“In such a small scene it’s so goddamn self defeating…To be so elitist with all of this gatekeeping…”‘Mediocre Goth Club’ by Devoted Sinners
** READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. THIS ESSAY TALKS ABOUT SEXUAL ASSAULT AND SEXUAL PREDATION THROUGH THE LENS OF MY TIME AS A HORROR GAMER AND CLUB PROMOTER. IF AREN’T UP FOR READING YOU THERE ARE STILL SOME PRETTY COOL MUSIC VIDEOS YOU CAN CHECK OUT**
In my nearly 50 years of life, I have worn many hats. Two of the most persistent that I have donned are gamer and DJ. They oddly both grew out of the same chance encounter with the new kid in Grade 11, where I was introduced to BattleTech and then Magic: the Gathering. It was those two interests that led me to the local comic shop when I moved to Ottawa for university. That first chance encounter with Colin meant that I had a second chance encounter with Kevin, the lead singer of a local goth band. It was because of meeting these two people that I fell into the world of Vampire: the Masquerade (V:tM) and, about 14 years later, DJing.
In the mid-90s, the Ottawa V:tM LARP (live-action roleplaying) scene and the local goth scene were pretty much the same thing. The camp of Lost Boys gave way to the gothic romance of Anne Rice's Lestat, and the slinky latex of Kate Beckinsale's Selene from the Underworld series. Vampires were cool, they were sexy, and they were everywhere in the 90s. Of course, these films and shows need music and the 90s was the peak of electro-industrial and second wave goth. London After Midnight, Skinny Puppy, Paralyzed Age and others were the soundtrack of subversion and lust. It was in this environment where White Wolf's Laws of the Night burst onto the scene, providing a system of immersive play where mostly teens and twenty-somethings could cos-play as thrift store Louises and bargain-bin undead street samurai within the lore of Vampire: the Masquerade. It was, and remains, gloriously cringe but this kind of play allowed a bunch of weirdos to start to figure out who they were, who they wanted to be, and what they could become. We were rarely as stylish or suave as our silver screen idols but at least we could pretend.
When playing pretend, we would emulate what we saw on our screens and the one thing every vampire franchise had was the vampire nightclub. Forever Knight had The Raven, Buffy and friends partied it up at Club Dead in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, while Titty Twister from Dusk ‘Til Dawn and Blade’s titillated and terrified moviegoers in equal parts. Vampire clubs were as much a part of late 20th century vampire mythos as fangs and blood. Even the source material from Vampire: the Masquerade gave players the Succubus Club, a sexy, gothic venue for kindred - in-game slang for vampires - to dance, writhe, and feed. White Wolf even released an album, Music From The Succubus Club, on Dancing Ferret records to allow players to daydream about what it would be like to move wildly as the hunter or the hunted on that Chicago dancefloor. Of course we players did our utmost to emulate these clubs in our games while others took the fearlessness we learned as LARPers to the dancefloors of our local clubs. In fact, we actively scheduled game and game related activities around the club nights so we could hear our favourite songs loud and dance until our bodies ached.
Music, vampires, and nightclubs were inextricably linked in 90s pop culture. And like the undead party monsters were pretended to be, many of us embraced the drama and pageantry of the goth and fetish clubs, floating through chemically induced haze as we danced to dawn with no cares deeper than who we wanted to take or how we might get there.
Of course, time passes. What was once cool stops being cool eventually, and what was stable shifts towards upheaval. In 2000 I had to change jobs, which took me away from clubs as I was working overnight. By the mid 2000s I was running out of stories I was interested in telling and found even fewer games other people had written compelling. I moved to D&D when my partner at the time asked me to join her game but even that fell off eventually after she moved overseas to teach English. When she returned we tried to continue but our priorities were no longer in sync. Eventually the relationship ended and I found myself alone with spare time, and spare money, and no obligation for the first time in about 12 years. I needed something in my life so I returned to the clubs as a young 30 something, a little wiser and a little more self assured, looking to find a new community to call my own.
Being away from the clubs for a half decade meant returning was exciting. What changed? What hadn't? The answer to both was nothing and everything. The classics rang out but new favourites were there to be discovered, too. Slinky velvet, tight leather, big black boots, dramatic hair and eyes all remained popular but cybergoth was also peaking so gasmasks and synthetic dread falls were all the rage. It was in this environment, on the sticky floors and shadow cloaked booths I found my new tribe. Beats became our religion and we went to church every Tuesday to hear Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Angelspit, and Terrorfakt, and to commune with our people. It was a new love borne out of an old. Eventually it led me to a new calling, DJing.
The funny thing is, I never intended to become a DJ. The path to becoming one involved a move, a cancelled party, drunken bravado, and then a good friend pointing out the goths are very unreliable. It started with a move that roughly corresponded with my 32nd birthday. Given the convergence of those two events my roommate and I threw one hell of a party with nearly 40 people crammed into our post-world war two apartment. Music, beer, vodka, and conversation flowed like water over Niagara Falls. One of the major points of conversation that was our beloved Industrial Strength Tuesday was being preempted on the most holy of nights, Halloween, for an indie rock showcase and after party. To say we were upset would be an understatement. No graver injustice could be done to the pale and tragic than to pre-empt our Halloween party. It was such an affront that my friend Jeff and I drunkenly declared that we would start promoting immediately to ensure we would never have to suffer such an indignity ever again. The next day we sobered up and got to work.
A few months later we were throwing our first event. Turns out that promoting club events is a lot like running a good LARP. You had to find someone willing to host you, convince them that you aren’t a bunch of weirdos looking to sacrifice lost pets, separate the space from the mundane, and encourage your patrons to let go of reality and embrace the exceptional. A good horror game and a good club night allow people to touch the sublime, flirt with danger, and come back safely. While it took time to figure out how to put it all together we eventually got to touch the divine in a sweaty basement bar-turned-nightclub a block from Parliament Hill in downtown Ottawa.
