Words: -57 (total 4,370)
The first time the strobe lights go off, I watch my friends dancing and think: oh, it’s like the light in Italy.
“So are you doing anything fun today?” my dad asks over the phone. He called to see how moving was going, and I’d explained that I was actually in Vancouver, having started the day at 6am to reach the city for a haircut appointment by 10.
“Yeah, I’m going to a party! Or, well… clubbing?” I pause, hearing how dubious my own voice sounds. “It’s this thing that starts early, so Lili and Nicole can be home in time for their kids. It’s mainly older people, they said, and our group is all girls, so it’s sort of like clubbing with training wheels. I thought it might be good to go. See if I actually want to do any partying in business school.”
“Makes sense to me. Have fun, sweetie!”
When we walk in, the music is so loud that I can feel it in my sternum.
“I used to go here when I was in uni,” Maria yells into my ear. “This is exactly what it would be like, but we’d all be drunk.”
Maria knows this is my first time clubbing, and that I have an anthropological sort of curiosity about the whole thing. I’ll also poll all the girls later, when we step outside at 8pm and collectively decide we’ve had enough and would rather go to Starbucks. How is it the same? How is it different? (The verdict: same same, but there’d be guys dancing on you that you didn’t want and your feet would hurt from your heels. I decide, in that moment, that I’m perfectly fine with having skipped this in college.)
We edge our way onto the dance floor, and I’m relieved to see that the “dancing” is the same as it was at dances in high school. I know how to do this; it isn’t foreign. I sway my hips to the beat and look around, openly curious. There’s a few other groups of friends in their thirties, but mostly the crowd skews towards their forties and fifties. A woman walks by wearing a “Just Divorced” sash.
Then the strobes turn on, and I realize that all those party-montages from movies weren’t utilizing visual hyperbole, when everything flickered in and out. That’s what it really looks like.
I’ve discovered this over and over again throughout life. The light in Italian landscape paintings? The light in Tuscany actually does that. The clouds in Ghibli movies? The clouds in Japan actually look like that. The moment in movies when people “fall asleep” and we can see their eyelids closing, as they struggle to stay awake? Get tired enough, I’ve found, and you can actually be conscious of the darkness of your lids narrowing your field of vision.
Clubbing at 31: Nutrition Label
10% transcendent experience. Jumping, hands in the air, forgetting that any time or place exists other than here and now.
10% singing at the top of my lungs, completely unable to hear myself. (When we finally step outside, my ears feel like they’re underwater, and Lili announces that she’s going to buy everyone Loop earplugs for Christmas this year.)
20% wishing balls were still a thing, thinking that maybe I was born in the wrong era, and then reminding myself that having rights as a woman is nice, so it’s best to just bounce in my two square feet of space and not think about how waltzing would be better.
10% thinking I’m much too sober for this, but that it actually makes sense why people would opt to be drunk or high in this environment, so that’s a cultural mystery solved.
50% “Alright, this is fine.”
I get home at 11:30pm, sit down and stare at my laptop. I thought I’d have time in the afternoon to write at a coffee shop, but ended up having errands I needed to run instead, so my day consisted of driving-haircut-errands-dancing-driving. But no part of me wants to give up on writing tonight, so here I am.
I read the words I wrote yesterday, and tighten a few sentences that are easy fixes. Flag a section of a character’s interior thoughts that are good for me to know, but that the reader probably doesn’t need to. Change how the last scene ended, since I realize it doesn’t set me up for the next beat the way I need it to.
Start the next scene, which switches into the male main character’s POV for the first time. Write maybe ten sentences. Stop. Scroll back up in the document. Think. Delete. Rewrite. Think again. Scribble in my notebook. Reread. Delete. Write again. Put my head on my arms for just a moment. I’m so tired. Read the new words. Don’t like them either. Look at the time. 1:30am.
I tell myself I just need ten minutes. Just ten minutes to close my eyes, and then I’ll be fine. I set an alarm, all good intentions…
And wake up at 8am the next morning, sunlight streaming through the windows. I’m still in my crop top and jeans from the night before, lying at a strange angle on the bottom of my mattress.
My first thought: oh shit. Writing.
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