Dateline Special

Sometimes I walk into a room, an establishment, a party, or the like and I think, "This looks like the opening segment for a news magazine on TV."  More often than not, it's the sparsely populated dance floor that sparks it.  Combine that with guys wearing too much hair product, too much cologne, white adidas below stonewashed jeans; in addition to girls who've spent too long trying to change the color of their skin through UV bulbs and "natural" foundation sporting their crispy hair cigarette stained fingernails; all topped off with the incredible lights and sounds of overplayed ass-shaking hits.  Last night I was honored enough to babysit a friend as he got his drunk on, so we went to the only club in this entire city.  I was not disappointed to see exactly what I expected.  Some things I find socially intriguing: what are men supposed to do if they aren't dancing with a girl? Do we dance (which, if you weren't a member of Step Up 2, you probably shouldn't be doing all alone) and wait for a girl to come around? And when they do happen upon us,  we can't really ask to dance, but I perceive it as rude to just begin grinding up on some girl.  And when girls are dancing in groups with their cells in one hand and drinks in the other, it's impressive how well they can protect one of the members from an intruding penis.  The seamless choreography keeping the female covey free from intrusion was just astounding.  Even more impressive is how quickly people want to put their mouth on a stranger.  The end of the night approaches, leveraging people out of their shells.  Napkins and cell phones come out, grabbing numbers of people you'll never call.  It's incredibly predictable, and a little gross.  Maybe gross because it seems so seedy to me.