Nightclubs Are Hotbeds of Rape Culture. So Why Do I Keep Going?

I’m standing on the dance floor, hating every moment

Photo: Hollie Fernando/Getty Images

The air is thick and hot, like wandering into a sauna. The pleasant banality of replaceable EDM songs syncopates with the shimmering blue and pink lights with assembly-line precision. There’s enough cologne wafting around to make this place smell like an Abercrombie outlet. Being sardined in the middle of the dark and haunted dance floor makes you appreciate the value of personal space, especially after the ninth or 10th time you’re involuntarily grinded on by some glistening troglodyte looking for something to validate their manhood.

There’s no shortage of nameless, faceless Miami Vice wannabes tonight. Glazed and squinting, donned in redundant floral button-downs they probably copped from an Urban Outfitters discount rack, they bump, grind, and shout rehearsed pickup lines with the fleeting hope that one unlucky female will reciprocate something vaguely approximating consent.

“HEY, YOU’RE CUTE,” his lips move inaudibly as the thumping bass renders him mute. “WHA — ?” she replies, confused, before he tongue-jousts her face.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that every dance remix sounds like a Transformer robot going “full Weinstein” on a Shop-Vac.

In a normal functioning society, every one of these godforsaken shitholes would’ve been designated a #MeToo quarantine zone right around the time of Roe v. Wade. But, like a cockroach who survives a nuclear apocalypse, these institutions chug along with a demented Livestrong persistence.

Maybe these selfie-snapping documentarians of all things LIT AF are subconsciously seeking a reprieve from the entropy of late-stage capitalism. Maybe they’re chasing the bright ding of Instagram pseudo-pleasure. Regardless, they keep coming back — insistent on subjecting themselves to mutually assured low self-esteem and $15 vodka crans, telling themselves this night will be different for whatever reason.

And yet, here I find myself standing awkwardly in solitude, shoulders slumped and sandwiched between the two couples who dragged me along to this hellscape of mad sounds, wishing I spent the night alone in my boxers binging Game of Thrones and getting ratchet with a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. I feel like less of a fifth wheel and more like a useless appendage waiting to be severed off and discarded to the wolves. It was probably the promise of free key bumps in the bathroom stall that lured me in, but sometimes even drugs aren’t sufficient enough justification for your judgmental shortcomings.

We’re all bored and delirious and looking to shake off our lunar alienation. The nightcrawlers glam up, mask it all with pretend memories, and dance like someone’s watching — because they are.

It’s like everything about nightclubs was specifically designed for assholes.

God help us all.