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Wednesday, December 16, 1998 By Samantha Bennett
I've suspected it for a while now, but I'm going to have to come out and admit it: I'm getting too old for the bar scene.
I'm so catastrophically too old that it doesn't even bother me that much.
In fact, I find myself thinking that I have outgrown loitering in bars in the same way I have outgrown slumber parties and asking my parents for money.
God help me. I may be growing up.
And wouldn't you know that this would happen just at a time when Pittsburgh is awash in new bars and nightclubs. (A nightclub being a bar with louder music and a cover charge.) I wasn't here till the very end of my 20s, which are the prime bar-hopping years. But for the twentysomethings who are - people who can't think of a better way to spend an evening than drinking expensive swill out of novelty thimbles, test tubes or specimen bottles while being simultaneously deafened and asphyxiated - these must be heady days indeed.
I made my sobering diagnosis on a Saturday night at a perfectly vile watering hole. Naturally, it is wildly popular with the kids and there was a line outside to get in. The word of mouth on such an establishment, I believe, goes something like this: "Oh you guys, we went there one time and it was so excellent, we got like totally wasted on Screaming Nude Clam Sex On The Rocks and somebody touched my butt and there was this girl who can tie a cherry stem in a knot inside her mouth and I lost my keys and we had the best time and I threw up for like three hours after!"
I paid $5 for the privilege of standing in a warehouse that was decorated to look like a beach-themed fraternity party. Alleged "dance" music thundered onto an empty floor, punctuated by the oily exhortations of a DJ to "Come on, ladies!"
Other rooms provided a deafening cover band, pool (been there, done that), darts (yawn) and conveniently placed beer stations womanned by artificially tanned Barbies in tight, shredded tops. I would not have been at all surprised if the DJ had announced a wet-T-shirt contest, though I might have pulled a muscle rolling my eyes.
Well sure, the boys like it. And I do mean boys.
Even Dante would not have paid the cover to get into this multicircular hell. I lost my voice trying to have a conversation. And in all this sea of pink-faced, hair-gelled, brew-sodden youth, the creepiest denizens were those leathery, graying creatures who have somehow never gotten past this kind of thing. Finally, a friend and I cut out to go dancing.
We knew where we could slip into something '80s, and that's a sure evening-saver for me. I like to dance. And I love to dance to '80s music because, if I close my eyes, I am transported back to the dark, crowded, welcoming dance floors of my carefree college days - though in so doing I risk being transported violently to the present dark, crowded, welcoming dance floor by a pool of spilled beer or a wayward rolling bottle. No fooling, there's hazardous dropped bottles underfoot. Clearly, the kids are unable to hold their liquor.
I'm pleased to report I am not too old to go dancing. I may have lost my ability to perch for hours on a bar stool in a place with less atmosphere than the moon (slogan: "Come for the nose rings, stay for the secondhand smoke!"). I have definitely lost my ability to get excited about Body-Shot Nite, 25-cent drafts and video golf games. But if I can rock out, I will pocket my earplugs and join the party.
We swam down into the middle of the vibrating molecular chaos on the dance floor, and happiness hissed up around me like the faux fog. Ahhhhhhh! Like jumping into a hot bath! A really hot bath. With hundreds of people you don't know carrying lit cigarettes.
The great thing about going dancing in a place that's serious about dancing is the joyful lack of pretension. No babbling DJ, no palm trees, no drunken bimbos in bruise-colored lipstick waving their navels from a platform and pretending to offer something the boys have to pretend not to want.
A lot of complicated facial lacquer is only going to melt. Even hair with a half-gallon of Ultra Professional TV News Person Mega-Hold spray in it is going to come unstuck. No rat-stabber shoes. It's just you and the beer bottles and your precious square foot of space. And the good honest sweat of everyone around you.
In the morning I'll be stiff, but at least I'll know I can still stay out dancing after midnight, the way I used to. You're only as old as your knees.
Samantha Bennett can be reached by e-mail at sbennett@post-gazette.com.
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