The Naked Dream

When I was in high school, there was a teen disco in my hometown called Pure.

It was called Pure because there was supposedly no alcohol or drugs.

Which is quite funny, really, because a remarkable number of high school kids seemed to be absolutely pissed at these things.

That was just how it was.

I could never get hold of any alcohol, so I never was.

I just danced.

Pure was actually a pretty good scene for a while. The whole room was essentially one enormous dance floor, with these big square podiums dotted around that you could climb onto and dance on if you were feeling particularly confident.

Which, apparently, I often was.

There were paid male dancers too.

One of them, Danny, was fancied by me and pretty much all of my friends. Years later, I eventually snogged him.

It wasn’t all it had been cracked up to be when I was younger.

Probably an important life lesson there somewhere.

Pure was the kind of place where everywhere you turned, someone was getting off with someone.

I remember bumping into my school friend Bridget one night and her announcing, as if reporting some sort of personal best,

“I’ve just snogged eight boys in a row.”

Pure was basically a training ground for teenage kissing.

And, presumably, where everybody caught glandular fever.

Get your practice in.

Share some saliva.

Learn on the job.

I did get to snog people occasionally, although every single time I was absolutely terrified beforehand that I was somehow going to be terrible at it.

It never actually seemed to go badly.

Mostly, though, I just wanted to dance.

And I did.

All night.

Going to Pure was a big deal.

Tickets were about a fiver, but obviously you couldn’t just go to Pure in something you’d already worn to Pure.

That would have been a disaster.

So me and my friends would head into town on a Saturday and hunt around New Look or Bay Trading for something new.

The clothes I bought from Bay Trading as a teenager.

Honestly.

I once had this navy blue Chinese-style dress that I thought was absolutely to die for.

There were little skirts and fitted tops and all the things I had started buying now that I was entering the extremely important teenage era of high heels.

I had these incredible denim shoes with huge chunky heels that fastened around my ankle.

I wore them with a navy blue floral mini skirt and a navy top.

I thought I looked amazing.

And perhaps I did.

Back then, I had a fairly spectacular wardrobe.

So we’d arrive at Pure in our new outfits and spend the night dancing, punctuated by regular pilgrimages to the toilets where we’d reapply our No7 lipstick or one of those Body Shop lip balms everyone seemed to own.

Every so often, somebody would tap you on the shoulder.

“Will you go with me?”

God.

Even writing that makes me cringe.

Will you go with me?

Apparently that was all the romance required.

And then, if the answer was yes, the boy would perform some sort of supposedly cool manoeuvre where he’d cup his hands, place them over your head and somehow begin making out with you with his hands already wrapped around the back of your neck.

Some of the boys had the move down perfectly.

Smooth. Practised. Seamless.

Others made it feel like you were both trying to assemble flat-pack furniture in the dark.

Pure awkwardness.

And then we’d dance some more.

By the end of the night, my feet would be absolutely screaming from whatever ridiculous heels I’d decided to wear.

And one of our parents would come and collect us.

Which is such a strange stage of life when you think about it.

Old enough to spend an entire evening in a dark nightclub dancing and snogging people.

Not old enough to get yourself home afterwards.

So eventually I’d crawl into bed, feet throbbing, ears still ringing from the music.

Still carrying that strange mixture of joy, adrenaline and dopamine that comes from dancing for hours in a room full of people when you’re fifteen years old and everything feels unbelievably important.

The stench of Lynx Africa still clinging to you from all the boys you’d danced past, mixed with the faded remains of whatever Boots-own perfume or Impulse body spray you’d absolutely drenched yourself in before leaving the house.

Your feet aching.

Your ears ringing.

Your lipstick mostly gone.

Sometimes thinking about whoever you’d kissed.

Sometimes wondering whether Danny the dancer had noticed you.

And then I’d fall asleep.

And almost every time I went to Pure, I had the same dream.

I’d be back there.

Music playing.

Lights flashing.

Dancing on one of the podiums.

Absolutely loving my life.

Completely in my element.

And then, suddenly, there would be this realisation.

Something wasn’t right.

I’d look down.

And think:

Oh my God.

How has this happened?

Why am I naked?

Completely naked.

Standing on a podium.

In the middle of Pure.

Dancing.

And the horror of it would hit me all at once.

Everyone had seen me.

Everyone from school.

Everyone I knew.

I would wake up in sheer panic.

For several seconds, I would genuinely believe it had happened.

My whole body would be flooded with embarrassment and shame while my brain desperately tried to work out how I had somehow managed to attend a teenage disco, climb onto a podium and dance naked without noticing.

And then slowly I’d realise.

Bedroom.

Pyjamas.

Dream.

Fine.

It happened over and over again.

Pure.

Podium.

Dancing.

Naked.

Panic.

Wake up.

To this day, I have absolutely no idea why.

Maybe somewhere in my teenage brain there was a complicated psychological battle happening between confidence and embarrassment.

Maybe dancing on those podiums made me feel visible in a way that was both thrilling and terrifying.

Maybe being fifteen is essentially one long period of wondering whether everybody is looking at you.

Or perhaps my brain had simply decided that an evening at Pure wasn’t quite stimulating enough already.

All I know is that I spent my teenage years dancing happily on those podiums fully clothed.

And then went home every night and took the whole lot off in my dreams.