Culture Slut: Pride Again & Facing Reality on the Dancefloor

It’s the first week of August, which means that the build up to Brighton Pride has started, culminating in a weekend of glittery debauchery and debilitating hangovers. Normally, I would be starting to feel the excitement of the season, the high point of the summer, the crown jewel of my social calendar, but this year feels different. My plans aren’t fully in place. My outfits haven’t been chosen. My parties are booked, but I feel so tired. Maybe it’s part of growing older, this weariness and aimlessness. Maybe it’s because the weather has been so grim and grey for the last three weeks, and still isn’t showing any signs of change for the parades and promenades to come. Maybe it’s the constant political attacks on the trans community, both here and internationally, and our way of life seems to be being threatened in a very real way. Or it’s that this year we have experienced very real losses, both in the reporting of sky-rocketing street violence, and in a personal way, with the deaths of friends and loved ones permeating my summer.

I was going to miss the Saturday parades in Brighton for the first time in sixteen years so I could attend a memorial for a friend in Deptford who died earlier this year, but after the announcement of more train strikes, it seems that my chances of leaving the city are exactly nil. I will always stand with striking workers and support the unions, but still, I wish it wasn’t this weekend. I hadn’t seen this friend in many years, but it was someone that I used to go to nightclubs and parties with, and was very sad to hear about his passing.

One night that I remember in particular and will always treasure was when he and some of our other friends came to Brighton to give a performance with the very cool band they were in, and we went to get lots of cheap alcohol to drink on the train back to London. Andrew was the first person I knew who had contactless on his debit card, back when you could charge up £35 and it wouldn’t bill it to your account til the next day, which meant you could get away with spending beyond your means on a night out. We caught a graveyard train to Blackfriars where we drew on each other’s faces with lipstick. The barriers were left open and four of us went to a gay sauna where we could luxuriate naked together in a heated swimming pool in our inebriated states. Afterwards, we went back to someone’s small studio in Deptford at about eight in the morning and watched the finale of season eight of Drag Race, all lying entwined on a mattress on the floor before drifting off to sleep. I remember getting the train back home the next day with almost no hangover but only one contact lens in, rendering me practically blind in one eye. It was a great night.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

“In times like this, queer joy is not only radical, but vital.”

I’m still not really sleeping through the nights. Grief can be hard and uncomfortable, like the new pillows I’ve started using. I miss my old ones, they were soft and yielding, stained and spilling out. I can’t count the times I’d bury my face in them and scream, or cry, or just lie there. I don’t like it when things change. I want to be comfortable and cosy forever. I don’t want anyone to leave, I don’t want relationships to end, I don’t want anyone to die. We came back from Eden’s funeral recently and I lay on a sofa for three whole days, just sleeping and tossing and turning and playing on my phone. I watched mindless gay youtube content; Trixie Mattel make up videos, Queer Eye interviews, Drag Race deep dives, anything. I even watched a two hour video of drag queens playing dungeons and dragons. I hate dungeons and dragons. I finally found the song that will always make me think of her. I thought it would be hidden in the catalogue of sad 50s feminine jazz that I used to play when we hung out together, or maybe in the dramatic performances of Judy Garland or Barbra Streisand, but it wasn’t. It’s a Hi-NRG 90s club song by the London Boys, called Chapel of Love, and I played it to her at the end of a party at the new studio, just before we slept on soft sofas next to each other, reflected in the mirrored ceiling tiles. It was just a fun discotheque throwaway, but now the lyrics are etched on the inside of my skull: Another day goes by without you, I love you. Chapel of love, I’m crying in the night, I need you.

