After being in New York for nearly three months, my social scene remains somewhat limited. While MMB tends to frequent the most exclusive nightclubs in the city, her little sister is reluctant to venture out of the East Village. I’m comfortable in the scene I refer to as NYU.S.A.—an address that’s a fusion of college life and New York. Such a combination makes me feel somewhat at home.

But I can’t remain a village idiot forever. When MMB had to leave town on a business trip, she asked me to attend an event at Marquee in her place. She had to talk me through the whole arrangement several times, very slowly, as terms like “nightclub” and “business trip” are somewhat foreign concepts.

How could I say no? It was time to venture out of my comfort zone and discover what a club had to offer.

I had two concerns about going to Marquee:
1) Running into fellow intern and arch nemesis Sushi Girl, who frequents Marquee like a bad case of herpes.

2) Being obviously out of place in a crowd of people exactly like Sushi Girl: impeccably dressed, subtly judgmental, effortlessly bitchy.

But if Marquee’s the most famous club in Manhattan five-years running, I decided it must be worth seeing. My sister wouldn’t feed me to the wolves! Besides, who am I kidding? I rely on subtle judgment and bitchiness in each blog post I write.

How out of place could I be?

I put on a little black dress and very high heels. My headband stayed home. I was ready…I guess.

The event at Marquee was hosted by TruthThroughAction.org, an organization that “brings independent filmmakers together to create edgy film and video content to support the Democratic Party, its issues and candidates.” I think it’s both commendable and effective when people use their own creative energy and channel it towards a greater cause. Be sure to check out the viral videos on the website. While surfing the world wide web, you may also want to take a glance at McCain’s crazy faces. That should be a real push towards “political monogamy”–a status that Truth Through Action promotes through its “I only sleep with Democrats” shirts. Sex doesn’t just sell; it also votes.

My friend T and I strutted into Marquee at 9:00 PM and immediately downed two cocktails. We surveyed our surroundings, unsure of our next move. The club had a projector that showed behind-the-scenes footage of the “I only sleep with Democrats” photo shoots. Sleek photographs hung on the back wall and blue balloons floated in a few tastefully scattered bundles around the crowded interior. This Democratic party looked good.

The DJ was fantastic, playing everything from Rihanna to Jay-Z to Oasis to Pat Benatar, each song dressed up with irresistibly danceable beats. There was also a live performance by Madison, who boasted an oversized white oxford with Obama’s face printed on the back of it. She too had solid dance music to contribute.

Yet no one was dancing. I wasn’t completely naive. I never assumed that the inside of a New York club was going to look like the Britney’s “I’m a Slave 4 U” music video. But I did think that signs of life would extend beyond the occasional shudder and twitch from a collective crowd. Perhaps it was just too early. After all, nightclubs thrive in the after-hours.

But the music! It was too good not to enjoy. I hadn’t felt this compelled to dance since my last drunken college frat party when I ended up dancing on a Beirut table to “Shake Ya Tailfeather,” only to land flat on my face in what I tried to play off as an attempted crowd-surf. T and I tossed our inhibitions aside like empty beer cans and began to bust out in full force: flailing arms, shimmying shoulders, I don’t even know what was happening with the lower half of my body but, word to the wise, doing the running man in heels is both difficult and dangerous.

It may sound outlandish and embarrassing, but T and I were having a great time. With each new song, we’d let out a wooo of excitement, another tradition of college partying that didn’t seem to carry over into the Marquee scene. The rest of the room became a blur until some youngish guy approached us.

“You guys are like, the only people dancing,” He told us.

We gave him a nod and a shrug. People stating the obvious don’t tend to hold our interest.

“What are you, like, 18?” He asked skeptically

“Yeahhhh.” T exclaimed while breaking into a ridiculous pelvic thrust. “It’s her 18th birthday!” As she pointed to me. “Birthday girrrrl!”

I think that T prefers acting drunk to actually being drunk. This guy propelled her into full force faux-toxication. We probably appeared to be the drunkest, most immature people there.

I took a look around the club.

We were definitely the most immature people there.

But no one cared. Yeah, it probably looked a little like Romy and Michelle’s Marquee Intrusion if anyone was seriously surveying the scene, but everyone was immersed in his or her own Marquee experience.

Almost everyone.

T noticed her strapless dress had slipped down to an almost inappropriate level–then she noticed that a guy standing a few feet away had also noticed and continued to unabashedly stare and grin even after she had readjusted her apparel. She shot him a glance that said, “You are testing my gag reflex.” While a glare of death can sometimes be interpreted as sultry, there’s really nothing ambiguous about a pre-puke face. He continued staring. Since T wasn’t about to follow through and pull the trigger in the middle of Marquee, we decided it was time to leave.

Though Marquee wasn’t quite the scene we were accustomed to, like so much of New York, I walked away thinking, “I could get used to this.”