For nearly six years I plied my trade as a DJ in Ottawa. Those nights were some of the best hazy memories of my life. That small bar we turned into a nightclub became a sacred space for many of us. Glittering lights, smokey haze, heavy beats, haunting and harsh vocals filled the air while sweaty, mostly naked bodies entwined on the dancefloor, and in the bathrooms or parking lot next door for those too caught up in the moment to wait until they got home. It was an enchanting illusion; one where wallflowers became lotharios and the demure became defiant. The problem with enchanting illusions is that spells can and do get broken.
The night I ran in Ottawa prided itself on being a safe place. Staff and patrons looked out for each other. No meant no. Creepy behaviour was not tolerated. People were free to be as sexual as they felt comfortable with. Offers of chemicals could be freely accepted or declined. We cared. At least this is what we told ourselves, but when alcohol, drugs, and sex flow as freely as they did those nights, signals and boundaries were crossed by most, if not all of us. Me included.
One of the uncomfortable truths about clubbing is that if you make women feel safe then the men will follow so we worked hard on making sure women felt safe. As a DJ I learned the favourite songs of women who frequented my night that weren’t being played elsewhere. Staff and regulars would intercede and check-in on anyone who looked like they may be having an uncomfortable encounter. If someone drank too much, or partied too hard someone would get them home safe. Those sitting alone in a corner, looking despondent, would inevitably have someone come up, throw an arm around their shoulder and ask them “What’s up?” New people were greeted by me and the other DJs, who would then proceed to introduce them to everyone in the club. All of this, despite being good on so many levels, was in service of one goal: to make the prey feel comfortable around the predators who will pay good money to use your club to hunt. Nightclubs need women to lure in men to over-drink, to ensure everyone gets paid.
Another dark truth about club life is that good, proper people will assume whatever happens to you at night is your fault. Darkness is tied to criminality, even more so post-2020, so whatever happens to you is deserved. An unwanted sexual encounter is treated similarly to a hangover. You brought it on yourself. Club owners and promoters will turn a blind eye to their friends or high-rolling patrons when they misbehave. Or, in some cases, the people who are supposed to protect you will be the ones looking to exploit or victimize you. This is the reality, the risk anyone who enjoys the night takes each and every time they go out.
The horror underpinning the vampire club is the reality, the truth of what happens at a regular club. Patrons are both punters and prey. Sure we pretty up that truth, obfuscating it with slinky outfits, hazed lights and driving beats, but the same aesthetic beats meant to take you out the mundane by overwhelming your senses also dull you to the threats lurking in the room with you. The escape of frenetic movement, friends, and music prevents us from gazing into the abyss for too long but when we avert our eyes from the abyss we don’t see it staring up at us.
I once read that the point of horror is to come as close to the Romantic ideal of the sublime as possible. We create monsters to intellectualize the emotional threat down to a manageable level so we can engage with our fears in a more reasonable, more abstract way. For vampires lurking in the club, the fear is of one who looks like us but is truly monstrous. We can’t be sure if the threat is hidden behind a debonair smile, lurching in the fog and bodies on the dancefloor, or waiting in ambush just outside the doors of the club. The threats of the undead replace our fears of being drugged, groped, mugged, or assaulted. Better to grapple with the fiction of Laurel K Hamilton and Timur Bekmambetov through fantasy and play than rely on the whisper networks warning of ‘broken stairs’.
In vampire lore, feeding comes in one of two flavors. The most popular in the romantic horror genre is the seductive, forbidden allure of the vampire. A wry smile. A hushed whisper. A finger running gently through someone’s hair only to have the vampire grip tight and yank the head back, exposing the supple neck. And then only after lingering, lips quivering, does the vampire sink their teeth into the waiting flesh. The kiss, more ecstatic than any other dalliance, washes over the mortal and vampire as they embrace. Sure, the vampire’s vessel may die but the exquisite rush of touching the sublime is dangerous, addictive, and potentially deadly but to truly live one must risk it all. It’s a seductive, timeless tale told in Victorian bodice rippers and Tumblr fanfics.
The other feeding trope is one of the inhuman monsters, vampires who are more beasts than men. This is a gratuitous, slasher horror that is used to set the undead up as worthy antagonists for the heroes. Humans are set upon like a plate of chicken wings. Meat, bones, and sinew are torn and ripped apart. Blood spatters and stains everyone. It is visually stunning but unrelatable even if the screams of terror resonate. More often than not the victims are nameless props, dressed in whatever is considered stylishly appropriate for the time. In the rare cases they are not, their horrible deaths are portrayed as cosmic justice. The victim’s cruelness and hubris being met by something more cruel and powerful than they ever could be, usually because this human wronged the main character in the first act. Karma with blood thirst and fangs.
These two tropes, the forbidden lover and blood-crazed animal, have become so common that the evil of the vampire club has been lost. The Raven, Club Dead, and the Titty Twister exist primarily for orchestrated, abstracted sexual assault. The penetrating teeth and rush of blood are not only an analogy to sex but to sexual violation. Vampires take and take because it is their will alone. We have no control, no say, no voice. Consent doesn’t matter.
The point of unmasking this trope, revealing viscera used to make the sausage, is not to shock but to honestly explore how these scenes should be horrific. Stripping away the veneer of respectability that cloaks Spike and Lestat will hopefully allow us to see their real-world analogs not as cool and suave but the cold, calculating, self-deluded predators they are. Horror stories are moral tales, and the moral of the vampire club is a warning about just how easy it is to find ourselves surrounded by monsters if we aren’t paying attention.