Soon I took refuge in the corner seat - the loud bass of the electromusic passed through the wall behind me in rhythmic vibrations, like a giant machinery pushing me from behind. The crowd on the floor were dancing to the yellow disco lights hanging above them. I looked around for the guys who came with me, failing to find them, and took a little sip from my glass of gin and tonic. The chilled tonic water sizzled on my tongue for a moment before the warmth of my body flushed it away. I had learned to appreciate the nuances that came with using alcohol, turning things and people around me into gentler, less crude versions. In the background, the music was still playing as loudly as ever - it thumped on my ear drum every half a second, asserting itself above all else. But it was also sounding somewhat vague to me - the loudness seemed to disperse with the purple and red smokes and become more monotonous. As a result, there seemed to be no rock solid things any more in this room - the boundaries were blurring, the edges eased out, and the people began to move like waves.
I noticed that on the outer surface of my gin-and-tonic glass the layer of mists was condensing into tiny droplets of water - the ice cubes had also gotten smaller. Intuitively I began to sip faster and started to feel somewhat lightheaded. In front of me a group of people were dancing to a set of lights that seemed increasingly flashy. Or rather, they weren't dancing at all - they were merely shaking their bodies around. I had the intention to talk to someone but the cascade of the music and the voices singing to it quickly overwhelmed. I became bottled in this room. And it was only 11 PM, a long way to go until the night would die down. My decision to show up in this club was not voluntary, but it was inevitable. It occurred to me as though when there was more freedom to make choices in life, there would be fewer reasons to adhere to any particular choice. So I ended up making no choice at all, merely allowing myself to be taken to places simply because going to places was to me preferable to not going to places. I couldn't pinpoint exactly what I felt when I quietly sat in the corner - it wasn't a material substance but rather the lack thereof - the lack of belief in essential oils, in playing golf, in dotted or not-dotted reporting lines, and in the future me taking the kids to the swimming pool.
Bypassing the straw I took a gulp of gin and tonic from the glass, wishing to drive the feeling away as it permeated me like the dimly lit smoke permeating the crowd. The swirling loud electro-bangs at the moment were like the background music of a movie scene waiting for something to happen, except for that nothing did happen and everything remained the same as it was thirty seconds ago. I was somewhat amused and put up a bland smile. I drank up the rest of the gin and tonic and decided to leave.
Pessoa once remarked that "what was social is now individual". And it was exactly like that when I left the club. The dry air with low levels of carbon dioxide was refreshing. Some specks of stars from afar were faintly visible. There were tire noises of cars in the city going places, and I was going back to the apartment where I would stay until the end of September. At this time of the day, walking on the streets were only people who were the patched up versions of their former selves. But which version was more real or less fake was not an answerable question and not the point.
In whichever version the solace people sought was still missing and at a distance the music went on.
