do with it? Is any of it even real? Well…thank you corona, now you get to decide for yourself.

Btw, if you ever want someone to tell you their deepest darkest secrets— maybe it’s someone close to you, and it’s something you’ve wanted to know for a while— pull out a recorder and have a couple of drinks. Tell them why you're interested. See what happens. Hell, they might even perform for you! This story is about the power of a microphone.