CMM
04-02-2010, 02:25 PM
Hi all,
This is something I wrote a little while back, based heavily on a true experience I had during a night out in Melbourne, Australia. Honestly, it's not even finished, but I'd still like some critique from readers.
From what I've gathered lurking this forum, profanity is pretty heavily frowned upon in writing, so I've censored the piece a bit. However, I'm just trying to convey the sense of what it's like going out on the town as a 21-year-old.
All comments and criticisms will be welcomed with open arms!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite the cliché perpetrated by movies, popular culture and music videos, nightclubs are not glamorous. The mood lighting, chic decor and classy name may provide an appealing facade, but the reality is that behind the velvet curtains, diamante-encrusted sign and overpriced drinks lies a den of sin, sticky floors and sleazy demeanours. The toilets perfectly reflect this – if you’re ever at a nightclub early, just as it opens (around 10pm at most establishments), you’ll find pristine toilets, clean and glistening, with freshly mopped floors and paper towels neatly stacked inside their dispensers. Within an hour or two the pristine environment is torn to shreds, ravaged by hordes of drunken louts who cover the floor in urine, allow paper towels to litter the sink area, vomit and break glasses and piss on the walls. I can’t account for the female toilets – I’ve never been.
In the club itself, if you pay attention, you’ll notice chewing gum covering a large majority of surfaces. The floors are constantly sticky. Empty, half-empty, full, spilled glasses of liquor cover any surface resembling a table or bench as the bar staff attempt to keep the mess under control. Lots overindulge. You can usually find at least one or two girls on any given night slumped in a corner, attempting not to vomit on themselves. Those who do succumb to the technicolour yawn are usually worshiping at the porcelain altar or have rushed out to a nearby alleyway or parking lot. Male drunks are usually more volatile, charging around with a sense of ownership and pride – quite a thing when you see two alcohol-inflated egos collide near the bar. I’m not the type to get into fights, and am usually able to talk or weasel my way out of confrontations, even when drunk.
While it sounds like nightclubs are all testosterone and alcohol fuelled warzones, covered in filth and stink, it doesn’t mean they’re not fun. I was merely putting to rest the popular notion of nightclubs being a classy affair, with clean toilets and cleaner patrons. I love clubs, the surging music, cold drinks and atmosphere of fun. I accept the filth as part of the experience. I’ve been to classy establishments. They’re not nightclubs and they sure as hell aren’t ‘mainstream’. Bars, with a plethora of exotic liquors and boutique beers; they usually charge as much as the more popular clubs for a drink, sometimes even less, but any sign of over-the-top behaviour will earn patrons an eviction notice - usually served by a large, well-muscled bouncer.
Of course, I’m just speaking from my experiences in Perth, the most isolated city in the world. And that experience counts for little when you’re standing in the line outside of an ‘exclusive’ club in the heart of Melbourne, Australia’s unofficial capitol. Everything in Melbourne oozes class, from the European-styled alleyways which play host to boutique cafes and shops to the fashion and apparently the nightlife. We were in front of a club call ‘Tramp’. Or ‘Trash’. (‘Treasure’?) I wasn’t sure – it probably wasn’t even the club’s name anyway. Apparently that’s how it is in Melbourne – you don’t go to a club, you go to a night. In Perth it’s almost similar, ‘so and so’ at ‘so and so club’. But in Melbourne apparently it’s just the night, and if you didn’t know where the night was, then you probably shouldn’t be going.
This was our second night in Melbourne – Friday – and we were all keen to sample this infamous nightlife. We'd found a nice bar the previous night, which happened to be directly across the lane from our hotel room. Happy hour went from 5 to 7, but Hugh managed to sweet-talk the bartender (and apparently owner) into giving us happy-hour priced drinks right through until we left, which was about 10. He seemed to manage that easily and often. I guess she didn’t mind, seeing as every trip to the bar would produce no less than 10 gin and tonics and 10 shots of tequila. Hugh’s ‘charm’ probably sent the cash-register noises ringing in her head.
