Dancing

You spend your entire teenagehood going out to venues which play loud music in order to meet girls. Some people mistake the means for the end and keep going out even if they already have a partner. Few people make this mistake, but since those people stay in the places, while the others find their girl and move on, they make up a sizable proportion of those in the club.

In your late 20s, you've worked it out. You basically know how to dance, or more to the point how to behave, in a variety of late-night, loud-music, alcohol-fuelled situations. In my case, a combination of the metal clubs of my teenage years and the drum'n'bass and techno clubs of my brighton years, added to which a smattering of gay clubs, led me to behave in a certain ways in venues characterized by loud repetitive beats and stroboscopic lighting.

Then, you come to a different culture. You might, for instance, find yourself in Bogota. You continue, out of habit, to consume beer and come to nightspots. However, insidiously, everything is different. You thought it was all about getting drunk and dancing like a ponce with your mates! Or perhaps you thought it was all about getting drunk, dancing like a ponce with your mates, and picking up a random girl (also drunk and dancing with her mates, perhaps less like a ponce and more like a pissed bint.)

But no. In fact, these nightspots are an excuse for the local youth, who all live with their parents and don't believe in sex before marriage, to simulate sex with their partners on the dancefloor. I believe that the theory is that if you do it in a public place, it can't be bad. True enough, everyone keeps their clothes on, but beyond that there is some serious groin proximity going on.

Of course, being a northern European, I think dance music is about a 4/4 beat and dancing in lines facing the DJ. I feel like an alien here. Dancing is about knowing what you're doing. It's also about simulating sex. Actually, although you might think latin music or salsa is fun and exotic, after you've watched some hot latin girls dancing with their pimply or mustachioed boyfriends on the dance floor a few times, you really wish they would go home and just have sex in their houses like civilised human beings, and leave the dancefloors for people to just have fun!

Obviously, I don't really know how to dance Salsa. But even if i did, i have to say that i reject the whole idea of musical sex on the dancefloor. People say its not about sex, and that I am a silly Brit to think so. Then I ask why I can't dance with a man, and they say "because that would be gay!" Case closed.

I wonder if my own culture will seem weird on my return, or whether it will be a welcome breath of fresh air. I'll say one thing though: I intend to go clubbing, and I intend to dance and have fun. What a revolutionary idea!