No Love Up In The Club For The Girls Night Out

Forgive me for being naïve, but really? Guys—GROWN men—still run up behind women—GROWN women—they don’t know and rub all up on their booties on the dance floor at the club?

Really?

I mean, I assumed that at age *whispers number in cupped hand* we’d be able to walk into a club and hear a little old school LL Cool J, Black Sheep, and Mary J., and, oh, I don’t know, be able to dance with abandon, without some random guy thinking that my ability to drop it like it’s hot gives him automatic license to attach himself to my nether regions.

But apparently, somebody forgot to give me and my girls—13 deep on our latest Girls Night Out adventure—the memo that rings, tight girlfriend dance circles, and really polite, “Thank you, I’m flattered, but I’m chilling with my girls” beg-offs would mean nothing to men looking to get their dance floor freak-on with any woman moving.

One guy, dancing thisclose to my girl, even cussed me out because I politely told him that if he wanted to dance with her, me, or any of the other women in our group, he should be a gentleman about it and just, oh, I don’t know, ask.

Me: No disrespect—we’re just chillin’ right now.

Him: Well if you didn’t want to dance you should have stayed your ass home, then.

Me: Really brother, I’m not trying to be mean, it’s just that guys have been coming up behind us all night…

Him: Whatever, swamp trailer trash beyotch.

Me: *jaw on the ground, eyebrows furled, clearly confused.* Well damn.

I should disclose that during our Girls Night Out email planning, our girl Tina asked if we should bring our husbands so we’d have someone to dance with—a suggestion that was roundly clowned right up until we sipped the last of our pomegranate martinis and walked onto the dance floor.

And then, as we cut up and got down and giggled and twisted some more, we started looking around us—noticed how jaded and bored the women looked. And how cocky and sure the men seemed—like they were clear that because the women outnumbered them doggone near three to one, they didn’t have to be bothered with such niceties as offering to buy a lady a drink, or using their grown-up words to strike up a conversation, or even taking the time to say five simple, polite words that a typical gentlemen would employ at a club: “Would you like to dance?”

It’s a shame that Old School Night couldn’t be a return to old school values, when guys and girls were both out there to enjoy the music, and moving bodies didn’t serve as an invitation to pantomimed intercourse in the middle of the dance floor. Honestly, I thought this was a phenomenon of our BET-fed, video ho-obsessed teenagers, who don’t know how to dance together without the grinding of private parts and rap video simulations.

We 30-plusses know better, though.

At least I thought we did.

Still, not all was lost: We had a helluva good time despite the roomful of fools who wouldn’t understand r-e-s-p-e-c-t if Aretha Franklin pimp slapped them with a “Respect” 8-track. That’s how we girlfriends do on Girls Night Out. And Mr. ThisClose did come back over and apologize for his ridiculous behavior and extremely hurtful words.

But I think my girls and I will take Tina’s advice the next time and bring the boys along when we hit the club—and keep our Girls Night Out adventures in venues that check pretenses, desperation, bitterness, and childish behavior at the door.

Nothing but good times.