Is New Zealand ready for a woman to have a night out by herself?

As a woman in midlife, taking yourself out for a coffee or lunch is acceptable. But what about a night of dancing to a DJ and drinking vodka premix from a plastic cup? Sarah Daniell finds out.

I hadn’t planned it but here I am, preparing to go out to a gig alone. I bought the ticket two months earlier. Plenty of time to scope potential dancing partners. Four interest-free installments of $20.

I start texting, are you in? Four interest-free responses. To be fair the interest is there, just not the availability, or the coin. This is the mesmerising Chicago house legend DJ Ron Trent, my friends, are you out of your minds? Still, I have time.

About a week before the event, I’m doing the hard sell to a friend in Pōneke. “Can you come up please? No? I get it. Maybe I’ll just go alone, then.” I say this like a woman who’s about to walk naked into a room full of strangers. “Yes, do it,” she says, “it’s great going out alone, you can do whatever the f*** you want.”

When do any of us go out to a gig alone? Not leave-the-house-alone-and-meet-you-there “alone”. We – and I’m talking about women here – may have made gains, but expectations cling. Out at night? Partner up or surround yourself with friends. Girls nights out, that’s the way. I seek them out and I’m grateful for it. I love and need my friends. I’m a social being.

But girl/woman, she/her alone?

The enigmatic Man Alone figure is a New Zealand icon. But he doesn't just exist in this country, he's everywhere and anything but alone. He is pored over in literature and film. The Hemingwayesque mythical loner; peak masculinity. He is silent but everyone takes a seat around his fire in the wilderness to marvel, ponder, analyse. It’s said Katherine Mansfield’s contemporaries were unnerved by her independence and many were suspicious of her because of it. There is no romanticising of “Woman Alone”. Even feminism moves in a group.

In the tradition of asking Google stupid questions, I type “can women go out alone?” and the first response is not nuanced: “They can, but it’s risky. Not very smart.” There are posts about Toronto and Copenhagen being the safest cities in the world. I’m not thinking I won’t be safe in this situation, but rather that it feels so fraught with judgment, as though “going out alone” to dance implies something is innately lacking. Upsetting a social code. No one ever says not to. “You do you!” But society is constructed on a scaffolding of judgments and in the quiet rooms inside myself I feel it.

Why do I feel it’s somehow weird to go alone to a gig? Why am I anxious? Why am I thinking, sure I can do this, but can you spot me a valium?

A quick survey among friends: “I did in Wellington. But not to a gig. The beauty of Wellington is that it's so small you’ll always know people.” One sends a Whatsapp message from a Colorado bar where you can pour your own beer: “I went out the other night on my own, met random people. I was having a great time and talking to this guy who was interesting and then he lunged in to kiss me. I wasn’t flirting, I was talking. It was really f***ing annoying.”

I get a video call from a friend attending the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. She’s at a rooftop bar and spins around, showing me the Manhattan skyline. “Hotel bars don’t count,” I say. “In Auckland,” she says, “I would go out for breakfast or lunch, but never dinner. It’s different in Wellington, though. But I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a gig on my own anywhere, even when I was younger. It feels like you’re being judged, or you’re lame and have no friends.”

In More Understanding than a Man Margo Guryan, sings about sitting by a river on her own and singing out loud. The river is “she” and the river “gets” her. I feel fine in nature alone too, though I have considered taking mace. I take road trips alone. I walk alone. Clarification: Being alone is not the same as feeling lonely.

In Miranda July’s latest novel All Fours the protagonist talks about the midpoint of life. “A body rises, reaches an apex, and then falls - but at the apex, the peak, it is perfectly still for a moment. Neither rising nor falling.”

Here I am, midpoint (give or take), half way (hopefully). But I do feel like I am rising. Rising up to meet myself. My children have left home, moved to new cities. I am free – not from responsibilities or debt – but freedom from taking care of others has revealed startling new shapes and truths to me, about myself and this new space I occupy. Like, how free am I?

I’m getting ready. Prince is playing.

“Baby, can I dress you

I mean, help you pick out your clothes before we go out? (if I was your girlfriend)

Listen girl, I ain't sayin you're helpless …”

I send a selfie to my Pōneke friend: “Is this OK?” “Shit yeah,” she replies, “IWD.” It was March 8, International Women's Day. A kind of cosmic endorsement for going out alone from the universe.

Pour another glass of wine, order an Uber. The Uber driver plays Love Me Tender by some crooner who’s not Elvis but who probably plays to people who drink at bars alone.

I’m on the dancefloor holding my vodka premix in a plastic cup. As a woman going out alone to a gig, all venues are not equal. The Hollywood in Avondale is a notable exception. The bar staff are cool and friendly, the vibe is relaxed. It’s still early. A scattering of people waiting for it to build. You can still see the floor. You won’t be able to soon.

The perfect thing about this gig is no one is screaming “so how are things?” in your ear. Everyone’s here for the artist. I’m near the stage. It’s more jammed now. A man turns and faces me, standing close, jerking and writhing. I’m focused on the music, trying to get lost in the reverie. As I turn and shift, he follows. I move closer to the stage and he’s there, again. I go outside. Can’t see anyone I know. Check my phone, text a friend who says she’ll show up later: “So how are things?”

I do see people I know and she does eventually show up. I get lost in the music and the movement and leave everything – the anxiety and distractions – on the floor and I come back to myself, lighter somehow. It stays with me for days later.

At closing time, the Hollywood is emptying out, and a young dude comes up to me and says, “I know you! You were here from the very beginning,” and he hugs me and vanishes into the night.

“I felt untethered from my age and femininity,” says the character in All Fours, “and thus swimming in great new swathes of freedom and time. One might shift again and again like this, through intimacies, and not outpace oldness exactly, but match its weirdness, its flagrant specificity, with one’s own.”

My niece sends me a photo of a frond on a plant in her backyard. “That’s you,” she says. New, emerging. I like swimming in a freedom that looks different and feels a little weird sometimes. Freedom to skip dinner. Freedom to be impulsive. To choose my company. To stay in. Freedom to go out to a gig, alone.

Sarah Daniell is a writer and editor based in Tāmaki Makaurau.