Everyone You'll Meet in the Smoking Area of a Club This Weekend

At some point this weekend you'll probably decide that as much fun as being in the club is — Music! Flashing lights! Blokes in parkas pushing pills! Someone stumbling wide-eyed out of the toilets with a bit of sick dangling from their dusty nose! — it's just as fun outside in the smoking area. Who doesn't love the moment that refreshing blast of cool air mingles with the putrid reek of a thousand half-smoked Marlboros? The realisation you've voluntarily placed yourself in a squalid holding pen that squeezes about a hundred people into an area clearly only really designed for about 10! Music's alright, and dancing is just about passable we suppose, but honestly, the whole point of going to the club is to drop a tenner or so on a night spent rolling increasingly poor quality fags and desperately asking around for a spare bit of Wrigleys.

The characters you shares this foggy compound with, despite only knowing them for the best part of a bleary few hours, are a central element to any nightclub experience. It doesn't matter whether you're on an Ibizan terrace or a bit of decking outside a Wetherspoon's, everyone needs to borrow a lighter sometimes.

THE CAREERIST

You only asked for lighter, but you are now 20 minutes deep into a lengthy descriptive run-down of the careerist's professional life until this point. "I was at Twitter before that." "Really? Wow." "Yeah, which was obviously amazing for my CV but it was such a massive company and to be honest I prefer working with a smaller team. That way you can communicate within the office, and your relationships actually exist outside of email chains. So I started my own social media consultancy company 3 months ago." Did you? Did you mate? DID YOU MATE? I barely earned enough this month to pay for the slither of tobacco you are currently ruining for me. Did not ask dude.

THE DEALER

This will be your shortest conversation of the night. Moving through the smoking area like a Dementor with a signet ring and two mobiles, is the dealer. Easy to spot, as they are probably the only person in the place not smoking. Simply sliding between groups, offering a world of over-priced, badly-cut, gummy wonder, before disappearing once again into the night. The likelihood is your chat will only go as far as you insisting, "nah we're alright mate"; but if you are looking to take things up a level you might be pulled into the corner, just behind the patio heater, for a quick exchange of notes, baggies and mobile numbers. Quite amazingly the dealer probably won't get caught, which is ridiculous considering most of the time the only thing that could make them appear more 'drug dealery' would be wearing a sandwich board that read "BAD GAK".

THE FIRST TIMER

There, shuttling around like Bambi on ice, is the first timer. Currently soaking up the never-bettered rush of their first ever pill. Then, they clock you, and moving with the aerodynamic grace of a fish slipping up-stream, their moon-like eyes joined dot to dot by a pearly beaming grin, they approach you. Chattering in the cold, but sweating with the fervour of a thousand Lee Evans', they tentatively pop the question: "can I pinch a fag?" For the next 25 minutes you will become everything to this newly opened soul. A drug help-line, a soul-mate, an older sibling, a confidante, a life-coach, an expert cigarette roller, and most likely a Facebook friend request.

THE SILVERBACK

You clocked him on entry. Olive green t-shirt, stonewash bootcuts, brown Merrell trainers, a flash of grey in his beard, foamy pint clasped between yellowing fingers. Back hunched slightly from years of peering into the booth. Fucked knees and sit downs. This is the silverback, the graver: your dad after a cheeky half eccy in room two at Sankeys. You and the squad nip out for a much needed breather/snifter combo and he's there with a small crowd gathering. "Fucking love it, still! You can't beat this can you!" he bellows, buckling slightly beneath his own weight, steadying himself physically and mentally with a long drag on a JPS. He sweats profusely and has gone a curious shade of yellow. He's slurring, ever so slightly, about the Hacienda. "Mike Pickc..ckk..kering, how he, now he was, he was a, fucking, he was a great, a, fucking DJ!" you hear him shout as you step back into the club. You worry about him quietly all night. As 6am rolls round and the night calls for a sun-dappled cigarette you notice he's now fully slumped on the floor. He's gone grey. Fully grey.

THE "I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN YEARS"

Smoking areas always house at least one person you haven't seen in at least half a decade. The guy you got off with when your were in your school's production of Bugsy Malone that time? Your older sister's mate who you always thought was really fit? The weird neighbour who you sold an over-priced Pokemon card to aged 8? The girl you met at Reading 2009 with the husky voice? The flatmate from your first year of uni you barely spoke to after the first month? That short bloke you used to work with who occasionally posts memes on Facebook? They are all here, they're all surprised to see you, and they all want to borrow your lighter. Trouble is, once the initial surprise of this reunion has passed, you will quickly realise you have absolutely nothing to talk about and are now just two aged, weary versions of the youthful incarnations you used to know – exhausted by time, and barely recognisable. Probably best to keep on smoking.

