I went to many nightclubs of various forms and crowds and music throughout my 20s but there was one common denominator that fused them all: my rate of coming away empty-handed and unlaid registered a solid 100% rate.
I lacked the courage to ask women to dance. It was a barrier I could never surmount regardless of how much liquid courage I consumed. It was pathetic and frustrating, but never bad enough to dampen my masochistic clubbing habit.
Everytime I went out I harbored a fantasy that this would be the night. It became a relentless charade I endured to make myself feel better, to inject those nights out with a dose of hope. Hollow hope fuels our forward momentum in the face of sure disappointment as we recite the tired doomed script from memory, awaiting an outcome that was preceded by a thousand similar scenes.
Each time I went to a club there was a dangling carrot, the chance this parade of futility might end. Every fresh night was the one I would finally ask a woman to dance and like normal guys, I would “pick a chick up” at a club, the beacon that enticed me with its illusory normality. Inevitably I would walk into the humid, pulsing flesh market and promptly begin drinking as I studied my surroundings for potential victims of my Social Ineptitude Charm.
Occassionally I would reach that sweet spot where, flush with a fresh buzz that intoxicated me with confidence, I would see a pretty (but not too pretty) girl with a friendly, welcoming face and convince myself that I had a chance with her. My bravery would climax in cadence with the thumping speakers and I might formulate an attack strategy. I would get perilously close to starting my physical approach; this was the time, I was ready to take my first step.
The first step was the scariest. The moment I walked toward her was the point of no return. I contemplated the movement, the gesture that would propel me off this cliff. A few minutes would pass and the battle did not move me, again. Soon, imperceptibly, the window would open and close and I still hadn’t budged. I saw myself crumble. I soon saw I was mired in the position I had known I would revisit, long before the night began. Afraid, timid, and discouraged.
Defeated.
I would dispel the angst by drinking a little more until I had written off tonight’s ambitions. The rest of my time in that miserable club would be spent disguising my bitter helplessness and defeat with more intense, fuller swigs of [whatever I was drinking]. By the end of the night, my initial glow had long cooled and drunken resignation was my only accomplishment. A numbing buzz ringing in my ears would accompany me to the car at the end of the night and all the way home on a stressful drive where I spent more time staring in the rearview mirrors than on the road.
This was the wash-rinse-repeat cycle I enacted each time I went to clubs.
Any club, any night, it didn’t matter. The script remained intractable.
More than any club I frequented, The Hop seemed the most realistic venue for my delusion to become a reality. Most dance clubs catered to a younger demographic (my own at the time), while The Hop’s clientele was older and rougher around the edges, and less discerning, which implied I had a chance. The women here were older than me and a little haggard. They had been around the block a few times and were more forgiving in their requirements for a one-night stand, unlike the young hot chicks at more happening clubs.
In other words, The Hop should have offered me more opportunities to break my lifelong phobic spell. It didn’t; I came away empty-handed from there as I did from every other club in SoCal.
The problem was me, not the clubs.
Until Valentine’s Day in 1993, a Sunday night when I met some people for drinks after work at The Hop.
