Stop Dancing

Our fragilities would collide with the Bar’s re-opening on August 2nd. I was sure.

During the lay-off she hadn't worked at PokerDado though the management missed no opportunity to let her know the job was open. Our Place, next in line for her dancing skills, she eshewed, perhaps because of my reaction to her working there.

Certainly her spluttering monogamy was dangerous to get used to but did she miss the poisonous adulation or was she happier ‘in love’? Nothing sure, only the drip drip;

‘Falang phut maak ma, speak no good’

The absence of punter-pressure and the redundance of her rictus availability was subtly allowing the young Thai woman or whoever she really was to emerge. I enjoyed this even if it often didn’t mesh with my wants.

We still hadn’t talked before time chimed though. The first night started gay enough. The Bar was looking smashing after the enforced closure and opportunistic refit. The swirly brush marks of black paint on the ceiling lustred with new night and the tired pounded stage was now covered with obviously fake wood. Even the 'stairway to heaven' no longer shook to a lusty tread.

The reprobate habitual clientele drifted in sheepishly or with bravado. Magnified, crowded greetings split the air making it foolish to cross the bar. Already in mufti, cool and understated throughout , I wondered just how she had fended off all the men who wanted her.

Subterranean things were happening though as I whispered her dully goodbye not long after, faintly repulsed by the image of her earning her living the next evening.

But she didn’t work then nor the following night. On Thursday, when I saw her again, she was pensive, distracted, pole shuffling without eye contact. We drifted to the short time room.

‘I want stop dancing?

‘Yeh, I know,  you tell me already’

‘No, I want stop dancing now, today, I leave Ram Si, find room have air, soi 22, room no have air you no like’

My mouth was dry and she was observing my confusion slightly contemptuously.

‘You speak mamasan already’?

‘No I speak you now’

I felt our meagre cache of language running out with the futures still tantalizing.

‘Ok’ I said, after a long time, knowing of no way to directly frustrate her first tentative step outside the scene.

‘But I want you stay Ram Si Ok’?  One stockade of the familiar.

The rest of the package came thorny wrapped. I wasn’t to go to the Bar alone and we would not meet everyday. Her money needs would be modest and without alternative work she would be dancing again after three months. I very nearly balked at buying her out. 10000 to the gilded brothel but it so obviously mattered.

Back at the Bar between a wake and a wedding.

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