We were drunk as fuck. Five quadruple vodkas-and-orange in different pubs around central Nottingham were as cheap a way to jump-start a Friday-night as we could find.
Don't get us wrong, we had class, we were just too poor to express it in our drinking habits. We were young then and always in a hurry - we drank as a
means, rather than as an end in itself - a means of losing the part of ourselves that stopped us from taking risks; a means of eluding our self-consciousness, of drowning it out under a layer of cheap supermarket booze and a couple of ice-cubes. A means of becoming something both more and less than ourselves for one night a week.
And meeting women of course. Let's not get too poetic here. We drank mainly as a means to a leg-over.
The club we usually went was The Cookie Club - a couple of large rooms spanning the second and third floors of a back-street building just off the Council-House Square in the city-centre. Inside it was painted a utilitarian black with day-glow scrawls and garish insignia crawling every surface. A small bar outlined in twinkling rope-lights on the right, and a square dance floor wreathed in old cigarette smoke and sweat beyond. Upstairs a chill-out zone with a fag-machine and scattered chairs - warped wooden windows thrown open to let in the cool night air.
It was about eleven, the pubs had closed their doors and we were swaying on the stairs, queuing, laughing - jittery on our toes - expectant. Awash with stupidity and hope and wearing slack-jawed grins. Clumsy cigarettes in our hands and smoke dribbling from our nostrils; our ash feathered the heavy breath-filled air. The music from above throbbed in the cool metal of the hand-rail as we climbed the steps one by one.
It was Eighties night of course - even though Nineteen-Ninety had already come and gone. It was still too early in the decade for it to have aquired a musical flavour all of its own, and even though we were barely into our twenties, already we were nostalgic for the past. Maybe the familliar music made us feel somehow older, somehow wiser, more accomplished - the Eighties were something we'd done; somewhere we'd been; worn the tee-shirts for. And if nothing else, at least we knew how to dance Eighties-style - Adolescence had taught us that much.
We dumped our coats and lost eachother in the murk. Pubs were social but clubs were more of a singular pursuit. The music was always too loud to hear anyone below a scream anyway. I propped myself up against a pillar plastered in a sweating paisley patterns and watched girls dance. Waiting for a song that would pull me away from myself and onto the floor and into the many legged, many armed embrace of pissed humanity.
"We were so. in. phase.
In our dance. hall. days.
We were cool. on. craze.
When I, you, and everyone we knew
Could believe, do, and share in what was true -
An' ah said..."There are some songs I still can't help liking. Even now - no matter how cheesey they may seem to my middle-aged ears - these songs tug at me and send me grinning back to the days when I could dance without inhibition, confident that the eyes watching me were indulgent. And then I pity the poor modern youth , so young and yet forced to pretend to be so old. Then I grimmace and smile and catch myself, and remember it was the same for us.
The gloom of the bar was ripped away in the blaze of strobes and ultra-violet arc-lights revolving overhead. The heat from the spotlights seared over my back as they passed. People's eyes glowed in the dry-ice and their teeth burned white-hot between their lips. Too soon the song ends and we who were so in phase one moment suddenly falter and break apart, drifting. Someone though, stays close and touches me fleetingly on the shoulder; feather fingers barely grazing my skin.
"Take your baby by the hair
And pull her close and there there there"Her fingers flip the hair away from my face and I glimpse her face too - mottled and striped by the pinwheeling lights as we stand balanced on the very brink of the dancefloor - buffeted by shoulders on all sides as the music and the dancers change once more. She is pretty. And that is enough. She leads me upstairs.
"Take your baby by the ears
And play upon her darkest fears"Whatever it is we do in the darkness of clubs it is not real communication. Whatever it is that bridges the gap between two pairs of whetted lips in the haze it is not words. While tongues twist and vocal chords twang in throats made hoarse by smoke and shouting the real conversation is being carried out by hesitant fingers, dragged back again and again from out of the darkness to touch briefly a cheek, a shoulder at the least excuse - just to make contact. In situations like these, we never trust our eyes. They've been fooled too many times, so we lower our lids and reach out. In situations like these, we never trust our ears. They've heard too many lies, so we let the words wash over us and reach out. In situations like these, only touch is real so we reach out and hope to feel love, however fleeting, however brief, beneath our fingertips.
"And you need her and she needs you
And you need her and she needs you"
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