The club’s rules were enforced to the letter. Club Avalanche’s trained security staff ensured no drugs, alcohol, weapons, or anyone out of dress code or outside the age window of fourteen to eighteen made it through the door. Throughout the evening the security staff remained an ever-vigilant presence inside the club to swiftly expel anyone looking for a fight. These strict rules made me as a parent feel good about Philip attending one of their events.
Over the course of four high school dances during his freshman year, Philip had come to like dancing. While the kind of dancing Philip’s generation practiced at
The evening began with a long wait in line outside the club. The doors did not even open until ten minutes after the event was supposed to begin. I promised not to leave Oxford Hills until Philip had sent me a text message from inside the club. I took the opportunity to enjoy a stroll in downtown Oxford Hills. Half an hour before the event was supposed to begin, Philip sent me a text commenting on his discomfort with the crowd waiting outside the club. Most of the teens in line were displaying a tough exterior, and nobody was using the opportunity to meet new people. Philip did not see anyone else who was alone. He saw groups of guys and he saw large groups of girls with just one or two token guys in tow. He was still only guardedly interested when he finally made it inside.
Colored lights waved. Strobe lights flashed. A DJ played all of the most popular dance songs. Philip was immediately disappointed with how loud the DJ was playing the music. It was impossible for two people to hear one another talking. Philip scanned the room before taking any kind of action. And then he saw it. Over half of the kids were grinding while they danced. There were no rules against grinding or any other sensual behavior at Club Avalanche, although the dress code meant everyone kept their clothes on. There were no drugs, alcohol, weapons or threatening behavior inside the club. But any other rules that one might infer were not enforced at all. There were no parents, no teachers, no school administrators, no coaches and no other rules. If it was consensual and could happen without putting someone out of dress code, it was happening in multiple places inside those four walls.
After assessing the overall mood and climate in the room, Philip started dancing to the loud, fast hip-hop beat. He worked his way behind a girl close to his age dancing without a partner. He had learned to approach cautiously, giving the girl ample opportunity to give him a subtle signal of rejection. At Club Avalanche, he found he was more likely to be rejected than was the case at a
From the proximity of the dance floor, Philip saw the grinding live and up close. Some of it was overt and explicit. But much of it merely involved taking the contact he considered to be normal and extending that contact lower. And so Philip decided to try out the less explicit grind dancing. He began dancing up to a slightly older girl he had already seen grinding with more than one guy. As he got progressively closer, she continued to welcome his advances. With his hands firmly on both her hips, he cautiously moved his hip forward until it was firmly pressed against her buttock. The move was welcome, so he slowly turned to press both his hips against her from behind while she leaned her full body back into him and continued dancing. She seemed both satisfied and distant. His mouth was just a few inches from her ear, but he knew that the music was far too loud for her to hear anything he might say.
The song ended quickly and Philip saw his first grinding partner move on to someone else. He continued the pattern of dancing up to a girl, first securing her acceptance to dance in close proximity and then securing her acceptance to grind. Not all girls who leaned back into him agreed to the grinding, but many still did. With the end of each song, a new dance partner needed to be found. Dancing among the grinders, Philip experienced a surreal, high-energy, wordless cross between speed dating and hookup culture. Eventually, he took a break and visited the men’s room. When the door closed behind him, the music volume suddenly dropped. He felt a numb buzzing sensation in his ears. Then over the music and the buzzing, he began to hear a small group of guys talking about the girls they had been with so far that evening. Their misogynistic attitude annoyed Philip. And yet, without the ability to talk, girls and guys who had not met before were reduced to objects of consensual play out on the dance floor. This is just stupid, he thought.
Philip left the men’s room and returned to the edge of the dance floor. He scanned the room with a newly focused set of intentions. This time, he was looking to identify the girls who were not grinding. He picked up that the girls who were younger and avoiding the center of the dance floor were generally non-grinders. Although members is this segment of the population were the least likely to welcome him to dance in his regular fashion, these younger, more cautious girls were the ones on whom he focused his attentions for the rest of the evening.
At his request, I picked up Philip outside the club about half an hour before the evening’s event officially ended. He didn’t have much to say, except to tell me he was not planning on attending another one of their dance events any time soon. A couple weeks later, he told me he had no intention of ever returning. And as time passed, Philip slowly disclosed the full story of the grinding culture and his brief experiment with it. He had no interest in grinding, especially with complete strangers. And he really hated that fact that he could not even talk to his dance partners over the loud music.
While Philip was embarrassed to disclose the specifics of his experience, it was hard not to be impressed with his depth. His morals and ethics did not grow out of a “do and don’t” list imposed from the outside. Instead, he merely values relationships. And there were no relationships—not even casual friendships—to be found on the Club Avalanche dance floor: just glitter.
* See my comment on this post for an important explanation for those of you who read this blog regularly.
1 comment:
Sometimes after a post, an observation or experience changes my perspective and interpretation of those things about which I have already written. For example, I thought it was probably Erica’s older brother driving Erica, the day she was playing Peek-a-Boo with Philip. I have since learned it was the guy to whom Erica lost her virginity and with whom she is now officially in a relationship. These newer experiences and observations effectively change a story that has already been posted.
When I first wrote about Club Avalanche, I genuinely believed we had found something Philip would enjoy and I as a parent would appreciate. Obviously, I was wrong. I try to make each post a succinct story of its own while the overall story of our family moves forward. But to make a short, stand-alone story out of a slice of life so close to the events in question, I usually need to infer certain things as well as simplify actual events. In my first post about Club Avalanche, I left out writing about Philip’s reservations. Philip often has reservations about something new, so I did not think they were very relevant at the time. But in this case, his reservations were born out of a level of foresight that I lacked.
The seeming contradiction between my first and second post about Club Avalanche are a reminder that we all grow and learn. With each new experience and observation, we develop new interpretations of the past. This blog is no different. The author of a book would go back and edit in the details that become important at a later date. I only edit earlier posts to correct spelling, grammar and occasionally a proper name. How I saw and reflected upon things at the time stay intact on this blog, but I will keep changing.
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