Lyricist Lin Xi, in an interview, speaks of the levels to writing a love song. Level one is when you are at least writing Chinese; level two is when you want people to weep and they do; level three: Not only do your words bring tears they also bring back memories; level four: When the weepers have done weeping they are philosophical, able to see the unhappy past in a happier light; then there is what Mr Lin terms the Huang Yaoshi level, when a love song is also about the world, politics – going beyond “one couple, two systems” to “one country, two systems” and back, as it were.
Coming to the Huang Yaoshi ref in the interview – thanks Ms O for posting parts of it – I felt a flicker of satisfaction. Hey, I thought, Mr Lin reads Louis Cha too. The master lyricist is reading the same master novelist as me. Then I thought, hey, everyone in Hong Kong, in China, reads Mr Cha or learns him by osmosis: Mr Lin is making the ref to Huang Yaoshi (an exceptionally multitalented man in Legend of the Eagle-Shooting Heroes, a genius) without a second thought and everyone there gets the ref without a second thought. So in mere seconds I went from feeling I wasn’t quite alone to feeling I was quite alone. I am a shorthand typist using signs that few of my friends here know. Worse, I thought, we don’t have our own similarly resonant shorthand. We don’t have our own Louis Cha stories, our own rich (if a bit middlebrow) mythology. We are poorer for it.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
TURKISH DELIGHT | Pamukkale
In the village at the bottom of the snow-white cliff-side calcium terraces of Pamukkale we were in a shoebox of a bus office when a man said, “台北人?” He didn’t guess Tokyo or Seoul, hmm. Since his sleeve said 武士攻略, I guessed, “You got your T-shirt from Taiwan?” “Korea,” he shrugged and said, “all the Asians know what it says.”
Over apple tea in tulip glasses we waited at his father’s for the 6pm bus which wouldn’t be here before 6.20pm; he waited. He had a baby, six months old, he said. “We marry too young, make babies too much and they run everywhere.” He wanted another baby as soon as next year, he said, but his father, the village bus agent, wanted him to wait.
Had he been in Korea on business, the reporter in me reared its head to ask. “My wife, Korean.” Then he was on and off the phone, declared, “Korean dinner ready,” and was out of the office. He had been waiting for dinner – prepared by, perhaps, an ex-tourist.
So some men do want you – just as others want your money.
When I came home from Turkey M wrote from Tokyo, “So you survived the world-famous romantic attack?” The first wave of Japanese tourists, sold on Turkey’s campaign, swept the country in the mid-90s, she said, where some fell for men they would marry and others fell for “I love you” tricksters. (Who sound as infamous to the Japanese as China-born CPF-killers are to Singaporeans.)
In Istanbul a man told me of his factory and showed me a photo album of him in it. Another man told me of his life in the States and showed me his chequebook printed with his name and stateside address.
So some men do want you…or want you to think they want you…oh, I don’t know what they want.
Over apple tea in tulip glasses we waited at his father’s for the 6pm bus which wouldn’t be here before 6.20pm; he waited. He had a baby, six months old, he said. “We marry too young, make babies too much and they run everywhere.” He wanted another baby as soon as next year, he said, but his father, the village bus agent, wanted him to wait.
Had he been in Korea on business, the reporter in me reared its head to ask. “My wife, Korean.” Then he was on and off the phone, declared, “Korean dinner ready,” and was out of the office. He had been waiting for dinner – prepared by, perhaps, an ex-tourist.
So some men do want you – just as others want your money.
When I came home from Turkey M wrote from Tokyo, “So you survived the world-famous romantic attack?” The first wave of Japanese tourists, sold on Turkey’s campaign, swept the country in the mid-90s, she said, where some fell for men they would marry and others fell for “I love you” tricksters. (Who sound as infamous to the Japanese as China-born CPF-killers are to Singaporeans.)
In Istanbul a man told me of his factory and showed me a photo album of him in it. Another man told me of his life in the States and showed me his chequebook printed with his name and stateside address.
So some men do want you…or want you to think they want you…oh, I don’t know what they want.
