Goodbye, youth

Rosie’s take on… Getting too old for clubbing 
It’s finally happened guys. I’m finally too old for clubbing. 

I know, it’s shocking.

At a young 20 years, 8 months and 8 days, I am too old to go out partying. 

The realisation hit this Saturday night, but I think I’ve known for a while. I used to go out very regularly, at least once a weekend but often twice. It has become less and less frequent in recent times, becoming instead something that I do once every few weeks. 

This Saturday night started out as any other. I had pizza for dinner. I squeezed in a power nap before my friends came over. We pre-drank to music such as Eminem and Fergie. We chatted, we drank, we laughed, I did some push-ups. We called a taxi and had to wait ages for it to find our street. And we headed into town. 

The first sign that my clubbing time is up should have been the lack of familiar faces. That used to be one of the things that would always draw us back to the same place, we knew everyone. But not this time. There were the same bouncers and security guards as I know from my countless trips into town. But the faces of the fellow party-goers? Not only were they not familiar, but they were juvenile. “Have they suddenly lowered the drinking age and forgotten to tell me?” I thought as I pushed my way through the crowds of eager teenagers. I swear initially I didn’t see a single person over the age of like fifteen at our first stop, one of our usual bars. But then I looked closer, and realised I had been mistaken; not everyone was fifteen, there was an undeniable amount of old people. More specifically, old men. So here we are, in one of our favourite bars and most popular watering holes, surrounded almost exclusively by a) fresh faced youths who’ve just graduated high school, wearing crop tops, leather short shorts and sky-high heels, just been dropped off by their mums, and b) seedy faced old men looking for an aforementioned eager youth to take home with them. And then there was us, a group of four women who are of age, didn’t rely on our parents for a lift, wanting to have an enjoyable night out on the town to celebrate my completion of uni. It is a strange experience that is becoming more and more common, a night out when we don’t see someone we know or used to party with. This weekend it occurred to me that we don’t see them anymore because they’ve grown up. They don’t go clubbing anymore. 

Dancing in the club has always been one of my favourite parts of a night out, and I’ll admit I enjoyed tearing up the D floor on Saturday night. However, the once carefree, reckless dancer that encouraged large crowds that I once was, has turned into an angry, bitter people-hater who wants her own personal space and for everyone to stop bumping into her, pouring drinks on her and standing on her fucking feet. More than once I considered putting my new combat moves to the test, I’ll admit it. But I’ve always been told it’s wrong to hit a child, so I resisted.

Somehow our relatively casual-dress club that we used to rock up to in flats, and on one occasion even managed to get through in thongs, has become a place for stilettos and high-heeled boots that, should you happen to receive a stomp on your foot, causes a lot of physical and emotional damage no matter how deep your state of inebriation. 

Once upon a time I would be flattered if a guy was hitting on me, trying to dance with me, or even the occasional ‘accidental’ swipe of a hand on my backside. But not anymore. You’re gonna try to dance up close to me? No thanks mate, jog on. Any girl who has been clubbing ever is surely more than familiar with being unexpectedly groped by strangers. On Saturday night I was walking along harmlessly, minding my own business when someone took a real good squeeze of my right ass cheek. Once upon a time, I would have ignored it, or possibly turned around and given them a smile and continued on my way. But, being the old woman that I suddenly am, my violent and generally aggressive nature clicked into place, and I swung around ready to give whoever it was a real good right hook to the side of the face. But alas, I couldn’t tell who the groper was, and so he was saved. 

I have two days off a week. Today, on my second day off in a row, I got to spend time with my sisters before they went to school, had a cuddle in the sun with my puppy, tackled Jacob’s Ladder, went to the beach for a few hours, read about half of The Notebook, did my grocery shopping, did my washing, went to combat, and ate many meals. Just a standard productive day off. But yesterday. Sunday. The day after clubbing. Also the day of clubbing depending on how you think of it; I didn’t get home until the early hours of Sunday. Anyway, yesterday. You know what I did yesterday? Absolutely nothing. It took me ages to wake up and get out of bed, then it took me ages to eat, then I had a nap. All I did all day was nap, watch The Lion King (I will never get too old for Disney), and I managed to drive myself to my parents house for dinner. Except I was so dead tired that I couldn’t drive myself home again so I had to stay the night. It got to like 8 o’clock and my little sister was speaking to me and I literally couldn’t understand what she was saying because I was so tired. So half of my time off for the entire week I wasted because I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t even clear out the empty wine bottles from the counter. What a waste of a day. Gone are the days of quick recovery after a night out, when I could go out all night and rock up to work for a 10 hour shift the next day and be fine. I barely even had anything to drink this weekend, I had less than one bottle of wine for pre’s; gone are the days of multiple bottles. And I definitely can’t do back to back nights out anymore; last night I was asleep by 9, and I’m still trying to recover today. These days I have too much other stuff I’d rather be doing on my day off than silently dying on the couch, wishing I could sleep for a week and a half. 

The best part of the night on Saturday was getting a kebab and chips, gravy and cheese at the end of the night. But I can do that during the day. So I’ve officially come to the conclusion that there is no reason for me to go out anymore. I used to have a fear of missing out; if I didn’t go, all my friends would have a great night and I’d miss out. Not anymore. Now hardly any of those friends go out anymore anyway, and all I’d be missing out on is some sweaty, old man trying to fondle my bum, a boy who may as well be fifteen trying to grind on me and everyone else he sees, and some over-enthusiastic, over-intoxicated, under-dressed, high-heeled clad eighteen year old girls, mouths stained pink from their vodka cruisers, talking about how excited they are for leavers. Then I’d wake up late on the Sunday, and miss most of the day while I’m focusing on not dying, and not achieve a single thing on one of the two days I get off out of every seven. No thanks, I choose life. 

It’s time to pass the baton onto the next generation of party people. Enjoy it, little eighteen year olds. It’s your turn now. I’m retired. 

the shirt says it all