I was standing outside the Muddy River Smokehouse in Portsmouth thinking how I hadn’t seen the inside of a club in 10 years and wondering if ‘the scene’ had changed much. I was about to find out.

After dinner with my wife and a couple of friends we had decided to sample some of the bar scene instead of settling down comfortably for our usual after dinner coffee and dessert. It was Saturday night and we must have succumbed to a kind of group hysteria in which we all felt young again.

We asked the waitress where we should go and she told us there was a great blues band playing at the Smokehouse and, even better, it was within walking distance.

When we got there I noticed a lot of young people hanging around the entrance. Even though it was bitterly cold few of them seemed interested in actually going inside. This struck me as odd until I walked down the stairs to the door and ran into a large and intimidating young man wearing an after shave that smelled strongly of sweat socks and who was collecting a $10.00 cover charge.

I realized that the reason why there were still so many people at the entrance was because they couldn’t decide if they wanted to unload $10 just to get in the door.

I also thought I recognized the bouncer as a student I had taught a few years earlier and he stared at me as I paid the money, but if he recognized me he wasn’t about to cut me any deals.

I also remembered him as one of those students voted by the school staff as least likely to succeed.

A full $40.00 lighter I led the four of us into the club to find it packed. My idea that nobody could afford the cover charge was instantly proven wrong. It was so crowded there were no seats or tables. There was nowhere to sit down and be comfortable and enjoy the music. In fact, there was very little space left to stand. I wormed my way to the bar between people who acted as though they owned their section of the floor. At those prices, maybe they did. After a few minutes of struggling through the huddle at the bat I attracted the attention of the barkeeper who looked younger to me than most of the people I taught at school I ordered four drinks and after he had taken his tip I was another $30 poorer. I hadn’t been in the place five minutes and I had spent $70.

The four of us then weaved our way through the crowd and found a niche against a wall that was very close to the stage. Here I saw that there were a few people sitting on chairs though there were no tables that went with them. I wondered if this was something new about the club scene where you were expected to bring you own chair if you wanted to sit down.

I tried leaning against a pole to take some of the weight off my creaking legs but was told – and I mean told, not asked – by a young man behind me to move because I was blocking his friend’s view. The only odd thing was that he didn’t seem to have any friend with him. Not wanting to start a brawl with somebody half my age, not to mention his imaginary friend, I wedged myself closer to the wall feeling that I had wandered into a strange new world indeed.

Minutes later I knew I was right. The younger man had been joined by an older man and they were holding hands. By now the band had wandered onstage. The band had four people in it and about 20 others who seemed to be in charge of set-up and sound check. For the next half hour the only sound I heard from them were the words: “Check one-two.”

Inside my head I was singing; “I ain’t got any money and my legs have gone to sleep blues.” While I waited I looked around the room and noticed that most of the men in this club were actually close to my age. The notion of old men clubbing made me smile. I wondered if we all suffered from the same condition where the self-image stops aging the moment we turn 40.

To my surprise they were clustered in groups of two and three, as if still looking for the perfect mate after all these years. Then I thought about the hand holders and wondered exactly which gender they were scrutinizing in search of the perfect mate.

There were women in the club. Very nice looking women, in fact, clustered in groups of four or five but they looked awfully young to me. They acted young too, giggling and laughing, pointing at other people and talking behind their hands. They reminded me of students hanging in the hall at school during recess.

The only group not represented there, I realized, was older women. I assumed they were all at the Sheraton looking for older men who could afford the price of admission.

At last the band started to play and the instant they began the dance floor filled completely. The music was fast and loud and definitely not related to any blues I was familiar with, but what was really weird was that everybody slow danced, maybe because there was no room to do anything else.

I noticed that when they danced none of them actually looked at each other. The women kept scanning the room, as if looking for somebody better, while the men stared vacantly into space hoping they wouldn’t be rejected again. When the first song ended the dance floor emptied in a second but as soon as the band started into another song it filled up again with the same people, except that in a few seconds they had mysteriously arranged themselves into all new couples.

At this point I decided I should move to restore some feeling to my legs and also because I had to find the restroom. One never actually buys beer, only rents it.

On my way I noticed something else about the two sexes, at least the two primary sexes. The men were all casually dressed in jeans and rugged outdoors shirts, as if trying to convey the impression that what they lacked in youth they made up for in virility. The women, on the other hand, were dressed to kill.

To me the atmosphere was a like a sophomore mixer at our school except half the people – that would be the men – looked like they were in the wrong place.

So this was what happened to all the guys who never got the girl of their dreams, I realized. They were still out there looking while the tide of youth receded further and further away from them.

When I found the restroom I was surprised to discover it could only fit one person at a time. What surprised me more was that there was no line. I also noticed there was no line to the ladies room.

I wondered if anybody in the entire place was actually drinking or, at those prices, if they were all making one drink last all night.

Ah the romance of it all.

I worked my way back to our small corner of the wall and found my wife and friends desperate to leave. We were on our way out before the band finished its first set. As we exited onto the street there were still plenty of young men hanging around, waiting for leftovers, I guessed.

I wanted to tell them to stop wasting their time and go home, but I didn’t. I went with my wife and friends to a coffee shop where we had coffee and dessert in comfort, the way we usually do. It seemed we all had pretty much the same impression of the club scene and we all shared the same prayer…that we would never, ever be forced to go back into it again.