Honeyed Inspiration

Thursday night is a night I use to hold sacred for either dancing to House music cover free or freak it out to Hip Hop spun by my DJ friend. Now that I look back I haven’t done a Thursday night in a really long time. Probably not since James and I went out. Work seems to be getting me all twisted up in stress and I’ve turned into the ultimate adult where I just want to pass out and stop moving when I get home. I feel so old!
My friend Patrick let me know that Trinity was going to be a hot spot that night. He was going to a birthday party and had said that I should swing by to check it out. The invite appealed to me as well as made me a little nervous. I’m terribly routine about the places I go dancing at especially on a weeknight and I hadn’t done any club other than my two favorites since I made them my favorites in the first place. Needless to say I was rather eager to check out something new. I really do love the atmosphere of Trinity and would like to incorporate it into my favorite’s list as well as into my realm of comfort.
The club was still an unknown entity since I’d only been there with friends and weeknight clubbers are always different than the weekend crew. This could even be the same people. The vibe is usually just different. To stay optimistic I was eager to hope that maybe this would be a house crowd that I missing out on.
That whole day I just wasn’t feeling like going out. I was back into my whole routine of being too tired or stubborn to get all ready and head out after ten o’clock. I didn’t know Patrick that well and I was not in the mood to put in a ton of effort to look gorgeous for the sake of continued first impressions. That’s the trouble with meeting people either in the dating frame of mind or just seeking friendship (or in my case a dance partner). They are attracted to you on a purely physical level. They came over and talked to you because you looked hot and (hopefully) danced well. After that I just feel this weird need to keep up that level of impression concerning my appearance. I’ve become a seriously high maintenance person when it comes to my hair and make-up these last couple months. I’ve been tomboyish most of my life, saving all my energy for when I went out on the weekends. Now I’m waking up earlier just to get ready for my job and all this hard work to look good seriously makes me tired to even think about.
After work a friend of mine and I were hanging out, running a bunch of pointless errands. I still had it in my head that I was going to go out that night so I was keeping an eye on the time, yet feeling like I was forcing myself into something I really would rather replace with a good night’s rest. There’s just something really annoying about telling yourself you have to go out in order to keep the motivation level up but deep down you want to jump up and down like a kid and whine, “I don’t wanna!”
I ended up finding the DVD of “Honey” for seriously cheep at Target and just had to watch it. Figuring that I was throwing in the towel again, I planned out an evening of sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn. Good enough to feel like I did something with myself that night, but low key enough that I could just roll over and go to sleep whenever I felt like it.
The entire point of the movie is the dream of being discovered. The main character has extreme talent in dancing and gets discovered because of her moves in a night club. This builds from her being a back up dancer for a Jadakiss video to her becoming a successful choreographer for music videos. How completely awesome is that!?! Anyway there’s a lot more bits to the plot obviously but the point is that sitting through the movie only had me twitching around in my seat and when the credits rolled I was damn well certain I was going out dancing if it killed me.
Changing my clothes and heading out, it was well after eleven-thirty by the time I got into the city. This has to be my all time record for late arrivals. But parking was fine and the city seemed alive that night. It was darn interesting to see so much activity going on in the area on a weeknight. Then again it’s summer time and the college kids are home again looking for any excuse to get out of the house on any night.
Walking through the club I tried to head straight for the House Room for a little piece of mind only to be completely shut down. That room wasn’t to be open that night. The only dancing to be had would be in the smaller Hip Hop Room. I didn’t see Patrick anywhere in the lobby and I was getting a weird vibe from the crowd. Jagermeister was in the house doing promotional give-aways which I had thought would totally lend to the party atmosphere. Quite the opposite, the people around me seemed so low key for being so packed in. Everyone had their group or had surrounded themselves with the people they were going to associate with for the night. There was no feeling of the usual “meet-n-greet” that makes a club atmosphere social in the first place.
Deciding to stand in the Hip Hop Room for a while, the floor was still pretty empty except for several girls that in my terribly opinioned mind weren’t that great. They were having a ball and that’s all that mattered, it just didn’t inspire me to jump in the middle of their group and dance the night away. That left me to hanging by the ramp walkway of the entrance waiting to see if Patrick could be found. Several well dressed black guys walked by me obviously fed up with the scene in that room. One of them was very vocal about the fact that it was “No different than a high school dance.” He must have noticed me smile at his comment because he stopped and stood next to me for a moment. Breaking the silence he asked if the club got more exciting later or if there was better place to go. As it turned out he was really into Breaks and Trance. Having heard about the club’s focus on House music, his friends and he had come down expecting something entirely different than what they were getting.
