The Opposite of Love Is?
As a Yale student, going to Partners Cafe feels like an exercise in ignoring. Ignoring the man at the front asking for your ID. Ignoring the well-lit downstairs, full of New Haven-ers playing pool, standing or leaning on a gold bar. Ignoring the eyes of that person you hooked up with last year. Or locking eyes and wondering if, later tonight, your head will once again be sandwiched against a lock-less bathroom stall.
Your first “Modern Love” night at Partners Cafe — one of New Haven’s gay bars/clubs — is a hallmark Yale experience. There will be Crushes, and Queer Proms, and Radio Proms, and many, many other Yale-affiliated events at Partners, but “Modern Love” isn’t one of them. Open to the public, “Modern Love” happens each month with a different music theme. The most popular “Modern Love” among Yalies of the year is “Bowie Night,” where DJs play and project David Bowie against darkness and glitter and screams.
Last Friday’s “Modern Love” felt familiar to most nights I’ve had at Partners. This month was Bossanova themed, playful and smooth compared to the usual EDM club beats and blinking lights. The dance floor was brighter and smokier; the crowds were less familiar, less Yale-tainted. The air felt lighter than usual.
My favorite part of Partners are the mirrors upstairs, hanging on opposite walls, endlessly reflecting the mesh of twisting bodies and expressions in between. It’s hard to understand the actual magnitude of this mesh of bodies when you’re one of them. If you’re drunk enough, you might be fooled into thinking there’s a second room where the mirrors are. If not, you might get a sinking instinct to shrink away and ignore yourself (and the iconic phallic paintings hanging throughout the room).
Last week, amid blinding smoke, everyone looked like they were slipping out of their chest, loosening, becoming themselves. Maybe in a way we don’t want to acknowledge. Maybe ways we’re normally ashamed of. But it sort of felt magical, like dancing in clouds. By the end of the school year, a “Modern Love” night ends up feeling almost like another suite party — a dark, sweaty room full of people you know all too well. At the start of a new year, however, Partners feels almost unadulterated, still full of New Haven-ers and new faces. Full of new magic and hope and changing lights, before it becomes a familiar place full of faces to ignore.
