DESPACITO by LUIS FONSI with DADDY YANKEE Story by Cameron Davis

Cameron Davis
Brass Monkey Bar, Perth, Western Australia
April 2018

…It’s coming over in my direction… You don’t realise what the song is until it’s too late, you’re already on the dance floor glitching and popping to the beat in spite of the irritation at how easily you were ensnared in such a blatant and banal song. Well, you have to agree …got me feelin’ some kind of way... But it doesn’t matter. It’s a cheap trashy kind of song for a cheap, trashy kind of night.

The kind of night you didn’t expect to be worth having but by the end, slunk home alone with bad food in shaky hand, to sit on the balcony and smoke an unwise cigarillo you regret lighting the moment the first puff leaves your lungs, to suck at a warming beer you’re going to finish in the morning before that masochistic trip to the gym, to know it was a night worth having.

It felt like that song was on repeat the entire night, or at least the verses rendered gibberish to the English ear in fitting with the downward trajectory of the night. But, and will have it on repeat for weeks to come …Todos mis tendidos han perdido más, si, si, más por favor …

The memories, spluttering and fading as quickly as the ember on the no longer desired cigarillo, scrawl a singular phrase to stamp over all things, ‘damn I enjoyed the shit out of that’. Coiling smoke, swirling beer and machine-manufactured beats all pleasurably pound through your head, brilliantly foreshadowing the painful pounding of your head that wakes you in the morning when even fewer memories remain.

Long experience assures you that sharp pain is temporary and all too soon you find yourself laying there, savouring the blunt throbbing while you hum that song again (at least the parts you can remember), smile to those memories again (at least the parts you can remember), and, before throwing the curtains wide to allow the punishing rays of light to drive themselves into an already tortured skull and blast away all remaining memories, think about how badly you want to get out there and do that dance to that song again. Even if it’s to that kind of song.