The Nightclub

After dinner Saturday night, I was picked up by Justine and his sister Preeti. I was invited to go to a club with them, to the only club in Pune open until one am. Preeti is about five five, with a wide frame and medium brown hair. One of her front teeth is black from a former cleft upper lip. She is quite honest, caring and helpful. She is single and the breadwinner for her family, though Justine tells me their family is quite well off.
The three of us pick up her friend, whose name I cannot remember. He is a Realtor by profession, a painter by hobby, and a dancer by spirit. A dark-skinned man with sharp features and a clubbing attire to match it.
The club we went to was in the basement of a five star hotel called Le Meridien. Before entering the iron gates adorned with gold fleur-de-lis, five private security guards abruptly opened our trunk, the passenger door (the left since Indian cars are British), and the glove compartment. They shined their club-like flashlights in the compartments and upon our feet. "Check for bombs," explains Preeti. Since the attack on the Indian hotel in Mumbai called 26/11, (like 9/11 also named by its date) security has been omnipresent (for example, when shopping on Sunday, we entered the grocery store through a metal detector). After Le Meridien's metal detector at the front gate, Preeti's purse was put through a machine and us three men were caressed by a metal detector wand. The painted hotel ceiling was held up by massive marble columns which complemented the marble floors and marble staircase and marble chairs (just kidding).
We arrived at the stairs to the club where three bouncers told us we cannot enter. Since Justine was wearing shorts and Preeti's friend (for the sake of ease, I will call him Chet in this story) was wearing open toed shoes. Chet lived close to the hotel, but Justine and Preeti were much further. Justine suggested he borrow a pair of Chet's pants to save time, but Chet and Preeti did not seem familiar or comfortable with that practice. Before leaving the hotel, Justine asked Preeti whether we had to go back to their place to get pants. "Of course, we have no choice." Apparently not.
After a disappointing drive back to Chet's and then to Justine's, we finally re-arrived at Le Meridien. We were once again subjected to the security provisions, and this time at the bouncer's staircase, we passed.
The club's name is Scream and a thick stainless steel door changes the tone from Versailles expensive to New York chic expensive. One thousand rupees per couple and we entered the dark hallway filled with techno music and relief that we finally got in.
The club did not seem too out of the ordinary, people dressed up to various degrees (no saris), high heels and short skirts, button down shirts and nice slacks. But a few things caught my attention. The first weird thing that I noticed was the dance floor. Bouncers lined the perimeter of the wooden dance floor to monitor the men. If a man did not have a friend who was a girl or a girlfriend dancing with him, he could be escorted off. Since Preeti would not dance but preferred the bar table with chips instead, it was up to Chet, Justine, and I to dance near her.

Three men, two of them white, dancing in a nightclub in an odd triangle formation.
We are so cool.

The second weird thing I noticed was the only other group of whities in the crowd. A group of five or so middle aged men danced and drank near us. One of the men was tall and lanky with a button-down shirt too wide for him and comb-over. His little eyes and hooked nose were all on a young attractive Indian girl with silver sneakers and a bubbly demeanor. She looked half his age and obviously intoxicated. When I first saw them together she was seated on a barstool and he was hunched over her with his hand upon her inner thigh. They danced together all night and every once in a while he would ever-so-slyly graze his hands over her butt only to land them on her back. She would rest her forehead on his chest every once in a while, either to rest or to show affection or to control the spins she had. Her bright white smile made the relationship seem consensual. I assumed she was his mistress. I couldn't help but think that wshat I was witnessing was all sorts of fucked up.
The other guys seemed to be giving them their space. The other men danced and held their drinks as if holding onto railing on a shaky subway.
After some liquid courage I loosened up and danced a bit myself. Chet was fired up, a man who flailed his limbs and gave intense stares to the music and called it good dancing. Though I was not one to judge, for my dancing was quite mediocre. I was in more of the walk around and pose to the beat camp. I did not care about our quality of dancing, all that mattered was that we were having fun.
Chet suggested I try to get one of the girls near us to dance with me. I was reluctant but in the end decided to give it a shot. I did not know really what to say since nobody could talk without screaming right next to an ear, and even then accents and the chance that they did not speak English made me more reluctant. After small talk gone terribly wrong, I asked to dance with one of them and they all walked away.

Ouch.

"You must impress them with your dance moves," Chet explained to me later in the car. "Girls want to be the most wanted by guys and envied by girls. You must prove that you can make them feel that way through dance. There is no other way. You must demonstrate confidence on the dance floor so they will want to be with you because they will think that they are with the best." Whether I was convinced or not, Chet made a good point: the majority of doing something is confidence, and if you have that, you can do anything.

When on the dance floor, a guy approached Chet and I in what became a quasi-dance off, except the music did not stop and nobody formed a circle. He just got all up "in our grill" if you will and flaunting his moves. Chet responded to his waving arms by catching the wave with his left arm and spitting it back upon him with his left. Like Zoolander and Hansel on the runway, Chet and him duked it out on the dance floor. When it seemed like he could not break the Chet, he turned to me. I was not prepared to be emasculated twice on the dance floor, so I replied to his moves and spat that shit right back IN HIS FACE.
I would like to say he cowered in the face of my mighty masculine moves, that he put his tail between his legs and whimpered off, that a crowd cheered and three beautiful women came to my side to congratulate me with a celebratory make-out session, that I was the object of every woman's affection and the envy of every man at the club, and that I walked out more proud than I had been in my life, but in the end nothing really did happen. Eventually I just turned away after realizing how stupid I was acting.

Before Chet left the car when we dropped him off at 1:15, he gave me some advice: "Remember to always look a girl in the eye and impress them with your dance moves. If you want to get girls you must be confident with dance."

Thanks, Chet. I know his advice will stick with me for years to come.