The name of the club is Opium. We got in free because our tour manager has some important friends, and so walked - or staggered - straight past the endless queue of party goers without paying a cent. The building is enormous and a dance floor stretches out as far as the eye can see, a heaving mess of people gyrating to bass that pumps out of enormous speakers and sends vibrations into the palms of your hands and the soles of your shoes. There are dancers dressed in spangling silver leotards, shaking their hips on stages around the DJ booth, and occasionally through the crowd cut some circus-looking creatures: people in masks and sequins, on stilts and with painted smiles. Confetti rains from the ceiling when the bass drops, and smoke machines sporadically shroud the club goers' torsos in silvery mist. Around the dance floor are small areas roped off for more private conversations to take place on lounges in leather and suede. The bar is exorbitantly priced, although Spain's free pour rule means that drinks are often 70 or 80 percent alcohol. This is known as the best club in Barcelona.
Outside, the patrons expand onto tables and benches and then onto the beach itself, shmoozing beside the gentle hiss of the waves. The club is full of tourists like us but also local Spanish men, with their white shirts undone to three buttons, and women, wearing tight and colorful dresses. As you make your way through the crowd, a thousand black eyes blink at you with their promises of seduction, twinkling brighter than the stars outside and luring you into the traps of Opium at three, four and five o'clock in the morning, on the blessed and saturated streets of Barcelona.
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