College Days Relived At Chocolate Club Monot

I went to Chocolate club this weekend in Monot with a group of friends. Having heard good things about this new spot I thought I’d check it out.  The interior wasn’t especially impressive and I’m not complaining – on the contrary, it was refreshing to walk into a club in Beirut that didn’t cost millions of dollars to design with state-of–the-art everything and enough Botox to numb an entire village.  A very average looking club that managed to stand strong on the clubbing scene without making you feel like a peasant for not being on the guest list. The majority of the clubbers looked 23 and below and they were there with one thing in mind– to PARTAAY!

And a party it was.  We walked in feeling skeptical (older) as we watched young girls in micro-dresses bumping and grinding with tanned handsome college boys, they were everywhere, on the couches, on the tables and the ledges. It reminded me of my good-old college days, when you could just sleep through hangovers and wake up just to do it all over again.

I was modestly dressed in skinny beige pants and a salmon colored tank top, an outfit that could have worked for a dinner better. Clearly I was overdressed or underdressed, depending on how you look at it.

As I walked into the crammed washrooms, I felt as though I was backstage at a fashion show. Utter and complete chaos!  The lip gloss, the faint-inducing perfume, the joint group-dressing, compliments, snarls, loud chatting and of course  the barfing. As my friend and I waited our turns to use the loo, we saw a raccoon-eyed girl exit her stall, looking like she had just fought and lost a battle with a beast inside. Her strapless dress was hardly covering her chest as she struggled to access the sink. We both stood in full alert ready to jump to her aide, our mid-twenty motherly instincts kicking in, but she sloppily pulled her dress up, hardly lessening the potential of a serious wardrobe malfunction, splashed some water on her face, applied some lip gloss, tipped 5000LL to the cleaning lady with who handed her over some napkins, and hung on to her boyfriend’s neck, as he greeted her by the door.  As she strutted her stuff back to her table, the girl showed no signs of the ramifications of her washroom incident; she somehow managed to look fabulous!  We were impressed.  We loosened up after that, letting go of any hesitations we had, and partied like it was 1999 all over again.

We ended up at Zaatar W Zeit, drunk and silly, with what seemed like the entire clubbing population.  Skybar, Iris, Capitole, Crystal are all so proper and primped, but after years of joining the professional workforce, a night out with the  college kids proved PRICELESS!  Bisoux