THE STRAIGHT UP FULL SCALE FUCKING MESS

You don't want a cigarette. At best you want a small supportive frame, structured around your torso and bolted onto the floor, to stop you from falling head first into a murky brown plant pot of fag-butts and rain-water. "Canaslavvasliggerette?" What? If you can't even muster the sentience to articulate the fact you think you want one of my remaining tabs, then you don't deserve to have one at all. This might all sound a bit harsh, but towards the end of the night, there is always at least one lone ranger, careering around the smoking area like a shopping trolley on an oil slick. They are convinced they want a cigarette but really, they are just trying to feel normal again, mindlessly going through the motions of a night out. You'll see them again in a minute, somewhere in the middle of the dance-floor, glazed eyes, head nodding perfectly out of time.

THE GOT-THEIR-SHIT-TOGETHER

Let's face it, we would be deluded if we suggested that we were always the put upon ones in the smoking area. The reality is, sometimes we are the ones starting the ash-breathed chats in the company of strangers, all the while hoping the next burp doesn't bring up dinner. Through fuzzy eyes, as your clenched mouth fills with saliva, you become aware you are in the presence of the 'got-their-shit-together'. Despite having been in the club the same amount of time as you, and surely drinking almost as much, their clothes are in pristine condition, they are surrounded by beautiful people, their words seem delicately selected, and every joke they make is landing. You try talking to them, and they somehow manage to brush you off completely without being rude. Mere minutes in their presence may leave you questioning every life choice you've ever made. They just made a pithy remark about the Greek debt crisis, you can't unlock your iPhone. They are coming off like Idris Elba while you look like Ray Winstone chewing a bulldog, chewing a wasp.

THE LISTENER

There you are, pouch of Amber Leaf in one hand, a pack of blue skins in the other and a fluffy filter tucked between your beer-smeared lips. The Listener approaches you cautiously, nervously, looking slightly embarrassed and utterly uncomfortable. "Errr, sorry to bother you mate," he starts, eyes fixed firmly on his Old Skools, "but, umm, would you, urrr, mind lending me a Rizzla. Sorry to ask." You politely oblige and ask him how his evening's going. He mumbles something you don't quite catch. You've got two options: abandon conversation entirely and turn your back and continue sucking down that fag you've barely started on, or, try really, really hard to engage him. Always go down the latter route. Why? Because there is nothing better than being able to drone on and on about yourself to someone who's too nice, or rather, too scared, to interrupt. He's listening intently. He really is. Your hopes and dreams will spill into this empty vessel. It's like therapy. Half an hour into your life story you'll look down only to notice he's not actually lit his fag. He won't ask you for a lighter. He won't ever ask anyone for a lighter.

THE BEDROOM PRODUCER

Whatever type of music you are missing in order to punish your lungs, there will always be a bedroom producer loitering in the vicinity with tunes of his own. Preying on the beleaguered and battered, ready to exchange a blast of his lighter for a like on Facebook. Bizarrely they almost always make a completely different sort of music to the stuff you've come out to listen to. "It basically sounds a bit like Burial," he says, tapping the URL for his soundcloud into your phone, "but way more club friendly, cos I DJ as well, so I need it to be club friendly." You're never going to listen to their music. Maybe, deep down they know that. But the fact is, this tactic for promoting music defies any logic. Whatever dross you've managed to put together on Ableton, along with a VSCOcam edited picture of a feather for cover art, is unlikely to make waves in a fenced off concrete garden full of thirty people too fucked to remember their own names, let alone that of your EP. Wouldn't you be better off using, I don't know, the internet?

A BLOKE SAYING "FAIR PLAY" LOADS

"Having fun, mate?
"Loads!"
"Fair play. You seen Craig Richards before?"
"Nah, my first time at Fabric actually."
"Fair play. He's fucking great, Craig Richards is. Really fucking underrated if you ask me."
"I've heard a few mixes and liked them, yeah. Looking forward to it."
"Fair play. You go out much? I live for it, mate. Can't get enough."
"I try, yeah, my job holds me back a bit."
"Fair play, we've all been there. What do you do then, buddy?"
"I work in IT."
"Fair play."

THE VAPER

You like Top Gear and watch videos of Marvel movie Easter Eggs on Youtube, don't you?

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