Monday, January 17, 2011

Clubbing

So it's past midnight, and we are headed to a club called The Hotel. I have never heard of it...should I? I can't believe there is even something open at this hour. There are eight of us in two cars. We drive down the street in downtown Salt Lake and there is what looks to me like a mob outside of an old brick building. It's past midnight, and there are more people standing outside in the freezing cold than what usually stand in the whole of Salt Lake during the day. Who knew there were this many people that even knew that Salt Lake City existed?


We park across the street in some illegal spot and I hope that I don't find a ticket when I come out. We are not really looking club worthy- my car. We are moms, and we look like it. I mean, nothing as bad as mom jeans, but there's no cleavage going on here. We are tired. We are doing this for a friend's birthday wish. So, we exit the car and I know that we are in trouble. Truly, I think that I have been to two clubs in my life. One was The Palace, a dance club in Provo, where I could not have been more than 16, which means that they weren't serving anything harder than Mountain Dew. And the other was The Bay, in Salt Lake, where I didn't partake of anything sinful, even though it may have been there for the taking.


So, we go up to the door of this building, where two of our friends are outside, and one of my friends is practically having a panic attack. She looks like the person who is about to get gobbled up by the lions in the Colosseum. She tells me that this is the best idea, cause for sure they are dressed right. I look over to see some girls whose boobs are practically on the outside of their shirts. Shirts is a loose term for what they were wearing, cause really it was more like shreds of fabric hanging on the top of her body so that only the nipples were not exposed. Yes, we were definitely leaving more to the imagination. I even went as far as to wear Gavin's North face quilted ski jacket because it was so flippin cold. I didn't know what to do with it, cause I didn't have a bag, and there was no way I was putting it around my waist, so I just kind of wadded it up in a ball and tried to hide it next to my leg so it looked a little less lame.


So, we moved to where we showed the bouncer our ID. I don't know why we even bothered, but for about two seconds we felt kind of young and hip. Young and hip until we had to pay to enter, because only hot girls get comped and don't have to pay a cover charge. I think they may have charged us double, because we were probably about to scare away half their patrons. We entered a darkish lounge and proceeded back to a dance floor, where the music was deafeningly loud and there were a ton of people. Everyone seemed to be headed somewhere. We just stood there, looking like fat carp who had just been thrown on to land, trying to breathe air with our mom gills. The bar was to our right, and we ordered a drink. This would be like the walking staff for the crippled. With drink in hand, we looked at least semi normal in this den of iniquity. We needed to find our other friends and fast. Our birthday girl needed to see that we had come out to support her, and we were willing to endure this hell for her.

Why was everyone in this club so flippin tall? I seriously felt like an Oompa Loompa compared to most of the young, thin club goers. And oh my gosh, why did I ever make eye contact with ANYONE? Cause they would look at you like, "What is some one's mom doing here? And I feel bad for whoever is the kid of that lady, cause they are gonna be busted!" Someone even asked one of my friends if she was the mother of another friend...oh the pain. So, we go from one dance floor to another, and this next one is even more terrifying. The entire population of Salt Lake's black youth seems to be in this room. And that is great. Just that I am OLD and white and I look like an idiot trying to dance to this music. So I don't. We finally find our other friends and sit on a couch to watch the fun unfold on the dance floor.


There is some seriously energetic simulated sex going on on the dance floor. I am impressed...taking notes...like I didn't even know these positions were doable. Girl on girl on guy on girl...gyrating and bumping and grinding. I don't know how these guys are dancing with their hard-ons, let alone walking. The girls are all really done up. Some to the point where I am wondering if they are trannies. They dance well, and it's fun to watch. Then we realize that we are sitting in the VIP reserved section, which we are not worthy of, so we move. We move upstairs to the gay room, which we were unaware of. It may not have officially been the gay room. It was the hookah room where you could pay to smoke some strawberry flavored air while you sat on couches that had stains too dark to be sperm but too light to be poop, so you just hoped it was dry whatever it was...and kind of tried to hover over it.

The hookah looked like trying to smoke humidifier steam, with some icee flavoring thrown in. A friend commented on how germ infested the mouth piece must be. I did notice some wrappers all over the floor, and wondered if they were condoms. If so, they were for cats, because they were tiny. But upon further examination I saw that they were new mouthpieces for the pipe. So, at least if you were going to smoke the pipe, the spit you were swapping would be amongst friends, and not the rest of the transgendered Salt Lake population.

We danced on the dance floor, and oh my gosh we must have been a sight. I guess it was a slow night upstairs because we were the only ones on the floor...that, or we'd driven the crowd away. There was a small group of girls on the couches surrounding the floor, but they were engaged in hookah smoking and/or dry humping. Not sure who was more of a freak show.

After our dancing, it was time to go home...thank goodness.
Outside, we linked arms, to walk through the mob of people who were smoking and loitering outside. We crossed the crosswalk with flag in hand. Girls in tube top-unit-type dresses, were sitting in front of my car, and asked us for a lighter. We shook our heads no and quickly jumped in the car. Once we were in, I think I finally breathed my first deep breath for the entire night. We smelled horrible. My friend had had a drink spilled all over her. The smoke and hookah and sweat was heavy in the air. It was almost 2:00 AM. As we are driving away, my friend says, "Well that's great that Salt Lake has a night life. Good for all of them." Yes, good for them. We drove home.


I felt old and wondered if it had made my friend feel old too. Do I care that I feel old? No. I actually felt relieved that I would NEVER EVER enter that place again in my life. I was pretty happy to be in my 30's. My ball and chain felt like safety and security and peace. I mean, I am sure there are age appropriate clubs that I still would like to find and frequent. I don't want to strap on the Depends and turn on the Lawrence Welk Show just yet. However, the bump and grind and hype and panic that filled the air in that club, was something that I wanted to shower off as soon as I got home. Unfortunately I was too tired. And Garrett was asleep in bed next to Gavin..and he had peed through his diaper. Welcome home Mom.

2 comments:

Danielle Hatch said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Danielle Hatch said...

thanks for sharing this hilarious club going experience! it really brought me back to the lovely clubs of florence that i frequented while studying abroad. loud techno music, 'romantic' italian men and inebriated and therefore extremely willing american females, and who can forget trying to shower out the lovely club smell, ah the culture of it all :)