How to Get Into the World’s Most Exclusive Nightclub

For those with a secret techno affliction.

MENTAL PRIMING

1. Meditate and journal.

2. You will learn that some pieces of advice are more common (wear black, don’t act too eager at the door, know which DJs are playing) and some are less common (go on Saturday for the wristband and return Sunday, it’s easier to get in Saturday; Sunday to Monday is the real version of the club). Pay attention to it all. Word of mouth is always better than Reddit.

3. But you still need Reddit to keep track of the queue. Be prepared to arrive 30 minutes before doors open.

4. You will go through your clothes to find what to wear. It’s better to be yourself, or rather, the shadow, non-Instagram-friendly part of yourself that dances to deep techno and participates in group sex.

5. You will settle on black track pants, a black mesh top, a black bra, and sneakers. You’re there to dance, anyway, and so you should dress like it. You will change your underwear even though you’ll be home in two hours, max.

6. You will recite the plan via text message to your friends who are an ocean away. Get in, get the wrist band, come back and sleep, return at eleven in the morning. However, somewhere along the way, you will allow yourself the pleasure of imagining what will happen if you stay inside.

7. You will hang out with a friend late into the evening. That way you won’t fall asleep before eleven. No matter—you’ve been scrolling TikTok late into the night these days. You can prepare your mind for some better drugs. After you return later, that is.

STANDING IN LINE

1. Please do not bring a book to wait in line. Not your headphones, either. Your phone will likely be at 50% and you can’t afford to drain your battery. Of course, you’ll be home, three hours max, but just in case.

2. You will do breathing exercises in line because you’ve taken a hit of a HHC pen which isn’t exactly weed, but it functions as such. You will stand there looking very cool and calm. You likely brought your book—a thin thing, but what the fuck! You won’t be able to read it anyway. It will be too dark.

3. You will watch people who have been turned away trot back to the line of taxis. Dressed like caricatures of fetish-friendly, wearing JCrew chic, those in expressionless outfits, large groups in leather and fishnet, a couple in blue denim. Sometimes people pull out their phones to take a photo of the line. You will roll your eyes. These people will not get in.

4. You will get closer to the front after an hour. You will ask the man standing in line behind you for a piece of gum. He’ll give it to you and you’ll chew it. You will see the bouncer is a brown femme with a beautiful, hairless head, studded with a constellation of piercings in her T-zone. She will smile and shake her head at a couple, dressed stylishly in all black, and they will walk away defeated. Don’t worry babe, we can go to another club.

5. She will be looking at your shoes while you’re looking at the white men standing around her, the muscle. When you make eye contact, she will nod with a smile and stretch her left arm toward the entrance of the door.

BEING INSIDE

1. All of the energy you put off from the breathing exercises will make your hands tremble. You managed to remain calm in line, but soon you will be shaking as you count 8 euros in coins. The man waiting for the money will look at you with a bored expression on his face. You can tell yourself he probably thinks you’re on drugs, which is better than having anxiety.

2. You will see two dancefloors. The club will feel smaller than you anticipated. Don’t worry, it’s because Saturday really is for the tourists, and they’re saving the good stuff for later.

3. You will find a smaller version of the long, curved bar downstairs, upstairs. You will order a mezcal sour, sit on a stool and drink it. Since you would have had a glass of wine with your friend only two hours ago, you will be fairly tipsy by the time you make it onto the dancefloor.

4. You will dance to house techno, which is the music you exercise to. The DJ will spin vinyls. The music will be all-consuming. All the women you look at will smile at you. A shirtless brown man will smile at you. He’s standing next to a Norwegian sort of looking guy. You will have wished you brought earplugs. You will stand closer to the DJ. There will be a guy, hiding in a corner to the left of the DJ, on a laptop. You assume he’s some sort of tech guy. He looks like a twenty-year old computer nerd.

5. A twink in leather will start dancing with you. He will say he’s from Iran. His English is terrible, like actually nonsensical, and you realize you sound like that in another language. You will walk around the club with him, dance a bit on the deep techno floor. You will learn he is a straight man visiting his gay friend in Berlin, who lent him the outfit so he would get in. You go back to the house techno DJ and tell the guy you’d prefer to dance alone.

6. The brown guy and Norwegian will come up to you, asking to be friends. The brown guy takes out a big, black fan, and it makes your hair blow back. They are both also straight. They will offer you drugs.

7. The bathroom stalls will be surprisingly spacious.

8. The Norwegian guy is actually half Danish. As you step out of the stall, you will realize which country they are from.

GOING ALL IN

9. On a certain drug, which you have done before but always in smaller doses, your senses will be confused. You will hand someone your phone so they can type in their phone number, but your keyboard will look like some alien language.

10. When another person hands you their phone, the keyboard will also look like some alien language. Then you will have to stop yourself from saying people began speaking modern Hebrew only at the end of the 19th century, and it’s wild how complex this made up thing can get, even after such a short period of time, isn’t language such a funny thing!

