I get to the club. Scan the dancefloor. Vodka and soda,
clean. I do a little dance, talk to a graduate from Oxford, he specialised in
English Literature. He takes a polaroid of us, I take it off him and rip it in
half. Get another vodka and soda. Stand in line at the bathroom. Listen in on a
conversation about housemates not doing the dishes. A neon sign overhead tells
me to drink. I drink. Go outside for a cigarette. Talk to two women about Norse
mythology. One has a tattoo of Thor, from the movies. We go inside, we dance, I
move away, I move to a dark corner, I take a bag from my sock, lick a finger,
dip, rub my gums, back to the dancefloor. I am undercover. I’m an undercover
detective on a journalistic assignment to find out if a person past their thirtieth
birthday can enjoy clubbing.
This club is too young. I leave, get a taxi for two minutes, patted down by a bouncer who is four foot two with arms bigger than my legs. I don’t need to use the cloak room. I’m travelling light. Vodka and soda. If you’re moving you want to drink spirits, what you don’t want to do is be in a position where you’ve had a couple of litres of lager then shaking it up and down like the guy from cocktail. I make this remark to people I suspect are older than thirty, but they do not correct me or offer any sign of recognition of the 1988 film. Another vodka and soda. I finish that and order eight shots of water, which I grip between my fingers like a Cat’s Cradle. Scan the dancefloor. I attempt to walk past a group and allow myself to be knocked into, spilling the shots on the floor. They apologise, they buy me another round of shots, this time white Sambuca. Between us we finish the lot. Take out my Dictaphone.
“Do you {inaudible}?”
“I {inaudible}…and then {inaudible} fucking great, yeah!”
“{inaudible}”
And so the tape goes on. I leave the club. Taxi. Edge of town. I had heard there’s a rave here. Walk through streets lined with terrace houses, red brick. A group of students are walking home, one carrying a pizza. I ask for a slice and get laughed at. I reach the edge of the block, high fence made of metal slats. Drag over a bin, use it to double jump overhead, down a slope and onto gravel. A tram line runs through here, they’ve all gone to sleep for the night.
An hour later I have found the rave. Me and three men are sitting around a Bluetooth speaker. They take it in turns to smoke crack. I take out my Dictaphone again.
“Do you guys like to party?” I ask. They laugh. On the tape later you can hear a lone engine approach then fade away.
“Wherever I am it’s a Halloween party.” one says.
“What are you dressed as?”
“A fucker.” he laughs. They all start laughing and calling themselves fuckers.
“Gimme a hit off that.” I say, grabbing the crack pipe and taking a hit, holding the chemical smoke in my mouth before coughing it back out. They all laugh at me.
“You didn’t even inhale.” says one. My mouth is numb. All of a sudden the nausea hits me, my stomach filled with vodka and soda empties.
Later. Dawn. I am waiting for a bus by a man sleeping on the floor surrounded by broken glass. I catch my reflection in the mirror, slack jawed, hair stuck to my head with sweat. An advertisement across the road makes me jump. It hadn’t moved or anything, just leapt into my consciousness so suddenly it made my heart race. It was an advertisement for a new iPhone. The way phones had been advertised for the last decade was with a ribbon of some kind of goo. There wasn’t anything else about the product that was interesting. It had remained the same for fifteen years. All of culture had remained the same for fifteen years. A bus drives past. I search my pockets and find a bottle of Poppers. I take a sip and go back to looking at the phone advertisement.
I become aware again sometime later. My memory was missing. I’d blacked out and now found myself in Preston, surrounded by day time shoppers. My reflection in shop windows is more bedraggled and upsetting than before. There is no money left. I ask people for 20p at a time to get the train home, but nobody looks at me, let alone answer me. There are a couple of homeless people laid in sleeping bags by Greggs. They beckon me over and ask me where I’m from. I convince them that we should go clubbing.
That evening, we’ve been refused entry to every nightclub in Preston. I blame my acquaintances. I criticise their outfits, they don’t feel considered. They leave me behind and I walk along the embankment next to the motorway. I do not know what direction I am heading. Sometimes car headlights may catch me walking between the trees. Faded crisp packets, plastic bottles, shitty tissues, it all blows between the thistles and grass by the motorway barrier. I look at a squashed animal on the tarmac, taking another sip from the Poppers. Was this the clubbing experience in 2025? No wonder people didn’t go out any more. I sit on the drought choked grass, watching lorries go by, singing nineties club classics to myself and my words are lost to the wind.