Friday, April 13, 2007
TURKISH DELIGHT | Ayasofya
For a few hours, as my thoughts galloped like horses, I imagined my surrender. I’ll call him and we’ll… We? Yes, we. We’ll have Turkish wine, he said we would, and we’ll… But you are already drunk on him. Should you be having any actual alcohol? He said… Think. Think market. Think supply and demand. You had to buzz an old man to have him unlock the ladies, a lone room, in the Grand Bazaar. So there are not many girls in the market in the first place. So your being in demand was mere mathematics. Eh are you listening? Stop looking in the mirror and smiling like a moron leh. …and didn’t you see and hear how he said to me…
I called him. I said 7pm. He said 9pm; he had work to do. I said Ayasofya. He said he would park there and wait to pick me up. “I k–iss you,” he said in such an Italian way, broken English was whole and Humpty Dumpty unbroken happily ever after.
Once off the phone, however, I was in a panic. You don’t want him to come to the hostel. But do you want to cross the car park in the dark to go to the Ayasofya, close as the church is to the hostel? Do you want to be slain by someone else while waiting for him to come in his car – to take you who-knows-where for who-knows-what? Think of the headlines. Think of the parents.
I had to call the thing off. I said, “Nine is a little late.” He said, “I will n–ot kill you.” I said tomorrow. He said 8pm. But I didn’t call him again.
Daydreams are safer.
I called him. I said 7pm. He said 9pm; he had work to do. I said Ayasofya. He said he would park there and wait to pick me up. “I k–iss you,” he said in such an Italian way, broken English was whole and Humpty Dumpty unbroken happily ever after.
Once off the phone, however, I was in a panic. You don’t want him to come to the hostel. But do you want to cross the car park in the dark to go to the Ayasofya, close as the church is to the hostel? Do you want to be slain by someone else while waiting for him to come in his car – to take you who-knows-where for who-knows-what? Think of the headlines. Think of the parents.
I had to call the thing off. I said, “Nine is a little late.” He said, “I will n–ot kill you.” I said tomorrow. He said 8pm. But I didn’t call him again.
Daydreams are safer.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
TURKISH DELIGHT | Grand Bazaar
Going into the Grand Bazaar, the “mother of all tourist traps…anything but pleasant”, in Frommer’s book, I was wary. Coming out of it I was so high, I wasn’t walking – I was floating. It wasn’t the shopping, no (I did lose myself, for half an hour, in the cute clutter of the children’s shop, Deli Kizin Yeri Junior). It was the men. One man. Half Turkish, half Italian, completely sexy.
What was it about him? He said he would sell me a “dream jacket” but after I stepped into his shop he squired me, with my hand on his arm, to another of his shops, sat me down for a cup of tea and started selling himself. He was a cook at “Sir Raffles Hotel” in Singapore. He lived in Hong Kong years ago. Oh, and he was, is and will be trim. For ever and ever. “Ganetics,” he said. “Genetics…? Yes, your Italian gene, yes,” I said. (Was I sounding breathy? Why was I sounding breathy?)
He wasn’t the only one to give me tea and his number. But he alone didn’t make me uncomfortable: He didn’t feel my hand up as he was shaking it (one man did and I had to scram when he tried to take me in his arms too); he didn’t ask what my room number was (another man did and I had to say I didn’t remember); he didn’t use “Turkish hospitality” as a pretext for inviting me into his shop.
What was it about him? Our fifteen minutes were so snug, it might last me a lifetime of never again being chatted up.
What was it about him? He said he would sell me a “dream jacket” but after I stepped into his shop he squired me, with my hand on his arm, to another of his shops, sat me down for a cup of tea and started selling himself. He was a cook at “Sir Raffles Hotel” in Singapore. He lived in Hong Kong years ago. Oh, and he was, is and will be trim. For ever and ever. “Ganetics,” he said. “Genetics…? Yes, your Italian gene, yes,” I said. (Was I sounding breathy? Why was I sounding breathy?)
