Originally published by The Clifton Courier, September 23, 2020

The other day I bought a strobe light.

I have no idea what prompted me to do it. I vaguely remember the thought crossing my mind at some point. And I have a faint recollection of mentioning them in passing conversation before then. But I don’t remember making a concrete plan to purchase one.

I was sitting in front of my laptop to begin writing this week’s column, I become distracted. 

I’d recently woken up a little dazed from an afternoon nap after a touch of food poisoning that morning. I wasn’t in the right mind frame to be writing something witty about coming within millimetres of literally shitting* the bed. And, if I’m going to be honest, I didn’t really feel like being productive. 

* I obviously didn’t write “shitting” in the newspaper. Rather, I put dashes in the spaces for the second, third and fourth letters so as to not actually use a rude word, but to allude to a rude word. That’s much classier in print. But since we’re in the wild, Wild West of the internet, I thought I’d unleash a little. I mean, I COULD have just written “poring” but the phrase is “shit the bed” and I wanted to honour the saying.

I found myself Googling “strobe lights”, and eventually came across one that was $20 and had free shipping, so I just went ahead and bought the damn thing. 

This will be my second strobe light. 

I was the proud owner of one about 10 years ago, as a loose unit 18-year-old. This was a time when being a being pisswreck* was a personality trait and LMFAO was on every playlist. So you can understand why said strobe light was my most prized possession. It became a huge part of my identity. 

* This one wasn’t as rude a word as “shitting”, but I didn’t want to come off as as crass as I actually am so I dashed that one out for print too.

I’d rock up to house parties with it, along with a box of fruity lexia and punch ingredients to make a concoction in a vat of some description before proudly declaring its tagline: “You can’t even taste the goon” to whoever would listen. Then I’d find some dank shed or room under the house, plug in my strobe and test out the lighting. 

I can still hear that “tick, tick, tick” of cheap electronics blinking the light on and off. 

And far out it was good.

Strobe lights instantly turned what I told my parents was “just a gathering” into a ripsorter of a party. It didn’t matter if it was just a few friends or a backyard of strangers. It was a few 100 watts of magic. 

As someone who loves a dance floor but can’t actually really even dance – if dance is poetry written by the human body, my style is perhaps a little closer to slam poetry than your Henry Lawson variety – a strobe light really suited me. 

It facilitated that uninhibited dancing one can only achieve under the liberty of darkness but had enough flicks of light to make faces at your friends. No matter what you were doing, you felt cool and the visuals were so distorted, it was a case of anything goes. 

You weren’t dancing to look good – thank heavens, because based on the photos that emerged from back in those days, I think it’s fair to say that I spectacularly failed if that was my goal – you were dancing to feel good.

It was more than just a lighting effect, it was freedom.

Sadly, the hallowed strobe’s lifespan was a short one. Like that vivid “tick, tick, tick” sound, there is another sound I can still hear: the crunch of my finger breaking the tubing, forever extinguishing what had so brilliantly lit up all that darkness. 

I haven’t replaced it until now. 

I think it was probably due to laziness rather than any poignant realisation about the crunch sounding the end of an era in my life. My hoodrat days grew danker as the years went on, so an epiphany about maturity definitely didn’t take place.  

In any case, I have been strobe-less for nearly a decade.

And it wasn’t until today that I realised there had been a strobe-light-sized hole in my heart.

Of course, at this point in time, we’re not able to have the same kinds of house parties we threw back then. And, let’s be honest, trying to get that many people together on a Friday night would be well nigh impossible even without a pandemic.  

Also, my housemates are in no way enthused about my new addition to the household. For some reason, they’re against my turning the space under the house into a dance den. They seemed legitimately repulsed by my purchase. 

But there’s nothing stopping me from closing my blinds, blocking off the light under my bedroom door and having my own little dance party. 

Maybe I am having a quarter life crisis. Maybe I’m desperately trying to claw back my rapidly sagging youth. Maybe the $20 strobe light is the millennial version of the middle-aged man’s impulsive red sports car. 

But I don’t care. Strobes are undeniably cool. 

I can’t believe I haven’t done this sooner.