Challenge: Feta-ish

Location: London Bridge

Month: February 2010

Do you rock around the grave? Do you back into the wave?

There has always been one thing that I’m open to (but not so open that everything falls out) – and that is people embracing their sexuality, or at least their true selves. The room is decked with red and black couture,  ladies (and men) in dramatic black eyes and a quiver of the unknown is in the air. There is a very real energy, something resembling that of just before your first swimming gala or a crucial moment in the final of a rugby game.  Excited, aware, scared!

From the minute I arrived until the time I left, I felt more at ease than I would have at your local Whetherspoons. Even though the club is based around fetish, imagination, dance music, cabaret cafes, drum 'n bass dancefloors, swing music and sexy people – there is certainly no forceful finger pointing at you, or requiring you to fit a specific caliber. It was beautiful because it was free – you can wear, do, say and dance how you wish.  You can be the person, character, animal or thing you want to be without anyone knowing you are it. And you can rock it!

So there I was – dancing amongst the exquisite – flaring my tail, smiling at funny people, chatting with Marilyn Manson (or was that his lookalike?), drinking whisky with an Irishman in the Cabaret Café and realising that the experience I was going through, was one that will add to my personal life soup – one ingredient that will allow me to reflect on myself, with a hint of a smile and a knowing that even though it may not be my every Friday thing… that at the time, it was perfect and it fulfilled its purpose - to live in a world of imagination for a night!

Emotion: Mischief

Outcome: Brilliant clubbing night out, dashed with a sliver of burlesque.

Details of challenge: www.torturegarden.com