clubbing during my jesus year

a spiritual experience

if you want to hear me read this newsletter I, insanely, have provided that for you above <3

My best friend had her bachelorette party in Austin last week and I had what I believe to be a spiritual experience while listening to Mr. Brightside, alone, in the middle of an establishment described as “a dance club for ppl who hate dance clubs.”

In my life, I’ve encountered several emotionally significant moments soundtracked to Mr. Brightside; I’m thinking of the time I attempted to somehow grind with my ex-boyfriend during The Killers set at Lollapalooza in 2009, and also the time that, as a senior in college, I returned to the freshman dorm I oft partied at three years earlier and sat on the floor of the lobby, listening to an eighteen-year-old with an acoustic guitar sing, Jealousy, turning saints into the sea. (I cried).

The song always just comes on at the exact right time, exactly when I need it, which weirdly, I’ve learned, is always.

But before my spiritual experience:

I have two martinis (one dirty) and a shot of limoncello at an outdoor restaurant. I share plates with my best friend and five women I barely know. Everyone is incredibly nice and fun, but also, like me, in their thirties. We had walked into our 6pm dinner reservation wearing clothes that should not see the light of day. I’m wearing platform docs, a black mini skirt, and a tank top that sort of suggests the illusion of an exposed bra. It’s a look that would have benefited from the shadow of night, let’s say, but the 9pm alternate reservations we got were widely rejected by the group. One woman has to get home to her baby and two of the others have children, too. We finish dinner and go to a cocktail bar to kill time as the sun sets. Then we head to a gay bar.

I am cozily drunk for the gay bar. I feel like, okay, I’m comfy here. Everyone feels safe and there are no large men in sight. A DJ plays outside and bodies amass in the wide courtyard, between a wooden stage and an outdoor bar. I get a Lone Star tall boy and dance, which for me essentially looks like shifting my weight from foot to foot and swaying my shoulders in almost a rowing motion. I’m not taking up much square footage. I’m sort of just like one of those inflatable tube men outside a car dealership, thrashing from a fixed place. I don’t know the song playing, though everyone around me does (well, only two people in our group of thirty-somethings). I close my eyes and dance along anyway. Then I open them and look at the sky, the green and white Holiday Inn Express sign glowing on the tall building that borders the bar.

I think back to when I lived in this city, age 22-24. From how many different angles I have looked up at that same Holiday Inn Express sign, a pseudo-North Star visible from dance floors across Sixth street. When I danced at that age, I knew the words to everything.

The whole bar screams to a Chappell Roan song. I think about how powerful this moment would be if I knew who Chappell Roan was. I record the experience instead, thinking I can be videographer for my friend. She hops on the stage and dances using her whole body, taking up as much space as possible. She looks so cute in her green, glittery mini dress. We all turn toward her and cheer, reaching our arms to her like she is a star. She is.

The DJ plays a dance remix of Cranes in the Sky by Solange and I’m like finally, appropriate club music. I sing along, but fewer voices sing with me. It is so humid that my straightened hair has puffed out and begun to look like a dead animal on my head. I twist it up in a clip and I know it looks bad. A Muna song plays next and the two people in the group who know things start singing. I am back to swaying with my mouth closed, trying to blend in.

It isn’t until we head to the dance club for ppl who hate dance clubs that I start to actually look at the other patrons. Sometimes I don’t look at other human beings who pass me as a strange sign of respect, like, “I’m so chill about you existing here alongside me that I’m going to not acknowledge you whatsoever, so you can comfortably live your life without fear of my judgment.” But the person who takes our $5 cover and stamps our hands at the front door wears both a beard and pink nail polish (this is my type), so I decide it is in my best interest to live a little and observe.

