I just got up.

It’s 4 PM.

Guess that’s what happens when you eat dinner at midnight, get to the club at two and drive home as the sun starts to come up.

I’ll admit, I’ve been jet-lagged.  Could take a pill, many swear by Ambien.  But my psychiatrist flipped when I brought it up.  Said it wakes you up so suddenly that it freaks you right out!  So, nay.  But that means for days after arriving in Europe, I sleep for a few hours, and am then up for a few hours, contemplating every scenario in my life.  I get new insights, am bizarred by remembrances and ultimately wake up after falling back asleep with barely a memory of the interlude, other than the fact that I’m tired and running on empty.

Last night we went to a fashion show…  Supposed to start at ten, eleven was more like it.  The designer was Swiss, the models looked like they hadn’t eaten this year and the whole thing was so boring it made me question all those runway pictures I’m subjected to in the press. Really, you left home for this?  REALLY?

And then the aforementioned dinner…

And after having not eaten since breakfast, which was yogurt and fruit back in Madrid, and having had copious amounts of Pellegrino, I excused myself to go to the bathroom.

Which I found outdoors.  There were many doors.  Kind of like that scene in "Help", but with more entrances.  And then a communal sink.  With a communal towel.

Now I don’t consider myself a prude, but we’re all germophobes these days, I’m not using the same stinking towel as everybody else.  I resorted to Kleenex.

Little did I know that I’d be confronted with the same scene at Pacha.

Yup, we drove into town long past midnight, and entered a party that was already jumping. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with today’s music scene, a lack of participation.  Social networking is the rage, but go to an overpriced show and it’s more like Broadway than Facebook.  You see some nitwit dancing in front of a set or some old sot with a faded reputation acting in a revival. Whereas at the club, it’s a mass of writhing flesh, everybody’s energized, bumping into their neighbors, popping up and down, fists in the air.

Even Ginny, Felice’s mother.

I mean some in our party tried to beg off.  They’d had enough.  They wanted to quit after dinner. But not this octogenarian.  She’s up and boogieing to Swedish House Mafia.  Not gyrating as quickly and thoroughly as the dancers perched on platforms, grinding like on "Where The Action Is", only sexier, but movin’ and a groovin’ like the rest of the crowd.

And as the set built, there was a sudden silence.  Then…

I want it all.

I want it all.

I want it all.

AND I WANT IT NOW!

Everybody, thrusting their arms in the air, repeating…the QUEEN SONG?

Yup.  Freddie Mercury would have fit in perfectly at Pacha.  There was that weird tension between campy and cool, gay and straight, the world outside the venue just didn’t matter, like in the days of yore.

And there was smoke and lasers and writhing naked girls on an extended stripper pole.

And then Tinie Tempah came out and engaged the assembled multitude like they were at the World Cup, cheering for their favorite team.

And I went to the bathroom.

Whoa!

Doors to the left of me, doors to the right, here I am…stuck in the middle with YOU?

Yes, on the right are girls who could have been featured on the runway hours before.  Tall, skinny, wearing sheaths, hanging out like…you do in the lounge that’s affixed to high end female bathrooms that males envy, but never enter.

I got that sudden flush…  I MUST HAVE GONE INTO THE WRONG ROOM!  These women are going to excoriate me!

But no one said a word.

I hightailed it to the other doors.

Where women were too.

And in between, was an extended sink.

There was no difference.

Now I went to college in the seventies.  When the breakthrough was coed dorms.  Boys and girls next door to each other in the residence hall, with bathrooms for each sex on the opposing end of the building.  Hell, in a need for speed, we’d pee in the other sex’s commode. I thought I was uninhibited.

But not last night.

I eventually chose a door.

And then it’s time to wash up.

I’m standing next to these girls and…

I notice they’re speaking a foreign language.  These are not the harpies of high school. They’re not judging me.  Rather, we’re all in it together!  They might be dressed up, but the men are wearing t-shirts, it’s about being moved by the music as opposed to looking like GaGa.

I relaxed.  I put my hands under the spigot.

But I was not about to use the communal towel!