Resurrector: “Like a G6”

In my mid-twenties, most Fridays after work, I would frequent Asian-themed nights at clubs like White Rabbit in the Lower East Side, mostly because the drinks were cheap and the girl I had a crush on was going to be there. The dance floor was always a little sticky, and it wasn’t unusual to go home at 4 a.m. with someone’s rogue eyelash smushed into your shoe.

Those Friday nights more or less defined one of the weirder transition periods of my adult life—new to New York City; terminally broke; wearing cheap, wrinkle-free work shirts from H&M that probably osmosed microplastics into my bloodstream—yet I remember developing something of a personal ritual whenever the DJ played the song “Like a G6” by Far East Movement, which was everywhere at the time: I’d go outside and smoke a cigarette.