I found strength and community on the dance floor of queer clubs

Straight people often marvel at the freedom and joy they experience in gay clubs and long to capture some of that magic for themselves. And who could blame them? But for us, it’s not just about fun. It’s about survival. It’s about finding those fleeting moments when the world feels right, when the noise in your head quiets down and you can just exist.

During Pride, the dance floors are packed, the music is louder, and the energy is palpable. You can feel the history in the air, the struggles and triumphs of those who came before us. It’s a powerful reminder of how far we’ve come and how much further we still have to go. These moments are our way of honoring that legacy and saying, “We are here and we’re not going anywhere.”

This Pride month

I remember my first Pride. I remember walking out of the CastleCourt Shopping Centre in Belfast and being blown away. The colours, the music, the celebration… the perversity. You couldn’t escape it. It was all-encompassing. Northern Ireland’s capital city was going crazy and it was amazing. The sheer ecstasy of the rainbow wonderland was infectious.

I had never been surrounded by so many queer people. It was magical. I had never felt so validated and so overjoyed. It was an awakening. For so long I had normalised queer culture as something strictly ‘underground’, but Belfast Pride reminded those who wanted us to live in the shadows that we existed. – and we didn’t go anywhere.

The excitement, the nervousness, the overwhelming sense of community – it was everything I had hoped for and more. There was a moment, standing in the middle of a crowded street, surrounded by strangers who felt like family, that I felt a deep sense of belonging. It was as if the world had shifted and for once everything was in its right place.

And that’s what these nights are about. It’s about finding moments of connection, joy and release. It’s about reclaiming our spaces and celebrating our identities. It’s about dancing through pain and joy, past and future, and everything in between.

A night to remember

You see, nightlife is not just a backdrop for our stories – it is an essential part of them. This is where we come alive, this is where we find our voice and this is where we create space for ourselves in a world that often wants to push us to the margins. This is where we find our strength and our joy, our resilience and our community.

As the night wears on and the sun rises, there is a bittersweet feeling in the air. The magic of the night fades, but the memories remain. And those memories, those moments of pure, unfiltered joy, are what keep us going. They are what give us strength for the struggles ahead and remind us why we keep going.

So the next time you step onto a dance floor, remember the story that got you there. Remember the struggles and the triumphs, the pain and the joy. And most of all, remember that you are part of something bigger. – a community, a movement, a family. Dance like nobody’s watching, love like you’ve never been hurt, and celebrate every moment like it’s your last.

Because in these moments you not only dance – You are reclaiming your space, your identity and your freedom. You are writing your story, one beat at a time. And that, my friends, is the true magic of queer nightlife.

Second season of Damian Kerlin’s podcast Memories from the dance floor is out now and available wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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