Learning to be my own 3am: Solo Clubbing as a 20-Something Woman
When I reflect on my current situation, I think I have it all. An endlessly supportive partner, a network of friends who would go to war for me and a fuck-off massive 4k TV. Yet, I’ve been craving something that can’t be fulfilled by any of this. Nightlife.
You might question, ‘why don’t you just go dancing with your friends?’, well, some prefer an early night, some have cut down the booze and almost all work 9-to-5s. My partner shares this sentiment. He’d rather be curled up on the sofa watching reality TV (in genuinely frightening definition) and after all, I was always the party animal between the two of us. So, I’ve reached the realisation that if I’m going to hit the town, I’ll have to do it all by myself.
It has been with trepidation that I’ve taken the plunge into the world of solo clubbing. As a woman in my early twenties, I’ve had to grapple with the known danger that I’m taking. I’d rather not end up on a local news bulletin, or feel uneasy navigating the labyrinth of Edinburgh’s Cowgate, the epicentre of the city’s nightlife. I retrace narrow alleyways, remembering an instance from my first week in the capital. ‘You are pretty drunk, right?’ an older university student asked me, banking on my intoxicated state to get him laid. I was rescued by newly-made friends that time, but now I’m my own protector. I take precautions like I’m a mountaineer, embarking on a treacherous route. I switch my location on, send regular texts and update my partner on my plans. Edinburgh’s safe, but I’m no chancer. Despite these fears and fables, I can’t deny that I love the adventure of being awake in the early hours, listening to bass heavy music. I’m drawn back to the underground.
A friend once showed me Adult Mom’s perfectly scratchy anthem, Be Your Own 3am, after a formative breakup. In the year following, it became my own personal tradition to blast the song as I walked back to my flat following a heavy night on the cobbles, enjoying the final hours before the dreaded anxiety hit. It’s a song about finding friendship and love in your own company - ‘Now I hold my own hands/ In crowds of bands’. I was lucky to have someone who recognised I needed to learn to love myself, and even luckier that her teenage indie phase had led her to a song which distilled this message so succinctly.
Now that I'm tad older and a whole lot wiser, I finally feel ready to put these lyrics into action. My routine is the same as it’s always been. I start my evening by putting on makeup whilst listening to the radio. Then I chose an outfit with enough ventilation and stretch to allow me to dance without inhibition. Dungarees are good, though the farmer comments are inevitable. A 50-something man shouts in my ear, ‘you’d make a good addition to my new allotment’, I learn my lesson for the next night out. Lastly, a venue. Usually electronic music, usually half full and usually filled by fellow solo dancers, enacting their own personal quests.
There’s an utterly magic quality about dancing beside people you might never cross paths with again. It might be the fleeting unity, heart’s pounding in time with a track’s BPM, or the feeling of being unobserved - something of a rarity.
‘A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself’, John Berger famously wrote in Ways of Seeing. Yet when I’m dancing alone, the image of myself stays home. 
Despite my self-imposed solitude, I’ve found that sisterhood is never far away on these excursions. The first time I headed into a small, smoky club alone, I plucked up the courage to speak to a pair of girls who instantly took me in as one of their own. We exchanged Instagram handles and told tales about our number of mutual friends - who they had skated with, or worked horrible jobs with, or regretfully dated. Edinburgh’s close knit social scene felt like a protective womb. By the end of the night, I felt secure with the knowledge that these surrounding strangers were likely much closer to my everyday life than I’d imagined.
It’s equally enthralling to find yourself playing a part in someone else’s 2am antics. At a recent dubstep night, I noticed an older woman dancing ever closer to me. She eventually leant in and asked, ‘what are we all listening to?’. She’d snuck in, evading the organisers checking tickets on the door. ‘I only listen to gabba and hardcore, my son’s doing a set downstairs’, if there was a main character in the room, it was definitely her. We kept chatting and she promised me she’d come back for the next event, before slinking back into the club’s underbelly to fulfil her parental duties.
‘I took my shoes off/ Crawled into bed’, I listen to Adult mom on my way home, content in the knowledge that my sleeping partner has been warming our bed for my return. I kiss his cheek, he grunts and rolls over. My night of skulking around the Old Town has drawn to a close and as the sun rises I reflect on another blissful night, known only to me.
Photography by Azia Bolger (@azia.bolger)