hedonistic pursuits

It was about 4 in the morning and I was in my Grab when the last ounce of alcohol lost its ability to inhibit me and I got the time to contemplate the past four hours. It's funny, how a few hours before at 7:45pm I was awake not too long after my midday nap, eating my unhealthy Chicken Cutlet fried rice from the shop downstairs while watching Sense8 on Netflix, with one leg nested on my chair, the most lapsup position that happens to be the most comfortable. Then, I was still thinking of pulling a last minute ghosting. And 4 hours later, I was in a different continuum, jumping away, as if two separate lives collided violently.

I know hitting the club is nothing to write home about. If anything, there's that same element of taking a walk of shame if you take one too many shots. But as a first timer hitting Zouk and clubs at large, it was all sorts of exhilarating. It was everything I imagined it to look like, a crowded dancefloor, bass that beats the ground so hard it seeks to replace and take dictatorship over your natural heartbeat, dizzying disco lights to throw you in a hedonistic fervour. If the alcohol haven't took care of that, that is.

Like Radio Gaga's lost chick in the casino, I had no inkling on what good club music is, and I spent the first 10 minutes trying to fit in, headbobbing and awkward hand gestures to the beat while the rest of the crew grew into insiders' position, hands up in the air; and Alastair true to his form, jumped with the beat dropped together when the crowd raved.

I had many a times said how I'll be a terrible person to rave with, far too self-aware to throw myself in that hedonistic rapture that partygoers seem to have embedded in their being, but A. Panderghast told me it's all about the company and you'll get into it when everyone's just unfucked and here to turn up and get down. I had dismissed that thought weeks ago when he told me this in the office during my Division duty. I happily ate my words by the time we jumped to Phuture.

The underground grunge of Phuture wasn't just defined by its urban hits and R&B remixes-everyone went wild when Rihanna's hits hit the speakers- it has that 'only cool and druggies kids know it' vibe to it, much smaller, a remarkable contrast to the it's-the-end-of-the-world-fuck-it-let's-dance-till-we-die of Zouk. It's much less showy in a sense, without the high ceilings, smoke and blinking disco lights. In our little space, I danced like nobody was watching. My hands were thrown up; my body was jiving to whatever that was on. It was that dramatic I'm feeling the music and I'm one with it millennial bullshit, but I've never denied I'm basic af.

It's been so long since I felt this kind of unfettered freedom, a kind of feeling I thought was well and over. I suppose this liberation heightened since I was convinced it would be an underwhelming experience. I was surprised how I eventually got into it, how much I enjoyed myself.

That night Cash Cash played live, and one of the last songs was 'Devil' which featured Neon Hitch, I guess my affinity with the singer had made the night even more intoxicating, and an extra splosh of alcohol in the middle of it all helped serum the it all. The company mattered a lot, and I continue to count my sober blessings that I've got all I got.

At 5ish in the morning, I've finally returned home. For the first time, I'm completely fine after drinking: no nausea, no pounding headaches. Did all of this really happen?

Now, when's the next nearest possible date we're doing it all over again?