You'll Miss Me When I'm Not Around

 

I have this habit that seems strange to those that don’t understand. I get in my car around 10 PM and make the three hour drive to New York City so I can go clubbing. Bars are the only nightlife Boston really has to offer, and a sober gal sitting around drinking Red Bull trying to get to know new people over incessantly loud yacht rock isn’t an image I find appealing. Sometimes a friend will come with me, sometimes I’ll meet up with people on the other side, but most of the time it’s just me on the road, me dancing for myself in a fogged out room. The whole night becomes like a ritual for me. It’s a form of witchcraft. I disappear into the night and come back to my Cambridge apartment at 5am ready to have a cup of coffee, read some library books to decompress from the chaos that is the Brooklyn club scene, take my morning meds and go to sleep for a while. It’s easy to do this now that I’m sober. I find I can stay out a lot longer and really make the most of the night. My energy is aligned with what’s best for me. I don’t go out that often anymore, so when I do it’s my way of reconnecting with the only place that’s ever really felt like home. At least it felt that way when I moved to Boston a year ago. I’m not having that much fun doing that drive anymore though, if I’m being totally honest. I’m still chasing those perfect nights I had when the quarantine mandate was lifted after three months and stuff started getting lively again. Those were the days I lived for an Instagram flyer for an event that didn’t have a location so you just had to know where to go, or know someone who knew where to go. I danced on boats, on strangers rooftops, under bridges, in grimy amphitheaters until the cops showed up. It was all so fleeting and beautiful. No experience since then has quite compared, but I go out anyways the same way I kept using drugs when they weren’t fun anymore. 

I’ve felt connected to parties and techno and dancing and house music since I moved to New York. It’s where I found acceptance and love after getting away from my abusive ex boyfriend. It’s a scene that changed my life, a scene I have endless gratitude for. But an uncomfortable sense of discontent is becoming more and more of a reality the more I make that long drive. I show up to the club tired. I’m a little out of it. My feet hurt. I don’t like my outfit. Parking was a bitch. The people are annoying me. Red Bull was stupidly priced. Even my beloved American Spirits don’t taste as good as they used to. I’m kinda bored. I’m in a bad mood because I’m gonna be up all night. A bad mood in the club is contagious, so I leave long before the party is over knowing I’m not gonna be much fun. I met someone during a night out a couple years ago who I’m still in touch with who gets it. He’s in the same boat as me. 

I’m done with New York, he drunkenly texted me at 3AM while I was sound asleep in my now half-filled one bedroom apartment in Cambridge. My boyfriend fled like a bat out of hell only a few weeks prior. I had spent that time crying, contemplating, wondering where the hell I went wrong. I wasn’t sure of anything besides the fact he was gone and he wasn’t coming back. I don’t usually appreciate middle of the night texts given their obvious, desperate subtext, but a fellow rave friend hitting me up at 3AM for a chat about losing NYC is a conversation I’m willing to engage in. I met this guy, let’s call him Adrian, in 2022 when I was heartbroken about another guy who didn’t want the same things I did. Adrian was heartbroken as well in a way I still can’t even fathom. His girlfriend left him after they had talked about marriage together. Heartache! It’s so stupid and so liberating and so human. I felt so foolish at the time I met Adrian because I had been so hopeful about that other guy who had really given me nothing. He was just a gross fuckboy. And a good fuckbuddy. When Adrian hit me up recently I was once again feeling foolish because I’m mourning the loss of a dude who gave me so much hope for the future, but turned out to be a massive asshole and a huge disappointment.

You might have caught this before I did, but I have a bad habit of keeping men in my life who don’t give me what I deserve, nevermind what I need! It’s because I don’t date. I meet a guy, we fuck, we fuck a few more times and I don’t bother fucking anyone else because I’m too tired from fucking this guy, and before you know it months have gone by and I’ve fallen in love. I don’t vet anyone before I bring them home. I think that if we have good conversation and good sex then that’s enough to turn them into my boyfriend. I put my whole heart into one man without knowing what else is out there. I don’t keep my eyes open. That’s my issue. I’m a clever girl, but when it comes to men I’m clueless. Love is my blindspot. At the end of the day that’s what I’m looking for. I wanna feel like every damn day is my birthday, a day where I can be showered with affection, but I have no idea the work it takes to make every day feel like your birthday. I read that line in a book I just read and damn was it spot on. 

