Me and my friend Jesse had some pretty awesome adventures in Europe in our twenties.
Probably one of the best moments was sneaking into The Most Elite Club in Denmark. That’s how it was described in our travel book.
The Most Elite Club in Denmark. Don’t even try to get in.
We tried to get in.
The only entrance was past two 7-foot tall bouncers in front of a gold elevator.
Jesse, equipped with some acting talent, found 5 supermodels who agreed to let us trail behind them into the elevator. I think he told them he worked for MTV, which he did. Sort of.
Anyway, after a very awkward elevator ride, we made it into The Most Elite Bar in Denmark.
I don’t remember the name, but I’ll never forget the interior. It was all white: the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the bartenders’ tuxedos. There was no odor and no temperature. The place was the meaning of the word clean, the edges of everything, sharp and well defined…
It felt a lot like standing in a hermetically sealed heaven.
Or a 5-star hospital with extremely comfy couches.
Our brightly colored drinks, in their triangular glasses, resembled Star Trek elixirs.
We’d made it. The Most Elite Club in Denmark. Beautiful architecture, incredible views. Possible celebrity sightings. You can never quite tell.
The people were pretty enough to be actors, leaning into each other and sharing secrets.
We walked around, trying not to squeal.
We probably would have stayed all night, had we not ventured to the far end of the club.
It was empty of people, but there were tiered rows of white tufted chairs all facing the same way, like a poofy home theater. Only, instead of a screen down in front, there was a floor-to-ceiling glass wall. You could see all the way down to the first floor which, quite surprisingly, was not white and vaccum-sealed at all. Rather, it was filled with masses of gyrating, bouncing, pulsating people. Hundreds of them. If I had to pick a color for that room, it’d be red. Almost like… well, Hell, I guess.
It looked less like a dancefloor and more like the earth was erupting. You couldn’t hear the music from behind the glass but you could see the sweat on peoples’ skin, and, if you tried to, you could feel the bass pushing up through the white marble floor.
Jesse clutched my arm, without taking his eyes from the glass. “We gotta get down there, ” he said.
“Yeah, I know.”
But there was a catch: that pulsating first floor was an entirely different club, another venue altogether. It was not The Most Elite Club in Denmark. Rather, it was the club next to The Most Elite Club in Denmark.
And if we left, we couldn’t get back in, because, as you well know, we’d snuck into the club in the first place.
We got another $28 drink and sat down to think about it in the most comfortable chairs I’ve ever known.
Sometimes, we shape our story by the thought of telling it to people later on, and, in the process, end up telling someone else’ story and skipping an important chapter of our own.
Or maybe we just didn’t want to pay for $28 drinks.
It wasn’t a hard decision. We were mid-chapter and we knew it.
—
Upon entering the club next to The Most Elite Club in Denmark, the atmosphere changed immediately. And we changed, osmosis at work, molecules passing through the skin and eyes.
The thick warm air put sweat on our skin, the bass filled our lungs, and the people, with their flailing arms, splashing drinks, relaxed hips, and smiles as bright as the sun, beckoned us inward.
We became part of the volcano.
The room was a pit of people.
We rocked back and forth in a wave, all of us, stomach to back, elbows up and out of the way to make room for more people. We flowed like the tide. My movement wasn’t even entirely up to me anymore.
Someone knocked me on the head from behind. It was Jesse. He was already 2 people away from me and floating away in the people-tide. We laughed big inaudible laughs up into the rafters.
Past his head, way up there on the wall, I could see the glowing white rectangle of The Most Elite Club in Denmark.
Two figures stood side by side, not touching, arms bent holding Star Trek drinks.
So many chapters unwritten.
I knew they couldn’t see me. It was silly, but I waved, an exaggerated wave like I was trying to get someone’s attention on the other side of a busy street. It was the least I could do for them.
Alas, they walked out of the glowing white frame without giving me a signal.
But a trio of sweaty-faced dancers just a few feet from me… they waved back, the same silly, genuine, over-the-top wave.
I laughed.
They laughed.
I laughed again because we weren’t laughing at the same thing.
But, then again, maybe we were.
That club. It was a cauldron of silliness. An unpredictable lava flow. A seismic shift prompted by intense physical closeness and tribal-like bass beats, shaking the room above just enough to keep it from being perfect.
Redness bleeding into whiteness. Hell reaching up into Heaven.
Or the other way around.