What would happen if the world outside was just like this? Dark enough so that everyone can be beautiful, loud enough that no one sounds that stupid.

The day I turned 18 I escaped my birthday party and went to a gay club for the first time.

My mother said, “No, they’ll do drugs there.” My aunt said, “Please, just tonight, stay home.” My dad said nothing. My sister said, “You are so selfish.”

So I left my guests in the apartment and went to Garagem. I rode with my boyfriend at the time, a 34-year-old former cocaine addict who still lived with his parents. Yeah, he was a loser, but when you are 17 and people say they love you, you believe them.

Garagem was this huge warehouse featuring two levels, three dance floors, go-go boys, drag shows, a lounge area, dark rooms and a vintage car falling from the ceiling, as if wanting to crash onto the dance floor.

The first night at a club for a gay man tends to be overwhelming. It is not everyday that you find yourself in a room filled with hundreds of shirtless, muscular men, hunting for that night’s prey. I remember just smelling the male scent immediately. It felt like a treacherous aroma, so good it can’t be healthy.

It was clear that the club served as microcosm for some other macro structure that existed outside the nightlife. Older men grouped together by the bar, sitting still, lusting over boys who would never acknowledge their existence — unless they had a big budget.

Overtly buff men on top of speakers screamed, “look at me,” begged, “please, tell me this is good enough.” Skinny 19-year-olds with overtly arched eyebrows going round and round, showing off their youth, unconsciously aware of its ephemeralness. Suspiciously masculine fit men with facial hair and their girlfriends, lost in the ocean of post-traumatic sexual need.

The girls dancing. The guys trying not to fantasize. And also me: 18 and hungry, 18 and stupid, 18 and dancing. Under the impression that in this newly discovered planet, happiness was achievable — via transpiration, half-nakedness, shaved bodies lowering down its social prices as the hours go by.

What would happen if the world outside was just like this, I remember thinking. Dark enough so that everyone can be beautiful, loud enough that no one sounds that stupid.

Men who love men wearing their identities on their foreheads without second thought. Men who fuck men able to construct their existences outside bed sheets, outside darkened corners, gloryholes, public bathrooms or chatlines. Who would choose to castrate and repress then?

Listening to a friend elaborate on how electronika was going to take over the world (“Like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, man, on acid!”) and other ’90s sophisms, I just danced — hoping one day I would be back there without a boyfriend so I could fuck each and every one of those men.

Where were they hiding all along? Why didn’t they approach me in the hallways of school buildings, at the mall, at the bank, on the streets?

Why didn’t they whistle when I walked by? Why didn’t they stare at my torso in the daylight? Why could I only gain the privilege of their gaze inside this gay man-made bunker of frantic saturnalia?

I left the club at four in the morning. By then it was so past my curfew; I was so screwed when I got home that it didn’t even matter anymore.

We went to a deserted city park and made neurotic love — keeping an eye out for cops, thieves, lonely faggots in the mood for a three-way and hoping one of us would have our own place next time.

We never said I love you. I was too young to say it, him, too old to feel it. I did think to say thank you. But I remembered my sister saying “Never tell a guy you are thankful, they’ll leave you. Just say nothing” one time, so I decided to copy her.

When I got home at seven, it was light out, everyone was asleep and the house smelled like recently-dead things. Maybe even people. I went to bed for a few hours. My parents and I never spoke about the incident. I never got grounded.

Perhaps they telepathically felt my world being torn open. And they understood. So they just said nothing, too.

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