Dryathlon Diary Week 3: The Sober Sleaze

SOPHIA VAHDATI returns to recount to you the trials of a sober third week.


One more week left to go of my alcohol austerity, just a few more days of this self-imposed sobriety… I can almost taste the Jaeger bomb vom at the back of my mouth; I can almost see it, bright pink and orange, decorating the white canvas toilet bowl…

I’m only kidding, of course. I’ve learnt many valuable lessons in my stint of abstinence.  One of these lessons is that you don’t always have to be sick to know that you have had a good time the night before.  Another is that apparently giving up drinking is not an effective weightless plan for me because I just replace the calories with cake (so much cake).  It seems we all need a vice or two… And it is precisely these vices that have led to the discovery that I’m going to tell you about.

Sadly separated at birth

In 2013, little did I know that my adamant refusal to stop going out would lead to me becoming a nightclub voyeur. My eyesight is alert, my vision steady and I can see the sweating masses surrounding me and turning round and round like pieces of tetris until they click into place with one, or two, or more tetris pieces and remain stuck together for the rest of the night. I can see it all perfectly.  In fact, I cannot un-see it.  

Alas, there I was, watching people stumble into one another and become attached like leeches, or like those bath toys with suckers on the end of them.  The combination of darkness, blaring music and grinding made me feel quite sleazy until I noticed a particular group who kept on appearing during every night out.  They didn’t look the same, they were in fact entirely different people every night, but they acted in an identical manner.  I just could not get my head round it.  During my dry January, I have become aware of a genre of guy (and sometimes girl) which I must have always been too mashed to ever truly notice before: the silent seducer, the quiet Casanova.

I’m talking about the mute men.

This fascinating species that I have observed is more often male than female; by day they can appear to be an ordinary and sane cantab, (if any cantabs can truly be described by those two adjectives).  By night, in a blur of booze and tribal chanting, they undergo a lyncanthropic style transformation. Their hairs stand on end as the KUDA sign illuminates outside of Life, their noses prick up at the scent of perfume or cologne in the queue for Lola’s, they salivate as they watch their prey take a drag from a rollie outside Fez.

Once a potential victim is sighted, rather than engage in the customary small talk or cheesy chat up line that is favoured by other types of clubber, these creatures simply stare for a minute or two, unflinching in their gaze.  They cannot make a move outside, it’s not their territory.  Their hunting ground is the dancefloor.

So sly you probably can’t even spot them in this picture

They follow their target onto familiar turf and start to surround them, never saying a word, hardly even making eye contact, but occasionally attempting to grab their victim’s hips or limply stroke their hand.  No names are exchanged.  They simply walk past, grope and stare.  So confident are they in their powers of seduction that they do not even need to resort to any form of speech or even sign language.

Unfortunately for them, I did not observe a very high success rate, although they are particularly tenacious in the chase… Sometimes the efforts did yield rewards; however, this was normally only when two members of the same clan targeted each other.  The most common reaction that I noticed in my field research was a mixture of laughter, disgust and bemusement but overall, rejection.

So that is the interesting anthropological find which I present to you in my new occupation as voyeuristic sober clubber. I hope I do not get caught by the curse when I start drinking again… COUNTING. DOWN. THE. DAYS.

Please donate to fund important research about meaningful things like Cancer treatment and prevention.

http://www.justgiving.com/Sophia-Vahdati-dryathlete?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=shares-from-eua&utm_content=Sophia-Vahdati-dryathlete&utm_campaign=eua-share-facebook