To Vanish Is to Begin

In the heart of London’s nightlife—through fog and bass—I stopped performing and started just being.

After a clumsy attempt at a graceful exit, I found myself stumbling out of Bagatelle in my new 7-inch Vivienne Westwood crocodile embossed pumps. Bagatelle was a night to remember–a restaurant turned absolute disco and napkin-waving sea located in one of London's hearts, Mayfair. We were there to celebrate the easiest person in the world to love (and party with)—my best friend. The 5 of us sipped cosmopolitans–reintroducing a little bit of NYC back into our routines—and watched as the ultimate pregame spot began to take shape. We leaned in to talk to each other over the clatter of forks and clinking glasses. We were half laughing and half posing, incredibly aware of how we looked and where we were but really, too tipsy to care. It was perfect, on the surface.

As the first round of appetizers covered the blinding white tablecloth, PAWSA, and Nate Dogg’s chart-topping edm hit PICK UP THE PHONE began to flow out of the speakers. The song grew louder, and the lights began to dim, and the party had officially begun. 

Waiters dancing, napkins twirling overhead, girls standing on chairs like makeshift stages. We joined them—phones in one hand, drinks in the other, hair flying everywhere, all of us caught in the swell of it. The music was good—really good, nostalgic even. The kind of party music throwbacks that make you want to move without thinking.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were acting. Not lying exactly, just performing. Everyone at other tables seemed acutely aware of being seen—of what this night was supposed to look like. It was curated. It was cinematic. It was expensive. I was being observed. On the outside of it. Who was I dancing for? My friends? The people at the next table? My own camera roll?

Just as that thought landed, my phone lit up with a reminder: we had somewhere else to be. Another kind of night entirely.

We crossed the city and landed at the doors of Fabric–a former cold storage unit next to Smithfield Meat Market turned world-famous club. We didn't just enter Fabric, we descended–we were consumed. That night Fabric was hosting Love Child, a queer Collective with a monthly residency. The moment I entered someone approached me and placed a small Pride Flag sticker on my back and front cameras. This action was a delicate but firm reminder; you are here to be, not to broadcast. That tiny act was the catalyst for my perspective shift for the rest of the night. Suddenly I wasn't thinking about how I looked, I wasn't watching myself from above, my phone was quiet and I was here. I tucked my phone into my bag and handed it to the bag check. I was totally disconnected and surrendered to the dance floor.

What followed was not just your average club, it was a kind of communion. We slipped through concrete corridors and moved between rooms pulsing with different sounds. The club itself was a labyrinth, with multiple rooms and levels each with its own ecosystem. There is no single sound. That night we moved through UK garage, drum and bass, trance, techno, dubstep and so much more. Some rooms were humid and chaotic, others were cool and reverent. Some invited you to jump and sweat and scream, others evoked stillness and to fall into a kind of trance where you swayed with your eyes closed connecting your soul to the beat. Fabric doesn't ask you to show off, it asks you to submit. There was no main stage, no sectioned-off VIP, no posing for cameras, there was nothing to prove, nothing to post–just your motion and the music. 

I remember this moment clearly: a moment between the DJs transitions, the lasers were cutting clean through the fog. My arms were above my head and I made eye contact with someone across the room. We didn’t speak, only smiled, and we knew. Not who they were or what they wanted, but that we were here and we were alive feeling so incredibly seen and safe knowing we were both exactly where we needed to be. 

It reminded me of my memories at Basement–a New York club with a similar ethos: dark, unzipped, brutally honest, and affirming. Tucked away in the industrial heart of Queens, Basement delivers a similar sensory experience. The windowless rooms, the commitment to sound, and the pure devotion to movement and music, but that night Fabric cracked me open. It was a disappearance. And in that disappearance, I found myself. 

I don't think people talk enough about how nightlife can save you, not the bottle service or table dancing look-at-me type of way, but in the quiet body movements of release. Clubs like Fabric didn't ask me to show off, it asked me to feel. It gave me the space to exist without explanation. I wasn't defined by any of the titles I or other people have given me. I was just a person pulsing in time with strangers, floating between bass drops.

We danced until morning. After my calves began to ache and realized someone else's body glitter was all over my chest, I finally surfaced. I had gone in curious and emerged transformed.

Here's the thing: we talk so much about how nightlife is an escape, but the good ones–the really good ones–aren't just escapes. They’re returns. Returns to yourself, to your body, to a joy that doesn’t need to be explained—and honestly, can’t be.

Bagatelle gave me sparkle, sure. It gave me glam, celebration, and a kind of curated chaos that I love in its own way. But Fabric? Fabric granted me stillness, truth, and an unexplainable, blossoming joy.

The best scenes aren't the ones that make you feel watched. They are the ones that let you disappear–only to return a little more yourself.