Mug a space of naked honesty

To be honest, I'm a little conflicted about writing this article in the first place since Matthew's Mug is not usually the first place I think of heading when I crave social interaction. But under the auspices of saying what everyone's thinking, I feel that it's important to come out and say what the Mug is, in no uncertain terms (not simply an event or special night, but the place itself), if only to set that issue to rest in my own mind. I'm certainly not talking about the place without firsthand knowledge, though. If I was, how could I talk about little details like the wall of heat and moisture in the air that you can feel almost immediately after descending the stairs? If you haven't caught on to this yet, no, I'm not a great fan of going to the Mug. But I do appreciate what it means to us as Vassar students. I'll get into that later.

A lot of what going to the Mug entails is what you expect; that is, expectations. Most people expect to have a good time, get loud and stupid, and feel really good about it. Something amazing happens to a person when they get in the middle of the crowd. We tap into the animal side of our brain that we need to satisfy by dancing hard and fast and just listening to our instincts when we get the urge to go grind or dance with someone. There's nothing wrong with that.

People also expect to waive their right to personal space—it's a dance club, after all. We expect to be bumped into, grinded on and all the rest of it. We expect to immediately see somebody that we wouldn't mind waking up to the next morning, as well as those people that make us feel uncomfortable because they just can't take the hint that they are not wanted. Our expectations surrounding the Mug are of a social—and literal—Petri dish, where the mass of the crowd just grows in proportion to the sweaty condensation on the floor.

Of course, I'm not going to presume that I can actually speak for everyone. Much of what I hear, especially amongst groups of girls, is some variation on, "I just went in there to dance, but this one guy kept accosting me." I remember being "this one guy" from time to time, and it's valuable to know that not everyone goes to the Mug for the same, uniform reason. Maybe next time I'll ask before I start dancing with someone.

Now, I mentioned earlier that I rarely go to the Mug when I'm feeling social, and this is true. I don't really enjoy being in a hot, sweaty mass of people unless I have some kind of dementia, and even then I might take some convincing. I prefer to keep my partying small and personal, rather than loud, stupid and anonymous. But more than anything, and despite any quibbles and problems I can find with our beloved club, I can appreciate the Mug for its one genuinely redeeming quality: It keeps us honest. We walk in without pretense, expecting to walk away from the whole thing with a cute person in tow, with the assumption that we'll wake up next to them the next morning. We don't burden ourselves with trying to dress the Mug up like something it isn't. It's a place for us to have fun with little consequence, say what we want, and most of all, it lets us believe that even though we're at a small college, we can belong to something bigger by getting lost in the crowd. The Mug lets us be honest with each other in moments when we can't even be honest with ourselves.