None of the guys I fall in love with listen to house music. They don’t get the appeal. These are the men who I choose to be my partner, but don’t understand my strange habit of driving 3 hours just to go to the club. That should be my first warning sign. Thinking it’s all well and good to drive 6 hours to Pittsburgh to stand around listening to a band named after a bird, but heaven forbid someone enjoy dancing is a beige flag, but a flag nonetheless. These are men who won’t dance with me, won’t even show a lick of interest in why I like dance music so much, and I pretend like that isn’t deeply painful for me because I want to keep them around. I’m willing to overlook so much for men that I love, and they refuse to even look at me. Then they leave, which is a blessing in disguise, but feels like an unwelcome reminder that I’m not worth staying around.

Maybe that’s why I keep going out. Dancing is healing, the ravers know this. Plus, it’s just fucking fun being out late at night seeing a great set go down. If the DJ’s any good the whole crowd morphs into one being and it’s like seeing everything and everyone you’ve loved enter the pearly gates of heaven and we all finally get to put on our halos and party. The men I choose to date wouldn’t make it past the doorguy. At this point that’s on me instead of them. You are as much of a vibe as the people in your crew are, and if they don’t come correct then they shouldn’t come at all. That’s how it is in the world of techno, and that’s how I want it to be in my romantic life as well. But lately when I go out it’s so that I don’t have to go in. I’m in pain in this strange city that is hours away from where I once knew home to be. I’m yearning for love and connection and those gorgeous nights I used to spend watching the sun come up, the nights I used to spend in someone else’s bed. 

I’m mourning the loss of a few men right now. The one I opened up my apartment and my whole heart to and the one who was supposed to raise me. One is a man who just needs to grow the fuck up and I can’t make that happen for him. I thought it meant something that we spent a year of our lives together, a year in which we both were recovering from drug addiction, and all the while he was trying to find a way to say he enjoys being around me, but just isn’t that into me. The other is a man who has spent the past 27 years trying to say that he just isn’t that interested in having kids. It’s so hurtful going through life trying to communicate what your needs are to people who just can’t deliver but keep making promises all the same. Those men turned me into a foolish, hopeful girl. 

The last time I went out I was foolish and hopeful, too. I was wearing a loose tee shirt with only a G-string and fishnets underneath, hoping to get sweaty in the club, getting laid a loose option. I hopped in my car with my debit card, a full tank of gas, a couple Red Bulls, and high tailed it to back to where I first came alive: a techno club infamous for sex parties and not being able to see a single fucking thing. You know how it ends, dancing with this cute guy Adrian in a dark room filled with fog, earnestly being asked if he can touch my ass, making out, smiling as we go our separate ways. Unfinished business, flirtation, summer nights in New York City. So much promise, so much hope, so much foolishness as a 5AM 3 hour drive back to Boston lingers in the distance. New York is dead to us, those other guys are dead to me. So we hold hands as we walk out of the club, look back at the city barely hidden from view, together mourning the loss of a place, the people, who once made us feel so at home. Now the past year feels like a dream, a nightmare, a surreal series of events that led us to strange places that offer us everything we’ve deserved all along. A fresh start, new beginnings, a chance to be hopeful without feeling foolish. 5AM in Brooklyn.

At least that’s all how it went down in my head. Adrian was too tired to come out. I was too tired to dance for longer than a few hours. I was absolutely miserable on the drive back and wished I had stayed in bed. I’m done. I’m really done. I’m not going back. Not going back to those silly boys who were always making me cry. Not going back to the clubs where everything could be so shiny and pure, but could also be trash. I’m not taking any more chances. Next time I make plans to see Adrian, I’m sure the meeting place won’t be NYC. It might not even be at the club. I’m ready to see what the next life looks like. I’ll still go out dancing, of course, but there needs to be receipts of delivery of an epic night out before I bother making the drive. I’m not wasting any time anymore.

Goodbye NYC, goodbye nogoodterriblymean boys, goodbye to wanting, wishing and hoping for things to be as good as they once were when the truth of the matter is my heart and feet are aching for something those boys and that party aren’t able to give me. Both the dance and the partners are changing. My heart isn’t broken anymore, so fuck it let’s break it again. I learned the rules of the love game and what it takes to win, so the next time someone breaks my heart it won’t be because I dug myself into a hole with a man who cared less about me than I did about him. The next time I go out it won’t be because I’m chasing the highs so I don’t have to feel the lows. Fuck it, let’s go out. I’m ready to see what else is out there. I’m ready for it all. Make a wish and smile, baby. We haven't made it to heaven yet.