I still remember my first time. My friend and I had come back from Wigan, a midweek away game following our football club. It was midnight and George decided we were heading out, unknowing to him that I had never been clubbing before.
I froze a little, racking my brains for excuses, “I’m busy tomorrow”, “I don’t have enough money”. I was unsure what to expect and fearful, given the fact I was stone-cold sober.
We rushed to a nearby casino for a few rounds. As we waited in the busy queue, lots of thoughts rushed through my head. What if I want to leave after five minutes? What if the music is terrible? What if I recognise old college faces who I don’t particularly want to mingle with? I was sure that clubbing wasn’t for me. How wrong I was.
During my years at university, I spent more time in clubs than I did in lectures or seminars. I struggled with anxiety for much of my three years, but ironically enough, clubs were the one place I felt comfortable in, where all my self-consciousness and insecurities disappeared with every drink that filtered into my system.
When you are inside a dark room accompanied by flashing lights, large numbers of joyous people and booming music, it doesn’t matter if you are dancing out of sync, or chatting absolute sh*t, you aren’t there to be judged, you are there to let your hair down and have a good time. I would treat it as a few hours of fun that would quieten my mind, a brief escapism when things weren’t going so well in my life.
Nightclubs were the location where I discovered the opposite sex. I was shy and socially awkward at college. I lacked the confidence to speak to girls past tedious small talk.
Receiving female attention opened me up, I started to think f*ck it, if I don’t have confidence in myself then why should anyone else?
It has been nearly nine months since club doors shut all over the country and I am missing it more than ever, not just socially but mentally.
That mixture of nervous excitement as you wait in a queue. Unsure if you are going to get in with the booze slowly wearing off. Paying cash on the door to enter a sweaty, sticky-floored room packed full of strangers. The printed stamp on the palm of your hand that would take days to wash off. Having vodka and coke splashed over your shirt when making your way through an endless cluster of bodies.
A night out is what gets many of us through the week or even the day, that feeling after you have finished work or university, and you know you have earned the right to get p*ssed and blow off some steam. Lying under your duvet watching re-runs of films and series on Netflix until the early hours of the morning doesn’t quite have the same effect especially when you know what is going to happen and you have been doing it for over half a year.
Sadly, a lot of clubs won’t survive the pandemic, but for those that do, it still feels like a very long wait until we can use them as we did before. Carelessness and naivety are luxuries that are now a thing of the past. When face masks and social distancing have been the norm for nearly a year, will people be increasingly cautious about congregating close to others or even intimate contact with strangers? Or will hundreds of thousands just flock to dance floors ready to make up for lost time?
Will I share that same mindset before a night out? That feeling where tonight could be different from all the others? It might be just me, but things are always different at night.
During the day, you can walk around somewhere, and it can be the same old place, but at night there is this feeling of endless possibilities, where anything can happen.
Maybe tonight something amazing might happen? Maybe tonight I might meet the girl of my dreams? It is why I hate missing out because if you don’t go then you will never know.
Some of these memories may seem romanticised. I recall the many great things about going out but not the lows that come with it; the terrible hangovers, the irrational decisions that would never be made sober, the unnecessary booze-fuelled arguments and days filled with paranoia and regret. But perhaps like life itself, the good times sometimes aren’t appreciated enough at the time, but only cherished and reminisced upon when it is all over.