Barely past my sixteenth birthday, fueled by cheap beer and sugary cocktails at a chaotic house party, I stumbled into my truth: I was gay. The words felt clumsy, escaping me at a bus stop as I confided in my friend Dan, who I’d pulled outside for this very purpose. I remember looking down at the pavement as if to see where those newly spoken words had landed, then back at Dan, then down again. In that fleeting moment, the declaration solidified into reality within me. Returning to the pulsating party, enveloped in its smoky, neon-lit atmosphere, I recounted my revelation to each friend, the music and chatter a backdrop to my personal earthquake. Later, in a gesture of nascent rebellion and discovery, I shared a clumsy, blanket-covered kiss with my friend Scott, a secret pact made in the midst of revelry, unknowingly setting the tone for the adventures and explorations of the decade ahead.
Coming out stories are almost a rite of passage for my friends, most of whom identify as queer. Each story is unique, a personal narrative woven around the often-complex experience of revealing one’s true self to the world. Some came out in the hallways of their high schools, others waited until the supposed maturity of their late twenties. Some made grand, theatrical announcements, while others whispered their truth so softly it was barely perceptible. Coming out has happened in tents under canvas skies, in hushed church pews, over polite dinner tables, even at the somber setting of a funeral (definitely not recommended). These stories have been told through heartfelt letters, awkward, meandering conversations with bewildered parents, or sometimes, remain unspoken altogether. Yet, despite the diverse tapestry of these experiences, a common thread binds them all: a profound sense of isolation.
The journey of exploring and accepting one’s queerness can be inherently isolating. In fact, queerness itself, in its initial stages, can feel like a solitary path. As young queer individuals, we embark on the act of coming out, often met with a spectrum of reactions, and then spend years navigating the world, repeatedly coming out, seeking to carve out our space in a society not always designed to accommodate us. Especially in our youth, our burgeoning queerness is often nurtured in hushed moments, in stolen glances and secret thoughts. Once this seed of self-discovery takes root, it requires time and a safe space to germinate, often in the hidden corners of our minds, away from the judging eyes of the world.
Two years after my own tentative steps into queerness, Robyn released her seminal album Body Talk pt. 1, spearheaded by the now-iconic single, “Dancing On My Own”. The album, at its core, is an exploration of loneliness and isolation within the vibrant backdrop of club culture. In a 2010 interview with Pitchfork, Robyn herself explained, “The whole album is about being lonely, but I think it’s interesting to put that idea into a club where a lot of people are crammed into a small room.” Reflecting specifically on “Dancing On My Own,” she shared, “I’ve been touring a lot in the last three years, and spent a lot of time in clubs just watching people, and it became impossible to not use that lyric ‘dancing on my own’, because it’s such a beautiful picture.”
I vividly remember the first time “Dancing On My Own” washed over me. By then, I had navigated several bustling cities and sprawling urban landscapes. Those hurried, clandestine encounters remained a feature of my life, though thankfully, and for the benefit of all involved, my approach had become somewhat more refined. Like many young queer men, I leveraged youthful charm, wide eyes, and sharp cheekbones into a series of fleeting sexual encounters, each a desperate grasp for a connection I couldn’t quite define or attain. I was adrift in a sea of unrequited longing for my closest friend, desperately clinging to the remnants of a life I thought I was supposed to be pursuing, a life that felt increasingly distant and unattainable.
In the sweltering summer of 2010, my small studio apartment in the outer reaches of East Bristol became an oven as friends and acquaintances gathered for a post-Glastonbury party. Around midnight, the music selection, a chaotic mix that swung wildly from Candi Staton’s soulful vocals to the raw energy of The Horrors, landed on a track I had never encountered.
It began with a tremor, a pulsating synth beat that mirrored a racing heart, driving the four minutes and 49 seconds of Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own” before dissolving into an ethereal silence, spent and melancholic. Looking out from my cramped kitchen, I saw ‘him’, the object of my affection, standing across the room with someone else. The anxious rhythm of the song’s synth mirrored the frantic pounding of my own heart. The raw longing and profound sadness embedded in the lyrics perfectly framed my own internal landscape. The same ache that resonated in the confined spaces between the bass notes played out in the cramped confines of my flat, a soundtrack to my unspoken emotions.
