We arrive at Flocker so early that Jenny and I are the first people on the dance floor. It’s a daytime show, starting at 9 a.m. We have the opening DJ all to ourselves for a bit. I’m not afraid to be dancing on an empty floor, and neither is Jenny. She likes a sparse crowd at the best of times, so there’s space to unfurl her long limbs. I close my eyes and sink into the slow, steady build.

I’m in ravespace, where my body is propelled by the beat and my thoughts are floating off on their own, without me having to be there to think them. It’s something about how techno music illustrates information theory. I know—I should just turn off and just groove, but my brain doesn’t work that way. I’m thinking about how information happens somewhere between what is completely random and what is completely predictable.

I’m thinking this because the opening DJ is playing some minimal track for a long, long time. I’m into it—but what I’m into is the predictable repetition. I’m going through exactly the same moves, over and over, to exactly the same sequence of sounds. Sometimes, this is what makes techno interesting. On one level, it seems like there’s no information here. It’s just the same thing, over and over.

Then I start to hear it differently. When you hear exactly the same kick, or the same three-note “melody,” over and over, you start to appreciate it in incredible detail. The suppression of variation opens up another kind of listening. Techno—at least the kind I happen to like—is all about a classic information theory concept: redundancy. There’s a lot of repetition in most communication, so that if something interferes with the act of communicating, the information can be reconstructed—even if part of it is missing.

I’m homing in on this track and dancing with fanatical repetition, eyes closed. But something is interfering with my engagement with it—noise. The second pair of people on the dance floor are talkers. They’re not standing close, so they have to shout over the music to be heard. For them, the music is noise interfering with their communication; for me, their communication is the noise interfering with my communion with the music.

“The suppression of variation opens up another kind of listening. Techno—at least the kind I happen to like—is all about a classic information theory concept: redundancy.”

Jenny and I take a break and head outside. She has a work thing to solve on her phone. One of her co-workers needs a piece of information from the city, and she is trying to locate it. She is also battling noise. In her case, the channel isn’t clear. There’s so much information the city puts out, that this single bit of it got lost.

I’m talking to Ron the doorman. It’s quiet this early, and he’s in a chatty mood. He’s talking about the dolls, and their expectation that they get into every party for free. Maybe, here, I should explain who the dolls are. Another thing about communication: When I encode something in language, you then decode it to make sense of it—but you might not decode it with the same code. Ron and I both know what he means by the dolls, but maybe you don’t, so here goes:

All dolls are trans women, but not all trans women are dolls. I’m not. The dolls are more high-femme in appearance, more likely to be attracted to men, and more likely to do sex work. They’re also more likely to be in nightlife—and to expect to get into the party for free.

Ron does “face check”—the difficult job of sorting out who should get into a party, and who should be turned away—even if they paid for a ticket. It’s like he is the editor of the information that is the bodies who will pass into the text of the party. He also has to decide who gets in free. At the last party I saw him work, a lot of the dolls showed up, expecting to get in free. And when they didn’t, they were rude to him about it.

R: I mean, I get it. They’re looking at me, a large Black man, and maybe they don’t expect me to be an ally. But I am! I’m here for the dolls.
M: Well, some of these white bitches aren’t seeing you as an ally, because they’re not your ally.
R: Yeah, I see what you mean. That’s not all of them though. The Black girls can be rude, too. Like, it doesn’t take all that much effort to just say hi. To learn my name.
M: Show some respect.
R: Right? We’re all out here working.
M: I’m not defending the rudeness, but I think I get where it comes from. You’re not like the people who work door at some of the places they frequent. They’re used to door being intimidating and disrespectful to them—so they front.
R: Maybe, maybe.
M: I see your perspective, though. Like, why make your job unpleasant?
R: I mean, if they want to get in—helps to be friendly.

“There’s the way people encode themselves, with dress, with attitude; there’s the way we decode others, subjecting their dress and their attitude to a read. There’s an asymmetry between encoding and decoding, and it introduces its own kind of noise.”

Jenny has found that crucial document from the city. On her phone, on a Sunday. She has ways of organizing and managing information I just don’t have. So we’re going back to dance. It’s a bright morning outside, and dark within, so my eyes take a while to adjust. I find my way through the dancers to the front of the room by touch more than by sight. The talkers are gone. It’s all rave-heads, swaying and vibing.

I’m off in ravespace again. I’m thinking about Ron and the dolls and can’t stop it—so I just let the thinking scroll on without paying it much attention. I try to remember a couple of key words so I can reconstruct the thought later. Those words are dolls and decoding.

Here’s what I think I was thinking: In the city, in nightlife especially, we spend a lot of time decoding people as if they were signs. There’s the way people encode themselves, with dress, with attitude; there’s the way we decode others, subjecting their dress and their attitude to a read. There’s an asymmetry between encoding and decoding, and it introduces its own kind of noise.

The way I see it, some of the dolls just can’t decode Ron in a way that respects who he is, and what his role is here. Well—their loss. They’re not getting into the party. They’re not the only ones. Whoever does face check at the door is the writer of the party, and our bodies are just phrases that might not make it into the text. As a writer, I appreciate being at a party that’s made up of delightful phrases. Even if some of them are a little noisy.