I’ve been putting on club nights, running away from my feelings by taking things on board that need my full attention and focus. I hosted the Church of Italo, a queer catholic fashion show and disco in an old church with a real minister on the judging panel. I danced at the closing party for Brighton Bear Weekend, an underwear night called Underbears. I hosted and sang at the Diva Karaoke Power Hour for Diva Disrupted and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and later ran away to Soho and drank Martinis on the street corner. I danced at a truly unhinged Studio 54 disco party at the Masonic Lodge in St Leonards, where fake cocaine covered every surface and a naked girl on roller skates did laps of the dance floor. I’ve been living in a riot of sensations and experiences, existing only in the immediateness of the now, not in the recesses of what could, or should have been. I dance, and push, and dance again until I drop down and can’t go on any more. Then I lie in bed for a day or two, sunken in a cotton pit of dark black sleep, where I still don’t have to think.

Nightlife is escapism from the real world. The dance floor is a utopia devoid of consequences and hangovers, tomorrow morning is a long way off and the day after doesn’t exist. Manic euphoria is ticking on for all eternity, you’ve never felt better and it never has to end! It’s nower than now, and newer than new. It’s wower than wow, and youer than you. Deep in the dark, even heartbreak feels good in a place like this. But is it escapism? Maybe this is the real world? Maybe this is realer than anything else in your life. Maybe the ugliness of trauma creates a false sense of truth. What is more real, the you that feels joy just by existing in the moment, or the you that wants to die because something bad happened five, six, ten years ago? Have you ever felt so completely yourself when dancing that you become a shining emanation, a goddess transcending a fleshly body whilst Depeche Mode tells you that all you ever wanted, all you ever needed, is in fact right here, in my arms? I have. I cried real tears that mingled with my hot sweat and the glitter on my face ran down onto my neck and chest. The light of Heaven (strobe) illuminates my soft body and I know that the gods are smiling at me. This isn’t escapism, this is me in my truest form.

Nightclubs are about resilience. They are a space for healing. How do you expect me to go on raw-dogging reality without creating somewhere that lets me lay my burdens down and drink from the pools of spiritual rejuvenation? The dancefloor is a temple to the self, but also a forum for community. I think of all the nightclubs in the past, the illicit bars, the frequently raided queer spaces, the dens of iniquity, the molly houses, the private lofts, the password protected basements, the members clubs, the private drawing rooms, the literary salons, the secluded woods, the derelict warehouses, the stairs behind the docks, every single venue that has housed mutual queer joy, love and friendships, erotic, platonic, everything in between, and I take courage. Nightlife has long been the birthplace of revolutions, places where ideas and radical joy flow freely, alongside the waters of the wild. It is somewhere that comforts, that nurtures. Every drag queen I have ever seen has been my mother. Every DJ I have ever heard has been the soothing voice that sings to a screaming baby. Every bull-dyke bouncer has been my father, protecting me from the wolves howling at the door. Every cute boy I kissed in the shadows has brought me one step closer to loving myself in the light. We as queer people are nothing if not resilient. It takes strength to keep dancing, to keep dreaming, to keep going forward. This is Pride.

Pride is here again. The Mother of Resilience is opening her arms and calling us home. She is telling us to continue to be strong, to fight for our rights and for our communities. She is telling us to protect those who need it most and to give freely to those who have little. She is telling us it's OK to enjoy our lives again, even if only for a short while. She wants to take our troubles away, kiss our foreheads and watch us dance. In times like this, queer joy is not only radical, but vital. When so many of us are under attack, when so many of us are dealing with grief, with loss, with illness, with poverty, with loneliness, with anything and everything, we need to be granted space to dream again. We need to let loose. We need to rest. We need to experience the community of our own spaces. We need the escapism of the dancefloor. We need the reality of our own godhood. We need the transcendence of the nightclub.

I’m going to go out almost every night this week. I can’t wait to commune with my own spirit in the dazzling darkness of euphoria. I will be dancing until I can’t dance any more, and then I shall rest. And one day, not too long from now, I shall wake up and realise that I was strong, and resilient, and powerful, and beautiful, and that I have made it through. And I will be Proud of that.

Words: Misha MN