Sabado Nights

On a night like this, the first order of business is to choose the dance floor. Whether it be Che'lu, BED or O-Bar, what matters is that I get there and party. Clubbing is a sort of addiction - an excuse to be alone and purge that hangover left from last week's revelry. The weekdays are mostly dreary: work, home, empty sweet nothings, failed dates.

Life goes on in a blink:

All I ever desire is to feel alive.

So the gym is my temple and my body, the altar.  The week's work-out is in preparation for a war dance that has been going on for ages.  Sometimes I would leave the gym at past midnight, pumped up and ready for action. Destination is Malate. The goal is to get drunk and get crazy. Soon, I would have to muster enough balls to take-off my shirt and bust a move to catch someone's attention.

Up there on the ledge, I exhort the masses.  Possessed by a rave god who feeds on energy, the adrenalin rush would sometimes leaves me breathless and begging not to end the party. Of course there are the admirers and the rivals, when luck shines on some random nights, even dreams show up unexpected. The swift, sweet love is  intoxicating. Sadly, the fairy tale ends when the sobering up begins.



This was my life a year ago. Exhausted and searching for release,  all I ever looked for was that one soul who would stop me from repeating the madness. I wanted to end the cycle but I was to weak to let go. With Planet Romeo off-limits, and the risky entanglements with boys from the same space discouraged, the dance floor was my only cruise. How ironic for something that gave me so much freedom - and distraction, would soon become my prison.

Fate tells that the one soul was never found there, not even in the queue snaking around the nightclub. Instead he made his presence felt just before he got hooked, and possibly turn into someone like me. He has never seen me dance, nor spotted the drunken gaze in my eyes. For I turned my back the day he held my hand and from then forth, the clubber in me disappeared.

Soon, the dance floor became a distant memory.  Covered in thick layers of smoke and ecstasy, the thrill and loneliness - the great duo of the party -  stay remnants of a delinquent history.

And though the rave god still lives, and hum to the sound of Trance, its playground now stays inside my head. A decade of clubbing should be enough. No longer could my legs bear more. And while I still remember all the sins I committed in the name of dancing, redemption comes the farther I stay away from the dance floor.

Denial was my word the whole time I was there. Yet in my hidden longings, I was there hoping to find my another. Now that he has found me, restored and chastened, there's no reason to return and get lost like I once did in my search.