There’s a wave of articles about it. Nightlife is back. The dinner party has returned. Being seen is the new being well. There are pieces about the comeback of the long lunch, the big night, the going-out top. A columnist, somewhere, has written that staying in is “over.”
We read these with interest, in the chair, under the lamp, and turned the page.
A clarification
Nobody in this house is against going out. Going out is lovely for the people who like it, and they should do as much of it as they can, loudly, in the bars, where we are not. The issue is the framing: that staying in was a phase, a thing that happened to people for a few years and from which they’re now, thankfully, recovering.
It wasn’t a phase. For a great many of us it was a reveal. We’d been going out for years because that was what one did, and then for a while one didn’t, and we discovered that the evening at home, with a book and a blanket and the door shut, was not a consolation. It was the thing we’d wanted the whole time. The world put a name on it (“cozy”) and a shelf in the shop, and then, apparently, decided it was finished with it.
We’re not finished with it.
What the columns get wrong
They assume the night in is a lack: a night out that didn’t happen. It isn’t. It’s a different activity with its own equipment, its own etiquette, and its own skills. There’s a way to decline an invitation that keeps a friendship. There’s a way to read horror after dark. There’s a way to share a blanket with a cat, and the cat has the upper hand, and it’s fine. These are competencies. Nobody writes columns about the comeback of the people who have them, because we’re not out where the columnists are.
What we’d say to the columnist
Go out. Have the big night. Be seen. Then, around 10:40, when the music’s at the volume where you can’t hear the person next to you and you’ve begun to calculate the taxi, think of us. We’re on chapter nineteen. The lamp’s on. The soup was good. We’ll hear all about it on Tuesday, which is when we answer messages, and we’ll be glad you had a nice time.
Staying in isn’t over. It was never on. It was just quiet, which is the point, and quiet doesn’t trend.
The forecast
More articles about going out. More people going out. The bars full, the dinners long, the tops going-out. And, under all of it, a large and uncounted population at home with the door shut, reading, not responding, not trending, and entirely well.
We’ll sit this one out. We’ve got a chair for it.