For a Thursday in Melbourne, we were trying to make it as lively as possible, but Thursdays aren’t really the night to ‘go out’ anywhere in the country, even Melbourne apparently. We toured a selection of bars, adding a handful of locals to our entourage with every drinking hole we visited. They were all students, hipsters, no responsibilities and enough money to be able to go out and get pissed on a Thursday for no reason. I mentioned before that bars were usually the cleaner, more refined drinking establishments. That remained true in Melbourne, and it was nice. In every small, boutique drinking hole we waltzed into, we were more often than not the most people there. Maybe a few regulars, but we were welcomed with big smiles, friendly chatter and clean toilets. Then again, it was Thursday, maybe it just wasn’t busy.
Friday had started different, however. Through friends of people who know friends who are associates with people and friends with associates, we had managed to score ourselves a very large bar tab at a strip club only a few minutes’ walk from our hotel. While bars and nightclubs can change from city to city and country to country, strip clubs are universal. The air hangs thick with sleaze – you feel dirty just for being there. A girl just walked past wearing nothing but a g-string that looks as if it’s a few sizes too small for her. I try not to stare, but realise I’m the only guy in the whole club who isn’t. It’s not rude.
The main attraction for me wasn’t so much the naked bodies and suggestive winks, but the carte blanche we had at the bar. The people we were hanging around were very close friends with the owner and they definitely looked as though they were not to be crossed. As sleazy as it was, the strip club offered a sense of security. Not because we were associating with the people who controlled the security, but because you could be a guy here and no-one cared. After a few drinks and a few chats with a few regulars, you get used to a bare arse in your face when you’re sitting at the table. It’s comfortable. We’d even chat to some of the strippers, cheekily poking fun at them, hoping they wouldn’t notice our subtle humour. One girl told us to guess how many guys she had slept with. We all grinned.
‘Ten!’ Tony yelled.
‘Nope’
‘TWENTY! HAHAHA’
‘Haha, nah go lower than that!’
‘Five,’ I chimed in.
‘Heh, you’re close!’
‘S**t, around five? That’s bulls**t!’
‘Nah! Less!’
‘You’re kidding!’ one of our security associates – I think his name was Steve – chimed in.
‘Two’
The whole crowd called ‘bulls**t’; there’s no way a stripper had only slept with two guys.
‘Ah, ah, you’re trying to trick us!’ Tony spoke up again, ‘you’re a dyke!’
The stripper laughed coquettishly. Hah, that must be it then! She vehemently denied the accusations, but everyone walked out of there thinking she was a lesbian. It made her stage show a bit more interesting, at the very least.
Naked flesh and free drinks could only hold us for so long and we said our goodbyes to our security friends and to the few of us who had decided to stay and experience more carnal temptations. We met up with girls and friends and girlfriends and then there we were: a whole bunch of us lined up outside ‘Tramp’ on a chilly night in the middle of winter in Melbourne. Chilly didn’t really describe it actually. Living in Perth, the temperature rarely dropped below 10 or 12 Celsius. What am I talking about rarely? I don’t think I’d ever been awake when it was lower than 15C – it just doesn't happen. There I was, with a grey hooded pullover on underneath a thick jacket, and I was still hugging myself to keep warm. I should have been hugging my legs to be honest – slim-leg jeans didn’t offer much protection from the cold wind. Neither do thin slip-on shoes. I was completely underdressed – not for the club, plenty of others we had seen walking in and out were wearing similar attire – but for that goddamn cold.
And they were making us wait. Jesus! It was freezing out here, and all we wanted was to walk through that doorway and down the stairs into the warm, dark recess of the club. In Melbourne on weekend nights, the majority of clubs had a strict rule of keeping the guy-to-girl ratio even. If you were unlucky enough to be male, you had to make sure you were with a girl to get entry to any given establishment. There were about eight of us; five guys, three girls. The group had been gone separate ways for the night earlier after a large dinner, and we were all meeting back up in Tramp. Of course, with only five guys and three girls, there was somewhat of a ratio problem. The first six were let in fine, yet Johnny and Myself were stuck at the end, behind the rope with the bouncer shaking his head.
