Club Ethnography

Whenever I'm bored at clubs (i.e. sober and married, thus defeating both of the primary purposes of being at a club) I have a couple of fall-back games I like to play. The first is: Who's On Drugs? with bonus points if the drug can be named (not counting alcohol, that's just cheating). The second is the Everybody Wants to Get Laid game, in which you try to pick out the people most likely to go home with other people that evening. This is a good time to examine the mating rituals of the human animal: the hair flipping, lip touching, hips turned toward the other person, the casual touching--and those are the subtle gestures. In the Netherlands, I discovered a fun new game: How Many People In This Room Are Fifteen Inches Taller Than I Am? Answer from Paradiso the other night: twelve. And I'd never before fully appreciated how much more exciting clubs are when smoking is allowed: dodging lit cigarettes just adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the evening. (Should there be an "s" on the end of quoi? I can't spell in French at all.)