Discharging Emotional Violence

We have been forced to absorb the cruelty of others; time to find an outlet

It’s 3am. I am at a club. This is not really my thing. I don’t particularly enjoy dancing, nor staying up for two days at a time, as many ravers do. But I’m here, and I’m kind of, to my own surprise, getting into it. 

The DJ is good. The music is layered—R+B vocals on top of hard techno beats, speeding up, slowing down, the bass getting deeper and deeper as more and more people smush their bodies against each other. 

And then, the beat nearly cuts out. Just a hypnotic drum now. I’m on a bit of ketamine but not that much. Enough to feel loose, but not really high. 

And something weird happens: I, for a brief moment, feel liberated.