‘Need girls fellas’
‘But we were with those guys! There’re only two of us!’
The bouncer shook his head again. And how do you get past that? You can’t charge past him – there were two other equally large bouncers flanking the doorway. We chatted away from the bouncer, looked up and down the street to see if any tarts wanted to walk in with us. Nothing. Damn.
Johnny had handled situations like this before. Some of the more elitist clubs in Perth occasionally enforced this rule. Not often, but it happened.
‘Follow my lead’
He walked casually up to the bouncer, digging in his jacket pocket. He leaned in and started chatting to the bouncer in a reasonable tone. I couldn’t hear all of it; I stood far enough away so as to not to give the impression Johnny and I were intimidating the bouncer.
‘…just from Perth mate, both of us have girlfriends (blatant lie)… not lookin’ to cause trouble for no-one, here with mates…’
He reached out his right hand and I saw the incentive – a crisp $50 note clutched in his palm. The bouncer realised this and knew what was up. This was a tense moment.
There were a few ways this could go – the bouncer could take the cash, let us in, tell us to have a good night. It’d be all smiles. Or he could see Johnny’s attempt at bribing him an affront, an insult, and would deny us entry, or introduce Johnny to his fist. The third option would have been the most embarrassing, had the bouncer taken the cash, then laughed at us and told us to ‘f**k off’. What would we do then? Any chances of getting into that club would be sabotaged, gone, not even plausible. And I actually wanted to get down there. The club seemed to call for us and the free bar at the strip club had put me in a jolly mood, numbing my skull and swaggering my step.
It felt as though the bouncer was considering the option for hours. In reality, only a split second passed before he grinned broadly, shook hands with Johnny (a subtle exchange, sealed with a wink) and waved us through, patting me on the back on the way in. Phew. We were both breathing heavy sighs of relief as we made our way to the bar, past the throngs of hipsters and regulars, into unknown territory. This club wasn’t classy. I liked it already.
This is something I wrote a little while back, based heavily on a true experience I had during a night out in Melbourne, Australia. Honestly, it's not even finished, but I'd still like some critique from readers.
From what I've gathered lurking this forum, profanity is pretty heavily frowned upon in writing, so I've censored the piece a bit. However, I'm just trying to convey the sense of what it's like going out on the town as a 21-year-old.
All comments and criticisms will be welcomed with open arms!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite the cliché perpetrated by movies, popular culture and music videos, nightclubs are not glamorous. The mood lighting, chic decor and classy name may provide an appealing facade, but the reality is that behind the velvet curtains, diamante-encrusted sign and overpriced drinks lies a den of sin, sticky floors and sleazy demeanours. The toilets perfectly reflect this – if you’re ever at a nightclub early, just as it opens (around 10pm at most establishments), you’ll find pristine toilets, clean and glistening, with freshly mopped floors and paper towels neatly stacked inside their dispensers. Within an hour or two the pristine environment is torn to shreds, ravaged by hordes of drunken louts who cover the floor in urine, allow paper towels to litter the sink area, vomit and break glasses and piss on the walls. I can’t account for the female toilets – I’ve never been.
In the club itself, if you pay attention, you’ll notice chewing gum covering a large majority of surfaces. The floors are constantly sticky. Empty, half-empty, full, spilled glasses of liquor cover any surface resembling a table or bench as the bar staff attempt to keep the mess under control. Lots overindulge. You can usually find at least one or two girls on any given night slumped in a corner, attempting not to vomit on themselves. Those who do succumb to the technicolour yawn are usually worshiping at the porcelain altar or have rushed out to a nearby alleyway or parking lot. Male drunks are usually more volatile, charging around with a sense of ownership and pride – quite a thing when you see two alcohol-inflated egos collide near the bar. I’m not the type to get into fights, and am usually able to talk or weasel my way out of confrontations, even when drunk.
