Confessions on A Dance Floor
And when "Jenn Rice" became a noun.
How did I get here? Good question.
It’s 3:38 p.m. on January 6, 2023 (guess a couple of years have slipped by on this one). I’ve got a glass of iced unsweet tea in front of me (I know... am I even Southern anymore?), blasting Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, attempting to travel back in time to 2005, where it truly all began—the birth of Jenn Rice, that is.
The night of October 22, 2005, was the quintessential fall evening in the Big Apple. Madonna-obsessed 23-year-old Jenn had caught wind of a secret Madge performance at the Roxy—a flashy nightclub in NYC’s Chelsea—in celebration of her then-new Confessions on a Dance Floor album drop. I convinced my gay friend Christian, also a colleague at Bloomingdale’s on 59th, to sidekick it with me. Spoiler alert: it didn’t take much convincing, as the Roxy’s gay Saturday dance parties were perfectly raunchy.
My fresh city blood wanted in. It smelled like sex, sweat, and debauchery inside as we pushed our way through the crowds, where exposed, oily six-packs and hard cock outlines were the dress code. I had on bright blue eyeshadow—not yet working in Beauty PR, but feeling extremely confident in this choice. Intoxicated on watered-down $25 double Red Bull vodkas, my patience wore thin. It was well past 1 a.m. The steamy, half-naked crowds had begun to thin out, and just as I was about to call it a night, I heard the opening beats of Hung Up—and then, Madonna appeared in a sparkly blue, sleeveless wrap dress. The bass was so loud my entire body vibrated. This.
"Time goes by so slowly for those who wait
No time to hesitate
Those who run seem to have all the fun
I'm caught up
I don't know what to do"
I didn’t even know how to pay a phone bill at this point, and here I was, in the greatest city in the world, on the greatest night of my life. No one knows who I am here, I wanted to scream. I am freeeeeeee. It was at that moment I knew I was exactly where I needed to be—and nothing could stop me now.
"New York is not for little pussies who scream
If you can't stand the heat
Then get off my street"
Several months later, this is where “Jenn Rice” became a noun—well, mostly because my boss asked if I spelled my name with one “n” or two, and I said, “Two. Jenn.” From there, it wasn’t just Jenn—it was Jenn Rice. And let’s be honest, my early-twenty-something self was never going to correct my boss. I wanted that job so badly.
I’d forgotten I started writing this until recently when a guy I was dating asked me what I was like in my twenties. It was like looking into a mirror—we were the same person… in the past. Wild animals on the loose, seeking pleasure and freedom in the vibrant playgrounds of New York City and London. I showed him a few pictures.
“If I had met you twenty years ago, we would have had eleven children,” he said, smiling from ear to ear.
“Probably so,” I replied, also smiling.
We both laughed, thanked our lucky stars that wasn’t our reality—and then proceeded to spend the next ten days hopping from one luxury oceanfront hotel to another, pretending it was our honeymoon like two lovebirds who couldn’t take their hands off each other. We made up a very believable story of how we met a few years ago when I got lost on Sant'Antioco island in Sardinia, on his farmland, and he pulled over to help me find where I was going….and the rest was history.
“How many times have you been in love,” he asked me one evening when we were cuddled up at sunset on the beach. “Zero,” I reply. “Love should be simple and easy, like this,” he says.
My actual honeymoon took place in Thailand and Malaysia many years ago and there was zero connection, zero love, and zero sex. I had a flashback of sitting in the beautiful oversized bathtub in our suite at the Hansar in Bangkok, crying hysterically, because I was so lonely inside.
Time is a crazy concept, isn’t it?
Love it ❤️
Love this!