Robyn performing on stage
American professor David Halperin, in his insightful book How to Be Gay, explores the unique position of queerness within minority or marginalized communities, particularly concerning the discovery of history, culture, and identity. Contrary to societal norms, queer individuals often do not grow up within queer families or surrounded by queer role models. Exposure to queer individuals in our formative years, or representations of complex and valid queer lives in mainstream media, is often limited or non-existent.
Instead, our education in queerness unfolds in the dimly lit corners of bars and nightclubs, in the fleeting encounters of darkrooms and bedrooms. We learn from those we love, often those whose affections are not reciprocated in the ways we yearn for or deserve. We learn from shared traumas, from collective experiences of loneliness. From these fragments, we weave together a queer cultural lexicon, incorporating pieces of music, art, and poetry that resonate with our shared experiences. Queerness exists in public spaces, in private moments, in digital realms and bold displays, but it truly thrives within the sanctuary of clubs. In these liberated spaces, we paint our queerness onto each other, onto the walls, onto the very atmosphere of the room. Through a shared canon of anthems, curated collectively over time, we envelop our queerness in the thick, intoxicating air, and for a fleeting moment, we are consumed and embraced by it. From the moment of its release, “Dancing On My Own” was instantly absorbed into the musical vocabulary of a generation of queer people.
In 2013, a club night named Dancing On My Own (DOMO) emerged, a testament to the song’s enduring resonance. After several iterations, it found its home in London’s Resistance Gallery and quickly cultivated a devoted following. Five years after my initial coming out, three years after that first transformative encounter with the song in my Bristol flat, “Dancing On My Own” continued to echo through my life. It accompanied me through the exhilarating highs and crushing lows, and now, it had found me again, but this time, in a different, communal context.
DOMO was more than just another queer venue; it was a sanctuary. The Resistance Gallery, tucked away behind an unassuming door on a quiet London backstreet, possessed the typical hallmarks of a small East London spot: a compact bar, a DJ booth pulsating with energy, a stage framed by cheap, glittering curtains, and a smoking area enclosed by barbed wire and walls embedded with shards of broken glass. Yet, once a month, this unassuming space transformed into a queer utopia, a haven of belonging and liberation.
Seeking to understand the magic of DOMO in retrospect, I reached out for photos and stories from those who had experienced it. Overwhelmingly, people responded with gratitude for the memory, but lamented the lack of photographic evidence. This was partly due to the atmosphere; as the night progressed, the temperature would rise to almost unbearable levels, prompting many to shed layers of clothing, often down to their underwear. In such an environment of liberated expression, indiscriminate photography was understandably discouraged. My friend Izzy described the scene as having “more boobs than Playboy, except not in an oppressive, problematic way.”
The sweaty, writhing mass of bodies certainly contributed to the night’s exhilarating atmosphere, but it wasn’t the core of its magic. The true essence lay in Izzy’s subsequent message: “I only went once and I spent all night kissing Lauren (my straight pal), it was my first kiss after my shitty, abusive ex-girlfriend, and my sparkly Converse stuck to the floor, and I’ve never felt more alive.”
It wasn’t just the kisses or the sticky floors; it was the space in between. DOMO provided a space for shared trauma, for the collective experiences of everyone in the room to converge and be held as we danced, perhaps physically surrounded by others, but emotionally, often, still dancing on our own. It was this club night that solidified for me the profound importance and integral role of “Dancing On My Own” within the contemporary queer experience.
At every DOMO event, the final song, without exception, was “Dancing On My Own.” Even now, recalling those nights, I can vividly picture the moment the lights would rise, synced with the song’s lyrics signaling the shift from solitary introspection to collective catharsis. I remember witnessing the pure joy on the faces around me, voices raised in unison to shout the familiar lyrics, friends embracing, sharing one last sweaty, joyous kiss as that erratic, heart-like beat finally faded into silence.
But I also remember catching glimpses of sadness in people’s eyes as they began to disperse, stepping back into the outside world. Queerness can be inherently bittersweet. It encompasses loneliness, and moments of profound bleakness. Yet, it is also undeniably beautiful, exhilarating, and breathtakingly alive. And so too is “Dancing On My Own.” When we, as queer individuals, dance to it, wherever we may be, we are dancing on our own, yes, but we are also dancing as a collective ‘own’ – united, for the most fleeting of moments, against the world, and with each other.
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