My friend Mick offered me a smoke at a disco when we were fourteen and we ended up becoming best mates. I had never met him before when he offered me the smoke. We just happened to be sitting beside each other on plastic chairs in the smoking area of the disco.
I didn’t have a smoke, looked to my right, saw Mick, he was about to light a smoke, he saw me, offered me a smoke, and we got chatting.
That was nearly thirteen years ago now. We’re still best mates and do everything best mates do, like go out together, stay out together, spend hangovers together, and a few times a year go traveling together. But this story isn’t about Mick.
I was just reminiscing about how Mick and I met, and it made me think of underage discos, and how wild they were/still are.
The disco I met Mick at was Wezz, in the Wesley clubhouse end of Donnybrook stadium. Most Irish people know Wezz. It’s where drunk underage posh kids from posh schools went to meet other drunk underage posh kids from different posh schools so they could ask each other what posh school they went too.
Wezz was also were drunk young teenagers went a bit mad and had fun. I think Wezz is actually gone now. I heard kids were showing up out of their heads on MDMA and the organisers weren’t arsed anymore. The new generation is always wilder than yours was, don’t kid yourself.
Wezz had the reputation for being a hothouse of depravity. But really it was like every Irish underage disco. Or any underage disco for that matter. Underage discos are piss ups. I reckon underage discos are the closest thing modern civilization has to Ancient Greek and Roman orgies.
A night at an underage disco follows a similar pattern. Everyone shows up hammered, having convinced an older sibling or relative to buy them drink. Or if you don’t have sound older relatives, you go fishing outside the off license. Either way, you congregate with a crowd in a park, car park, or lane near the disco, or sometimes in a friend’s house under the supervision of carefree parents.
You drink your 4-6 cans of cider or piss beer, or your naggin or shoulder of vodka mixed with Coke or Red Bull, or your bright coloured alcopops. Sometimes it’s whatever you could get away with stealing from your parents drink cupboard, replacing whatever you took with water.
Whatever your tipple is, it’s drank fast and then off you go to the disco where, unless you look hammered, you get in and proceed inside towards the dark dance floor with cheap flashing lights.
The sexual tension on the dance floor can be cut with a knife, and the entire room is roasting hot. It also smells like way too much perfume and aftershave, with an undercurrent of piss that Oompa Loompa lookalike young girls wearing way too much fake tan never realize they smell like.
Everyone starts kissing everyone, usually because they’ve sent a friend over to the person they like as an envoy. If the person says yes, you’re in. If it’s a no, you pretend your friend asked the wrong person.
Along the walls of the dance floor, kids shove their hands down each other’s pants while “Yeah” by Usher plays in the background. That’s what they played in 2006-2008 anyway, when I was going. Nowadays it’s probably Cardi B “I Like it Like That” or Drake “God’s Plan.” Whatever the banger of the day is, everyone cheers and crowds the room to dance and sing along.
Unless someone has their hands down your jocks, that is. In that case you stay right were you are. Sometimes young couples even sneak off outside for something more. “Head” or “wanking” or “fingering.” Although nowadays, with everyone watching free online porn, I reckon the poor young girls are expected to do a lot more. Either way, in my day, I was never that cool.
The night continues like this as kids in outfits they’ll look back and cringe over journey back and forth between the smoking area and the sweaty dance floor.
Nobody had smart phones when I was a teenager. Bebo was the social media site of choice. The day after a night out we’d all log on and check who had posted photos. In the photos, everyone would be posing, lips pouted, often pretending to be drunker than they were.
Nowadays I reckon every second of the night is on Snap Chat or Instagram stories. But kids these days are smart, savvy. They know their parents check their social media. So I reckon there’s an unknown site where all the mischief is posted.
The night usually ends outside a chipper or a McDonald’s, where young lads show off how hard they think they are by squaring up to each other in groups, before kicking the shite out of each other. That’s unless the police haven’t shown up to clear everyone away, only adding to the excitement.
But if you’re lucky you get to witness a scrap. Lads laying into each other, girls watching telling them to stop, even though a part of them is enjoying the display of testosterone.
Again I was never that cool. I always watched from the fringes as other lads proved whatever young teenage boys think they need to prove. It’s like in nature when male bucks challenge each other, clashing antlers to see who gets to shag the females. And, like in nature, the winner often does get the female.
Because underage discos are as primal as it gets. They’re great fucking craic.
Aaron500 