IRA MADISON III was skeptical that LIBERATION could be found on a DANCE floor.But the QUEER JOY of raves and techno music was IMPOSSIBLE to RESIST.An ARTISTIC RENAISSANCE called from the DJ BOOTH.

After I'd had a TASTE of a WORLD where PEOPLE could dance ALL NIGHT, getting out of their heads, I WANTED MORE.

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The first time I took MDMA, I ended the night embracing my best friend on a dance floor, crying about my uncertain future. I have never been much of a public crier-unless the altitude of a plane and two vodka ginger ales conspire against me to make me cry at almost anything I watch. Usually, my emotions are tightly sealed in my body's factory packaging. But that night, at Chris Cruse's Spotlight party in Los Angeles, I was in unfamiliar territory: my first time taking ecstasy and my first time on a dance floor pounding with techno music.

The dance floor of a club feels like home to me, as if I were Dorothy Gale (the Wiz iteration), but this wasn't always the case. To be at home on a dance floor, first you must be acutely in tune with your own body. This is not a skill I have always possessed. I had a growth spurt when I was young, around the same time I gained enough weight to be a chubby middle schooler. This was just before I was sent to a predominantly white, all-boys Jesuit high school in Milwaukee. Surrounded by white bodies smaller than my own, I learned quickly how to maneuver myself through the halls, between classroom desks, and on school buses to take up as little space as possible. To avoid being noticed. I retreated into books, wrote Buffy fanfic online, and developed my skills as a writer, but one thing I didn't do was dance at school functions. Not ever in public. Over time, I developed social skills by connecting with people through the pop culture I consumed. I wasn't adept at sharing personal things about myself, but I could talk about syndicated episodes of Martin and Seinfeld or every song on MTV's TRL countdown.