eh, it’s just not the same

Posted at 21 Sep 1:13 am. 0 comments

We’ve just swaggered in, laughing, arms around each other in a casual gesture that signifies solidarity and protectiveness and just so happens to keep everyone else out. We have the energy of children, the strength and grace of animals, the careless pride of royalty. Even the erratically lit darkness cannot conceal the predatory eyes that swivel to watch, but they don’t concern us. They can’t touch us if we don’t want them to. We’re about to own this place.

That’s what it used to feel like.

These days – I don’t know. Maybe it’s the music. Maybe it’s the people. Maybe it’s the atmosphere. Here my friends and I walk into Zouk (or worse, Ruumz when it was still open) and it’s packed wall-to-wall with skinny emo teenagers with their flailing limbs, baggy jeans and chains and over-gelled hair made extra spiky for the occasion, trying to look fashionably unimpressed with the world. Hello, it’s a club. It means a party, fun times, you know? I didn’t sign up for Wangst and Depression Day at the kindergarten.

(But back to their hair. Is spiky hair the equivalent of a bright red breast on a robin in today’s teenage mating rituals? Do teen girls nowadays get turned on only if their fingertips bleed when they finger their man’s up-swept fringe? Am I the only one with visions of boys settling a fight over a girl by lowering their heads and running at each other like bulls?)

But people in the City seem to equate clubbing with standing around and looking aloof while pouring drinks down their throats. This is not my idea of fun. I can’t even hold a decent conversation because one can’t hear anything over the music and I get tired of bellowing into peoples’ ears. Added to the fact that I’m naturally soft-spoken, I might as well give up from the start. I do.

My friends tend to be mostly male, and single. They spend the entire night checking out the girls around the place, which I have no issue with, but they take Sexybum with them, the bastards. Which is usually fine by me except it leaves me without a similar partner in crime, and the local males are not at all worth checking out; in the City, the men in clubs make me feel vaguely soiled. In Melbourne, we never left each other’s side. I can’t recall being left alone for even ten seconds when I went out with my boys. Even if we were all dancing with different people, we were always within reach. Entire conversations were communicated with a touch, a glance, a tilt of the head. In a night we wrote a novel’s worth of dialogue with our body language.

(And most importantly, it was all about us! The night, the dancing, the jokes, everything was about us! We were too busy having our own fun to stand around watching other people have their fun!)

But here I am in the City leaning against the table sipping at my extra-strong drink and wishing I got drunk more easily. I’m bored out of my skull, tormented with a godawful track put on by some DJ who was grievously deluded in thinking he could spin, deprived of amusing chatter and even a companionable silence – hell, even companions, since more than half of them are prowling the club sniffing desperately for short skirts. What, you really think I enjoy that sort of thing? I’d have more fun at home getting drunk alone, which is essentially what I’m doing.

Back to that electronic cacophony of yowling cats they call music – why? Just… why? I listen to anything. I find pleasure in the raw super-rhythm of breakbeat hardcore. I don’t actually disdain remixed R&B as much as my elitist pretensions insist I do. But who the hell went to such pains to drag out the worst DJs from the cesspool of music fail, put them in the best clubs in the City and told them to play?

You just can’t dance to music like that. You can’t close your eyes and lose yourself in it – in another country I have walked into clubs stone sober and danced til dawn without touching a drop of alcohol. You just have to stand there and endure, as I do: no baby, good dancing will not be happening tonight. Most of the people whose company I enjoy don’t dance. A few who do favor grinding on me, for crying out loud, I’m not single anymore. I can’t walk out onto the floor and pick any partner as I used to do. Quite likely, my every move would be followed by accusing eyes, the owners of which just whisked Sexybum away to gawk at various other girls and their assets.

Which part of the above sounds good to you? How much fun do you think I’m having? What-

-what? Oh, I’m sorry, I just got carried away for a moment there. No, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to the club tonight, but thanks for asking. I’m just feeling a little tired.