One Night at the Ruby Room

I go nightclubbing once in a blue moon. Not because I don't enjoy dancing. I LOVE dancing. What I don't like is the whole nightclubbing culture. Believe it or not, I actually go to have fun with my friends. I'm not there to 'pick up', get smashed or even to meet people. It's not that I'm against meeting new people, I just don't see how you can meet people properly in a nightclub. It's so fake. People aren't themselves. A lot of them are only there for one thing. And believe me, I don't think I'm some kind of babe that all the guys would want me or anything...a lot of them are so desperate or out of it, they wouldn't care if I had two heads, four horns and tentacles!

The last time I went out clubbing was October (shock horror). It was the night of our engagement party and we were joined by some of our guests at the Ruby Room. For those of you who don't know, the Ruby Room is the nightclub at the Burswood. It's meant to be a kind of upmarket nightclub and it came recommended by friends who had been there before. It was my first time there.

I didn't find it any more 'upmarket' than a lot of other clubs. There were people who were dressed pretty casually for a start and there were the same drunken yobbos that frequent other clubs. The music was hip hop crap and too slow to dance to.

But that's not the point of this post. It's not to pick fault with the Ruby Room itself. It's to look at nightclubbing culture as a whole.

While I was there I was surrounded by two different 'packs' - the guys with their gelled hair, trying to look tough with their big tats on their upper arms and the scantily clad, heavily made up girls. There were signs at the bar saying that intoxicated people would not be served but that was an absolute joke. The bar staff looked quite shy and intimidated and did nothing to turn away the loud, uncouth guys who would push other people roughly out of the way and demand yet another drink. I wished they'd had bar staff with balls and spines.

You couldn't dance for five minutes without someone touching you inappropriately. While Sarah, Craig and I were dancing, a guy came up behind Craig, and I don't know what he was doing but it looked like he was trying to bum dance with him. I tried not to make eye contact with anyone and when a yobbo tried to get my attention, I pretended not to hear him.

The whole experience reminded me of the lyrics of that Good Charlotte song, Misery.

Look at all these happy people
Living their lives
Look at all these plastic people
They're dying inside
Look at all these shallow people
Telling their lies
Look at all these empty people, people

And then instead of despising these people and getting angry at them, I started to feel sorry for them, to even have some compassion. For many of these young people, they know no different. Clubbing is their life. A typical week for them is work work work or uni uni uni and then it's going out and getting smashed on weekends and spending the remainder of their weekends nursing hangovers. It's a tragic waste.

I know many people who swore they would never live that kind of lifestyle only to become tantalised by what the world tries to sell as a 'good time'. Even Christians I know of have fallen for the ways of the nightclubbing culture, believing that they'll come back to Christ when the party's over. But then they're just having way too much fun and Jesus seems, well, boring by comparison.

By no means am I saying having a drink and a dance at a club or pub is wrong. But it's more than that, isn't it? It's a culture that screams that unless you embrace all the ungodly aspects of clubbing, then you are wasting the best years of your life, that you're old, that you're BORING.

I wonder if these happy, plastic people are really empty inside? They tend to travel in packs, they all dress like clones. But when they're alone, I wonder if they're truly happy with their life. Or if the heavy makeup is really a mask?

My brother looks like many of those guys in the Ruby Room and he's very much into that scene. But I know that he's not as secure as he makes out and a lot of it is a tough act he puts on around his mates; that he's actually a decent guy. I know that my friends who enjoy that scene are actually real, lovely people but maybe if someone just saw them but didn't know them, they might assume they were plastic.

It made me realise how blessed I am to know Jesus and I want them to know, love, follow and serve him too. For that's where real life is found. To show them that a life lived his way is what brings ultimate fulfilment. And to get to know some of these people away from the nightclubbing scene, away from the peer pressure of their packs and know them as real people who may indeed be empty and not plastic.