A Night Out... Straight Clubbing

I've not been to a straight club in AGES! When I was a teenager, back in the late… er… 90's… ok, ok… back in the late 80's, I only did straight clubbing. Coming from a reasonably small town meant that I only had straight friends and thus did all the usual things a straight guy does - goes out for a few pints and a curry on a Friday night, and then down to the Ritzy to pull a bird on Saturday. Except that I never actually pulled a bird - all my mates knew I was gay (they were the first people I came out to), and for some reason this meant that I was some kind of group chaperone/driver, as I was the only one who wasn't going to wake up in some bird's bed in a strange town on Sunday morning. I thus saw myself as being above such things and far more adult than everyone else and there purely to look after my mates, like I'd sacrificed my own life to make sure my mates got ferried around and picked up. That was until I found truck-stops, but that's a whole other story…

Anyway, on the way back from our little sojourn in Wales last week our little group (2 gay couples and The Drag Queen) found ourselves out on the tiles in Royal Leamington Spa on a Saturday night. There's not much for the gays to do in RLS, so we "went straight" for the evening. Thus we decided to go for something to eat early and then move on to a bar/club.

The straights start their evening out so much earlier than the gays. We don't leave the house 'til 10pm on Fridays or Saturdays, and expect to be home from 4am onwards. The straights are in the bars at 7:30 and completely pissed up by 9, a fact not wasted on us as we walked into the first bar at 9:30 to find it full of inebriated youngsters, music blaring, drinks spilling, hips grinding, drunken leering.

We forced our way to the bar past the Sharons and Tracys, or more likely the Imogens and Jemimas - this is Royal Leamington Spa after all - all non-existent shirts, big belts and off-the-shoulder 80's tops. Long, red nails clutching tall glasses and taller straw. The men were in de rigeur untucked shirts, trouser and shoes, except for those going down the dishevelled route with scruffy jeans and trainers, but all had the same odd, asymmetrical hair, like Edward Scissorhands had been at them after suffering a stroke.

My feet were immediately run over by a guy in a wheelchair, drunk, who seemed to think it his right to get served before us but obviously couldn't be bothered with an "excuse me". Fortunately a girl caught his eye and he sped off, not without running over The Boyf's feet, to grapple her into his lap, kicking and giggling and spilling her drink all over her.

We got drinks (surprisingly expensive even after London prices) and stood by the area which seemed to serve as a dance-floor. Lads and Ladettes careered about, grabbing each other and generally upping the decibel level by shouting a lot (I got the impression they'd probably shout at each other even if the music was muted). Dancing seemed to be a way to grope other people rather than an outward manifestation of the joy of the rhythm. At least apart from those groups of girls who simply shuffled from side to side, clutching their drinks.

Girls nowadays (I'm very aware that makes me sound old) don't seem to know how to dress themselves. Inevitably they wear whatever is fashionable regardless of whether it suits their shape. So we had plump (trying to be polite) girls in pencil skirts, skinny girls in rib-cage revealing tops, and apparently very pretty, voluptuous girls in baggy jumpers, completely hiding their shape.

A girl near us seemed obsessed with looking at her reflection in the windows as she twirled around the floor. Perhaps she was trying to work out if her asymmetrical page-boy hair looked as ridiculous as we thought it did, considering she was rather fuller of the face than would suit such hair. Basically it looked like a cheap boy's bowl-cut wig had shrunk in the wash and then been put on at a wonky angle. Her eye make-up was also a joy to behold - she had quite big eyes and had decided to make them look even bigger with judicious use of black eye-liner and blue shadow, such that they seemed to be taking over her face. In effect she looked like a blue-tinged panda. A blue-tinged panda in an ill-fitting wig.

Anyway, Panda-Girl twirled about the floor, seemingly able to swivel her neck in any direction to allow her to look at her reflection, which was all going very well until she careened face-first into a wall. She looked slightly dazed for a second before carrying on with her dancing. I'd have run off and hid in shame but I guess if you're going to go out looking like a wig-wearing panda from the 80's then you're obviously pretty thick-skinned. I'd like to report that she left a panda-face mark on the wall, but sadly her make-up was obviously very well applied.

An older couple came in (in their 60's I'd say) and, seeing us, decided to stand next to us. Er, cheers! We're not THAT old. Admittedly we were probably twice the age of some of the people in the place but we're not bloody OAP's. Now it just looked like all the older people were huddling together!

Meanwhile Wheelchair Guy was careering about the place at dangerous velocities, clearly very drunk and being incredibly aggressive. Grabbing girls or just mowing them down so they ended up in his lap where he'd grope them. The bouncers looked on, passively.

We'd just decided we'd had enough for the night when there was an almighty crash. A (large) girl had slipped and decided to grab the nearest person, which was unfortunately a very skinny guy. In turn he'd grabbed another girl and then whole lot had collapsed to the floor, knocking over a large number of people around them. It looked like that scene in "King Kong" where the Brontosaurus' stampede and the one at the front falls over, with the following herd tripping and falling in a huge pile. The noise was similar too.

That was quite enough for us so we left, although The Drag Queen stayed behind as somehow (and completely off our radar) she'd managed to pull a guy. I don't know how she does it. Well, I do know how she does it - she walks up, bold as brass, gives them a big smile and, with a flick of the hair, tells them to buy her a drink, all the while ensuring her top is conveniently showing her ample bosom. Sometimes I wish I had her bosom, as it seems to work on gay men too. They're fascinated in an entirely different way, but fascinated nonetheless.

So off we trotted, past groups of girls holding each other's hair back as they took turns being sick, and past lairy groups of guys outside the Kebab house trying to chat up girls whilst simultaneously dripping chilli sauce down their now rather dishevelled "best going out" shirts. Ah, I miss being straight...