Just Keep Dancing

Don’t drink on an empty stomach. That’s what they all say. But no one ever told me not to drink on an empty head: when the brain feels like a black cavity and you’re left curled up in bed, steeped in neglect and pitiful esteem. A drink will make me feel better, some think. It’ll cheer me up! Then they have that drink, and another, and another, and while they might feel elevated for the first few swigs, the beer becomes bottled bitterness, the spirits mixed melancholy, and they end up in a pit far deeper than when they had started.

I was one of those people.

University had not been what I was expecting. They sold the whole song-and-dance as a bright, carefree experience (meet the friends of a lifetime, work in a state-of-the-art lab, party!) and for some it was, sure. Yes, I had friends, I worked in an advanced laboratory, and I most certainly partied, but these things were only one side of a spinning, rattling coin. On the obverse were deadlines. Exams. Late nights spent trying to invent and memorise acronyms. The threat of failure looming overhead like a cresting wave, ready to crash down and sweep you away. More than once, my windows shuttered, I lay on the floor to dull the impending panic attack that squeezed my lungs in a fist. On one occasion, during one of the long showers I frequently took, I raked my nails across my skin until my torso was lined with furrows and petechiae. It made me feel a little better.

Believe me when I say I had not intended to drink that night. The temptation had been there; the sounds of partying could be heard throughout my block since four in the afternoon. It was Halloween, after all. But with a rare resolution, I had decided to knuckle down and finally finish the presentation I had been suffering my way through (biochemistry—an overview of the porphyrias). But the temptation had been there, and it had grown with each muffled bass hit in distant rooms, with the sounds of laughter, until finally, when my chest was itching with the dreaded F.O.M.O., my phone buzzed. A text. Marcus Brown, all caps: PARTY AT MINE, U GONNA BE THERE?

I liked Marcus. I liked him a lot, in fact. I had glanced at the laptop screen, read the word erythropoietic, and had slapped it shut.

My costume had been inspired for such short notice. One of my lab coats, freshly ironed after the crumpled state it had been in after the autoclave, combined with fake blood bought alongside the drinks—mad scientist. Whether the blood would wash out was not important. Beer was the drink of choice; I could cadge the harder stuff from the other partygoers. As I walked the short distance to Marcus’ flat, beer clinking in the cardboard box, the cold October wind made my loose coat flap behind me. The effect gave me a juvenile pleasure. When Marcus, dressed as a cowboy, greeted me with a grin and an affected hello, I had been convinced the night was going to be a good one. A rager. One for the books.

Bottled bitterness. Mixed melancholy. Three hours in and I was ensconced in a deep bean bag, wondering why I had even bothered to come. I had drunk too much—lying back, it felt like toppling from a cliff forever and ever—and the tilt-shift view of drunkenness kept me from focusing on anything except the vodka and lemonade in my hand. Hip-hop pounded from a chunky speaker. The smell of weed, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, emanated from the kitchen. Two skeletons, unfamiliar, were shotting in the corner. I sipped my vodka lemonade, but I was too far gone to taste it.

What the hell was I doing? The grades were slipping, and I had no excuses for that. Tutorials were skipped, lectures too, as if avoiding them would solve everything—out of sight and mind. Dad expected big things of me, he always had, and had always believed, and dammit, I expected big things of myself too. Yet here I was, drinking and smoking and cocooning myself in a ridiculous bean bag; things were collapsing like dominoes, and I was worthless, worthless, worthless and when I flunked or dropped out and the cresting wave (growing hungry) crushed my life into unsalvageable pieces I would think to myself you could have prevented this if you had just been better, better like the Cowboy who aced his tests and could still sink beers with gumption—

One of the skeletons had peeled away from his partner and plunked himself onto the sofa by my arm. Face-paint teeth parted to reveal real ones. “You doing alright there?”

Jolted from my unspooling torment, I scrambled for my words. “Yeah, I’m good,” I said, looking him up and down. “I like your costume.”

He winked and gave me a fist to bump. “I like yours. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Tyler.”

“Jake.” We bumped fists again, my movement as sluggish as my speech. We drank our drinks. I wished he would go away.

Tyler pinched at the sleeve of my lab coat, laughing a little. “I guess you’re studying the same thing as Marcus.”

This was hateful. The inanity. I swigged my vodka. “Yeah—” a chuckle “—how do you know him?”

But Tyler was bobbing along to the grimy song from the speaker, face scrunched up in appreciation. The heavy bass did soothe me somewhat, as how pressing sore muscles after the gym helps the pain. I settled back on the bean bag (falling from the cliff forever and ever—let myself fall) and immersed myself in the sounds.

The song came to an end. Silence. Then came the next one, light and bouncy.

“Oh no,” Tyler said, shaking his head.

“What?”

“Hate this song. Most overrated thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You hate it? Look at you!”

Opinion notwithstanding, Tyler was still bouncing his head, tapping his hand on the armrest. He grinned and stuck out his tongue, a flash of pink in his monochrome face. “It’s a party, baby.” Seeing that I wasn’t getting it, he leaned over and, waving his bottle of tonic wine to emphasise his point, he said:

“Some people play bad music. No, no, not bad music, just stuff you don’t like. Like this. But you can still have a good time! You just gotta keep on dancing. Keep the vibe. Just keep on dancing, even if you don’t want to, and then the song will be over and you’ll be onto other, better songs. You get me?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“You’re my main man,” he said with inebriated friendliness, clapping me on the shoulder, and the sincerity of it made me laugh. A real laugh. “Even if they play the weirdest, most effed up stuff, you can get through it.”

Grinning, I sketched some ridiculous dance move, arms swinging, shoulders rolling, and Tyler slapped the armrest happily. He had the magnetic quality I envied of people, the curious mix of unfeigned emotion and carefully told jokes, but knowing this did not stop me feeling good when he turned his beam of charisma onto me.

“Listen. We’re going to the club after this. You coming? They’re doing free entry if you have a costume. Come on, you know you want to.”

“Ah, I don’t know…”

“I’m not going if you’re not, my boy. That’s that.”

He was being genuine, as the drunk tend to be. Warm happiness blossomed inside. “I suppose I have to, then.”

“Yes! Love it.”

I had wanted to go home early that night, but Tyler, of course, had drawn me out with the rest of the group. We went to the club, a cowboy, a skeleton, a bloodied scientist, and more. In the line outside, a motley group of costumed students laughed at my lab coat. But it was a good-natured laugh, and our two groups merged into one, and we drank overpriced drinks and hit the dancefloor, and as the tunes blended into each other and the clock dragged from eleven to twelve to one the next day, the ball-and-chain of the studies I had promised myself to do the next day weighed ever heavier. But these things were temporary. Yes, they were unpleasant, but I could apply myself more. I could ask for help. I could even take a break from it all, if I really wanted it; if I did these things, if I found my footing, if I allowed myself to dance whatever way I needed to get me through, then the bad would pass and there would be a brief stillness and then the good would begin.

This was a truth everyone in the club must have known—why else would they stay up until two in the morning? As the lights turned on, throwing us all into stark relief, blushing and grinning, the chant began: “One more song! One more song!”

And I found myself chanting along with them.