SEX ED FOR GROWN-UPS
Nathalie Marquez Courtney explores the myths and taboos around female pleasure
Armed with an arts degree, NICOLE FLATTERY questioned what her future occupation would be. Should she pursue a steady job or opt for the life of a struggling
artist? But it was a stint as a nightclub coat checker that solidified her life goal.
The first job I had when I finished college was working in the cloakroom of a nightclub. I had graduated with an arts degree and, at that time, had no specific ambitions. I did it for the same reason I do many things, my own internal logic: I bet this will be funny. One future was a secure financial, office route, the path of many of my friends; the other future was that of the struggling artist, which required energy, commitment and drive I didn’t possess. However, in that tiny room off a dancefloor, I didn’t have a future. I didn’t care what the people who handed in their coats did or didn’t know about me, and that was, in its own strange way, a gift. The job had the effect of reminding me just how unimportant I was. After four years of arts education, this was a small and useful thing. In that room, for a brief period, I opted out of all of it – artistic competition, elitism, education. I was oblivious to the real world. Even the late hours I kept, usually until the early hours of the morning, made me feel like I existed outside of time itself. There was the extra distancing of my particular role: nightclubs are primarily concerned with providing their patrons with a “good time”; they treat fun with absolute gravity. If you’re not having a good time, what exactly are you doing there? Mostly, in the space between hanging up the coats and handing them back, I read. Every night, as I endured a horror soundtrack of pop hits while sitting in front of a tiny wooden desk that was supposed to function like barbed wire – either keeping people away from me,
or me away from people, I was never sure which – I worked through a large number of books. I probably read more than I did in college, where, in a fit of contrariness, I had taken against reading since it was pushed so heavily upon us. From my cubicle, I witnessed a lot of drunken heartbreak, which is useful for any writer. After my shift, I often found money on the floor. I paid the library fees I had to pay in order to graduate from university with money I found on the floor. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Most nights my boyfriend walked me home and asked, “What was it all about?” I hadn’t been conscripted; it wasn’t army service. Why was I doing it? The truth was I liked the noise, the warmth, the democracy of it – people were there to dance, idly abuse their health and make futile romantic endeavours. It was a microcosm of the human experience. It seemed uncomplicated and excitingly tawdry in comparison to what I saw as the disingenuous “sensitivity” of my degree. Also, because I was young and – I can’t stress this enough – incredibly stupid, I thought the job was sexy. My mistake. By the end of my time there, I looked like an actor who had been dramatically aged up for a final scene in a film. The place had performed terrible CGI on me. It was time to go. I’m a writer now and I’ve a book, a solid object, to prove it. Whenever I go to a nightclub – and there is a cloakroom in nearly every nightclub, separated from club-goers, inevitably run by a woman, often young – I think of the time I spent in that small, cramped space: sitting, reading, waiting.
“Every night, as I endured a horror soundtrack of pop hits while sitting in
front of a tiny wooden desk, I read.”