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“No, but neither have you.”
He barks a laugh. “Yeah and I never fucking will. Loud kids. Old drunk people. Cheesy entertainment. And you can’t escape the boat? Not exactly my idea of a good time.”
I bite my lip. Yep, that’s about the same spiel Evie had given me.
Suddenly I realize that I have an actual young person here to test her ideas against. “Would you go to Ibiza?” I ask.
“Hell yeah, I would,” he says instantly. “Wait. Are you going? Can you take me?”
“Stop, stop,” I say over him. “I’m not rewarding your delinquency with a vacation, much less to Ibiza. I’m just curious what you think of it.”
“I don’t know, man,” he says. He hits the vape again and this time it’s harder to pretend I don’t hear it. “What’s not to like? Beach parties. Sick clubs with great music. Girls in bikinis. Ten out of ten.”
Okay, I guess Jack isn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know, namely that young people like to party on islands. But what about that DJ? The one with the Mortal Kombat name who Evie claimed was the new big thing. That would be a better sign of whether or not she has her finger on the pulse.
“Who’s the hottest DJ right now?” I ask .
“That’s a hard question. You talking EDM? House? Hiphop? Techno?”
“I don’t know. Like, DJ music,” I say, waving a hand. When exactly did I get this out of touch? “There’s a girl here in New York. Something like Clumpy… Cooler…”
“Those aren’t even names.”
“Carrie?”
“Wait.” Jack bursts out laughing. “Are you talking about Kara Kon?”
“Yeah, that’s the one,” I say. I get up from the couch and go back to my computer, type the name into the search engine. “Do you know who she is?”
Jack is still laughing at me. “Yeah,” he says when he finally regains his composure. “I know who Kara Kon is. I’m not dead.”
I apparently am though. Google comes up with a Wikipedia page, talk show interviews, a discography of songs all stylized in capital letters, and a smattering of recent news articles.
The first article I click leads with a video. I play it. The volume is off, but, from the look of things, if my speakers were on they would be blasting some flavor of unpleasant electronic noise. Cell phone footage shows Ms. Kon behind a turntable in a bikini top and short jean shorts, a backward snapback over long, rainbow-colored braids, waving her hands to amp up a huge crowd of people in Washington Square Park. The article describes the scene as a “pop-up concert” that the police broke up for not having the right permits. I don’t know much (anything) about the music industry, but for a surprise event the place looks packed. There has to be a good three thousand people there.
“What do you think of her?” I ask.
“Kara Kon? Hot,” Jack says.
“As in trendy?” I ask, mesmerized despite myself by the jumping ocean of people. If I charged a fifty dollar cover…
“No idiot. She’s hot. As in, ‘Gimme those digits, girl’.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, but is she popular? Do people like her? Like, drinking-age people, not teenagers.”
“Yeah, for sure. They’ve been playing her at the clubs constantly. She’s the big new thing. Why?”
I’m about to explain when I pause, frown.
“How are you getting into clubs?” I ask.
A beat.
“They’re eighteen and up clubs,” he tries.
“You’re not turning eighteen for another couple weeks.”
“Hey I think I hear someone calling me. Gotta go.”
