Festival notes

Slipping out of Long Gun after catching the show on a slow night, mechanically checking a novel arrangement of familiar objects: plastic-wrapped phone top left pocket, plastic purse with cash and card top right breast, no passport. One last pat.

Down the street she wasn’t sitting outside at the shabby tables the girls make their own when the ennui of listening to old foreign songs and being groped by customers gets too much. Perhaps this was a bad sign. Our appointments are always tinged with chaos and entropy. Can we ever misunderstand one another? She will suggest a time and I think her joking. Or we arrange for the next morning and she arrives twelve hours late, not answering the phone, ‘no have bat’.

Going in anyway, through the curtained doorway, hardly checking my stride, passing the powder smeared ‘hello girls’ and the off-duty policeman who doubles as bouncer and ushers, with barely a nod, to sit down on an available stage-side stool.

I confess, first entering a bar is always mildly vertiginous, stepping through a mirror. The enveloping gloom of the interior and the volume of the music shocks, and apparently cannot wear off, even though I have thrilled to it many times. The eros too, which suddenly burns, through the dancing girls nudity, though nearly instantly this corrosion is gone and everything becomes spectacular transgressive fun.

A waitress comes over quickly and though she knows me quite well, presses her mouth to my ear, ‘Heineken’? I  give the thumbs up and feel the evening flex. To glance around wondering who is here tonight and see familiar faces in the crowd. Some I know quite well, others by sight and the girls who lives are becoming strangely, inextricably, entwined within my own.

I wait for her, knowing the news of my arrival is  telegraphed. This is artisan and will bring her to my side faster than any new girl will ask for a lady- drink. The dancer nearest me, with whom I sometimes share insects and live fish, cups her hand to her mouth and mock megaphones ‘ No here’ but my heart refuses to sink and a moment later her roommate walks over and says ‘  Upstairs come now’. I offer a drink, which she bounces off to get.

Slightly to my left with his back to the pillar and me is Tik’s and her regular customer. I think he adores her but it is not reciprocated, mostly because he is not free. She looks tired tonight I think, her face a little darker than when rested and her movements almost imperceptibly slower. He has been away more than a week and I suppose their reunion important enough to deliberately avoid catching her eye.

Roommate comes back, settling, and palming her lady drink receipt, dutifully asks. ‘How you tonight?’ 'Fine' I say slightly irritably, suddenly aggressively weary of these opening moves. Right side, I am aware of her approaching, between diffidence and hauteur, stopping a little further away than bar-girl-with-customer body language conventions dictate. She is always like this. I build bridges, putting my arm around her waist firmly enough.

Roommate moves away, according the mores, but not before asking for a tip, which surprises. Not usually hustling me like this. What’s wrong? ‘Diffidence and hauteur’ looks away, with a disdain for the whole vulgar business, she herself never asking for money. I snap judge Roommate unkindly. ‘No ‘. She winces slightly . ‘Its OK’ she says, placidly and is gone. I see Tik waving, somehow free  now since I am accompanied and everything's in place.  Eros almost back in her cage. There is however something not quite right about Tik’s customer’s back  which is all I can see. He is not sitting right. I have the distinct impression of that.

She gets restless quickly, impatience signaled by a change in the frequency of the slight tremor in her right leg, part of the aftermath of  last year's motorcycle accident . ‘Let’s go? I whisper  and she moves away to get her bag while I glance wistfully at Tik.

We go out and about, eat something together, laugh and smile, enjoy the festival for an hour or two and wander back to the bar slightly intoxicated by the beer and each other.

Tik’s customer is sitting alone outside, next to the table, too many bills in his tab holder. We sit down. More drinks are ordered and Tik arrives form inside the bar. The street is hot. Falang and Bar girl are seriously harassing each other with water. The music from the next-door bar is suddenly bongo drums played badly. We are a foursome. Tik is canoodling with him and though we have hardly spoken before I foolishly feel we are friends.  She likes him too because her talk is a little declamatory, contrasting the usual ambiguous deference. I look across to Tik who I have lusted mutely for so long and her face is even darker now and the energies not right.

Suddenly Tik breaks away to go into the bar, hardly looking back says ‘I go upstairs sleep, see you later’ and without a word she follows. Tik’s customer and I sit unscripted. He says uneasily, ‘She is a nice girl but she drinks too much. I tell her many times.’ I don't know what to say, slightly doubting her really drunk and anyway if she is, why is that, I wonder.

Mercifully she comes back though looking unsettled. I really cannot manage all this, do not like it in any way and say to both of them ‘I go inside look at lady’ and to her ‘you want come?’. She shakes her head and I peel off alone past the red curtain.

After about twenty minutes she comes in and we are together again. Tik’s customer is seated five stools away, facing me, and I can see from his face he is not OK.

‘What is happening?’ I ask her ‘Why Tik no stay with customer?’ she answers in a torrent of pidgin which I don’t much understand. :… ‘ I go upstairs ask her and she tell me’…. a moment later … ‘same same problem you me’.. and then all sense is gone again. This is a wild goose chase. The evening is winding down anyway, I can feel the sagging rhythm. Out of the corner of my eye I see Tik’s customer is moving disconsolately off.

She wants to go home too. ‘See you tomorrow ten o’clock, water fighting?’ and is gone. I am just left, wondering whether she meant morning or night.

© Icarus. All rights reserved by the author.