Monday, 19 April 2004 | Club

On Wednesday I got an email that said I'd won two $20 tickets to a Grand Master Flash show. So, on Thursday, Z and I headed to the west side, to a club a few blocks away from the unofficial entrance to the High Line.

It was a giant maze of a club, and around every corner was a stoic-looking bouncer wearing a neatly pressed black suit with a black t-shirt poking up through the V. They stood with their backs to the walls, their feet shoulder-width apart and hands clasped together in front of their groins. So uniform, their faces seem to disappear.

Ear pieces bloomed out of the left sides of the bouncers' heads; I half-expected to catch a glimpse of an important politician. Instead, I think I saw an important '80s rapper whom I didn't recognize, an assumption based solely on his age and the way that he dressed.

We snaked our way through the neon hallways and, eighteen bouncers later, spilled out into a spacious cube of a room with an island bar in the center. We each choked down a $7 Corona and surveyed our surroundings. The crowd was unusual: clean-cut white girls on a "girls' night out," young black guys sporting afros and baggy clothing, affluent middle-aged couples in cocktail attire, and scantily clad women wearing shirts that—as my dad would say—they were literally "falling out of."

It was hard not to talk about our observations, even though we both knew that we were being judgmental. We were flies; it was as if we were invisible. Other people appeared to be having fun. They were dancing and laughing and drawing looks out of each other. Meanwhile, Z and I were both (we later discovered) taking ourselves apart for analysis, and drawing comparisons. Could I have turned out differently?

My eyes kept drifting up to the video screens, where they were playing Wild Style, a classic hip-hop documentary, and showing a collection of the director's slides, taken in the Bronx two decades ago. The slides were more intriguing than they were beautiful. They made me want to better remember my first trip to New York in 1984. The slides in my head are blurry and are filtered through the mind of a 9-year-old. I wonder what it must've been like to be in the midst of that movement.

When the break dancing started I suggested that we move closer. A circle naturally formed around the people in the center, who took turns contorting their bodies in impossible ways while the music throbbed. It doesn't even look real.

One of the guys wore a motorcycle helmet when spinning on his head. He seemed frustrated with his performance; later I caught him trying to scratch up the top of the helmet, for better traction, I guess. There was a female break dancer, too. She was tiny and lithe and she could flip and fall into splits like a cartoon character, even while wearing pointy high heels. What must it be like to confidently strut into the middle of that circle?

I started using the movie feature on my digital camera to capture the dancers, the people, the lights, the music. It made me feel slightly closer.

It wasn't long before Z told me he was tired of watching other people (and confirmed that no, he wouldn't rather that they be watching him). I agreed. On the way back to Brooklyn, I began to feel my identity pour into me again like a tall drink.