Awkward Duckling

Photo from treehouse1977 on Flickr

Last night I went out to celebrate my best mates birthday at a comedy club and as I left the house I was feeling AMAZING. I had on my new favourite dress (it's a polka dot rockabilly style halterneck and it's gooooorgeous!), my hair looked really good, my make up was perfect and I was wearing red lipstick which always leaves me feeling like a bit of a saucy sexpot. I was sashaying down the street with a smile and a sexy bottom wiggle and generally felt Fucking Fantastic (if you'll excuse the language). You know when you catch sight of yourself in a shop window and internally go "Phwoar!"? Well that was happening, and life was wonderful.

The comedy gig was good, well 3 out of 4 acts were, and the food was spicy but still tasty, and despite having been roasting in a very warm room for a good few hours I still felt pretty darn awesome as we stepped outside and headed off to find a drinking establishment to do drinking and some dancing in. And that's where the awesome feeling flickered and died like a lonely bulb in a dark room.

Put me in a room full of conventionally beautiful people wearing fashionable, skin tight clothes, or barely any clothes at all, surround me with "propa LADS" looking for some "banter" who are sloshing beer down my dress whilst they try and grind their skinny-jean-clad-peni (penii? penises?) into the ladies in the barely-there-clothes and suddenly I feel all awkward and dowdy and frumpy and a bit of an ugly duckling. I don't know whether it's because I don't really drink and never really enjoy being around drunk people, whether it was because I was gripping my £50 coat tightly in a bid to stop it touching the sticky, sticky floor, whether it's because I basically don't enjoy any modern music* or even because I was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that my tights had worn through on the inner leg region and any movement meant that I was slowly but surely removing the skin from my thighs**, but whatever the reason, I didn't feel comfortable.

Don't get me wrong, I love myself and the way I look most of the time, but faced with all those people who were enjoying themselves in an environment I felt completely alien in I could just tell that I didn't really fit. I was surrounded by girls wearing hot pants and crop tops and suddenly my mid-calf length 50s-style dress felt somewhat dated, like I wasn't gratuitously exposing enough of my body to be dancing in that room full of sweaty people with their libidos turned up to 11 due to copious amounts of alcohol. I left early because, ugh, life's too short to do things you don't enjoy and that don't make you feel awesome!

Maybe I just accidentally skipped the bit where teenagers/students/twenty-somethings like to go out and get sweaty and rub themselves against each other to awful modern music and went straight instead to the bit where I'd rather be in my PJs with a cup of hot chocolate than a pub full of noise and so much synthetic smoke that you genuinely can't see your own hand. I'm sure my friend doesn't mind that I left early, she knows it's not her, it's definitely me, because I am a big weirdo and old before my time.

But hey, each to their own, right?

-Jenni-

*Really not an over exaggeration. My favourite nights out are to retro cheesy club nights like Flares, or Reflex or the awesome Poptarts at my beloved Sheffield SU. I'll happily dance all night to epic 70s/80s/90s cheese, but stick me in a room with Rihanna and Lady Gaga playing and I'll get bored and go home, because I don't know any of the songs and I enjoy them even less.
**Note to self-buy thicker tights than 15 denier if you intend to be dancing in warm rooms for any length of time and value your thigh-skin.