I went out last night. Some friend of a friend knew a promoter that offered free vodka all night and free entry to a club that typically has a $40 cover and where the cheapest bottle is $300. I spent $4 for my coat check.
Anyway, the place was pretty slow when we first got there, but we had a table and just relaxed and talked like girls for an hour so. Others started trickling in around 11:30 and I took a look around the place.
To the friend of a friend next to me, I marveled how clubs before 1 a.m. are remarkably like middle school dances, complete with awkward judging up the competition and gender segregation. Boys stand in their little circles looking awkward and uncomfortable and warm in their shirts and sweaters. And girls sit in their little table clusters and drink mixed drinks and just soak up each others prettiness.
I don’t really know where I am going with this. Obviously, around the witching hour, everyone is sufficiently boozed enough to dance with other smelly strangers and everyone ends up on the sweltering, deafening dance floor with the scantily clad, stilt-wearing go-go dancers (no, I’m not kidding).
I enjoyed myself immensely, but I had a built-in dance partner in my friend. I’m a Dane Cook cliche; I love dancing with my girlfriends. Random creepers offered us shots (read: cheapest drink at the bar and the fastest way to get a random girl drunk), which we kindly turned down and insisted that we were only interested in each other.
Other girls, however, were less inclined to turn down free alcohol from wealthy greasers. By about 2 or 3, the place was paired off and the only guys not dancing or sloppily making out with girls were Indian randoms who looked incredibly awkward (not racist, just an observation).
Anyway, I was way too sober for any of that. I’m sure that, had any of the impromptu couples released the suction between their slobbery mouths long enough to look at me, they would have seen a face wrinkled up in disgust. I’m just much too old fashioned for such practices.
I don’t really drink. I don’t talk to strangers, let alone make out with them. I like to be in bed at 11 p.m. The only reason I ended up there was to be with a close friend and to dance my little heart out.
But why in God’s name do people of my generation insist on going to bars and clubs to meet people of the opposite gender? Do you really think that because some guy is choking you with his tongue that he wants to be with you? I mean, realistically (which may be too far-fetched), what relationships really blossom from clubs??
I wouldn’t want to be with some guy that I met at the club. The music is so loud, that conversation is out of the question and the only thing I could be sure I had in common with the schlup was our choice of late night hangouts.
I want to be with someone I met in a class or at the library or at some philanthropy event. Someone I have things in common with, someone who doesn’t have to compete with the music or who is willing to drop hundreds of dollars in a night in the hopes of sealing the deal with some STD-ridden stranger. I want someone with substance.
I digress… but I guess I realize that clubs are not the place to look.
