last night i missed all the fireworks

Last night I danced the night away in Mornington Crescent. I was not in KOKO, but just across the road for a third of the price.

It was a small place, but not without its interests. There was a pole on a stage which provided an opportunity for the over-confident people among the crowd to show off. It was mostly gay men who availed themselves of this. During a song called 'The watering can song' a watering can the shape of an elephant is filled with vodka and poured into the mouths of the crowd. There are four girls paid to dress up and dance at the front of the front stage for the full 6 hours, one of whom was dressed as a sailor. Behind the front stage was a screen playing films on silent, last night these included Corpse Bride. There was a quick quiz and CD give away, which I managed to benefit from.

There was a very interesting lesbian couple, who rather unfortunately looked like a pair of drag queens. One did so in the large, wide, tall fashion of a pantomime dame, the other was also relatively tall but really skinny so spotting her boobs became difficult, but not impossible. She was possibly wearing a wig, but certainly a lot of hairspray, glitter false eyelashes on both sets of lashes. Clothing wise she had on an extremely short dress with suspenders and fishnet stockings. Bearing in mind the fact that most tights models are waxed men, this dress/stocking combo made me think 'only a man could have legs that good'. I then realised that the dress was so short I could tell she definitely didn't have a willy. Nice.

The worst dressed of the night goes to the woman who was at least post-30, tall, with a model's figure, wearing clumpy furry boots, a see-through black lace top with no bra, and black rubber hot pants with a red heart strategically placed where you'd expect it to be.

Despite these freaky-types, there were some genuinely normal people there. Even the people in what could be reasonably considered fancy dress weren't pretentious, and didn't look down at the more conventionally dressed. I didn't feel out of place. The professional dancing girls asked us to dance up on the stage. I got a free CD. There were no creepy too-old men that think students will sleep with anyone. The journey home was swift, easy and uneventful. It was a success.

But it made me realise again how many people are hurting, broken, needy, and looking in all the wrong places for the answers. And that if we're honest, even if we know were not to look, we all go there sometimes.