Every current or former EDM baby's lucky number is thirteen, because we essentially came into our womanhood in the underground. We mid-twenties women are usually in the latter category unless there was a delay, or slightly lopsided mickey mouse ears. We'll still attend the opening party of a secret warehouse and dance trap, but won't expect an ego-boost from anyone there. Because when you enter the electronic underground either to be or just to feel single for the night you're completely on your own.
The kid in brightly colored glasses who's been hitting on both you and your best girlfriend simultaneously won't be there when she vomits even though he asked for her number. Instead, he'll call Ubercab while you hold her hair back and disappear into the night without a goodbye. He'll leave you alone to take care of her in between commercial spaces at 5AM in the midst of a dangerous city ghetto. Because boys at raves are just looking for whoever is most vulnerable in the moment, and in your mid-twenties you are the one who just knows. We experience it every weekend, going out while still trying to grow up.
It happens to us if we still possess a lingering love of the underground and we often find ourselves entrapped in the two classic party competitions, who is more drunk and who gets laid first. Our younger girlfriends will snip at us, "He used you to get to me," as we roll our eyes, attempt to listen to the DJ and ruminate on how we're just too old for this in the dark. The irony of the situation is that you're still dancing next to a 40-year old man in a pink tutu, the warehouse is the place to go for edgy EDM and the social interactions are not to be taken seriously. You're not going to know the stripper in the Chippendale's outfit dancing on the speakers in real life, and if you recognize him in a coffee shop he won't remember you.
Everyone is on something, whether it be a bottle of over-warmed red wine or pure serotonin bursting Molly, not Ecstasy but unfortunately the next generation of EDM babies don't know the difference But therein lies the beauty of the underground, the kid with the nitrous is not your friend and you don't have to hob-knob or make deep interpersonal connections. It's always best to scoot away when he says, "God Bless," and offers us the balloon. In our mid-twenties, we're usually advanced enough to know who or what to go for, that competition between friends is pointless, but we're still consistently surrounded by these issues when we don our crop tops, disco-ball pants and neon colored glasses.
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Mid-twenties are the time to figure out your past in comparison to their future, and at times we're cynical to the point of being delusional. Foxes sang it best on her pre-Zedd song "Youth," with the line, "They didn't want me when I was running wild." Because so many raver boys pulled the Ubercab move on us in our early twenties that if we find one who will deliver us to our door we'll think him to be but a post-rave induced hallucination. She capitalized on the notion of dying teddy bears, slightly askew mouse ears and the life of circles that we live in. Because past the age of twenty-two being an EDM baby is no longer cute. You're playing with fire and not in the hip underground poi way, your younger youth is rapidly diminishing and you run the risk of not growing up. They call us condescending, when really we just realize the danger of these situations and that it really doesn't matter whom he talked to first. We won't stumble home with wine spatters all over our shoes, instead we'll drag them along through the rows of industrial buildings because in your mid-twenties the agenda is usually just to get home after the party.
We are sometimes able to rely on our even older EDM sisters on these nights in question, the one's who are now running the warehouse parties. We might still have an "Is this still really my life?" moment as our younger friend who was supposed to be driving vomits her supersized bottle of Malbec all over the floor of her car. Our thirty-something rave guardian angel hands us a twenty dollar bill and helps us roll up the windows and lock the doors before we can escape from the ghetto and collect our sober thoughts in the bathtub with a sketch pad. And she does this with a simple consolation, "It's OK dear, we've all had those nights."
