It occurs to me that I haven’t “been out” for ages. Not literally; I left the house both yesterday and today and will probably do so again tomorrow. I’m referring to what people mean when they say they are “going out” for an evening — that is, hitting the pubs and clubs of the local area, and probably drinking heavily along the way. Motivations for “going out” may vary — meeting with friends, going on the pull or simply just for something to do — but the results are usually pretty similar.

The vast majority of my “going out” when I was younger (read: during the university years) was conducted in conjunction with my good friend and Agricola demon Sam. We had quite a few memorable nights over the years, but they often tended to follow a fairly similar pattern.

Sam and I, and possibly a few others, would decide that we wanted to go out for some reason. In fact, there wasn’t always an explicit reason — “Let’s go to Lennon’s” was usually reason enough.

Regardless of whether there was a reason or not, we would get ourselves into whatever we considered our glad-rags to be, and head out for our target — usually either the aforementioned Lennon’s or Kaos, two grotty little student-heavy nightclubs within easy staggering distance of most of our homes, and two places with a predilection for cheap drinks that were usually 1) a knockoff of a recognisable drink and 2) out of date. Lennon’s, in particular, proudly sported a fridge which noted “contents may be out of date” and the happily sold you said contents for £1 a bottle.

The reason we went to these places rather than somewhere bigger and (arguably) better? Stubbornness, partly, but also none of us were particularly hardcore clubbers. None of us were into doing the drugs (to my knowledge, anyway) and none of us were bigtime drinkers. Both Lennon’s and Kaos allowed you the authentic clubland experience of being in a dark, smelly room with music too loud to talk to your friends over, but were both small enough that you never lost track of your friends for very long. Lennon’s, in particular, was roughly the size of a large garden shed and entirely contained in a single room, so if you had reached the stage where you couldn’t find your friends in there, you had definitely had too much.

Part of the appeal of “going out” for some is going on the pull, hoping to score some sweet lovin’ from some trophy guy/girl that you’d had your eye on all night. Or, as the evening went on, anyone who looked vaguely in your direction or accidentally made eye contact.

Suffice to say, our attempts in that regard were usually confined to standing on the perimeter of the dance floor having picked a “target” that we decided we quite liked, and then staring at them off and on for most of the night. When closing time rolled around, we would then leave with the lingering sense of regret that we should have probably actually gone and tried to talk to them, or at the very least danced near them in the vain hope they might pay attention.

I can only remember a single successful instance of “pulling” in my entire life. I was at Kaos, this time with the university theatre group, as it was our wont to invade Kaos every Monday night and enjoy their plentiful stocks of Newcastle Brown Ale and vodka-fake Red Bull. On this particular occasion, I had had a fair amount of vodka and fake Red Bull, and was consequently of the opinion that my dancing was The Shit.

“You ever tried ecstasy, mate?” yelled some Neanderthal I didn’t know in my ear as I wildly flailed around the dance floor.

“No,” I replied honestly. Almost immediately afterwards I was grabbed by a nearby blonde girl (named Beki, as it turned out) who proceeded to snog my face off.

“Yeah,” said the guy to me after Beki had allowed me to come up for air. “You’d love ecstasy.”

Quite.

So why don’t I “go out” any more? Several reasons, really: I don’t really drink any more; I live a long way from anyone who might want to “go out”; but most of all, I’m not sure I see the point any more.

That said, I can think of two people offhand who may well be reading this for whom I would happily make an exception and subject myself to the cavernous depths of The Dungeon or the sticky floor of Lennon’s. But that’s more because I haven’t seen them for ages and miss them rather than any particular massive desire to go clubbing. I certainly don’t feel the same pressure I once did that I perhaps “should” go out, head off somewhere by myself and have a miserable experience of the type outlined here.

Perhaps I’m just an antisocial old bastard. We can probably all agree on that.