Have you ever been to one of those super-hip clubs where everything looks like a bunch of tiny sets for movies or television or theater, just a bunch of disconnected, mismatched seating groups separated by bare hardwood or unpainted concrete or unapologetically vintage linoleum, all separated from each other with little walls-on-wheels, draped with ten yards of dyed burlap or fifty pounds of threadbare velvet, with something cheap and modern and rectangular nailed into the middle of it? Where each little cluster looks like a hundred square feet sawed out of the corner of some art student's dorm?

If you're not the sort of person who gets into super-hip clubs, this is what you're missing.

I am the sort of person who gets into these clubs. I practically live in them. Nothing can keep me out. I walk through the walls.

I see them as little sets no matter how hard I try not to. I wonder where I'm supposed to stand or sit or whatever so that, if I were a camera, I could crop down to something that would look like a seamless section of something larger. Something coherent. Something that belonged somewhere as part of a larger whole.

I'd walk around making the dippy rectangle out of my thumbs and forefingers, the mystical and holy sign of The Tube, and look at each little set from every possible angle. "Are you ... somebody?" people ask me. A lot. I don't say a word, but I nod. Then shake my head. Then nod again. Every time I'm asked I switch my answer, alternating.

At some point I must have figured that maybe the drinks were a critical part of the illusion. So I tried them all. As a cost-saving measure I even tried the ones that weren't mine.

You'd be surprised how easy that is to get away with. Just lock eyes with the owner of the drink you'd like to try. Keep a serious expression. Just reach over slowly and take the damned glass. Take a sip. Put a puzzled expression on your face and walk away without saying a word. This always works. But the drinks didn't help.

Some of the clubs put out little packets on little mirrors, when the atmosphere is right. I know for a fact once that the little packets were a saccharine-based sweetener, but people still snorted it all up and laughed way too loud. But not even Sweet-N-Low helped.

It occurs to me that maybe I'm missing the point. The point is to not get comfortable, to not find a place that fits, to not settle down. The point is to keep writhing and twitching and stay uncomfortable and then get fed up and leave. And then do it again tomorrow.

There is no belonging, no completeness, no resting. There just isn't.

All in all, I have to say I approve. But I'm the Goddess of Ennui.

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Posted by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri