I don’t know much about Reggae. Sure I like it, but I don’t go out of my way to listen to it, buy it, or go where it’s being performed live. So it was with no small amount of trepidation that I took a job as a Reggae disc jockey at the beginning of my senior year of college. My good friend, Josh, roped me into it, and only because we’re such good friends did I agree to the plum time slot – Sundays, 2-6 am.

Brown’s college radio station, WBRU, is a very professional operation. They programming is tight and polished, and their audience reaches from Boston to Newport. In short, they’re a big wheel down at the cracker factory. On any other day and at any other time the highest standards of decorum and conduct are kept, but on Sundays at 2 in the morning in the Providence, Rhodes Island, decorum took a nap. The regular audience went to sleep and the swing shift kept watch through the night.

Because Josh and I knew so little about Reggae, we’d crack jokes and fake Jamaican accents, dubbing ourselves, ‘Buck-Buck and Cool Breeze.’ The ‘Buck-Buck and Cool Breeze show quickly became a silly comedy radio show where we mainly cracked ourselves up, and more and more fielded calls from the swing shifters – Flocco and Tommy, two stoner bakers, Joanne from Dunkin Donuts, John, the cabdriver in East Providence who always wanted to listen to Lucky Dube, Peto, Flocco and Tommy’s incarcerated cousin, and DJ Dirty, the disc jockey at Centerfolds, the third best strip club in Providence.

Josh and I coveted our friendship with DJ Dirty. In fact we invited him to the studio one night. He brought over a few of his coworkers (read: strippers). That night we received free lap dances and an invitation to breakfast… in Newport. We declined (because we were nerds) but for a college manchildren, it was something huge. As our bromance with DJ Dirty blossomed we were invited to come visit him at Centerfolds. We only went twice. Maybe it’s just me, but seeing your friends get lap dances and stuff singles into a the g-string who may have made more than a few bad decisions in her life just wasn’t all that fun. I think we went because we were supposed to think it was cool or because of how impressed our friends were that we had an in with the strip club DJ.

The second and last time we went to Centerfolds, Josh and I watched as our friend Dave who played Buck-Buck and Cool Breeze’s annoying landlord on the radio show received a lapdance. Dave is a nice suburban kid from Wisconsin. To witness the total discomforture in his face as Pandora gyrated on his lap was enough for us to call it a night. On our way to the car, I chatted up a man who, to me looked like someone known as “A made guy,” an honest to god Mafioso. This guy looked and talked like the genuine article. Something important to remember is that Providence is a nexus of Waspy New England blue bloods and mobbed up connected characters. But because I spent my days on tony College Hill I never really got to see gangsters up close and personal. I wanted to pet him, in a sense. I wanted to get a drink with him, say fuggetabout and ‘this fucking guy!’ As a kid I was a sucker gangster movies and still keep the canon of the genre at the ready whenever I want a fix of violent family drama, or justice by Tommy gun. My drunken paisano tells me he needs a ride back to his place, and I am more than happy to oblige. I convince my friend to give the guy a ride, know that if we do this for him, he will do the same for us some day in kind. Then we’d be in good with not only a strip club DJ but a wiseguy too.