He wasn’t the only one to give me tea and his number. But he alone didn’t make me uncomfortable: He didn’t feel my hand up as he was shaking it (one man did and I had to scram when he tried to take me in his arms too); he didn’t ask what my room number was (another man did and I had to say I didn’t remember); he didn’t use “Turkish hospitality” as a pretext for inviting me into his shop.
What was it about him? Our fifteen minutes were so snug, it might last me a lifetime of never again being chatted up.
TURKISH DELIGHT | Blue Mosque
Turkish kids are a delight. Gaggles of them go on school tours of Topkapi Palace, see us, smile bigger and twitter, “Konichiwa! Konichiwa! Toshiba!” East Asian is spoken here, okay. (When I tell a girl I am not Japanese she takes a wide-eyed guess, “Turkish?” It must be my golden coat.)
All around Sultanahmet, the historic thus touristy district, Turkish men speak much more Asian. They usually try Japanese, then Korean, then Mandarin, all the better to tout restaurants.
Then there is the Turkish carpet salesman. We were minding our own business heading for the Blue Mosque one morning when a man – short, with long eyelashes – came over, made out our accent, “Chinese Singapore?” and advised us to hurry up to avoid the noon-prayer throng. He then showed us round the mosque, the bazaar beside it and his shop. He would sound upfront about this and that (he has a shop in Taipei 101; he hopes to master Mandarin; he has a Chinese ex-girlfriend; we haven’t been to Boracay in the Philippines? “They have the best beaches!”), then roll out his rugs. He would show us snapshots of a cousin in Tokyo, then roll out more rugs. By the time we walked out of the shop D had a new kilim and all I knew was: I didn’t know anything about the man behind those long lashes.
All around Sultanahmet, the historic thus touristy district, Turkish men speak much more Asian. They usually try Japanese, then Korean, then Mandarin, all the better to tout restaurants.
Then there is the Turkish carpet salesman. We were minding our own business heading for the Blue Mosque one morning when a man – short, with long eyelashes – came over, made out our accent, “Chinese Singapore?” and advised us to hurry up to avoid the noon-prayer throng. He then showed us round the mosque, the bazaar beside it and his shop. He would sound upfront about this and that (he has a shop in Taipei 101; he hopes to master Mandarin; he has a Chinese ex-girlfriend; we haven’t been to Boracay in the Philippines? “They have the best beaches!”), then roll out his rugs. He would show us snapshots of a cousin in Tokyo, then roll out more rugs. By the time we walked out of the shop D had a new kilim and all I knew was: I didn’t know anything about the man behind those long lashes.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
The promise
In the honeymoon of our friendship, when we first fell in like, A and I went to Taipei. Every day was a joy. We were in the city of authentic Taiwanese sausages, the National Palace Museum, Jerry Yen and Jay Chou, who was with us not only in spirit but also on surround sound: All the shops in Ximending, the two-bit Taiwanese Harajuku, would play his songs and we would feel luckier than Toto top-prize winners. We were happy when it rained or didn’t rain, shone or didn’t shine, or even when a taxi took us past an Italian Tomato restaurant. Italian Tomato! Maybe Meteor Garden was shot there! The thought alone was bliss.
I was so in like with A, I never once thought to tease her about her Teochew-twanged Cantonese when we went to Hong Kong from Taipei. She was so in like with me, she told all her other friends about me. She didn’t - and doesn’t - like spending sprees but she went with me when I wanted retail therapy. On one occasion, she asked, “Would you ever marry me if I was a man?” and answered, “You wouldn’t.” “You would be too nice to me,” I said. I do like my men lean and mean.
Now A has married my hanyu pinyin namesake, a not-lean, not-mean man who is nice to her and her grandma. She has always been more sensible than me.
In the weeks leading up to her wedding in the InterContinental, she didn’t turn into Bridezilla but I became Bridesmaidzilla. I hardly had dinner; I bought my first SK-II facial mask, first concealer and first anti-frizz hair balm; I weighed myself so much, the scales capitulated and said I had shed 2kg of my Chinese New Year blubber.
Feicius, the Confucius of our house, counselled, “What is your job as a bridesmaid? Your job is to make her look good. Your job is to make her look thin. Eat.”
