turning 18 in australia opens quite a few doors. you're an adult. you can vote. you can get your probationary licence. you can enter strike bowling after 9pm.
you can also legally drink and go clubbing and, with a wave of the magical key that is my id, that is what i did a couple of nights ago.
before i turned 18, i was excited by the prospect of clubbing merely because all it required was to have a good time - criteria that i was okay with working for. as my friends turned 18 before me, i saw glimpses of the night life in fleeting snapchats and drunk facebook statuses. i couldn't wait to join them and finally experience all the hype.
to me, it just seemed like a party but instead of buying a present, you paid an entry fee. and i liked parties. that is, until i actually went clubbing and i remembered what happened at every party: i liked getting the invite, i liked the anticipation, i liked getting ready. and then, when i was actually at the party, i always wanted to go home. and clubbing was no different.
wait, no. it's definitely worse.
because at parties there's a sense of familiarity and belonging - the host invited you and you probably had a few friends there. but anyone with $20 and an id with a close enough looking face and a birth date before 1998 can get into a club.
let's do a run-through of the night. i went out with my friends after our valedictory. the night already started off a little suspicious when we were waiting for our uber at the petrol station near the reception centre and a man tried to pick us up because he thought we were prostitutes but luckily when he asked how old we were and we promptly replied too young for him, he nodded and drove off, yelling back at us that he actually had a wife anyways.
on the whole, our friends and i were a bit on the shy side so we knew that we would have to be a little wasted to have a good time. however, time and location constraints meant we had to dash into a beer, skull a jug of gross beer that did absolutely nothing to our blood alcohol levels, before heading off to the club.
once we got there, we had to wait in a line with the rest of the nobodies, watching the 'vips' kiss the bouncers on the cheek as they welcomed them through the red rope. as we waited, i was cold, tired, and genuinely couldn't be fucked. all i could think about was the cheesy ebook i had on my kindle that i was currently reading and how i would much rather be in bed reading it.
eventually we were let in, and to say that it was jarring going from the quiet night and cool breeze in the line to the throbbing bass and way too packed room in the club is a large understatement. my friends and i mutually decided that we were definitely not drunk enough to enter the mob, so we headed to the bar where we paid way too much money for tequila shots that were watered down anyways so, once again, they did nothing. with a sense of mild defeat, we joined what could loosely be described as a dance-floor but was much rather a glorified version of those trucks that transport cattle or sheep in that it was crowded and claustrophobic and just an overall travesty.
i'm not going to go into detail about the following three or so hours i spent in there but here's the gist: i had enough body contact to last me a lifetime and, even among the masses, i had never felt so exposed.
then there's the 'sexual tension'. what a joke. from talking to my experienced friends, i expected that guys would try to grind on you or grope you or whatever other physical contact they could get on private parts (yours or theirs). i wasn't naive. but, here's the thing. when you're not getting grinded on, you feel horrible about yourself because it means that no one is interested or you're not attractive. then, when you are getting grinded on - which happened - you just want them to get off and fuck off. i constantly felt judged from every angle and i hated it.
i'll say one thing though - the club had really good music. chance the rapper, childish gambino, kendrick, frank ocean. it was all the music i usually listened and danced to in the shower and i think i'm going to save them for just in there. however, i doubt that my first clubbing experience will also be my last. i only just turned 18. but to past dinushka, chill, clubbing really isn't that great.
at least, when you're sober it's not.