While it sounds like nightclubs are all testosterone and alcohol fuelled warzones, covered in filth and stink, it doesn’t mean they’re not fun. I was merely putting to rest the popular notion of nightclubs being a classy affair, with clean toilets and cleaner patrons. I love clubs, the surging music, cold drinks and atmosphere of fun. I accept the filth as part of the experience. I’ve been to classy establishments. They’re not nightclubs and they sure as hell aren’t ‘mainstream’. Bars, with a plethora of exotic liquors and boutique beers; they usually charge as much as the more popular clubs for a drink, sometimes even less, but any sign of over-the-top behaviour will earn patrons an eviction notice - usually served by a large, well-muscled bouncer.
Of course, I’m just speaking from my experiences in Perth, the most isolated city in the world. And that experience counts for little when you’re standing in the line outside of an ‘exclusive’ club in the heart of Melbourne, Australia’s unofficial capitol. Everything in Melbourne oozes class, from the European-styled alleyways which play host to boutique cafes and shops to the fashion and apparently the nightlife. We were in front of a club call ‘Tramp’. Or ‘Trash’. (‘Treasure’?) I wasn’t sure – it probably wasn’t even the club’s name anyway. Apparently that’s how it is in Melbourne – you don’t go to a club, you go to a night. In Perth it’s almost similar, ‘so and so’ at ‘so and so club’. But in Melbourne apparently it’s just the night, and if you didn’t know where the night was, then you probably shouldn’t be going.
This was our second night in Melbourne – Friday – and we were all keen to sample this infamous nightlife. We'd found a nice bar the previous night, which happened to be directly across the lane from our hotel room. Happy hour went from 5 to 7, but Hugh managed to sweet-talk the bartender (and apparently owner) into giving us happy-hour priced drinks right through until we left, which was about 10. He seemed to manage that easily and often. I guess she didn’t mind, seeing as every trip to the bar would produce no less than 10 gin and tonics and 10 shots of tequila. Hugh’s ‘charm’ probably sent the cash-register noises ringing in her head.
For a Thursday in Melbourne, we were trying to make it as lively as possible, but Thursdays aren’t really the night to ‘go out’ anywhere in the country, even Melbourne apparently. We toured a selection of bars, adding a handful of locals to our entourage with every drinking hole we visited. They were all students, hipsters, no responsibilities and enough money to be able to go out and get pissed on a Thursday for no reason. I mentioned before that bars were usually the cleaner, more refined drinking establishments. That remained true in Melbourne, and it was nice. In every small, boutique drinking hole we waltzed into, we were more often than not the most people there. Maybe a few regulars, but we were welcomed with big smiles, friendly chatter and clean toilets. Then again, it was Thursday, maybe it just wasn’t busy.
Friday had started different, however. Through friends of people who know friends who are associates with people and friends with associates, we had managed to score ourselves a very large bar tab at a strip club only a few minutes’ walk from our hotel. While bars and nightclubs can change from city to city and country to country, strip clubs are universal. The air hangs thick with sleaze – you feel dirty just for being there. A girl just walked past wearing nothing but a g-string that looks as if it’s a few sizes too small for her. I try not to stare, but realise I’m the only guy in the whole club who isn’t. It’s not rude.
The main attraction for me wasn’t so much the naked bodies and suggestive winks, but the carte blanche we had at the bar. The people we were hanging around were very close friends with the owner and they definitely looked as though they were not to be crossed. As sleazy as it was, the strip club offered a sense of security. Not because we were associating with the people who controlled the security, but because you could be a guy here and no-one cared. After a few drinks and a few chats with a few regulars, you get used to a bare arse in your face when you’re sitting at the table. It’s comfortable. We’d even chat to some of the strippers, cheekily poking fun at them, hoping they wouldn’t notice our subtle humour. One girl told us to guess how many guys she had slept with. We all grinned.
‘Ten!’ Tony yelled.
‘Nope’
‘TWENTY! HAHAHA’
‘Haha, nah go lower than that!’
‘Five,’ I chimed in.
‘Heh, you’re close!’
