Club Sauce

The fact is hard to avoid. People come from miles around to sample the vibrant clubbing scene in Manchester. In fact, it’s not just a scene. It’s several scenes, all happening at once, and a night out can turn into an odyssey saturated with endorphins and chemical highs…

Let me stop there; I can’t keep this up. I know what you’re thinking. For those familiar with my blog, it must be a little strange for me to be writing about clubs in Manchester. And you’re right. I hate crowds, especially sweaty crowds. I loathe excessive, repetitive noise. Dim rooms, in which I tread on unspecified, moist obstacles, actually make my entire body twitch with disgust. I detest those odd, soulless places inhabited by a transient population, these voids of the modern.
So why am I writing about clubs? Well, I decided to embark upon a night of clubbing with some friends, to immerse myself in the clubbing scene for the purposes of writing this post. I threw myself on their mercy, allowing them to pick the locations, and following them nervously as we moved from one location to another.
The first club was an accident. It was cold outside and we wanted to start the night off quickly. We found ourselves outside a garish, neon building, the image of a supine woman, high-kicking her long, boot-clad legs in the window. It’s name, The Purple Pussycat, was emblazoned above this image. My group started to move towards the door.
“That’s a strip club if ever I saw one,” I shouted after them, reluctant to enter into a room that was filled with sorry breasts and male arousal.
“It’s not, I’m sure,” replied one of our pack. “But we can go somewhere else just in case.” Then a loud, meaty voice joined our conversation.
“It’s not a strip club.” It was the bouncer, clearly enjoying our consternation. This was the only reassurance my friends needed and we were soon inside.
Well, The Purple Pussycat is not a strip club. But it sure looks like one. The DJ booth was framed by two greasy poles, and the décor looked prepared to deal with all kind of bodily fluids. There were little alcoves here and there and a fish, tortured by the bass lines and banging its head on the glass of its mucky tank. It was an ominous start for me, the non-clubber. I felt slightly miserable as I tried to move my legs in time to a Madonna track I could barely hear over the farting buzz of the sub-standard speakers. It wasn’t long before a fight broke out, and a man dressed in a black raincoat fell directly on his face with a horrifying crack. There was raised voices, pushing and poking. I wasn’t really surprised. These poor saps were probably over-stimulated by the weird interior design (including the police mugshot of Charlie Sheen), and their loins had probably been activated by the faint promise of seeing some naked flesh. We decided it was time to move on. The Purple Pussycat had done nothing to change my mind about clubbing. But where to next?
From deep within our group there was a cry of, “Sankey’s”. We jumped into a taxi and headed up to Ancoats, the historical scene of much suffering in Manchester.
Sankey Soap is one of Manchester’s most famous clubs. I remember, back before I became the man I am now, attending nights there. Back then it was a scruffy venue, packed to the rafters with sweating thugs and pill-heads. It’s no longer scruffy, and has the stench of Money and Greed about the place. We joined the queue in the freezing cold, and shivered our way to the front.
Here, we were faced with no less than eight bouncers, all wearing matching outfits: black coats, black jeans/trousers, and black leather gloves. Their collective shaved heads glinted under the shiny new sign above the door. The only one with anything to mark him out as an individual had a very vaginal looking Mohican; a strip of coarse, pubic hair dividing his head, and declaring “Macho!” loudly and pornographically. It was, of course, this man who stopped us, glaring menacingly.
“You ain’t getting in with that shirt,” he said at my friend, who was obnoxious enough to wear a neatly pressed black shirt, black trousers and black shoes. He couldn’t see the problem.
“What?” he answered back. “I don’t get it.”
“Out of the queue,” the Mohican man ordered. Another friend piped up:
“But he’s with us, can’t we all just go in.”
“You’re together, are you?” came the reply. “Right, all of you, out of the queue.”
We were cast aside, huddling together, watching other people get subjected to the same treatment. I was taken back to my time at the airport. The security staff behaved in exactly the same way, their fictional authority puffing their chests as they sat on their high, high horses. I looked at the bouncers and just saw that their lives were structured around appearing tough, and getting paid. Humanity, it seems, has reached a peak of affectation: machismo in the modern world is nothing more than eight men in black standing with their legs so far apart that they are in danger of tearing their groins. I would have stifled a giggle right there on the street if I hadn’t been so darned cold.
So another taxi and another club. It was already past midnight and I hadn’t had a drink in about ninety minutes. It was also so cold that my state of sobriety had returned rather quickly. It was to The Roadhouse, where it was a Detroit Techno night and, a plus point on a clubbing night, only £4 to get in. We quickly found out why it was so cheap. The DJ, a big noise from Detroit, had decided not to do his set. Actually, he had not even left the United States, and was currently AWOL from his duties. Inside the club there were few people, most of who walked around aimlessly, their shoulders slumped, looking miserable. While my group made the best of the situation and took to the dancefloor, I counted up the reasons why clubbing is a horrific activity for me:

1. The music is so mechanical and repetitive that it makes the experience of standing in front of the DJ booth reminiscent of being chewed slowly and painfully by Ted Hughes’ Iron Man. I yearn for the organic in all forms of life – why does modern man gravitate towards the grind of the computer, even in his leisure time. Give me swirling jazz, primal drums, upbeat folk, loud rock music. Don’t give me a headache, and remind me that I spend most of my waking life in unholy communion with a machine. Of course, I wasn’t on drugs…

2. Everything is a disappointment. You queue for a while, and then find out that what you queued for wasn’t worth queuing for in the first place so you move on to another queue and stand shivering in the cold, waiting for something you hope will bring an epiphany, but only gives you a sinking feeling and the desire to leave. So you leave again, and queue again, and sober up again, and get cold again, and are disappointed again. This cycle continues and can’t be called fun by anyone.

3. The alcohol is of such a lousy quality that it makes the sting of being over-charged much, much worse. Watery beer in a plastic cup, or maybe a can of Red Stripe. Christ, our leisure time has been hijacked by dumb, tasteless brutes. I ended my night drinking straight Jack Daniels for want of something better. My Scottish father would disown me if I ever admitted this to him…

4. There’s a scene in Larry David’s delightful sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Larry is given a condom by his friend that has a special numbing tip to make him last longer. “Why would I want to last longer,” asks our bewildered hero. “It just gets boring after a while.” This is precisely how I feel about clubbing.

5. When these concerns are voiced, I’m looked at as if I’m some crazed pervert. This, of course, makes me have an even worse time, and makes the people I’m with question why they are indeed friends with such a stick in the mud. Which, in turn, makes me feel as if there is something deeply wrong with my genetic make-up, as if I am a social Elephant Man wailing through the sack on my head.