The Membership Club
A few months back, I developed a really good rapport with a lovely woman *Candice (not her real name) who always made a strong impression on me with her friendliness, high energy, positivity and consistency. Consistency may sound somewhat strange to compliment someone on, but in a world and city where people can be your best friends one day and become strangers the next, yes, her consistency impressed me. Regardless of what mood she was in, how shitty her boss was being to her or whatever was going on in her personal life, she always remained friendly and always made an effort to “connect”.
Growing up, I was a very shy kid as I had a little bit of a sheltered upbringing. On one hand it was extremely overprotective and on the other hand, I was exposed to many experiences that forced me to grow up faster than my peers. As soon as I tasted freedom at university, I was that wild child who wanted to experiment and experiment hard. Never with drugs, I am extremely anti-drugs (but that is a story for another occasion). I wanted to experience freedom with partying like I had never had before, socialising with friends, drank far too much to the point where my liver probably shrivelled to a prune, and experience relationships too.
I was very experimental and had a “give no fucks” attitude. During this time, I had some of the best and worst experiences of my life. But it helped me to grow up, and learn from different scenarios, and meeting different people. As I graduated and edged into the working period of my life, I started to focus on my work too much and it completely consumed my life. This is partly due to my Korean heritage and ‘work hard’ ethic that’s in my blood but also my personality where I want to do well in anything I put my hand to. Sometimes my personal life and certainly, my social life took a huge back seat and there was no such thing as work/ life balance.
It was also during this time, I found I was starting to withdraw and become, that young kid again who lost confidence, suffered from self-esteem and self doubt. To others I can come across calm, self-assured and put together but sometimes I am panicking inside over the smallest things, and care what others think of me. In my last post, I spoke about New Year being the perfect time to reflect on what you want in life and what you have achieved. Though I am proud of everything I have accomplished until now, I started to find myself becoming increasingly frustrated at the person I have become.
I rarely take risks, I’m just not a risk taker, sometimes I can back out of plans with friends last minute because I begin to feel anxious about going out (for no reason whatsoever) and I’m that person who is always overly conscientious. I have a friend who really gives no fucks about what other people think of her, and will be the type to twerk on me in public just to see me blush. I will then scold her as I am embarrassed and she will in turn, scold me back for caring for others think. My social life has reverted to people whom I know, are in my comfort zone and places I always go to and am familiar with. But I feel like I’m somehow losing out by doing this.
After quitting my job and being faced with a fresh new year, I thought long and hard and decided to reevaluate myself in the mirror. I made a resolution (shock, horror) to give less fucks and start putting myself in situations and places that would normally be out of my comfort zone. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to start hanging out with druggies, tree huggers or attend sex dungeon parties, it still has to be within normal-ish realms and it still has to be of interest to me.
Although it seems I have taken a huge diversion, there is a reason I have given you the back story of my personality. So back to Candice, we only ever really spoke to one another in a work setting and even then, barely longer than 5 minutes each time. When she left, she invited me to her work party and though I couldn’t attend, I invited her to mine when I decided to leave. Candice sweetly came and also bought a leaving gift with her. I was really appreciative of her gesture, but more importantly the effort she had made to attend. When she then invited me to meet with her 121, I was initially very hesitant. It was the classic…”oh but I don’t know her that well”, “will it be an evening filled with small talk?”…and so on and so forth.
But do you remember my resolution to being more of a ‘yes man’? Or should I say ‘yes woman’? Though my brain wanted to say “NO”, I said yes. Yes to new experiences and yes to meeting new people. Candice then told me she is a member of a membership bar and suggested we go there. As much as I enjoy bouji places, I have never been to or been interested in attending membership clubs before. It always conjured images of stuck up and snobby people, in a pretentious club that they could only belong to - narcissists.
Somehow from the beginning, I knew this membership club would provide an altogether different experience from a standard evening. When we entered, it looked like we were entering a small book store. We reached the desk and Candice “checked in”. We walked through double doors which in the world of a real book store, would lead to either a staff room or storage room. In this case, we entered a long corridor and came into an open plan bar which looked like a cool library. There was a real mellow vibe which is really up my alley, and since there were very few people, it meant we could relax with drinks of choice. So far so good.
As the evening warmed up, Candice and I ended up sharing personal experiences (that’s what alcohol and kindred spirits can do!) and we ended up bonding over an amazing gin cocktail (I normally hate gin) and mutual experiences of past abusive relationships (again, a story for another day). That alone would have made it a great evening, but the membership club hosts different themes each night to appease the diverse and cultured crowd. This evening, a tall American man (who looked like he wouldn’t be out of place by working in a bank) sang opera alongside a woman who played the electric piano. She was truly talented but his voice was melancholic. Though I appreciate opera, I can sometimes find it to be too heavy, but his tenor voice was really soothing. Candice and I switched from between listening to and admiring his vocals, to continuing our deep conversations.
In the midst of all this, I ended up bumping into an old work colleague who at one point of my career, she was my senior and then I became hers. Without going into too much detail, this woman’s life is far from boring and I would say she is the opposite of me - very experimental from what I’ve heard. Though I hadn't seen her for more than 6 months, we bumped into each other at this membership club. London, as much as it’s a large city, is also a very small world. It is sometimes amusing when we bump into random people in places where you’d least expect.
Back to Candice, by saying ‘yes’ to a person and night out I would normally have run a mile away from, I ended up experiencing a deep conversation with a genuine but fun person. I experienced a club/ bar like no other and ended up with a complimentary - what almost felt like a private - opera performance which was a one-off experience. Not bad for my first ‘yes experience’ ey? I wonder what’s next… xo
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All pictures on this post are my own
