Welcome to Straight Chillin’ where we send self proclaimed party machines to gigs sober and ask them if they’re as tough as they thought. This time we headed to Pleasure Planet‘s first birthday, which conveniently was a 24-hour marathon party.
Last week my editor asked me to cover the whole of Pleasure Planet’s 24-hour first birthday party sober. For some reason I said yes. I honestly wasn’t too worried, I’m not a late night amateur, years of working in bars has taught my body to adjust to the Vampire lifestyle. It’s not totally unheard of for me to stay up for 40 hours and still head to work on Monday. By that logic, I was quietly confident I could get through the challenge unscathed. Little did I know how greatly my mind and body were about to suffer. Being sober around drunk people for the same amount of time as it takes for the earth to rotate 360 degrees on its axis is no laughing matter. So while nobody who knows me would say I’m a beacon of happiness—even at two weeks my parents knew I was “an old soul”—the Reuben that emerged from Melbourne’s Lounge the next day felt like death half flushed.
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This is a grumpy young man’s sober recount of Pleasure Planet’s first birthday.
VIP rave babes waiting patiently to get on it.
I arrived at the venue just before 2AM. Heading up the stairs I sensed some anxiety about the many hours ahead. Then curiosity took hold and I was once again just eager to see how messed up this night was going to get. I made a quick bathroom stop on the way in to compose myself and make the most of the clean toilets. Would they survive a whole day’s worth of abuse? There was no telling. Better to take one good piss now before things went south.
I headed out to the smoking deck, grabbing a coffee on the way. My first encounter was with a dude I used to buy MDMA off. He was sitting down munching his face off surrounded by an equally fucked up entourage. We had the kind of conversation that you have with someone you’ve only ever known from clubs. Considering he’d been partying for a day beforehand, we weren’t exactly on equal playing fields. I stared around the balcony, sipping my coffee and sucking down the first of 100 cigarettes I’d consume in the next 24 hours. At this point, some girl came over and sat on my lap telling me about she couldn’t find her boyfriend. So many questions. Could she tell I why I was here? Was she sheltering in my sobriety? Would the drunk Reuben have continued chatting, ignoring the extreme likelihood of getting pounded when her boyfriend emerged from wherever he was? I politely told her to fuck off and continued to watch group of techno bros dance around each other.
One of the many techno frat boys.
30 minutes in and it began to dawn on me that I’d made a mistake. Any friend I’d encountered had been quick to detach from me, the lone party pooper. Right about now the first round of ejections kicked in and a techno frat baby was escorted from the balcony. His frat posse quickly regrouped, continuing to party without him. 24 hour partying is serious business. There is no room for compassion here.
I decided to do some eavesdropping. A guy turned to his mate and say, “I’ve been smoking puff for 14-hours, so I should be right ’til Monday.” I didn’t know what was more terrifying, that he’d been smoking ice for so long or the hint of doubt in his voice. If he was worried about making it how should I be feeling?
If you were ever wondering what people who go to 24-hour raves look like, wonder no more.
Soon after I got chatting to a guy I went to high school with. He recited a shopping list of the drugs he’d taken so far and his plans to tackle the rest of this rave-athon. He quickly scurried off and another dude from school walked over to ask for a paper and tell me how gacked he was. I knew the conversation wouldn’t be sparkling but frankly I’d hoped for better.
At 3AM the prodigal techno frat dog returned, albeit with a serious attitude adjustment. His time in exile had reset the balance. Once more, all was right in the world.
Pleasure Planet’s dance floor going strong at 7.00AM
Around about here is when I ran into my buddy Harvey from Client Liaison. He stood out for being more composed than most. Our conversation was brief, but it was the most sober one I’d have for a few hours. It was a welcome moment of calm, until I realized that standing with someone from a band people like in a room full of people on drugs is kind of a bummer. Soon enough I was being jostled away by people asking to take selfies with him.
Harvey, a pillar of unfucked-upness.
Hours passed and everything seemed to turn weird. I was no longer having conversations, just brief encounters with people asking to role ciggies and telling me how fucked they were.
I was standing at the bar drinking a cranberry juice when a contender for Most Fucked Dude Of The Night approached me. We didn’t have much of a conversation. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and told me how the party needed way more K, more whipper, less shard, and a lot less fuckwits. He had half a point.
At about 7, the first wave of exhaustion kicked in and I found myself retreating to the safety of the cloakroom. Thanks to a nice door girl it was a pretty good hiding hole.
By 6.30 the vibe had turned. Those who’d punched it early were now on the come down, the emotional equivalent of floor burn. It wouldn’t be long until one of the rave babes broke out in tears. Sure enough I soon found myself gazing across the smoking room at some woman crying her way through the various stages of a three-pill slide.
While I stood having my eightieth cigarette, a dude approached me and told me about his past addiction to prescription drugs. He now assured me that he was off the drugs and it was strictly piss from this point on. He told me this four times throughout the evening/day and made it to around 8AM. His story was kind of hard to buy.
Early morning rave babes partying away the bad feelings.
By 10AM most of the munted folk had either passed out or been kicked out. The vibe was nicer and I have to hand it to the Pleasure Planet crew, they know how to throw a really long party. It was now more of a day beers event and even the music had settled down a little. No more hard techno, more a mixture of minimal house and ambient jams.
Overall the daytime was casual—I had a pork roll and a few nice chats with friends—it was a good time. I almost forgot that I’d been awake for 26 hours.
Day Break of shame or absolute ecstasy.
Around 3PM things started to get strange again, I couldn’t tell whether a new crowd had appeared or people had replenished themselves with whatever they were using to tackle this day rave.
Two dudes decided to try get high off the smoke machine and both took turns placing their mouths around the nozzle to inhaling the smoke. It was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen, but that’s from a guy who agreed to stay up a ridiculous amount of time for pretty much no reason.
The exhaustion was starting to take control again and my apathy was becoming uncontrollable. Conversations had become less bearable and I thought about giving up to go home. At one point I even packed my things and made it to the door before getting a text from some party angel saying, “Hang in their Kitty”.
It was the encouragement I needed. I returned to the bar for a Dr. Pepper.
More friends started turning up, each providing some measure of motivation. I felt confident: I could do this. I’d been up for close to 32 hours now, and probably fitted in quite nicely with everyone else. My sleep-deprived state provided me with the same twitches and my eyes focused on things far longer than they needed to. I kept feeling the need to move around, sitting in one place for to long would lead to me drifting off.
Getting back to business.
But then things got shitty again. I hated everything, I wanted to burn it all down and punch myself in the face for agreeing to do this. I remembered it had been a drunken decision, which made me resent it even more.
With perfect timing a friend of mine went from relatively high to full-blown fucked.
I finally had a purpose—I rushed to the bar to grab some water and returned with gum and ciggies.
He turned to me, clenched jaw, eyes rolling, and began typing on my chest. He was under the impression I was an ATM and he needed to pull some cash out to pay for the water.
Maybe I didn’t need a purpose.
By now it was now 10.30PM I’d been up for 36 hours. I no longer cared about anything. All I could do was ask myself repeatedly: What the fuck am I doing? All night I’d been searching for the most fucked person in the club, then I realized, it was me. I wanted to hug my mother, I wanted to watch Finding Nemo and cry. I did the latter when I got home.
I couldn’t handle it any longer, my mind and body were destroyed. I left. The next day scrolling through my phone I found a single memo: There’s nothing funny anymore, everything is just really sad.
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