TKOG Who storms the stage

NTKOG #160: The kind of attention-starved woo girl who, in an effort to acquaint the soon-to-be adoring populace with her barely tamed inner diva, hops on stage to shake her junk.

I am: the first to conga out of the establishment any time there is a social expectation of dancey-pants proceedings.

I am not: into being the center of attention for anything other than my biting wit.

The Scene: An after-hours club in Barcelona, where the lukewarm energy drinks were flowing at ten Euros apiece, the populace was already shellacked with sweat, and all the cool kids in the joint loitered, bored, onstage with a dreads-wearing DJ. Even with my many-beer reality barricade, it just wasn’t my scene.

However, after scoping (and getting shot down by) the closest Seth Rogen lookalike in the place, I became fixated on the bored heroic-chic stage posse. Even though every nerve in my body was trembling away from the speakers, I had a particular feline perversion to jump into the one area of the club I couldn’t enter.

Began, reasonably enough, by approaching one of the headset-wearing dudes guarding the offstage VIP area. “Hey,” I asked him, in what I hoped was an exotic American accent. “I totally want to jump on stage. Can we make that happen?” Yeah, because that was really going to work. After he rolled his eyes, gesticulated wildly toward Justice and Kiss-Ducker: “No, no, my gorgeous friends want to come too! Bellezas americans! Dude!”

My Spanish may be sloppy, but rejection is my native language.

Shortly after, the three of us headed to the mile-long coat check, which was on a platform overlooking the VIP area. “Uh, grab my coat for me, guys,” I told ‘em. “I’m going to sneak in the VIP area, jump onstage, dance a little bit and get kicked out of this club.”

“Cool,” Justice said. “Just meet us out front.” Truly there is no greater blessing than having friends to whom nothing need ever be explained.

Made a mad, tipsy dash to vault over the railing, when — THUD — security guard barreled into me like a locomotive. “Where are you going?” he bellowed, voice so deep my whole body was vibrating. “No one allowed. Get back there.” He put his hand in the middle of my chest and pushed me back fifteen feet to the end of the coat check line.

Uh, if he thought a condescending tone and borderline sexual harassment would stop me, clearly he knows nothing about women. I looked at him, chastened, ’til he turned his head. At which point, I elbowed frantically to the other side of the club, loitered by the (unguarded) other edge of the stage and — when no one was looking — hoisted myself on stage and started dancing my spastic little heart out.

This went well for about fifteen seconds. Then a trio of emaciated fashionistas lounging by the auxiliary DJ pointed their waxy fingers at me and started shouting between bass pounds. Before the DJ could get up to investigate, I danced backwards off-stage, limboed under the backdrop curtain, spun around and smacked my face into the chest of the first VIP area security guard.

“Hasta!” I shouted, and ran to the VIP area, him in hot pursuit, only to come face to face with the chest-pushing security guard. He grabbed my arm, but shook him off. If this were a movie, I would have conked the guards’s heads together like coconuts, gotten back out on-stage and crowd-surfed my way to immortality. Instead, I settled for ducking out of my uncomfortable position between the two dudes, ran out the side of the stage, and vaulted the metal bar to the coat check. Grabbed the coat that Kiss-Ducker and Justice had retrieved and dashed into the crisp Barcelona night. A legend of only a few moments, sure, but a legend nonetheless.

The Verdict: The tale was beautifully cinematic, but every time I recall it, I wish only that I had stuck to my guns on that stage. Taken off my clothes or started a clumsy-Spanglish revolution or at least gotten kicked out of the club proper. ’cause tell you what, kittens: I’m so never jumping on stage again to take another chance.

Tagged as: barcelona, club, drinkin', dude you REALLY can't take me anywhere, how hard is it to get kicked out of a damn club?!, i realize some people do shiz like this all the time but there's a reason i'm not friends with those people, it was hard for me to resist a keystone cops reference here -- YOU'RE WELCOME, justice and kiss-ducker were totally unimpressed by this epic story purely on the grounds that i didn't get kicked out proper, movie cliches, reasons i should probably start drafting a screenplay for TKOG: The Movie, seth rogen ended up getting dragged out by security after he threw a joking punch at one of his friends