The things I do for friends. It was the faux-birthday night on the town for one of them last night and it sucked. I knew it would. It always does. No, it didn't suck because I had to spend time with her or anything like that, but because we always visit those last corners of town that I would never want to by my own volition. Last night it was to a meat-market dance club where I felt not so much like a fish out of water, but more like a fish flopping around in the middle of the frickin' Sahara. Egads. I walk in and all of a sudden the song "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead starts playing on an endless loop in my mind as I look around and see all sorts of people who are dressed to undress and wookin pa nub (Old Saturday Night Live reference for y'all) -- identified in their own minds as little more than a platform for genitalia. Hoochies and assholes crowded the floor, trying to impress each other with their individual fakenesses mass produced and sold in bulk at the mall (hey, maybe they should all meet there and save the middle man?). All the guys look the same with their greasy little boy crew cuts and khaki (I thought they went out with swing?) pants, button up shirt or something of the sort all looking the same. All the girls look completely different, but in the same way of over-done hair, newly painted-on faces, and clothing, top and bottom, that reveals as much as they legally can in a conservative town unlikely to turn a cheek at public indecency. They strutted around in packs of same-sexness all with a look of determination on their faces. No one was having fun, they all looked as if they were working, and they were. They were working at fitting a mold brought to them by the likes of MTV, the Gap, and countless glossy magazines -- trying to be "normal" by being "different" through mass-market means...if that makes any sense. The guys, looking for a warm pocket to rest inside of for the night, the girls looking for love by letting some guy do so. Because, hey, that's what life's all about eh?

It all made me sick, but I stayed there for an hour and a half or so and it nearly made me go mad I had to eventually skip out and go to a sane bar just to counteract the taste in my mouth. Next year I'm planning friend's birthday for her.