“But I bought a BCBG dress,” I said, offering my official line. Unofficially… Maybe my mother knew… Maybe she smelled something… “Do you want diamonds with your dress?” “No, no, no, not my wedding.” Did I protest too much? Didn’t I?
I did do my job as a friend. Minutes before the big moment, as A was waiting to make a bridal entrance, she seemed to lose her nerve. “I know it is a little late but am I doing the right thing?” Not quite knowing how to answer, I asked, “Is he good to you?” It was the right question. “Yes. He’s very good to me. I’ll be very good to him.” She made the vow with such a solemnity, I blinked back tears; then we stood in the suite, held hands and went back to waiting for the wedding marshal’s signal.
I was so in like with A, I never once thought to tease her about her Teochew-twanged Cantonese when we went to Hong Kong from Taipei. She was so in like with me, she told all her other friends about me. She didn’t - and doesn’t - like spending sprees but she went with me when I wanted retail therapy. On one occasion, she asked, “Would you ever marry me if I was a man?” and answered, “You wouldn’t.” “You would be too nice to me,” I said. I do like my men lean and mean.
Now A has married my hanyu pinyin namesake, a not-lean, not-mean man who is nice to her and her grandma. She has always been more sensible than me.
In the weeks leading up to her wedding in the InterContinental, she didn’t turn into Bridezilla but I became Bridesmaidzilla. I hardly had dinner; I bought my first SK-II facial mask, first concealer and first anti-frizz hair balm; I weighed myself so much, the scales capitulated and said I had shed 2kg of my Chinese New Year blubber.
Feicius, the Confucius of our house, counselled, “What is your job as a bridesmaid? Your job is to make her look good. Your job is to make her look thin. Eat.”
“But I bought a BCBG dress,” I said, offering my official line. Unofficially… Maybe my mother knew… Maybe she smelled something… “Do you want diamonds with your dress?” “No, no, no, not my wedding.” Did I protest too much? Didn’t I?
I did do my job as a friend. Minutes before the big moment, as A was waiting to make a bridal entrance, she seemed to lose her nerve. “I know it is a little late but am I doing the right thing?” Not quite knowing how to answer, I asked, “Is he good to you?” It was the right question. “Yes. He’s very good to me. I’ll be very good to him.” She made the vow with such a solemnity, I blinked back tears; then we stood in the suite, held hands and went back to waiting for the wedding marshal’s signal.
Friday, March 09, 2007
No LoVe lost
We have fallen behind. Fashion, as anyone who has visited Hong Kong knows, is a race to wear this season’s die-die-must-have or the best copy from Causeway Bay, maybe – why else should models strut along run-ways? – and somehow or other, when we were ransacking our bedroom closets for the worst clothes to wear to the market, the competition has come to little Bukit Batok.
So it is that Fei and I are at the market one morning, watching the world go by with her LV. “Wah, atas, siah. See the girl with the –” says Issey Feiyake, naming a limited-edition zillion-dollar canvas bag I have never ever heard of. Monogram-less and on a girl in shorts and sandals, it looks like any other canvas carryall. But what do I know? The guru has spoken. I’m just a shoe slut – the CK in my life is not Calvin Klein but Charles & Keith.
Then I catch sight of the chic monogram: a woman dressed up and made up to the nines, in pink high heels, with two bagfuls of food and in a pink shirt-and-skirt set so sheer, the world can read most of the multicoloured LVs on her undies. She is quite a sight on many, many levels. “Made in China,” says Fei. “The undies or the woman?” “Both.”
Like little children again, we point her out to Pa and Ma, but they act all blasé. We are told of a newcomer to the neighbourhood who goes for morning walks in her qipao. “Fresh off the boat, trying not to lose face,” says Ma, who travelled here on the same boat some 50 years ago. (She is not the same, she maintains. Her parents had made her here before her mother took the boat to, and gave birth in, China.)
We have fallen behind, not that we want to be ahead – it is our birthright to look as laidback as we want in the heartland – but where has Bak gone? For one thing, he has gone bottle-blond (Fei says it makes him look like a Johor video pirate). For another thing, he has gone temping for LV, manhandling in its store and warehouses all the bags we will not buy. Bak, LV runner, our pride and joy.
