I was sixteen when I stepped into a nightclub for the first time.

Rumor had it that there was a multi-story bar on Hubbard Street in my hometown of Chicago where you didn’t need an ID to get in — just slip the bouncer some cash. Word got around, leapfrogging from friend group to friend group, as juicy information tends to do among high schoolers in the city.

One Saturday night, instead of doing my pre-calculus worksheets or finishing an essay on The Great Gatsby, I lined up with some friends on the sidewalk, still damp and darkened from that afternoon’s rainfall. One by one, we faced the imposing bouncer dressed in all black, who asked for our IDs. Just like we’d practiced, each of us silently shoved our cash into his hand. After a few nervous moments that felt like an eternity, he moved to the side and waved us in.

Just like that, my cohort graduated from house parties in Lincoln Park to the nightclubs of River North.

Now, let’s be clear: if I were a parent and found out my sixteen-year-old was out clubbing, I would short-circuit, to say the least. Luckily, sixteen-year-old me told my parents I was at my friend Sasha’s, who conveniently lived a block from the club. When I quietly snuck back home two hours later, slightly tipsy, they were none the wiser.

I spent countless weekends immersed in this nocturnal world with my friends. We weren’t particularly adventurous, as the nightlife offerings were understandably limited at our age. Relegated to college dive bars and the scummiest of nightclubs who didn’t care who they let in, we traipsed through every dance floor and made it our own. I felt like I had stumbled into a secret world.

The vampiric, nocturnal landscape of nightlife took on a far different form when I arrived in New York City. In high school, I had come to understand bars and clubs as a seedy leisure activity. A guilty pleasure. It certainly wasn’t admirable — it was a frivolous time-waster that promised trouble equal to its weight in entertainment value.

New York taught me that that was all wrong.

Nightlife rewards good people skills and good judgment. The ability to let loose and dance like you don’t take yourself too seriously, but also stay firmly and respectably in control. Know how to talk to people, and know not to take the drugs they give you. Learn not to kiss every boy who wants you.

Clubland was a career starter for some. RuPaul and Amanda Lepore. Patricia Field and Susanne Bartsch. Some of the Club Kids of the 80s stayed in the nightlife scene, while others branched into television or fashion using the social networks they formed at boîtes and soirees across downtown watering holes. A guy I went out with for a few months (and whom I semi-sneeringly nicknamed “Mr. Blonde” in early installments of my nightlife column) told me he met the modeling agent who would eventually “discover” him, as well as the executive who promptly hired him as an Assistant Editor at a New York culture magazine, at a weekly party he religiously attended on the West side. 

In my vampiric world, I encounter people who lead polar opposite lives from mine. Creatures whom I would have never met under the light of the sun — only when the moon is out do our lives have a chance to intertwine. They work in Midtown or SoHo; I go to school in the Village. They live in Williamsburg; I have a dorm in Gramercy. After five p.m. they make music in their friend’s brownstone or do photoshoots and fashion styling for magazines. After five, I sit in the park or take the 6 Train home to write or nap. They’ve lived here for years upon years. I’m on my second — in a city big enough that our paths might never have crossed otherwise. But each night, we all implicitly know where the party is.