I’m doing what I always hated when I went to clubs as a kid: Instead of dancing, I’m just standing there, looking at everyone here. Worse, I’m checking out what they’re wearing, watching bodies move and spin around me, trying to see if I can pick out cohesive styles, emerging trends. There are many anime girls here. E-boys and e-girls in rave-friendly tech gear. There’s someone in the corner dressed as a banana, another as Master Chief from Halo. Stylistically, it’s a mess, with no obvious cohesion at all. It’s almost ugly, anxiety-inducing. But it’s also warmly familiar, nostalgic, like I’ve gone back twenty-five years to the parties of my youth.

Then the music changes, the DJ drops a…