8.7 DJ Pauly D

After living in my current residence for almost two years, I'd finally had it. When I moved in here, the place was left in a mess. Don't get me wrong, I love living here, but even after all this time, I still find dirt hidden away in cracks and crevices. It makes me wonder how some people live.

My place is two floors and has a wooden staircase upstairs. The corners of all the stairs have been chipped away and the centre of the steps are extremely worn. It's like someone took a file and tried to crudely sand away the step corners at irregular angles. There's a crack in the tub, like not enough that it leaks, but enough THAT IT IS CRACKED. I mean, how do you crack a tub? The sink also has a loonie-sized chip in it. You'd have to literally drop a rock in the sink to chip it like this. You don't even want to know what a plumber pulled out of the drain in the tub. I finally got the dryer professionally cleaned because the insides were so full of some type of unidentifiable fur objects or UFOs for short.

I can go on, but I'll stop there. You get the idea. For a long time, I had wondered about who this person was that lived here before me.

I moved here because I saw the potential of the place, and it has a lot of potential. I'm sort of doing things a job at a time, both for financial reasons and for the sake of my sanity. I'm cleaning up the other day and I decided I needed to get rid of a bunch of stuff. I have too much stuff, too many things clogging up my space, both physically and mentally. I vacuumed all the dust bunnies up and figured I needed to clean the area around the washing machine. I hadn't cleaned behind it since I moved in.

Behind the washing machine was a pile of business cards. They were all thrown about like they had been resting on a high shelf, knocked over and forgotten about. The business card was for a company called Void Music. The name on the card was for a DJ and I shit you not, his name was DJ Pauly D. The website address on the card was for a MySpace account, so I figured it was old and that this person was probably no longer in the DJ-ing business.

Googled DJ Pauly D and of course he instantly came up on SoundCloud. Not only that, he was headlining a party at the Mod Club over on College Street in another week. I don't know why, but I decided to buy a ticket to see if it was possible to actually meet this person who used to live in my condo and who left it a mess. I became totally obsessed with DJ Pauly D. Here's one of his tracks:

The following week, I was quite underwhelmed at the Mod Club. I'm too old for clubs. I'm not a dancer. I didn't know anyone there. None of this was for me. DJ Pauly D was annoying and arrogant, even I could tell he wasn't a good DJ. I made my way to the front of the stage and asked a few of the very large security guards if I could have a word with Mr. D after the show. They all ignored me, but one said he would pass along my business card to him, which only seemed fitting. I waited around for about an hour after his set to see if he might call or text me, but I didn't hear from him.

On my way to bed that evening, there was a knock at the door. Hardly anyone visits my house, I can't remember the last time someone knocked at my door this late. I looked through the peep hole and there was DJ Pauly D, flanked by two security guards from the Mod Club. I opened the door and all three walked inside. The security guard that took my business card earlier asked me to raise my arms and frisked me. DJ Pauly D walked right into my place without saying a word, looked around at the pictures on the wall, sat down on furniture.

Finally, he spoke and when he did, he had tears in his eyes. "Buttocks was my best friend and I miss him dearly. We lived here together and shared everything. He slept in my bed, we ate the same food, we went everywhere together. Then Buttocks ran outside, down the stairs and in front of a two ton truck. My life has never been the same since that day."

"I'm sorry," I asked. "Buttocks was your-"

"My dog, man," DJ Pauly D said. "My damn dog - Buttocks. Sometimes I called him Buttface or Butts for short."

Buttocks must have been responsible for all the UFOs.

"I actually have some questions for you DJ Pauly D-"

"I don't care about your damn questions. I'm going upstairs."

With that, DJ Pauly D went upstairs and lay down on my bed. The security guards put their hands on my shoulders and guided me to the couch. Since my condo is all open, I could hear the muffled cries of him upstairs where every once in a while he muttered, Buttface...I miss you Buttface.

In the morning, DJ Pauly D came back downstairs, snapped his fingers at the security guards and left. I know it may not seem like it, but this did bring me some closure to having a better understanding of the person who lived here before me.