And This Is Why I Still Go To The Club
Last night, I went to an event featuring Ta-Nehisi Coates (a great writer who also happens to be a blogger and senior editor at The Atlantic) and David Remnick (Pulitzer Prize-winning author and editor-in-chief of The New Yorker) at the New York Public Library. The event was simply titled “David Remnick and Ta-Nehisi Coates: In Conversation,” and that’s exactly what it was: two men talking, specifically about Barack Obama and Remnick’s new biography, The Bridge.
As I stepped inside the large room moments before the conversation began, I of course scanned the room to see if I saw any familiar faces. There were none. Then, of course, I scanned the room again, this time trying to find an attractive woman I could possibly sit next to. And guess what? There were none of those either*.
And this is why I still go to the club.
Forget the dismal number of pretty faces I saw last night, let’s talk about the small amount of faces I saw without wrinkles in them. Ta-Nehisi Coates and David Remnick aren’t old guys, but clearly their fan base is, because where I was sitting felt like a bridge club. These women were old. The kind of old people start embracing and use as an excuse to not do things like heavy lifting. And as much as I wanted to pull out my phone and distract myself, even scrolling through whatsapp wasn’t going to save me from noticing I was the youngest person in my section.
So not only was there a drought of fine women in the place, there was a drought of women my age too. Thus, even if I didn’t care about the way a woman looked, I would still be hard-pressed to find an unattractive woman my age to sit next to. Honestly, a whatsapp group chat with my friends back home would have been a better scene than the one in front of me.
I am 28 years old. Maybe I should have outgrown the club scene a long time ago, but I haven’t, and honestly, the club scene hasn’t outgrown me either. I don’t go out to clubs to pick up the kind of girl who just graduated from college. I don’t need to, because the truth is, there are plenty of good women my age still lurking in dimly lit places that play music way too loud. And if nothing else, I can always swap whatsapp info with them after a dance or two.
This is not to say a pretty woman I meet at the club would be opposed to join me for nerd-fests like a conversation between two writers at the New York Public Library. As a matter of fact, had I been able to score two tickets to last night’s event instead of one, I am sure I could have found some female company to bring along, and she would’ve enjoyed it as much as I. We could have even compared notes later on whatsapp about what was said. But I know better than to believe a sophisticated event like the one I attended last night is going to be teeming with women I’d like to take home with me afterwards. After all, it isn’t the club, and honestly, that’s fine with me.
If you ask me, the club has been given a bad rap. A common refrain I hear from women and men is, “you’ll never find the person of your dreams at a place that does bottle service.” And what I want to know is, why won’t I? I’ve swapped whatsapp numbers with some of the coolest women I’ve ever met in clubs.
There is not one public space I can think of where everyone congregating is an ideal type. Even a church welcomes people who have done more bad than good. And though I haven’t seen a statistic on where most good people go to hang out, I am pretty sure the club is full of them just by the sheer volume of people who go there. I mean, come on, all those people packed inside the tiny space and not one of them is quality? Get out of here. Maybe people who can’t meet good people at the club also struggle to meet good people on whatsapp or anywhere else.
Take it from someone who prides himself on balance. I have met a lot of cool girls at a lot of different places, but never at the library, never at a jazz show. At least on whatsapp, I can keep track of the ones I do meet.
On any given week, I can be at a club one night, and a museum exhibit the next. This is not some manufactured self I go out of my way to create; it is all a part of me. But also a part of me is how much I enjoy meeting new women, and of these two places, only one gives me that fix—and it’s not the place where you can touch with eyes only. At the exhibit I’m apt to see two, maybe three women I’d want to talk to, but at the club, way too many to count. And to be completely honest, if I had to choose between one or the other, I’d take the girl at the club, and here’s why: she’s probably way more fun and way more open-minded. Plus, she’s the one most likely to reply back when I message her on whatsapp at 2 a.m.
Though I should probably not judge people based on the environments in which they meet, I do. We all do. That being said, I would assume the girl I meet at the museum would be less likely to go to the club. To her, this museum we’re at is her definition of fun, whereas for me, the exhibit is my definition of interesting. Meanwhile, the girl I meet at the club is giving me the impression she likes to have fun (except for the girl with the bad attitude, she’s giving me the impression of a headache), which is always an attractive quality. Sometimes, just to test this theory, I’ll add them on whatsapp the same night and see how they respond. The ones who joke back? Keepers.
Just because a woman prefers to read more than she prefers to watch television doesn’t make her a higher commodity than her peers who prefer television. Hell, she might only like to read trashy romance novels, as opposed to the woman who watches television and always has on CNN. But both women probably gossip about it on whatsapp anyway, so what difference does it make?
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to meet a woman at a function like the one I was at last night, but I’ve gone to enough of those things to know I can leave my handful of peppermints at home. The only places where I need to bring those are coincidentally at the same places from where I get them…at the club. And yes, even in the club bathroom line, I’ve ended up exchanging whatsapp numbers with someone I liked.
Apologies to any woman who just happened to have been there last night and reads my blog today. I’m not saying you aren’t attractive, I’m just saying I never saw you. If I had, I probably would’ve asked for your whatsapp.