So it is that Fei and I are at the market one morning, watching the world go by with her LV. “Wah, atas, siah. See the girl with the –” says Issey Feiyake, naming a limited-edition zillion-dollar canvas bag I have never ever heard of. Monogram-less and on a girl in shorts and sandals, it looks like any other canvas carryall. But what do I know? The guru has spoken. I’m just a shoe slut – the CK in my life is not Calvin Klein but Charles & Keith.
Then I catch sight of the chic monogram: a woman dressed up and made up to the nines, in pink high heels, with two bagfuls of food and in a pink shirt-and-skirt set so sheer, the world can read most of the multicoloured LVs on her undies. She is quite a sight on many, many levels. “Made in China,” says Fei. “The undies or the woman?” “Both.”
Like little children again, we point her out to Pa and Ma, but they act all blasé. We are told of a newcomer to the neighbourhood who goes for morning walks in her qipao. “Fresh off the boat, trying not to lose face,” says Ma, who travelled here on the same boat some 50 years ago. (She is not the same, she maintains. Her parents had made her here before her mother took the boat to, and gave birth in, China.)
We have fallen behind, not that we want to be ahead – it is our birthright to look as laidback as we want in the heartland – but where has Bak gone? For one thing, he has gone bottle-blond (Fei says it makes him look like a Johor video pirate). For another thing, he has gone temping for LV, manhandling in its store and warehouses all the bags we will not buy. Bak, LV runner, our pride and joy.
Monday, February 26, 2007
THE FUNCTIONS OF FICTION | Chapter Nine
Last year I talked and talked of going to Paris, then I read Orhan Pamuk’s essay The Pamuk Apartments and talked and talked of going to Istanbul. Now that I’m booked to go to his home city I’ve been reading his novel My Name Is Red, for emotional preparation. I was looking to fall more in love with Turkey through his fiction – maybe to be dazzled by his brilliance and fall in love with a book – when I found an answer I hadn’t been looking for.
Once upon a time in my Iran phase one of the first films I watched was Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees. The movie starts simply, with a man standing in front of a tree. Then he says, “I’m Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, the actor who plays the director,” and the film seems less simple. To cut a long story short the movie is about the making of a fictional film about life after a non-fictional quake – about a couple who bury their families, then marry each other as they have no one else – and who should be cast as the couple but a schoolgirl, an orphan of the quake, and her suitor, an out-of-work bricklayer whom she won’t talk to. And the ending is a mystery: The schoolgirl still doesn’t talk to her suitor, who still doesn’t give up. He follows her down a hill, through olive trees and into an open field – but the camera doesn’t follow – and all the eye sees of him and her are smaller and smaller dots.
I’ve hoped it is a happy ending. Now I know: I’m sure I saw swaying leaves.
Let me describe for you how our embrace might’ve been depicted by the master miniaturists of Herat, if this tragic story of mine were one day recorded in a book. There are certain amazing illustrations that my father has shown me wherein the thrill of the script’s flow matches the swaying of the leaves, the wall ornamentation is echoed in the design of the border gilding and the joy of the swallow’s matchless wings piercing the picture’s border suggests the elation of the lovers. Exchanging glances from afar and tormenting each other with suggestive phrases, the lovers would be depicted so small, so far in the distance, that for a moment it’d seem like the story wasn’t about them at all, but had to do with the starry night, the dark trees, the exquisite palace where they met, its courtyard and its wonderful garden whose every leaf was lovingly and particularly rendered. If, however, one paid very close attention to the secret symmetry of the colours, which the miniaturist could only convey with total resignation to his art, and to the mysterious light infusing the entire painting, the careful observer would immediately see that the secret behind these illustrations is that they’re created by love itself. It’s as if a light were emanating from the lovers, from the very depths of illustration. And when Black and I embraced, well-being flooded the world in the very same manner.
Thank God I’ve seen enough of life to know that such well-being never lasts for long.
