Your Sexual Antics Make Me Puke

Warning! Rash generalizations and social stereotypes ahead!

For years I have been trying to put my finger on something: why do horny people in nightclubs tend to annoy me? On Saturday night, as occasionally happens, Club Abstract was invaded early by a sextet of hootchie girls who spun around me on the otherwise empty dancefloor, hooting, grinding together, attempting a line-dance choreography that simply wasn't working out.

As always in these situations I go through my "anti-mysanthropy thought exercise," to try to see through whatever's bothering me and recognize the antagonist's human traits. But it wasn't working. Plus I was standing next to a friend who expressed great attraction for the hootchies, and who viewed my rising gorge as a sign of my personal bitterness and/or unfounded elitism.

Maybe he's right! Or maybe that's part of it. But over the last few days I've done my best to pick apart what annoys me about the hootchie girls, and what annoys me about bar-sexuality in general, and I think I've finally figured it out.

* * *

First, I have a personal beef about people who are disconnected from their environments; people who see the world as catering entirely to their own social group, no matter where they happen to be at the time; people who think they're projecting a certain impression while they're really projecting a different one; people who are, in a word, clueless about others.

What bothers me about the hootchies is not that they're trying to be SEXY (though I'll get to that angle shortly). What bothers me is that they are being blatantly self-centered -- "This is our dancefloor and everybody is here to see US!" -- while expressing sexual antics (the grinding, the choreography) that THEY think of as "edgy, transgressive, alternative" but are in fact perceived as "typical, desperate, sleazy." Sure, my friend was TURNED ON by their behaviour, but not because they were in any way "edgy." He was turned on because they were exactly what he likes: slutty and attention-seeking. There's a difference.

This "lesbo routine" that girls do in bars is always presented by them as a form of extreme sexuality, when it's actually the most white-bread, overexposed form of dancefloor sexuality around. That's what bothers me: not that they're slutty or average, but because they think they're NOT slutty or average.

Before you accuse me of PICKING ON some concept of "mainstream culture," let me say that I am equally annoyed by counter-culture people whose perceptions are out-of-sync with the rest of the world. There's a gothy-girl at Abstract, for instance, who we call "Stompy Flamingo." She and her way-too-serious boyfriend do an exceptionally uncoordinated tango around the dancefloor, and then she'll break into a random collection of loud foot-stomps that could only be an attempt at "flamenco." It's probably the funniest thing you'll ever see.

But it's not funny because of her dance itself...if somebody wants to do a clumsy flamenco imitation, that alone is not silly. What's silly is that she SERIOUSLY BELIEVES THAT SHE APPEARS TO BE AN ACCOMPLISHED DANCER, but she's not, and nobody thinks she is. And while it's always dangerous to ascribe motivations for people's behaviour, you can usually tell by body language or facial expression when somebody is self-serious.

(As an aside, people like Stompy Flamingo are "Boodles." I keep promising to define the Boodles, and I eventually will. Curiously, the "hootchies" are generally NOT Boodles).

So what bugs me about the hootchies is their belief that they are being "extreme," while the rest of the world sees them as "average." They're the "look at my extreme tongue piercing" people. They're similar to people who actually think that publically displaying their cel phone puts them into a higher social class. They're disconnected in so many ways.

* * *

My second point is that sex is, generally, a pretty boring thing to be around. There's a reason why pornos rarely have a higher concept: when people are horny -- or when they're actually HAVING sex -- they almost always regress to a bundle of need-gratifying cliches. Likewise, when people have sex in movies and books, they either say the same old boring, time-worn phrases, or they talk in a way that nobody EVER talks.

So when people are horny, the part of them that makes them interesting -- their personality -- becomes thinner, because the sex-crazed, primitive animal is rising to the surface and displacing their distinguishing characteristics. That's perfectly natural, but it makes a person a dull boy or girl.

To make the situation worse, however, we tend to replace our REAL personalities with a "sexy routine," one we've learned over the years or -- if we have more than one -- whichever seems to be the most appropriate or advantageous in the current situation. If we pick a totally dull and average routine -- which the hootchies do -- we'll not only be suffering from the lack of personality that sex ALREADY tends to bring, but we'll be REPLACING that personality with something that we saw on Jerry Springer.

The final blow comes when the hootchies, as I said, THINK their Springer routine is something, but it's actually something totally different. Three strikes, you're out, I puke.

Some people certainly DO maintain their personalities when they're horny, which most others probably consider to be confusing and off-putting.

I'd like to point out that people tend to homogenize when they dance, as well. As a final example, on Saturday night there was a guy on the edge of the dancefloor who danced like a tree: his feet were firmly rooted in one spot, he moved his torso back and forth, he waved his arms, and he kept his eyes closed. But unlike Stompy Flamingo or the hootchies, he didn't seem to care about the rest of the world, which precludes him suffering the aforementioned disconnected impression (that he's super-cool but everybody else thinks he looks silly).

The Tree-Dancer actually made me HAPPY, because I believed he was dancing FOR HIMSELF, and that while he was aware enough of his surroundings to not be inconsiderate to others, he was not particularly concerned about how others viewed him...AND he had a pretty good idea of how they really DO view him, as illustrated by the two jocky guys who stood next to him and obnoxiously mocked him.

This gives me a final segue. I realize in my earlier description of my Saturday confrontation that it might sound like my attack of track-suit guy was unprovoked. Nope: he was one of the guys making aggressive fun of the tree dancer, so I automatically assumed he was moving on to making fun of me, which he probably was until I called him on it (at which time he brilliantly switched to victim-mode). Just so you know.