Living with agoraphobia: an immersion essay

There’s a tingling in my fingers and it’s not from the alcohol. I don’t belong on this dance floor and these kids know it. What do most people do when they find themselves in the middle of a herd of sweaty, cocksure teenagers? If I were their age I suppose I’d go with it — throw my head back and just be. But I’m not their age. I’m not even from the same galaxy. They tower over me — a different species — as if anyone born after the year 2000 was endowed with superhuman height.

Must be the millennial bug.

There’s the familiar stench of body odor and frothing hormones that conjure memories: the mid 90s, football halls crammed with staggering, sloshing teens bobbing their heads to Foo Fighters. But now … here … I’m an imposter. My breathing is unsteady, my heart throbs at a staccato, racing to match the pulse of the music. Become the pulse, feel the music. The music surges skyward and I wish I were lifting with it … up and away. But instead I am shrinking and certain that some unseen, enormous hands are closing in — fingers splayed, invented for smothering.

I watch as one of the male creatures pirouettes into my space — not before glancing down to check if I’m real. He’s been baptized with Hollywood looks, vigorously gay and comfortable in his own skin. He wears a polyester blue shirt fastened with bubblegum braces and his hair’s a shock of wax chocolate.

There’s an amused expression plastered across his face, as if studying an oddity — a man out of time. And I am. I’m a time traveler.

The young man cranes his neck. From this close I can see a hint of mascara and some glitter peppered across his right cheek. Then quite suddenly, he contorts his face and gyrates around me — striking ostrich poses, his neck doing things my arms could only attempt. Ignore the cartoon, I tell myself. Ignore the dread — the true provocateur — but it’s too late, fear is out of its cage. I close my eyes.