We talked several moments about other options that I knew about and watched the supposed high school dance continue as more girls went out onto the floor and goofed around with each other. The guy’s friends moved on into the lobby, but the guy stood by for several minutes more. At last a song I thought was pretty cool came on and I headed down the ramp. With an expression of “When in Rome,” directed at the guy I had been talking to, I went out onto the dance floor to make the best of the situation. There was nothing I could do about getting the House Room open, and I was there to dance.
Finding my own little corner as the floor started to pack in, I felt totally off and not really that excited to be dancing. I caught sight of the guy doing a walk through of the dance floor as if inspecting for possibilities that might keep his interest. He gave me this look of surprise after watching me dance for a bit, but quickly moved on. The gentleman was looking for better ways to make the best of his situation.
More than once I thought I spotted my friend Patrick standing at the rail looking over the crowd. I would wave and try to catch his attention but the guy would never look over. This was frustrating me because in the light of the room I couldn’t quite tell if it was Patrick or if I was just waving down some random person that didn’t think I was exciting enough to investigate. This only added to my lack of confidence since I felt rather plainly dressed that night. Ever since my glamorous role as a trophy date, I now felt rather scrubby in just jeans and a tank top.
As last I gave up on the tightly packed room, grabbed for my track jacket and headed back up to the lobby. It was nearly midnight and I had yet to find Patrick. We started texting back and forth, which lead me to leaving the club all together. After several useless tries to call and text I leaned against the building scouting the people who were hanging out. Then as if to only add to my sense of insecurity I watched Patrick leave the club, walk right past me and go around the corner. Even though I was wearing a hat that night, I didn’t think I looked that different. There was even a moment when I considered the idea that he just didn’t want to associate with me since I wasn’t looking up to my normal standards. Promptly calling him, back around the corner he came and apologized for blissfully walking right on by.
Returning to the club I watching him interact with the people around him, and realized that he reminded me a lot of Jimmy. The guy that knows everybody or any least introduces himself around to start knowing everybody. The birthday party that was going on was for someone named Mike who turned out to be a big guy. A bouncer in the club industry, he’d worked different places and Patrick was also claiming his friend to be a talented DJ as well. After that it was a matter of following Patrick as he made his rounds in the club. I was introduced to the dancer that had been apart of the girls that were already hired at the casino when I auditioned. I had seen her again the night I met James, the dancer he had been talking to, and a ton at this particular club. She turned out to be the famous Nadia who is a professional dancer for all sorts of places. Every guy I’m friends with in the clubbing world either knows her or wants to know her. Finally I could put a face with a name and I still didn’t feel better. I’ll always be bitter that I could do just as good a job as the girls that have been lucky enough to get the chance. I really need to get over that. Anyway, I met all sorts of people I forgot and who forgot me the minute I walked away.
The people that were there specifically for Mike’s birthday were an odd sort of crowd. Some gothic, some older, some just the regular sort of clubbing crowd. All types of people from all walks of life, yet they sat together talking like good friends. I mentioned that observation to Patrick as we grabbed an empty table and sat down. I found it really awesome that so many kinds of people could be tight friends. “That’s what real friends are,” he explained. Stealing freebees that had been left on the table behind us by Jager, I was now sporting a peach colored lai and was tucking into my pocket a very cool lanyard that was still too inappropriate to wear to work. We talked for a while, and again I felt out of my element. Patrick is the sort to initially come off as a simple partier, but when he’s engaged in conversation he is the deeply thoughtful slightly philosophical type. He kept asking me all sorts of deep questions that I didn’t have the answers for. “What’s the most beautiful thing you saw today?” Questions like that were a chance to really get a conversation started, yet I had no intelligent answers. The more I sucked at trying to carry on this conversation, the more frustrated I felt. Not only did I feel plain that night, now I was coming off as less than intelligent, which I really HATE!
Some how or another we got to talking about the last book he had read which was preceded by a lecture about keeping one’s brain working since the last thing I read was a trashy romance novel, and has been since I graduated. Going on to explain the finer points of the book, being a biological sort of biography on a scientist that discovered the true inner workings of the human nose. As strange as it sounds it wasn’t until the last fifteen years that scientists began to make headway on how the sense and recognition of smells really works. There was something almost surreal about having this conversation with a guy in a club. But thank god for intelligent conversation. I admit that I’ve become very jaded in my ideas about men, stereotyping them into disaster. Luckily I seemed to be on a streak of meeting guys that were both educated in the same field as I was, and just plain interesting to talk to.