‘S**t, around five? That’s bulls**t!’
‘Nah! Less!’
‘You’re kidding!’ one of our security associates – I think his name was Steve – chimed in.
‘Two’
The whole crowd called ‘bulls**t’; there’s no way a stripper had only slept with two guys.
‘Ah, ah, you’re trying to trick us!’ Tony spoke up again, ‘you’re a dyke!’
The stripper laughed coquettishly. Hah, that must be it then! She vehemently denied the accusations, but everyone walked out of there thinking she was a lesbian. It made her stage show a bit more interesting, at the very least.
Naked flesh and free drinks could only hold us for so long and we said our goodbyes to our security friends and to the few of us who had decided to stay and experience more carnal temptations. We met up with girls and friends and girlfriends and then there we were: a whole bunch of us lined up outside ‘Tramp’ on a chilly night in the middle of winter in Melbourne. Chilly didn’t really describe it actually. Living in Perth, the temperature rarely dropped below 10 or 12 Celsius. What am I talking about rarely? I don’t think I’d ever been awake when it was lower than 15C – it just doesn't happen. There I was, with a grey hooded pullover on underneath a thick jacket, and I was still hugging myself to keep warm. I should have been hugging my legs to be honest – slim-leg jeans didn’t offer much protection from the cold wind. Neither do thin slip-on shoes. I was completely underdressed – not for the club, plenty of others we had seen walking in and out were wearing similar attire – but for that goddamn cold.
And they were making us wait. Jesus! It was freezing out here, and all we wanted was to walk through that doorway and down the stairs into the warm, dark recess of the club. In Melbourne on weekend nights, the majority of clubs had a strict rule of keeping the guy-to-girl ratio even. If you were unlucky enough to be male, you had to make sure you were with a girl to get entry to any given establishment. There were about eight of us; five guys, three girls. The group had been gone separate ways for the night earlier after a large dinner, and we were all meeting back up in Tramp. Of course, with only five guys and three girls, there was somewhat of a ratio problem. The first six were let in fine, yet Johnny and Myself were stuck at the end, behind the rope with the bouncer shaking his head.
‘Need girls fellas’
‘But we were with those guys! There’re only two of us!’
The bouncer shook his head again. And how do you get past that? You can’t charge past him – there were two other equally large bouncers flanking the doorway. We chatted away from the bouncer, looked up and down the street to see if any tarts wanted to walk in with us. Nothing. Damn.
Johnny had handled situations like this before. Some of the more elitist clubs in Perth occasionally enforced this rule. Not often, but it happened.
‘Follow my lead’
He walked casually up to the bouncer, digging in his jacket pocket. He leaned in and started chatting to the bouncer in a reasonable tone. I couldn’t hear all of it; I stood far enough away so as to not to give the impression Johnny and I were intimidating the bouncer.
‘…just from Perth mate, both of us have girlfriends (blatant lie)… not lookin’ to cause trouble for no-one, here with mates…’
He reached out his right hand and I saw the incentive – a crisp $50 note clutched in his palm. The bouncer realised this and knew what was up. This was a tense moment.
There were a few ways this could go – the bouncer could take the cash, let us in, tell us to have a good night. It’d be all smiles. Or he could see Johnny’s attempt at bribing him an affront, an insult, and would deny us entry, or introduce Johnny to his fist. The third option would have been the most embarrassing, had the bouncer taken the cash, then laughed at us and told us to ‘f**k off’. What would we do then? Any chances of getting into that club would be sabotaged, gone, not even plausible. And I actually wanted to get down there. The club seemed to call for us and the free bar at the strip club had put me in a jolly mood, numbing my skull and swaggering my step.
It felt as though the bouncer was considering the option for hours. In reality, only a split second passed before he grinned broadly, shook hands with Johnny (a subtle exchange, sealed with a wink) and waved us through, patting me on the back on the way in. Phew. We were both breathing heavy sighs of relief as we made our way to the bar, past the throngs of hipsters and regulars, into unknown territory. This club wasn’t classy. I liked it already.