Single Again (Sort of)

Niles:  Just because you are by yourself up in Newport, it doesn't mean you are completely single and have to go hit the clubs.

Me: Of course not.  I don't even know what I would do in a club.

***    ****   ***

And no kidding, not less than five hours later, I find myself in the Boom Boom Room in Newport.  First off, let me explain.  I didn't really intend for that to happen.  I had originally thought that my friends and I were going to go to dinner and then a movie.  Or at least, that's what I told Niles.  But somehow after hitting a bar, we decided to go to the Boom Boom Room.

For those of you (un)lucky enough to never have gone, let me set the scene for you.  It's the most bottom level in a very nice looking restaurant (white tablecloths, candles, wine glasses, coat check girl, nautical/Caribbean music playing upstairs, the type of place you wouldn't feel uncomfortable taking your grandmother for her 70th birthday).  Sure, there appears to be a lot of men who at first glance look like they're taking their daughters out... only for us to discover they're their wives...  Or maybe a lot of "cougars" out on the town, but in general, it was a much classier place on the upstairs.

And then you go downstairs to the Boom Boom Room.  It's painted in garish red and black stripes on the walls, where it's just lit enough that you can see the paint on the walls.  There is a rather large bouncer constantly checking unguraded drinks with a flashlight.  Despite it being thirty degrees outside, there are still plenty of twenty-somethings dressed like they just came from the Jersey Shore.  This is the closest Newport has to a club.  And despite the fact the dance floor is the size of our kitchen floor in the tiny historical house I am staying with a friend, there are maybe thirty people jammed on it dancing to club music.  (Side note: It took me a solid two hours after leaving the club for my hearing to return.  Made me miss the Hearing Conservation Program.)

So my next confession: Even when I was young and single (or maybe just not married since I've been dating Niles forever), I never felt wholly comfortable in a club.  But as a mom of two dressed in a daytime sweater dress, I felt especially uncool.  Maybe I needed to wear sunglasses at night like a couple of kids, or maybe I needed to find a geriatric husband, or maybe I needed to be a young bride dancing her wedding night away without her groom, to be fully comfortable hitting the "club".  

Or maybe I would never be.

But it was fun.

And I still have five months and three weeks to try to be comfortable at the Boom Boom Room.