Once upon a time in my Iran phase one of the first films I watched was Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees. The movie starts simply, with a man standing in front of a tree. Then he says, “I’m Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, the actor who plays the director,” and the film seems less simple. To cut a long story short the movie is about the making of a fictional film about life after a non-fictional quake – about a couple who bury their families, then marry each other as they have no one else – and who should be cast as the couple but a schoolgirl, an orphan of the quake, and her suitor, an out-of-work bricklayer whom she won’t talk to. And the ending is a mystery: The schoolgirl still doesn’t talk to her suitor, who still doesn’t give up. He follows her down a hill, through olive trees and into an open field – but the camera doesn’t follow – and all the eye sees of him and her are smaller and smaller dots.
I’ve hoped it is a happy ending. Now I know: I’m sure I saw swaying leaves.
Friday, January 26, 2007
TRAVEL | Eat drink Brangelina
I confess. When the Jolie-Pitts toured Saigon on Thanksgiving last year the story that was published in the paper was much less informative than it might have been – and I had everything to do with that. No sooner had I seen the photos of the Jolie-Pitts’ night in Saigon than I made out the neon blur in the background: Temple Club! They had dined at the atmospheric temple-turned-restaurant that was on my to-go list for Saigon! I didn’t want the whole world following in their starry footsteps and jamming the restaurant, not during my vacation in Vietnam. I had to not do my job. Usually I am a conscientious celebrity gossipmonger, squeezing more breathless specifics into a story than anyone needs or wants to know; that day I didn’t breathe a word about Temple Club as I assembled the Jolie-Pitts article.
But I came home and told Bak, who told Fei, who told our cousin, Young Master Y, and so it was that by the time the clan did lunch at Temple Club, on New Year’s Eve, Y had told his Jolie joke umpteen times, saying in a sad stalker’s voice, “Can sit on Angelina Jolie’s chair?”
Boys don’t talk, you know. Not the boys. They repeat half-funny refrains, bark when they are annoyed and grunt when they are amused. When I am with the boys, reciting lines from Stephen Chow films is communication. For example, if somebody says, “英文?” it’s a cue for somebody else to say, “英文, 我來! A呀, B呀, C呀, OK!” (It’s OK, you either know the movie or you don’t.)
But back to Temple Club, the old-world romantic restaurant with the high ceiling, exposed-brick walls and tapestries, as charming as nothing we would ever see in Singapore. Except time seemed to stand still too in the kitchen. The food was so slow, Bak, then Pa, were sound asleep by the end of lunch. We cancelled the final course, woke them and came away.
But Bak had to know – “Where did Brad Pitt sit?”
The waitress answered, “At the window.”
For his fearless question, however, the boy got growled at for being shamelessly star-struck. “I didn’t say Angelina Jolie, whaaat, I said Brad Pitt.” More growling.
So I had to speak up for my kind, “Whaaat? Good reporter, whaaat.”
But I came home and told Bak, who told Fei, who told our cousin, Young Master Y, and so it was that by the time the clan did lunch at Temple Club, on New Year’s Eve, Y had told his Jolie joke umpteen times, saying in a sad stalker’s voice, “Can sit on Angelina Jolie’s chair?”
Boys don’t talk, you know. Not the boys. They repeat half-funny refrains, bark when they are annoyed and grunt when they are amused. When I am with the boys, reciting lines from Stephen Chow films is communication. For example, if somebody says, “英文?” it’s a cue for somebody else to say, “英文, 我來! A呀, B呀, C呀, OK!” (It’s OK, you either know the movie or you don’t.)
But back to Temple Club, the old-world romantic restaurant with the high ceiling, exposed-brick walls and tapestries, as charming as nothing we would ever see in Singapore. Except time seemed to stand still too in the kitchen. The food was so slow, Bak, then Pa, were sound asleep by the end of lunch. We cancelled the final course, woke them and came away.
But Bak had to know – “Where did Brad Pitt sit?”
The waitress answered, “At the window.”
For his fearless question, however, the boy got growled at for being shamelessly star-struck. “I didn’t say Angelina Jolie, whaaat, I said Brad Pitt.” More growling.
