A Night Out, Trapped Inside of My Head, by Regi Worles

            Over the course of this past semester I visited Tracks Nightclub several times in an attempt to experience an aspect of queer culture that I do not regularly engage with. I prepared each time, as I imagine many people might prepare, by finding good friends to go with, a cute outfit to wear, and applying a lot of glitter. There was this hype. Most of the people around me made Tracks seem like the type of place that would set you free, a place to release stress, and probably even more important for the topics of this course, release inhibitions. Yet, when I went my time was not freeing. It was not fuzzy or warm or even a little bit encouraging. My experience at Tracks, while sometimes fun, and definitely a meaningful engagement with a queer space, was muddled with all the things about queer culture that have always felt inaccessible to me. The tension between the freeing possibility of queer spaces and the powerful feelings that they typically actualize in practice for people who often feel those spaces are inaccessible to them seems like an interesting site to interrogate what is meant by queer spaces.

            My last time at Tracks seems like the best experience to share about. It was on one of their college nights, one of the only times when folks twenty-one and under can burst into the space and make it their own.  I walked, bright-eyed to all the magic of the space. The walls full of rainbow lights, the glass box office full of posters advertising their other events, and my friends, so happy that I decided to come out with them. The space was full to the brim with potential.

Once we were all were stamped and ready to go, we walked toward the inside of the club. I could feel the base humming on my toes as we got closer and closer and then, we were in. I looked around, and I felt so proud, being in such a space was a big jump for me. There was power in that space for some reason, and although I knew that eventually the loud music and the darkness would get to me, it was not enough to stop me from trying my best to have fun. And I did have fun, however, an anxious call from my mother and losing my friends after twenty minutes of being in the club immediately changed the space from one of freedom to one of anxiety. The more I tried to dance, the more I felt trapped, the more I felt trapped the less fun I could have. I found my friends on the dance floor, and even after asking them what had happened, why they’d left me, I still didn’t feel comfortable on the dance floor.

At some point, I left the inside of the club and went to the patio. The vibe was completely different, it felt like the kind of space that anyone could be in. After a few minutes of being in this space, I felt back to normal. My friends had come outside as well, I could see people again, and I could dance without the stress of random and sometimes unnerving encounters with strangers. I even made a few friends while in the patio. So much so that I didn’t notice that my friends were gone, nowhere to be seen. After looking around the club a couple times and frantically calling them, I decided to leave the club. Not disappointed in the night, but definitely disappointed that there was a distinct lack of closure from the experience. Once I got home, I spotted my friends and they told me that they’d been kicked out of the club. And once some confusion about why they didn’t tell me they left and how their night went, I just went to bed.

It was the next day that really got me thinking about what it meant to go to Tracks and why my experiences thus far were returned to me in such great disappointment. I don’t blame friends or the club, but I do think I blame the sort of intersection I find myself in. I find myself as a person of color in a club scene dominated by white bodies, and yet there are so many people of color who can go to the club and have fun. I also find myself experiencing the norms of queerness, while whiteness is among them, I believe that there are parts of the culture that by practice or by simple phenomenon have become more challenging to enter or feel a part of. When I think about my experiences now, I find myself taking advice from the great Audre Lorde, a queer scholar who I have come to really admire in my studies of queer history and justice. Lorde writes in one of her essays from her book Sister Outsider that “difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people” (Lorde 115). When I think about the club it really is a culmination of the world around us, a convergence of all the good things about queerness. That does mean that this also reflects the shortfalls the community has as well.

There are many who do not fit the stereotypical molds that are often idolized within the queer community, and yet that does little to break down the stereotypes. But what do these molds do? An article from the Huffington Post’s section of writings dedicated to queer experience, mentioned that the community is struggling with valuing their own lives. Michael Hobbes, the author of this piece notes that “Despite all the talk of our “chosen families,” gay men have fewer close friends than straight people or gay women.” And while this may seem small, when you look at all the other stats of mental and physical health in queer communities these experiences have impact. They have a tight grip on our experiences in social and settings, like clubs. When I think about that matched with the societal pressures of what it even means to go clubbing, let alone how those pressures begin to amplify as it leaks into queer realms, I realize that it is the pressure that shaped my experience. The pressure to fit in with the community that I so desperately want to be a part of. The pressure to seem cool and approachable while also feeling a need to be cautious and watch out for myself and my friends. I will definitely go to Tracks again, but I think when I go, maybe instead of attempting to release all of the clichés I could instead try to release those pressure. Maybe then, instead of letting everyone else’s experiences shape mine, I could focus on my own experience of queerness and allow that to shape my time at the club.