Drinking, love, the nightclub, and growing up

Growing up is a stealthy process. True, when one is in their teens it’s quite marked, but as my 30^th birthday looms ever larger on the horizon, I sometimes struggle to think of major differences in my personality, from say when I was 22. Of course, there are some which spring instantly to mind, such as my inability to eat too much without getting fat, something that the 22 year-old-me was rather good at, but fundamentally, despite many things that have changed in my life, and the many experiences I have been subjected to, I feel pretty much the same. My attitudes, and my opinions (and some would say prejudices) have, at most, been subject to a partial evolution but I still hold the vast majority of views that I held 7-8 years ago, despite the extra life experience I have accrued in the intervening years. But am I the same? Well I’m not so sure anymore, and the reason for this latest revision in my thinking comes not from exposure to some profound argument or life-changing experience, but rather from a somewhat innocuous source…a night out to celebrate my brother’s 25^th birthday.

Ah a birthday! Was it the thought of my little brother turning 25 that had plunged me into this analysis you may ask? As reasonable a conclusion as that may seem to be, it was not the catalyst for this reassessment. No, instead it was reliving a pastime that a few years ago would have been often the focus of a typical Friday or Saturday night out. Back then, in my late teens and early twenties, the world, or rather my world was a very different place. Life consisted of being at uni and when I wasn’t there during the holidays I was earning money to carry on studying and meeting up with school friends, and all three of these activities led to the obligatory nights out on the town. Regardless of the people you went with, the format was usually pretty similar; go out to a pub/bar, if possible a cocktail bar in order to get “primed” (or sometimes at uni this would consist of a cheap bottle of plonk per person in somebody’s room or house if money was tight), before maybe going to another bar, then finally followed by a nightclub. Sometimes there would be only two of us, other times it would be en masse with the groups consisting of mates who were both boys and girls.

Two common expressions used to couch the aims of these evenings would be to “go on the pull” or “get pissed” and in many cases try and combine the two, just as long as you didn’t pull a “minger”, although as everybody knows the combination of these aims often leads to the result that we were determined to avoid. That was the simplistic gloss that we put on the whole exercise, but in my case, and in those of others whom I know, this was certainly a smokescreen, as the true aim was often to finally engineer a defining event with a girl you were close to in your peer group, that would take what would often be an ambiguous friendship and to precipitate a sea-change in its nature, where all the games would stop and the cards be placed firmly on the table. In my case at least, that never happened, sometimes due to circumstances, but mostly due to social cowardice, so I always reverted to the default setting, back to the thrill of chasing the stranger. Don’t get me wrong the default setting was fun, and on the very few times I did “get lucky” at best I had fun and at worse I had learnt a lesson and provided my mates with a bit of banter.

Although there are probably countless counter-examples, I firmly believe that the club is no place to meet someone who is a cut above the rest. Quite frankly one leaves too much to chance. For starters it’s difficult to have a decent conversation with anybody and in some places, thanks to the lighting (aided of course by the alcohol), you might not even be able to see whom you’re talking to properly! I am therefore not surprised that I met every girl that I have ever had feelings for that were more profound that just “she’s hot” in far more normal and sober surroundings. The ultimate example being my current partner, whom I met in the common room of my college in the week that I started my Ph.D, whilst I was reading the paper. From that point on the dynamics of the night out changed; the pressure to pull evaporated.

But the nightclub without the thrill of the chase is a changed beast. It is still fun if you are with people whom you know and like, but when the overriding sexual element is redundant, and the company you are keeping is not the best they can be the most boring places on earth. I realised this a while back, but as I said if I was out with good friends it didn’t matter as the company would be fun and we’d all have a laugh and get drunk together, ending in a kebab and a funny anecdote; i.e. a perfect night out. The jolly with my brother ticked all of those boxes, and although I did enjoy myself, I was struck by the fact that this is no longer the model for the best time out with my mates. Last week back in the UK was hectic, as I managed to meet many old friends, but in almost all cases it was in the context of a quiet drink or meal and good conversation. Maybe it is the French influence that my partner has imparted upon me (after all I saw many blokes older than I at the weekend completely larruped as they attempted to pull girls in short skirts and corsets that were sometimes young enough to be their daughters), or perhaps it is just the fact that the advancing years, in my case, has led me to prefer good wine and food combined with intelligent discourse to gyrating in a drunken stupor on a dance floor.