This club has both an indoor and an outdoor area. The indoor area is foggy and hot, lit by a multicolor disco ball. TVs playing 80s movies line the walls. We grab another round and I do a photoshoot with my Lone Star. I know I look bad but I hope, somehow, the picture looks good. We shuffle to the dance floor when we hear the beginning of Icona Pop’s I Love It. I bop around and sing, feeling self-conscious of my age while holding space for how irresistible this song is when you’ve had six drinks. A group of young girls around me wear cropped shirts and pants with cargo pockets. They are all in Adidas sneakers. My friends wear low heels and dresses. Is this not what girls wear out anymore? My skirt is short and my shirt is expensive. I feel the shame of appearing as if I have tried too hard. I sing the line You're from the '70s, but I'm a '90s bitch and notice that it doesn’t feel victorious like it did when I sang it in 2012. Now it feels entirely irrelevant, like bragging about being from the stone age to someone from the ice age. I am embarrassed that I used to be proud of my birth year.

We take things to the outdoor dance floor, which is less crowded but equally hot. I sing to Baby by Justin Bieber. I even know the words to Ludacris’s part and I wonder if that makes me look old or young. I want to stop measuring every action of mine along this scale. One of the married girls from our party is talking to a guy. She’s not being inappropriate; I get that she just wants to know that she’s still got it. I am happy for her, but I’m now thinking about how no man has attempted to talk to me. That’s fine, I tell myself. I’m fine! I look at her talking to this man and wonder if she is prettier than me. I wonder if it’s obvious that she’s prettier than me, if everyone would objectively agree that she is obviously prettier than me and I am the only one unaware of our aesthetic hierarchy.

I chastise myself for caring so much about looks. I tell myself she probably just drew him in because she actually tried to, she beckoned him, unlike me, who doesn’t need that kind of validation. I’m fine lying to myself to get through the night. My friends keep dancing and I tell them I am going to go to the bathroom. I push through the doors to the inside dance floor and walk halfway to the restroom before coming to a complete halt upon hearing the opening chords of Mr. Brightside.

I worm my way through the crowd of sweating bodies. Clusters of friend groups create small circles, singing and dancing together. I find a gap between them and plant myself there. I close my eyes and tilt my face toward the ceiling. The disco ball spins. Flashes of red and blue and green and yellow tint my eyelids and I almost think I can feel the colors. I remember hearing this song on the radio in middle school. I remember Hot Fuss in my high school best friend’s alarm clock CD player. I remember screaming it with my college friends, I remember blasting it through car speakers on a roadtrip to Las Vegas. I sing Open up my eager eyes but I keep them closed, I don’t want to remember where I am. I want to keep existing in this liminal space between past and present and young and old. I want to live in these moments across my life all at the same time, in this body that transcends age and experience inside the container of this song.

I am aware that I am all alone with my eyes closed, shouting lyrics. I am aware that it is possible that someone is watching me and thinking I look strange. My eyes are not open so I cannot confirm, but I feel confident, then, that no one is looking at me. No one has looked at me the whole night. No one has cared what I am wearing, no one has cared what I am dancing to. No one has cared about me at all. I have aged out of being cared about at the club. And it feels, suddenly, clear to me that invisibility might be a super power. No one cares about me. I can do anything. I clasp my hands together and hold them in front of my heart. The disco ball lights flicker like confetti behind my closed eyes. I sing I never, I never, I never.

The song ends and I go back to the outdoor dance floor to find my friends. I say, “They’re playing better music inside,” and we all go back in. The DJ transitions a song I don’t know into Hotline Bling. People younger than us start booing. I grab my best friend’s hand and we sing every word.

---

hi to those of you who are new to me and my work! each week, i’m going to share one of my previously published short stories (until i run out) and enthusiastically invite you to give it a read.

this week’s short story is called Okay I Believe You, originally published by Rejection Letters in November 2022. it’s about a woman struggling to accept sexual misconduct accusations made against her favorite emo musician. i had to write so many versions of this to get it right. check it out here <3

---

Absolutely no one is keeping tabs on my publishing schedule except me BUT my perfectionism wants to let you know that I am skipping next Monday’s post and will be back to my regularly scheduled programming afterward! Thank you for reading and commenting, this has been a lot of fun :)