Yet even after all that, Patrick was still had to have his drinks before he could dance. When we finally headed to the dance floor it was totally packed with no room to move. Patrick is the sort to just really cut loose and dance anyway he chose even if that meant bumping into people to do it. I’ve never managed that sort of freedom. I always try to work within the space allotted to me because I know how annoying it is to get bashed into constantly. So Patrick cut loose, which then left me so far behind him. Our styles of dance don’t really mesh. He a great dancer, but not one that I can just walk up to and dance “with”. I can dance next to him just fine. Trying to keep up with the man just left me so completely exhausted.
After bragging to his friends about what a great dancer I was, I felt like I was making a poor showing of it. I was getting tired really fast, and not really working well with him. Now I was up to plain, dumb, and a bad dancer. I was really not having a good night. He could tell I was tired and we headed toward some friends of his near the exit. They were heading toward the club I normally hit up for House music so when the idea was proposed that we head over there for a while I was definitely down.
Around the corner we walked and I met more people that were quickly forgotten. Showing my ID in order to get into the club, I left Patrick behind talking to the guy I’ve seen a million times who always checks the IDs for that particular club. I felt almost stupid that I’d never thought of talking to the guy. Not even once. But then I never see a point. When you start introducing yourself around like that, it’s because you want something. It’s clear as day that you’re looking for a hook-up, a freebee, or some sort of connection to get a favor out of later. I’ve always been against that. Those poor night club workers get bothered every night by drunk ass people that want to feel like rock stars by not paying cover. I just never wanted to be thought of as that kind of person. If I make friends, and they make the offer first, then hell yeah I’m taking them up on it. But I’m not going to walk around demanding stuff.
I could hear the House music as the guy glanced at my ID. For some reason I just got all antsy and was desperate to get inside. Walking through the curtains that separate the lobby entrance from the rest of the club, I looked up to see Hyperfunk on the turntables. How freakin’ lucky could I be? Now I’ve written about this particular DJ before, and the bottom line is the guy totally kicks ass. Off my jacket came and onto the floor I went, busting out with everything in me from the moment I set foot in the right direction.
Not a minute later I had some guy calling out encouragement and the people around me were moving back to give me more room. As I worked out all my stress and straight up depression from how my night was going, it just felt so completely right. Dancing to that music was like coming home. Sometimes dancing to Hip-hop is like a calculated floorshow. The focus is more on rubbing yourself on a guy. I often feel like I’m fighting to keep up or to move my body in a way that I’m “suppose to”. When I walked onto this floor it was like truly diving in and letting the water carry me where ever it would. It wasn’t a matter of moving a certain way; my body just moved that way already. I floated and swayed with the music without any feeling of effort being exerted. That was where I belonged. I had room to move and express myself to music that just really got to the center of me.
I stayed on that floor for quite a while, not really wondering what had become of Patrick. I figured I’d see him wander by or get out on the dance floor sooner or later. I was having too much fun to leave my spot and hunt him down. When he did wander by we ended up going downstairs to sit for a while and I was ready for a break by then.
The basement on Thursday nights features Drum and Bass. The stuff fascinates me and I really like listening to it, but Drum and Bass is just not something I can dance to. Patrick and I grabbed a table and continued to talk while we watched other people make a go of dancing to the music. Finally the conversation took a turn for the better and touched on topics that I could talk about intelligently.
When Patrick was ready to dance again, he wanted a drink first and I suggested that we head back upstairs. I had seen Shannon working and was hopeful to talk to him since I hadn’t been into the club in quite a while. If there was going to be any drink ordering, I was going through Shannon. Disappointment was all I got when I finally got my chance to order my drink. Shannon looked unhappy with life or just me, and made my drink in a hurry. After barking out a total, I felt like I had been dismissed and made sure that Patrick only paid for his own drink. The last few times I had gone to Shannon it had been that way. After being met with that less than thrilled look again, it had me wondering if I had some how upset the man without knowing it. I also had to deal with Patrick’s look of, “Yeah that bartender doesn’t know you.”
Back on the floor I felt better equipped to handle Patrick’s style of dance to this music. He even sent me up to the stage area to dance next to the other girls for a while. Dancing up on a stage or on a platform in front of a packed dance floor is like my own little performance space. I imagine I am the Go-Go dancer I wish I were. Looking down at people who are shouting and whistling at you is an amazing ego boost. It’s also like my own little way of supporting a great DJ. Pump up the crowd and show them how’s done because the music is awesome.
Heading back out the door later, Patrick intended to hit up Trinity again. After checking my watch I realized I was way overdue for heading home. It was after one-thirty in the morning and I needed to work the next day. As we parted ways I felt a lot better about the night. It still blew me away how strongly I had felt about the House music when I had first walked into that club to dance. Besides that I had found stress relief in dancing that night and Patrick and I had managed to converse on the same level. All my original goals had been achieved. I was more than ready to just head home and get some sleep.