You need to be dancing.

Everything was on fire.

I knew it. The boy grabbing my hips on the dance floor knew it. And the way the DJ was playing, they knew it too.

I let the world slip away into the rhythm. And when I tuned back in, we were all outside.

My friend Andy was smoking and complaining about the cocktails; the lady we met at the bar chimed in, "They used to be $4." She's maybe thirty-two at most, and yet the sentiment is so foreign to me she might as well be talking about the days when burgers cost cents.

I pass Andy a shooter from my purse, and he puts it in his vodka soda. Cheap, effective, and enough to get us back out on the dance floor.

I'm not out of touch; I read the headlines this morning: war, tyranny, disease, and hunger across the world and in the States.

I balanced my checking and savings to make sure we could make groceries and gas for the rest of the month, and to my luck, I sneak away just enough for fun to not feel guilty. Still, I see the privilege in the act.

At the station, I give the clerk $7: 5 for gas, 2 for a 99-cent shooter. I pack it away with the other two that survived the summer. This, the gas and the shooter, will sustain the joy I need to reach tonight, to erase the feeling I have in my heart. If I dance long enough, something will replace it.

Did you know dancing is proven to help lower cortisol and stress levels? It reduces anxiety and depression symptoms, alters brain function, improves memory, and it's good cardio. A natural stress reliever passed down through tradition and history.

Tonight, it is alive and well in Houston's growing club scene.

My tips for a successful night out:

To have a good night, you have to chase the DJ.

When you hear a sound you like, let the thread guide you to the right places.

To have a good night, you have to get out of your head and put your phone down.

TO HAVE A GOOD NIGHT YOU HAVE TO BE DANCING.

While older generations groan on about how music is dying, the young people aren't dancing, and that clubbing is dead. Over the past couple of years, there has been a new sound rising from the south. Southern Club brings a new heartbeat to the dance floor, blending electronic with southern sound.

Artists Hyperfemme, Big Ace, and Amarji King established the subgenre back in 2023, and they are just a few of the many young artists bringing to life new sounds, new genres, and new spaces to the nightlife scene.

The pandemic, cellphones, and social media induced fear of embarrassment, hand in hand with section culture, make going out feel unbearable.

Today's DJs are changing the narrative, not only in sound, but in how they transform dance floor culture. HyperAce, Club Shugga, and other parties dedicated to music, movement, and community are giving clubs a comeback.

The same is happening all over the states; People want to get together, people want to dance, and if the traditional clubs aren't going to step up, the underground will have to.

Every week the list of where to go grows longer, whether you see it on your for you page or not. Tonight I'm one of the many that flooded in for Identity Trade's TrackID, a monthly dance party in Montrose; There's a certain something special in the air.

Sometimes I don't want to sit at the bar and look around for an hour. I don't want to spend $60 getting into some club with a line wrapped around the building where inside everyone just stares at each other. I think the tougher the world gets, the more I realize we need to be dancing.

Signs like "no requests, trust the DJ " and "The dance floor is for shaking ass, breakdancing, grinding, voguing, housing, connection. GET OFF YOUR PHONE AND DANCE" line the walls. MISSY, Identity Trade's resident DJ, spins tonight, and as we dance, everything falls into place. I'm nothing, I'm everything.

The bass encapsulates us, and when my feet finally grow tired, I head downstairs for a bathroom run.

The hefty weight of existing right now is no match for the resistance forming in the downstairs girls' bathroom.

"AND F- TRUMP" some girl says. The bathroom erupts in cheers.

I wait in line next to a tall girl with tequila on her breath. We talk about the video that has been trending all week of Trump talking about running for a third term; eerily, the internet couldn't decide if he was really joking or not.

She leans over and says, "He's going to try and stay." She says it like she's seen the future; I don't know what to say back.

I had seen the video just like everyone else. I had seen the website of him selling Trump 2028 merch. I wanted to wave it off, another attempt at capitalization from a con man who can sell a secret, but not of a serious man; still, that's what they said when he ran the first time.

"I hope not" was the most I could muster. "Me too," she continued. From the stall, my friend Teri yells, "He won't. We won't let him. We got rights for a reason." There was laughter in her voice, but the tone of the room grew gloomy anyway. What did that mean these days, rights? Then someone gasps and says, "I love this song."

We can hear the bass from upstairs, the party happening in a different room, and suddenly I long to spin under flashing fluorescents, replace one dizzy feeling with another.

We need to be dancing. Come close to me, stranger, let our hearts beat to the same vibration. We'll meet our troubles in the daylight.

As I return to the dance floor, I shuffle my way into the crowd, and everything is alive here.

Sometimes the weeks pass, the news gets darker and the days get harder, and I forget the world isn't just work, tragedy, and keeping your head above water. I let the monotony of doomscrolling distract me from the vibrancy of life.

Here, I forget myself, allow the waves of bodies to crash against my own; I'm alive again too.

It all still exists out there. Tomorrow I’ll have to research food banks, how to start a garden, and what to do once gas gets higher. I’ll text my mother and try not to worry beyond my control, a task I can never seem to accomplish.

Tomorrow is a new day, but tonight, in the hours where yesterday and tomorrow meet, I'm dancing. This will get me through, and as the cycle goes on, so do I.

I consider the Alice Walker quote: "Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is the proof."

I let my body release the tension it had been holding all week, and badly twist and twirl without the fear that there's a camera capturing the moment; we only exist here and now.

We dance and dance and dance, and when I'm dancing, I'm free; they only win when I stop.

We need to be dancing.