and Words
Oh, the night is my world
City light painted girl
In the day nothing matters
It’s the night time that flatters
In the night, no control
Through the wall something’s breaking
Wearing white as you’re walkin’
Down the street of my soul
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
Logically we understand the day officially starts at 12am, it crosses over, and we increment the date. However, culturally our day ends when we go to sleep, the day turns over while we can’t observe it. Even semantically, when we use terms like ‘tonight’ or ‘last night’, we refer to the time until you sleep.
We use the term ‘midday’ to refer to 12pm. The term ‘midnight’ is a bit of a misnomer; it’s not the midpoint of the night; it is the dividing line between day and night. While midnight defines the transition from one day to the next, it has a certain continuity. We are neither Cinderella nor Gremlins, the rules don’t abruptly change when the clock strikes 12am. Or do they?
Meanwhile those hours between midnight and slumber are magical pockets of time what defy definition. Is it day or is it night? Or better yet, neither?
It is precisely in this time when many of us existed, nay… thrived. I walked among these nocturnal animals for years. We metamorphosized as the clock approached midnight, these borrowed hours oozed with the life force that sustained us.
‘Self Control’ by Laura Branigan was released in 1983 while I endured high school. It was catchy and received plenty of airplay. I enjoyed the tune, and listened to it as it played on the radio. Though honestly, I simply grouped it among the scores of other 1980’s music which occupied my mind (and ears) while I survived those years of teen hood.
Upon graduation, I attended the University of Miami. I spent the preceding summer on the same campus in a summer academic program; this is when I decided to become an engineer. It took less than an hour to drive to campus from my childhood home. Having attended that summer program, I expected very few surprises to how I conducted my life.
While I had always been a night owl, staying up late nights reading, watching TV, or playing video games, that summer after high school graduation transformed that. As I reflect on this song, I realized how much my life paralleled those words. Perhaps much like Branigan, I lived among those creatures of the night. Similarly, we ambled together in that magical time between night and morning.
This is that story.
In high school, my kin were geeks. I learned to navigate it well enough to avoid most conflict; I even thrived in my own space. However, I was one of maybe a handful of Asian students in my high school, and literally no one else spoke Cantonese. While certainly everyone is unique; I was more ‘unique’ than others. Most found kinship and affirmation; I didn’t. I wasn’t a round peg, not a square peg. I was more like a triangular peg in a world of round and square pegs.
Upon graduation, I met other Chinese teens who had also just graduated. Finding other people like me was transformational and magical. I was no longer the oddball in this group; people did not see me as different. I found kindship and affirmation. We could compare life experiences. Our group ranged from our late teens to early twenties. We were scattered across the southeast coast of Florida.
During the day, most attended school though some had started working. On weekend nights, we found each other along different venues scattered over the coast. One movie theater on Oakland Park boulevard and State Road 7 played Chinese movies on weekend nights at midnight. The clubs on South Beach like Club 1235 would occasionally host a ‘teen night’ where they allowed patrons under drinking age.
However, we’d most frequently meet at Chinky parties. An enterprising young person would rent out space, hire a DJ, and charge a cover. The news spread quickly through word of mouth. Truthfully, I don’t remember when or how I got the details on each party, but I just did.
For years, these outings sustained us. We figuratively held our breath during the days while we conducted trivial things like engineering classes. Those weekend nights allowed us to surface for air, where we figurative became the Batman to our Bruce Wayne. These young people with uniformly straight, black hair and almond-shaped eyes were more than family; they were a lifeline to an identity I had orphaned.
The neon lights of South Beach bathed us in that soft distinctive glow. We danced to exhaustion under the white rotating reflections of a disco ball. Occasionally, a machine engulfed us in pyrotechnic artificial fog. Our hearts raced, and we smiled as we watched each other magically emerge from the smoky fog. The nights became a mixture of shirts and dresses drenched in sweat and schmeared make-up.
We recognized the music in mere seconds. Different venues specialized in slightly different genres, from New Wave to Freestyle to High Energy music. Speakers played music loudly enough to guarantee hearing loss, but we didn’t care. On the slow songs, we held each other closely. We quietly sang those words of love in our embrace; they were ambiguously either a serenade or a confession, or both.
I don’t think we ever danced to ‘Self Control’, though it would’ve certainly fit. I doubt any would’ve seen how it paralleled our own lives at the time.
However, to reflect on it as strictly benevolent isn’t completely honest. At times, being with them was an addiction. Engineering school will absorb all the time you have, and I definitely shorted time on projects to go out with my people, only to spend money that I couldn’t afford. When I wasn’t with them, they occupied my mind. In many ways, it resembled the very video for this song. My kin were my narcotic. In a colossal bit of irony, meeting in this group prevented me from functioning outside of this group with them.
Eventually, I graduated school and got a full-time job in Seattle. I melancholically left those people and started my real life, becoming what I’d be ‘when I grew up’. I’ve yet to find kinship like that again; it was simply a moment in time, no more lightning in a bottle. Moving away from the shores of Miami dispelled that magic, after all… who would Batman be outside of Gotham City? Going forward, I’d only be my figurative Bruce Wayne.
Nevertheless, I remember that part of my life with a great fondness. Those magical hours between midnight oozed with excitement and longing. They were slivers of stolen time that defied definition. In our youth, we lied to ourselves and almost believed that we suspended time until we woke in the morning. Oh, but what I would trade to again feeling like I did when I was with them.