Dancing Queen

Today, I have had a good, good night.

I've had enough of clubbing. Once in a while, it's fun to dance a bit, for a couple of hours, but I find it hard to hack the whole night in such a stinky, sweaty place stuffed full of students. Three years is enough, and I didn't even experience or enjoy it particulary during those years. Despite that, if I let go and decide that okay, I don't do alcohol and okay, I don't have to do this every week and okay, almost everyone is younger and thinner and more drunk than me then somehow, it becomes a lot easier to have a good night.

Last night was fun, in several respects.

I like music. It's too loud, but I know a lot of the songs and so I can sing along. I like dancing. I really like dancing. And I can go crazy spinning and jumping and skipping and no-one thinks any less of me, because they don't need to know that I'm not drunk. The clarity of mind that comes with being sober is amazing because you have potential to act however you like whilst being fully aware of what you're doing, but the fact that everyone else is suitably inebriated to do the things you'd quite happily do without inhibition anyway, means that you don't look like too much of a fool or a weirdo.

I like watching and meeting people. It's easy to almost invisibly observe the amusing behaviour or casually participate in interesting exchanges with people you wouldn't so much as smile at if you saw them anywhere else. But you don't have to be best friends, or even flirtation potential, you can still have a common link in conversation. A sort of suspended reality in which any interaction is possible. It kind of makes me a bit sad that we have to have alcohol to be able to talk to people we don't know. How else do you just strike up a conversation with someone without thinking that there's an ulterior motive? What kind of world do we live in?

Anyway, when I get tired and hot from dancing a lot, I sit or stand and I watch for a bit and sooner or later someone will come up to me. And they will give a glance or a gesture, or they will try to sing in my face, or grab me around the neck or the waist and get me to join in. And there are some you can immediately shrug off and they'll stumble away without a second thought. But some might actually try and chat, which is hard in a place where you can't even hear yourself think and the sound is so loud it moves in your body. But they try and they make an effort to actually find out what you're like, rather deciding that what you look like or the fact that you're female is good enough for what they want.

So, you figure that the place is full of people younger and thinner and more drunk than you. But a few aren't. And maybe you have an air of maturity, or the focused eyes and unswaying stance of sobriety but somehow it's the person who also doesn't drink who catches your eye, or the post-grad who is here on a one-off social that happens to be drawn to you. And so you talk, or you get a drink, or you dance, and it's fine and comfortable and no expectations are held and somehow, in this dire dismal heaving hovel, you've found some sort of enjoyment that you couldn't have previously conceived.

The fact remains: I don't really like clubbing. But if you make the effort to make it a good night, accept that it's going to be loud, and lads are going to push their luck and girls are going to act inconsiderately and it's going to be rammed and there's going to be people having sex in the corner of the club because some people have no shame, then you accept that it's not going to be the most fun you've ever had, and you go in knowing all that, you might just find that it can be more fun that you expect.

I'm so tired and it feels like I haven't slept at all, which isn't far from the truth. I ache all over and I can't wait for bedtime. I had a good, good night, though.

Oh, to be a student.

On the jukebox: Black Eyed Peas ~ I Gotta Feeling