COCKROACHES IN THE NIGHT CLUB

About 4 years ago, I came out of a Night Club just after midnight to get a taxi to take me home.  For a minute I stood there just surveying the taxis that were packed outside, trying to pick one which seemed suitable. Most of the taxis that operate in this part of town are not marked and we call them “private taxis”.  This makes it very difficult for one to tell which one is a “real” taxi and which one is not or just belongs to a patron.  Usually, you just have to stand there and someone will come to you and ask “Taxi?” but on this particular night, no one came to where I was standing.

As I was standing there, I notice a woman standing leaning against the wall just near the entrance talking to one of the door bouncers.  From the way she was dressed, I could tell that she was not here to party. She was dressed in a wrap around called chitenge and a head scarf. No one dresses like that after midnight.  The woman was explaining to the man  that her husband has not been home for the past 3 days and she suspected he was inside the club with another woman.

The door bouncer asked her if she was sure the husband was inside.  She replied that someone told her that he has been spotted here on two occasions.  The man then gave her permission to go inside and check for him. The woman refused and said she was going to wait for him until he comes out.

“But what if he is not there?” the man asked.  “You may be waiting here when your man is home waiting for you”.

She replied that she cannot go inside the Night Club because “only cockroaches enter Night Clubs”

That was a bombshell and people heard what she said. From the way she stressed the word “cockroaches”, it was like she wanted all of us to feel it.  She was almost harassed by some people and was only saved by the two bouncers, who also were obviously not happy with what she had said.  

“If your husband has let you down because of his infidelity, it doesn’t  mean we are all the like him. If he has been having sex with another woman, has he been having it here in the Club?” Someone shouted at her.

“Madam, from what you have just said, maybe that is why your husband runs away from you. You talk too much and have no respect for other people’s choices,” added another.

She was visibly scared because she knew that anything could happen to her. Night Clubs have all sorts of characters and some of them are uncontrollable freaks operating like zombies, especially the ones that like hanging around outside.

Though I understood the woman’s frustration and did not take her statement of us being cockroaches seriously, I wondered whether that is how many other people who do not go out Clubbing think of us.  Maybe they have other names that they call us too. We could be mosquitoes, house flies, centipedes, snakes or anything that they thought disgusted them.

But is night life or clubbing seriously that disgusting?  I remember the first time I went for a disco, I was about 16 and it was called Teen Time Disco. It was always between 13:00 hrs and 17:30 hrs and never in the night.  We just went there for dancing and listening to new music and we drank no alcohol.  It was so much fun and it made most of us admire the job of the DJ.

But why do people go to the disco or night club? Is it for bad reasons or just to have fun? Has the disco evolved from an innocent stint to something evil? Every time I step into a night club, I see a lot of different characters. I see men and women dancing. I see couples sitting at the table sharing drinks. I see prostitutes sitting at the counter smiling at every man that passes near them. I see men standing doing nothing but just watching. I am pretty sure there are other things that I don’t see which other people may see.

Image courtesy of ponsuwan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net