Before 1998, we could smoke in clubs and with cigarettes in hand, we would be on the dancefloor all night. After the smoking ban, the patio became the heart of the club. As a DJ, I hate this because it becomes more difficult to keep people on the floor. As a social being, though, I love the smoking patio on the grounds that I can actually have a conversation with my friends without starting every sentence with "WHAT DID YOU SAY?"
I rarely dance at Underground, mostly because the dance floor is the size of a four square court and it is inevitable that I will, at some point during the night, take a Kelly bag to the face or end up with a stiletto driven into my foot. I dance with Melissa and Anthony (both PDP contributors who keep forgetting to post) for a grand total of two songs early enough in the evening where we are the only people on the dance floor. For the rest of the night, I stay on the smoking patio.
If there is an element of the theatric to smoking patio conversation, it is of an absurdist nature. Life doesn't make sense, hence our conversations do not make sense.
On the patio, subjects change so quickly that if we turn for a split-second social hug with that person whose last name we never learned, we may be lost for the rest of the night. Mike detailing the near-amputation of his finger while slicing pizza turns into a thread of Catholic school jokes, with yours truly feigning offense because I know that everything said about Catholic school kids is true. (Does anybody seem to know why the vast majority of club-goers are Catholic school graduates? Are we still rebelling against our uniforms?) Somehow, this all leads to the shocking revelation Anthony likes Phish.
And then Melissa and I ended up rambling about new wave boys and Richard Blade and "Doot Doot" as the cheesiest of all cheesy 80s sex songs. Are there really guys who use Freur as foreplay and, if so, do they also have waterbeds? Or, does it all happen in a Trans Am parked on Mulholland?
These are the questions that linger in our minds because it's Friday night and if we have to actually think about work or school or politics, the cigarette won't taste as sweet and one of us might end up crying into our bottles of Bass Pale Ale. Here on the smoking patio, conversation is meaningless by design. We'll save the serious stuff for Denny's.