So I had to speak up for my kind, “Whaaat? Good reporter, whaaat.”
Monday, January 22, 2007
TRAVEL | Eat drink man woman
The NS boy wanted to meet girls on New Year’s Eve. Bak really, really did, never mind that he was with the whole clan in Saigon and that if he was to go clubbing, it would be with at least three chaperones: his cousin, Young Master Y, his brother, Fei, and his sister, me. The four parents were having their party of wild shopping in Chinatown – an area called Cho Lon by the Vietnamese and Tai Ngon by the Cantonese, to which two grandaunts were among the many to migrate years ago and which is famous in my family for its Cantonese food, quite untouched by time, capitalist time-is-money tenets and the evils of the food court – and so we hit Catwalk club, chosen out of the hotel’s Time Out guide by the clerk after Bak asked with all his NS urgency, “What’s a good club to go to? Good one, good one.”
Oh, it was first-rate. An ad at the door mentioned hip-hop music. “Looks okay,” said Fei, the sensible one. We paid, popped in and there they were, 10,000 prom queens. Okay, maybe 231. Necklines were going down, down, down; hemlines were going up, up, up; feet arched on high, high heels; but to a woman, they were classier than Britney Spears. They looked expensive, not cheap. No one was dancing. Everyone looked like they were waiting. Not for us – it was nine, we were too early and we were embarrassed – but maybe for johns who had booked the booths all around us. (One card read “Mr John”, really.)
“Good one, good one,” Fei and Y said. “Sexy time!” Bak whooped with his best Borat accent. But we kept to ourselves and our drinks. They are good boys, good boys. Okay, they didn’t look away when short skirts and long legs would zip past the cabs we were in on motorcycles – the skirts are more mini in Saigon than Hanoi, which, up in the hard-line north, has a different climate, meteorologically and socially – then again, they didn’t do more than look and share such info as, “Three o’clock, 2564, skirt damn short.”
So off we went to a posh part of town, in search of a better party. Except so many motorcyclists and their pillion clans were riding there, no cabbie would drive there. We had to go on a Long March through the mad traffic. I, in my inappropriate high heels, was tired out from trying not to be killed. When we arrived in the posh part, the parties were so truly posh, alas, we voted, three to one, for nibbles at a cheap café.
Bak’s bubble did burst then. “Never mind,” said Fei. “We love you long time,” chirped Fei and Y in one Vietnamese singsong voice. “20 years is a long time okay,” said Fei.
It is. Time flies though, when you are having fun.
Oh, it was first-rate. An ad at the door mentioned hip-hop music. “Looks okay,” said Fei, the sensible one. We paid, popped in and there they were, 10,000 prom queens. Okay, maybe 231. Necklines were going down, down, down; hemlines were going up, up, up; feet arched on high, high heels; but to a woman, they were classier than Britney Spears. They looked expensive, not cheap. No one was dancing. Everyone looked like they were waiting. Not for us – it was nine, we were too early and we were embarrassed – but maybe for johns who had booked the booths all around us. (One card read “Mr John”, really.)
“Good one, good one,” Fei and Y said. “Sexy time!” Bak whooped with his best Borat accent. But we kept to ourselves and our drinks. They are good boys, good boys. Okay, they didn’t look away when short skirts and long legs would zip past the cabs we were in on motorcycles – the skirts are more mini in Saigon than Hanoi, which, up in the hard-line north, has a different climate, meteorologically and socially – then again, they didn’t do more than look and share such info as, “Three o’clock, 2564, skirt damn short.”
So off we went to a posh part of town, in search of a better party. Except so many motorcyclists and their pillion clans were riding there, no cabbie would drive there. We had to go on a Long March through the mad traffic. I, in my inappropriate high heels, was tired out from trying not to be killed. When we arrived in the posh part, the parties were so truly posh, alas, we voted, three to one, for nibbles at a cheap café.
Bak’s bubble did burst then. “Never mind,” said Fei. “We love you long time,” chirped Fei and Y in one Vietnamese singsong voice. “20 years is a long time okay,” said Fei.
It is. Time flies though, when you are having fun.
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