11. You will listen to people be self-deprecatory about their nationality. Angry at their country. They want you to feel safe; it is the least they can do. You will stay quiet because there are other things you will talk about that are quite funny and meaningful, and you’d like to return to the bathroom stalls at some point. Being a solo traveller makes you kind of selfish that way.

12. You will meet a beautiful woman with long, shaggy brown hair. She will give you a hug and after a trip to the bathroom with her, you will think you might be in love with her.

13. On the dance floor, she will tell you she is straight, although she likes women sexually-speaking, she would like to marry a man. You will tell her she is queer and she will smile and shrug.

14. The half Danish guy will say the woman organizes the biggest music festivals in the place they’re from, which really is occupied land, but you will not say that. You will also not ask about That Festival and her connection to it.

15. You will dance with some other people, and smile at some other women, and your morals and ethics will be on the line somewhere in the background of all of this.

16. The shaggy haired woman will exit the club the same time as you. She will say it’s very impressive you are an author. She will say her friend is playing a set tomorrow. She will text you to ask if you’ve made it home safely.

17. You will pack your purse for tomorrow, shower, and fall asleep with breathing exercises.

GOING ALL IN PT. 2

1. On five hours of sleep, you will be in a car with a new outfit on, plus another one in your bag, back to the nightclub. You are coordinating your arrival with the shaggy haired woman (who would have said the previous night that it was impressive you came to the club alone, and for your first time. This place gets crazy, she might have added.)

2. You will see two lines, one which is much shorter, but for some reason you are anxious and unsure of which line to stand in, even though the shorter line is a good guess since you’ve already gotten into the club and simply need to be let back in.

3. You will see two different security guards, a woman with alopecia and a buff Bosnian-looking man smoking cigarettes. When you get to the front, you will see a look on the woman’s face, something like a pitiful smile, and then you will raise your wrist to show your wristband. She will be surprised, and dip her finger under your wristband to pull it closer to your face, and tell you that next time to go into the shorter line. Thank you for telling me, you whisper.

4. For some reason, you are nervous paying the re-entry fee, and there is a new man who will look at you and ask what you’ll be paying. You tell him, then he has a sticker on this thumb and you thank him and then he will shake his head and ask for your wristband, then he will place the sticker on there and turn his face away like he’s finished with you.

5. The club will look different, as if everything has shifted, as if the building is just one big Rubik’s Cube.

6. You will order an espresso martini, then drink it, then put in the earplugs you packed in your purse the night before, and dance to deep techno.

7. The woman from last night will join you. You will notice that there is double the number of people than there were when you were here six hours ago. You will go to the bathroom alone, but the woman will be generous in lending you some much-needed fuel.

8. You will dance to house techno, outside. You will not realize there would be an outside part, but there is one and it will be open because the weather is mysteriously summer-like. A blessing, you tell the shaggy haired woman. This will also be the same day as the city marathon.

9. You will take a break at the long, curved bar, where someone nearby is getting head. You will be jealous. You are there for the openness, the freedom, after all. You will wish you came here with party friends. You will wish to be less sober, because than you can do the things you really want to do. You will not have the resources. You could ask, but you are not the kind of person to ask strangers for things. You will down an entire bottle of water and order a Mate Mate.

10. You will return to the garden and dance in the DJ booth. You will see how the woman you had (have?) a crush on knows most of the people in and surrounding the DJ booth. They’re all from the same place.

11. The next DJ will make eye contact with you while waiting for his set to begin. He will watch you dance and bop his head to the same time as your hips.

CALLING IT

1. This DJ Man watching you dance with a cheeky, flirty look on his face. He will turn out to be a friend of the shaggy haired woman, which means he’s also from the same place. Then it will make sense why it seems half the people at the set know the shaggy haired woman and why they’re all speaking in Hebrew. The DJ Man will make eye contact with you every now and then, it is clear he is into you. His drops will be orgasmic, and the garden will be filled with people moving to his music. You will experience Performance Goggles. That look he keeps giving you, as if he’s asking Do you like that?

2. A woman nearby who you would have met earlier will offer you water. Eventually you will have to leave because you need to pee, but also because there are six more hours of the set and you don’t think you can keep being in this environment while sober. Perhaps not everyone there willl share the same sentiments as your initial bathroom stall group, and you won’t be able to get this out of your head. Plus, your outfit will be entirely underwhelming, which isn’t necessarily a confidence booster.

3. You will hold your pee for failure to stand in line and not be awkward. The HHC vape, along with a failure to secure any means of re-upping yourself with substances (more alcohol would be worse), will make you anxious.

4. You will change out of your current outfit into the mesh top and bra from the previous day. You will change on the couches sitting next to two men on your right, a couple on your left. You will knock a beer bottle down and it will break, and you will apologize to the man who seems only slightly annoyed.

5. You will dance to deep techno for another hour before leaving, and then you will realize you would have been there for seven hours. You will miss the real version of the club, which blossoms only as the evening gets darker, as it transforms into the next morning.

6. You will be too exhausted to wash your makeup off, and fall asleep with your ears ringing less than they did at the beginning of that whole ordeal. You will thank yourself for bringing earplugs.