Tasmanian nightclubs may be strange, dark and mysterious with odd pick up junctures, incredibly strange dress codes and bouncers that would chase your bitch ass all the way over Salamanca square but you have to respect their commitment to playing Dave Dobbyn all night long. Melbourne nightclubs may have their pumping house music, pretentious velvet rope areas for AFL footballers and the far greater sense of danger from gangsters, but only Tasmania won't let you into a nightclub because of something vaguely AFL related on your T-shirt. Actually, this is probably a little flippant, but Syrup, Isobar etc just aren't exactly the most hip and happening places for someone my age anymore. In fact, the last time I was in Isobar, after I somehow got through the security and the boom gates, I had an acid style flashback that made my head spin, my heart pound and the attractive brunette standing next to me stop chatting me up to take a quick break to spew in the pot plant. Wait, that wasn't my fault, I hope - I thought I was being quite charming, with the accent and all. Anyway, let me pause awkwardly to put on a Lykke Li track on, and I'll continue.
Yes, I had an acid flashback, and there I was, in Isobar, but somehow, mentally back in my school disco, with the cliques, the Bangles playing at the end of the night, the sense of incredible awkwardness I felt standing around girls much hotter than me - the bouncers turned into teachers, there were people offering to sell drugs at ridiculously overmarked prices that were just going to turn out to be either Tic Tacs, laxatives or pieces of chalk. The girl being sick in the pot plant was just an older version of the girl in the corner at the school disco that had just eaten a piece of chalk she thought was an E and had convinced herself she was tripping so much she ended up ill and sick in her handbag. Just when my confusion was at it's highest, when everything seemed to be leading up to me turning up to school on Monday ready to gossip about everyone and what they did, over the PA system came Kate Bush and Utah Saints with something good, and I really felt about 12 years old. Was what I was wearing cool enough? Why did I feel so terrible? How much can one girl possibly vomit? Everything is spinning...
School disco, there I am, sitting in the corner, never been kissed, completely and utterly awkward, no real friends, a slight, desperate hope of being kissed. Expensive clothes on that look way too good for me, maybe one or two friends talking me through the night, messing with me, trying to pretend that I have a chance with a hot girl. Fancy someone else, someone unlikely, but someone awkwardly hot, not quite conventionally beautiful, possibly a little chunky, is it wrong to say chunky, she has hot thighs, can I say that, not sure how to approach it. Wondering why there's bucket seats at a school disco. Girl is selling bits of chalk in a bag, claims they are her fathers stash. Have to turn her down. Start conversation about Italia 90 with the boys, but we're all incredibly awkward. Girls are dancing around in circles. I'm talking about how lame they look, how dancing is lame, maybe feeling like taking a chance on buying the pieces of chalk just in case they might be drugs. Sitting looking sharp in my British Knights shoes, now talking about something else, some band that I read about, hope they are cool. Someone says they are lame, teacher is hovering around the girl selling the chalk, trying to warn her subtly, not sure what's going to happen if she gets caught, hope she's got a back story. Sure the DJ looks familiar, didn't I see him last week? Or was it that time I got tricked into going to the nightclub in bike shorts? That wasn't a funny joke...
Girls are dancing together - room is spinning with awkward hormonal claminess. Room is dark, really dark, not sure why, Prodigy is playing, someone is talking to me about sampled music, someone is saying it's the future. Too tired and awkward to listen, not even sure who's talking - man, woman, teacher? Girl, boy? Not sure, shouldn't have had cider shot in the car, wondering what I was thinking. Person has stopped talking, girls on the dance floor have requested Lambada. Being chatted up by girl who looks like boy, she says everything in a flemmy voice, tells me her friend likes her. Hope friend is better looking than her, then chastise myself for thinking that, for that is really mean. DJ is playing trancey remix of Tainted Love, getting nothing. He's taking himself seriously. Lambada comes on, the forbidden dance. Everyone groans, isn't that so last year? Two girls in the middle of the dance floor and doing the Lambada with each other. Everything stops, American girl on the hay bale across the floor is tripping. Girls doing the Lambada seem to kiss, everything stops, whole school is stunned, talking silently, whispering. No sense that the girls are just being outrageous or mucking around, no, this is serious, it must be talked about, in the schoolyard, or is it work tomorrow? Work, what work? Where am I...stop poking me...
Come to, while later, standing on my own, younger people are milling, talking on Iphones. School disco, it's like Isobar. Yep, just like Isobar, right down to the Lambada being on...I'd get a new pot plant if I was you though...I don't think you can write it off as "nutrients"...
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