Let's be honest: nightclubs are nightmares, especially if you're a neurotic. A dark and sweaty room packed to capacity with drunk, gyrating bodies is a torture chamber for people like us. You arrive feeling like a newborn baby fresh out of the womb. You leave feeling like a corpse that just went through a washing machine cycle, covered in an assortment of undisclosed fluids and stenches.I like to believe that the world-renowned verse from Next's "Too Close"—"Oh, you're dancing real close, you're making it hard for me"—is less about a raging boner, and more about a group of dancers circling closer and closer into your personal space. Yes, you're making it extremely hard for me, because your armpit hair is brushing up against my upper lip, and you're blowing a whistle directly into my inner ear.
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I prepare for a night out the same way a boxer prepares for a fight: my friends hype me up, pat my back, and tell me I can do it. Invariably, though, I end up getting knocked out by a glass of watered-down vodka soda flung at me by someone's elbow.Here are six essential nightclub etiquette tips that should be deeply embedded into your brain, just like the Pledge of Allegiance or the no-camera policy at Berghain. Remember, a stranger in life is still a stranger on the dancefloor.Dance circles are, undoubtedly, the worst thing to happen to this planet. If I had a dollar for every time I've faced a near-death blow to the head because an Oscar G fan decided to spastically throw his leg into the air screaming "WEPA," I still wouldn't be able to afford a water bottle at a club in Manhattan. People who take part in these rings of death are oxygen thieves, much like the people who form a Macarena line to push closer to the DJ. I don't care how tall, beautiful, or famous you are—say "Excuse Me." Everybody should treat the people around them like they'd treat Giorgio Moroder if he got a colonoscopy: with tender love and care.Or even better: treat everyone as if they've been diagnosed with Ebola and are bleeding out of every orifice. In other words, just don't touch them at all. Unless someone is wearing a sign that says "free hugs," do not wrap your arms around my torso or press your lips against his or her face. In what world is greeting someone by transferring germs from your mouth to their cheeks and leaving them drenched in your sticky saliva acceptable? Refrain from touching anybody's face or body under any circumstance, unless they're choking on six ecstasy pills and need immediate CPR.
1. Don't touch me.
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2. Assume you smell like shit.
3. Keep your ass out of the DJ's space.
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