Last week I went out dancing and had a mental breakdown, right there in the middle of the floor. I don’t know what a mental breakdown actually is, in all honesty, but this felt like it. A small one. This felt like having my psyche torn apart like wet newspaper. This felt utterly, indescribably horrendous. But because I’m a writer, I’m going to attempt to describe it anyway, for Reasons.
Some backstory; I recently took MDMA for the first time. Around three weeks ago, in fact. I was at the sort of club where they play the sort of music reserved for use in fields and warehouses and, in an attempt to understand the fullness of the experience, took a whole bunch of MDMA which is (as far as I’m aware) a purer form of the drug Ecstasy.
Ecstasy is an entirely appropriate name; the high grabbed me by the hips and bore me up towards the ceiling. Basic acts – talking, smoking, drinking water, dancing with my friends – felt astonishing, like every part of my brain was focusing on dumping as much serotonin into my system as physically possible. I would talk to people and be utterly fascinated with their hair and skin and words.
It was like being in love, I think – in love with everything in a twenty-foot radius, though, rather than anyone in particular. Everything was fascinating and wonderful and so utterly, utterly worthwhile. I had a twenty-minute discussion with one man about his Sonic the Hedgehog backpack. It felt like it did in the films, complete with motion blur; my night was a montage, a scattershot in technicolour across my memory. I adored it. I adored it so much I’m honestly trying to use “scattershot” and “technicolour” in the same sentence to describe it.
(The next day I felt fairly shoddy, as you can imagine. But not enough to put me off trying it again.)
And so we progress to last week. I find myself alone in London and with an invitation to another club night, just down the road from the one I was at a month previous. I know one person there. My friend is insistent that I come along, and he’s promised me some more Mandy (as he calls the drug), and an afternoon of going back and forth on the decision ended with a resounding Fuck It and a decision to go.
I dye my hair bright red. It’s been six weeks since my last time, and my roots are starting to show. Going out to a club as a married man is a strange experience, because you’re not on the market, but you still find yourself saddled with the difficult task of appearing interesting enough to dance with. Turn up looking like an unshaven lunatic, and you bring the party down around you as prospective partners move away with that wide-eyed-what-the-fuck-does-he-look-like expression on their faces.
(I still get that look quite often. I think it’s the beard)
So I’m done up; clean clothes, new hair, new converse sneakers shining bright in the streetlights. I smell like worn leather and fucking thanks to a vial of perfume my wife handed on to me, because it smells better on me than it does her. I’m ready to rock. I’m ready to take some drugs and meet more people and talk about their backpacks and fall endlessly, deeply in love with my surroundings.
Last time was a fancy dress rave, of sorts, which made me feel safe; this time, it’s street clothes all the way. Everyone else just looks like a normal person, too. I don’t like that. I liked being able to disguise myself. To dress up as something I wasn’t.
I met my friend – it transpired that he had no drugs on him at all, aside from the moderate dose he’d obviously taken in the bathrooms twenty minutes before I met him. He knows everyone present, or as near as damnit, and years spent on the circuit give him the capacity to meet someone and strike up a conversation in seconds. I do not. He’s my one connection there. Any others I would have to forge in the crush and noise of the club. Trepidation sets in.
I dance – on my own, mainly, because I still like dancing and the two whiskeys I had before I came out are mixing well with the cans of red stripe I’m drinking in my off-hand, the one that isn’t clutching a glowstick. The music is good. The music is great, I think, and I’m still fairly sober, and I long for something to kick in my doors of perception and let me enjoy it even more. I ask around, but I’m that big white dude with a dodgy beard and a weird dance style and no-one seems forthcoming.
This continues for a good three hours, and I begin to fluctuate. I’m fine when I’m with people, and thanks to my friend’s gregarious charm and rich contacts book I meet a few people who seem willing to dance with us for more than thirty seconds, and there’s the connection. We’re dancing together. There’s inclusion. There’s acceptance. We’re having fun. I drink some more beer.
A man in a dayglo yellow string vest tells me that he likes my hair and says he cut his off ages ago for a job and now he makes lots more money but he misses it and he begs me to tell him that I’m a musician, and I realise now I could have been anything but I tell him I’m a freelance journo and he looks a little disappointed. In retrospect, I would have liked to play imaginary guitar.
People come and go between the dancefloors, of which there are three. Or four. It’s hard to tell. I don’t understand the protocol for moving between them. Occasionally I am on my own, and then the reality starts to hit as the glamour falls off in big, messy lumps and lands heavy on the ground. I bob up and down, and occasionally I am rescued or drawn in to groups by my friend.
At quarter to four, alone, it reaches a hideous zenith.
I am not in love with everything, and it is not in love with me. I feel hated. Wretched. Reviled. Invalid. Disconnected. Alienated. So very far away from everyone else here. I stand breathless and exhausted and motionless in the centre of a group of dancers all thrashing away to unfathomably loud music and I feel so other. Everything is so unreal and fake and hollow and nothing seems to actually exist.
I try to hold it together, but it’s not happening. I can’t process everything any more. I lean against a wall and pull my shirt back on over my vest and clutch my glowsticks to me tightly and stare wide-eyed into the room. It feels like a betrayal.
A girl who must be seven feet tall in a pseudo-Victorian school uniform combo dances nearby. She looks so cool. I should say that having your confidence and sense of self shattered is not improved by having someone you are sure is the seven-foot-tall epitome of cool dancing near to you, on their own, apparently unbothered by anything.
Someone walked past me and asked me to smile and I just stared and shook my head until they left and I realised that this wasn’t for me, this wasn’t what I was about, this isn’t my domain. I staggered out and got my coat and half-fell out of the club on the verge of tears. I didn’t know what was happening any more. I didn’t know why I wanted to collapse in the middle of the road and let buses dash my brains out. I’ve never felt so shaken and ill-equipped to deal with something.
I got a taxi home, eventually, hugged myself on the back seat and mutely paid the driver his twenty-five quid and limped home and stared at my computer, at ten to five in the morning, wishing that it would have some answers. I wrote to my wife, a shorter version of what you read today, begging for insight.
Bed, and the next day, not even a proper hangover to show for the night before. I step out cautiously into the bright day to buy bread to eat for breakfast, and chew down thick slices of toast and butter with hot black coffee as I sit at my desk. I have a normal Saturday and stay up late playing video games.
I feel cheated. I feel like I should have a scar to show for this.
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