Them Euro-peen-r's’r Weird

Or so I believed when I was 16 years of age. I didn’t walk around declaring “European folks are weird”, but earlier today I recalled a vivid memory which clearly indicates that I held this very belief.

When we were 16, we used to hang out at the hottest club in the city called Deluxe. It was when the rave scene was huge and when house was making its entry into mainstream clubs. I knew the owner ‘P’ and C’s brother’s best friend ‘V’ was the head bouncer at the club. Both P & C knew that none of us drank, but we did like to dance. (Besides, my curfew was 11:30 and so we all left together at around 11.)

They’d always walk us in, let us dance for a couple of hours while keeping an eye on us and making sure we were safe. P wouldn’t take our money for cover and the servers wouldn’t take our money for coca-cola and we got to dance to the best music by the hottest DJ around.

Aside: We are were relative geeks, anyway. Deluxe had toilettes that were for both men and women, and a couple of stalls where the doors had been removed. We thought this was a mistake and told P, who just shook his head and laughed. I never actually understood what those toilettes signified until last year. C, T & I were so grossed out by the idea that there were boys in the same washroom as us that we never returned to the toilettes at Deluxe . Serious geek-age, kids.

One evening, we were seated by the window with our collective coca-colas chatting away about Jason Gedrick whatever it is that 16 year olds chat about when two couples stomped into the club.

The couples were in their early 40s. One of the men was wearing a beret and one of the women was flying loose in a moo-moo. As soon as they stepped foot in Deluxe, they started whipping one another around in what can only be described as a ‘frenzy’. To the naked eye, it appeared as though they were interpretive dancing to wanker music that only they could hear. It was such an intriguing scene that people in the club stopped talking and instead stood around staring at these four individuals. Eventually, the DJ stopped spinning. Unfortunately, they kept going.

T turned to me and said “I think they’re on drugs. They must be on drugs. Cocaine?”, and with all the authority and confidence I possessed as a 16 year old girl, I replied “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think they’re on drugs. I think they’re just Europeans. Actually. I’m pretty sure they’re just Europeans. Yes. From Europe.”