Fertile spaces: Is it ever OK to pull on the dancefloor?

For me, there’s no better place to pull than the cramped environs of a club smoking area. It’s cold, so you’re in a tight physical proximity to your potential paramour. You’ve got the same attitude towards mortality on account of the fact you’re both smoking (nihilists belong together, you see.) You’ll have similar music tastes, on account of the fact that you’re at the same night. Plus, MDMA is a very loving drug!

But is it okay to treat dancefloors like 3D Tinder, or does this devalue the entire clubbing experience for everybody? In recent years, it’s become socially unacceptable to smash face with a total stranger while a 4/4 beat reverberates through your solar plexus and retching clubbers scramble out of your way. For me and my friends, pulling on dancefloors is a bit distasteful, a bit sleazy. Bait, basically. “It’s kind of lame, to be honest,” says 29-year-old Nicky. “I’ve always quietly judged people who go out and slobber on each other in clubs. Have a dance, flirt, enjoy the music, then go somewhere private for your passionate sesh.”

Plus, it’s annoying. “I find it usually annoys other people around you,” agrees 28-year-old Charlotte. While there are the odd moments of romance – I know one couple who literally met over a line of coke, nostrils bumping in the middle Lady And The Tramp style — for the most part we’re going clubbing for the music, not the bang.

But it wasn’t always like this.

Pulling on dancefloors never used to be an issue: historically, clubs were designed to be places of sexual freedom and expression. LGBTQ communities flocked to legendary venues like The Garage or the Loft to dance and fall in love, or lust, in a safe, queer-friendly space. After these halcyon days, clubbing split down the middle: a high-street club experience catering to a mass audience and a core of venues for more underground tastes and personalities.

On suburban high streets up and down the country, lads would pull on white button-downs, douse themselves in Old Spice and head out in the optimistic expectation of finding someone to pull before the lights came on at 2AM. Girls would congregate in chip shops cackling at hapless men like a coven of witches bound in unity by the satanic joys of chips ‘n’ cheese. In specialist dance music venues like the Hacienda, pilled-up ravers would hook up in euphoric union — as I said before, MDMA is a very loving drug. But for the most part, clubs existed as spaces to get wasted with your friends and pull. Then dance music went mainstream, and everything changed.

Nowadays, dancefloors and dance music festivals are overwhelmingly white, heteronormative spaces. This poses its own challenges: while things are gradually improving, many nightclubs aren’t safe spaces for LGBTQ people, women and minorities. And as more queer venues close down, it’s important that the nightlife spaces we have available to us are genuinely safe, for everyone. Which makes it a good thing not to have cis-straight men treating clubs like their own personal fiefdoms, cracking on to any unfortunate women.

The explosion of dating apps has also made us less likely to pull on nights out. Why bother flirting with someone IRL who’ll probably just reject you anyway, when you can enjoy your night out with your mates and swipe right on someone tomorrow, when you’re lonely and on a comedown?

But in our technologically facilitated world of endless dating opportunities, pulling someone just because they happened to be standing next to you on a dancefloor isn’t without its charm.

“Honestly, pulling in clubs is kinda romantic compared to dating apps,” says 28-year-old Sarah when I ask her whether she thinks pulling on a night out is okay, or definitively gross. Becky, also 28, hates dating apps with a passion and prefers to pull in clubs, but she might just be bitter because of that Bumble guy called her a “douche-canoe” for not responding to a last-minute hookup text.

There is a right way to pull on dancefloors, and that’s not to legitimate the behaviour of predatory creeps — always complain to security or tell a friend if you feel like someone’s invading your personal space or they’re making you feel unsafe. I’m not here to write a “how to flirt without being a creep” guide, other than to say, read the other person’s body language, smile and if they don’t smile back, move away. Literally every woman I know has been aggressively harassed, even assaulted, in a nightclub, so don’t be part of that problem. And never go specifically to a dance music night with the intention of pulling: have some integrity, you’re not the Conservative Party! Plus, you’ll probably just wind up bitter and disappointed, and that does not a fun night make, for you or your mates. But that’s not to say that if the opportunity comes your way, you shouldn’t take it.

There’s an etiquette to dancefloor pulling. “The initial pull is fine,” Becky explains, recounting a recent hook-up at London club night Secretsundaze, “but chewing each other’s faces off for half an hour is pretty gross.” Sarah has a more definitive set of rules. “No riding on chairs in the corners of clubs, no overt fingering, not too much spit or tongue on show. I’ve witnessed all of these things. It’s not pretty.”

Going out with an open mind, hope in your heart and rubbers in your pocket is one of life’s great joys. It’s the unexpectedness of it, the possible romance: you’re literally strangers, until you’re not, because you’ve shared sweat and coitus and maybe the odd STI. I met my ex-boyfriend while listening to Omar S in the club, and it was pretty special for a while, even if I don’t like to listen to Omar S now.

Clubs are magic, fertile spaces, adventure playgrounds for adults who probably should know better, but choose not to. I like the randomness of a connection made on a dancefloor. It’s a good story to tell your grandchildren (or your doctor, depending on how the romance pans out. No judgement!)

As a society, we’re becoming disconnected from each other. We live in little silos, reinforcing whatever social media echo chamber we currently live in. The mainstream media wants us to believe that young people aren’t going out anymore, nightclubs are closing at an alarming rate and the ones that remain are struggling to stay open. But there’s something to be said for the salty, sweaty euphoria of pulling someone on a dancefloor as the bass reverbs and endorphins spark in your brain. They say the couple that clubs together, stays together — so what better way to be sure you’re well suited than meeting in the club?

Sirin Kale is Staff Writer at Broadly and a regular contributor to Mixmag. Follow her on Twitter