Night Clubbed

Nite club's don't work for me, but judging from the crowds of people inside them and sometimes outside them they work for many people. They work for the gaggles of girls that go with the intent of dancing for the fun of it, they work for the cocky men with the shinny tight T-shirts and gelled hair and they even seem to work for the has beens and barflies lacking in youth but still wishing to relive it. That they work for these types of people is not as interesting as why do they appear to fail for me.

I have almost always ended up at night clubs after a evening of friendly drinking at a friends house where some one would want to go some where and do something. I would have been content to remain at the time and place where the party had started but was not one to want to be left behind. So we head out.

At first the noise and flashy lights and other shiny things are exciting. Then It dawns on me what ever conversations were underway on trip over are now dead and any exchange of information requires yelling. The novelty wears off after the first half hour that leaves me stuck watching.

What I see is the same every where, a square room with bars encircling a loosely fenced off dance floor in the center, extra floors are optional. To the side of the dance floor is a booth filled with the dumbest cockiest man they could find and a computer with some other hardwares, this creature is the DJ. His job is to maintain a steady supply of noise. There are several species seen on the dance floor and a few seen off of it.

The first creatures to appear on the floor are often the girls that claim they are only there to dance. They will appear in groups of three to five and will instantly find the oversized speakers and start dancing on top of them. Following the dancing girls and with a few more drinks in there collective system is the rest of the ecology in no particular order. The girls who come there with the intent of leaving with some one they did not arrive with, who I can not clearly separate from those who are there to dance . The cocky men with the gelled hair and shinny shirts start to drift onto the floor around the same time. This species confounds me, firstly they appear to be able to dance, secondly they are able to communicate in a 120 decibel plus room and the most perplexing thing of all is the cockiness. I am just unable to figure out how they express their attitude through a twinkle in the eye and smile.

Some what later the drunk male friends of the girls that came to dance stagger on to the floor. Fooled by beer and tequila they have come to think two false and dangerous things. Firstly that in fact believe they can dance and secondly that they have a chance with any one of their gender of choice out on the floor.
On a few occasions I have been drunk enough be in this group but that has been rare, largely based on the fact that the amount of booze required for me to reach that point is only slightly less then the amount required to make me stop talking which is half a drink away from the point I fall flat on my face. Which brings me to the last group of people collectively they are wallflowers, those who do not venture out onto the dance floor. Most often wall flowers are there willingly, to watch or perhaps to relive youth.

So I have covered the nature of the people now for the nature of the place. The lay out described above is only the start and the DJ is only the start of the problems. Now I have to figure out why they fail on me. It is not the women, like other men I have no objections to young women in small amounts of tight clothing, this is clearly a night clubs virtu. And booze is not at fault either as I can enjoy a cold beer just like every one else. No the reason why night clubs fail for me is my brain.

Combine 120 decibel music with giant screens projecting random geometries in time with the music and you flip a switch in my skull. The music which is very clean computer generated or edited by passes my body, leaving me with no desire to dance, rather then my heart matching the speed of the bass drum, every thing goes strait to my brain. I will fined my self trying to deconstruct the tune, a near impossible task with my negative musical talent. Or I catch one lyric and it chain reacts with junk lying around in my head, and before you know it I have the start of this essay.

Though I am writing this at work miles from any night life it owes its roots to my visit to Penticton. Where I sat on a stool at the edge of a dance floor trying to compose an essay structure that would mirror the time of bass and treble in the music while trying to figure out if the image on the over head screen was in fact a Klein Bottle. The total volume of the place is part of the cause of my failure to get it, its so loud that conversation is impossible reducing communication to a base level of body language and grunts. Unable to communicate I fine my self trapped one the inside of my own head, where I am quickly distracted by flashing lights and shinny things.