Sarong Party Girls

by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

  “I guess I’m supposed to understand why this has to be a part of doing business when I’m in Singapore,” Keith suddenly said, putting away his phone. He had been glued to it, texting, since the singing started. He was smiling at me though, so I guess he wasn’t upset about the situation. “Are you OK, Jazzy?”

  Am I OK? Usually, when I’m out like this, there’s one person who asks me that question—­Sher. I suddenly wished she was there. Unlike me, she would have the balls to say something polite (but with attitude) to the guys and tell them she has to leave so that we could escape. But then again, why would I wish this kind of dirty scene on someone I care about?

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, smiling back at Keith. “I guess . . . it’s just more shocking than I thought it would be. I’ve never been inside a KTV lounge before!”

  “I can imagine,” Keith said, laughing. “You seem like a nice girl, Jazzy.”

  That’s when the shouting started.

  “Aiyoh, aiyoh, aiyoh!” Sam said. He was standing up now, jumping up and down and pointing at the far darkest corner of the room. I couldn’t really see what he was pointing at so I stood up also. I could sort of make out a small love seat and some movement.

  But it turns out I didn’t need to squint so hard because Sam took out his iPhone and turned on the flashlight, shining it at the corner. Long Legs was seated, her minidress bunched up at her hips, her legs spread wide open, dangling off the sides of the chair. And I guess she wasn’t wearing panties because George was kneeling in front of her with his face in her you know where!

  “My god, George! Why on earth are you doing that?” Sam shouted.

  George had stopped and turned around now, looking a little embarrassed. Long Legs quickly closed her legs and sat properly, taking a tissue out of her handbag to wipe George’s mouth, helping him off his knees and onto the love seat. Sam’s light was still on them so we could see everything.

  “KTV girls are the last kinds of girls you should do that with—­aiyoh, they are so dirty!” Sam continued. Kin Meng stared hard at him—­no matter what they thought of what we all had just seen George do, he was still their business client after all. He should never be insulted—­especially not in front of girls. Sam was really throwing away Kin Meng’s face.

  Sam tried to make it seem like it was a joke and started to laugh. Kin Meng quickly laughed along too. And once that happened the KTV girls also joined in, giggling along. Sam decided to try and say something funny to defuse the situation more. “Hey, George,” he said, “I don’t know how your women treat you in the UK, but you come here to buy these girls so you don’t have to do that kind of shit. You don’t have to win these girls over by pretending you like that kind of gross shit!” He started laughing again. But Kin Meng didn’t laugh along this time.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I happen to like it . . .” George said.

  I could see Kin Meng’s shoulders tensing up. He was probably worried that the clients would get upset.

  “Sam,” he whispered, “quiet lah. You know these ang moh guys—­sometimes they just like this kind of weird shit. If he wants to do that, then just let him do it.”

  Sam turned off his iPhone light. Kin Meng waved over to George and said, “Come, George, why don’t you take . . . um sorry, I forget her name, somewhere more private?”

  Kin Meng picked up the receiver of the plastic red phone in the center of the tinted glass coffee table in front of us. “Yah, hello, we want to dapao one—­yes, just one. For now. . . . What? Oh, yes, of course five-­star room. . . . Hmm, I don’t know—­one? Maybe two hours? . . .” Kin Meng put the phone down so he could look over at George, who had Long Legs on his lap now and was violently frenching her.

  Kin Meng quietly laughed and shook his head then picked the phone back up. “Just book it for the whole night. Thanks.”

  In just a minute, mamasan appeared again. She smiled at Long Legs, bowed slightly at Kin Meng and then whisked George and the girl away.

  New China Girl had stopped singing while all the excitement was happening, so all we heard now was the melody of what must be one of Elva’s sad songs. (Not that I knew the song—­I only guessed this because Elva’s face was on the TV, looking like she was going to cry.)

  “Come, bottoms up! Bottoms up!” Big Boobs said, holding up her glass. This time I also joined in, throwing my head back as I drank and really cleaning out my glass. The ragged feeling of the whiskey burning down my throat warmed my face and nipped the feeling that my eyes were about to tear up. Even then, when I did tear up a bit, I just told Keith, who had noticed, “Whiskey sometimes does that to me—­too strong, too strong!” I even fanned my mouth with my hand to make him believe.

  The thing is, I always knew shit like that happens in these places. Growing up in Singapore with KTV bars in so many neighborhoods—­how not to know? But to see it happening in front of me—­girls getting packed up to go just like a box of noodles at a hawker center—­is a bit too much lah. How can these girls possibly be paid enough for a job like this to be worth it? And these guys—­I don’t know about George or Nigel but Kin Meng is married, Sam’s wife is seven months pregnant with their first kid. Even if you marry someone who seems like a good guy, in this kind of working environment, is it confirmed that this kind of thing will happen anyway?

  “Do you want to get out of here?” Keith asked.

  My god, yes. I grabbed my handbag. Keith whispered to Kin Meng, who nodded and tilted his head to look at me, waving. Keith took my hand and led me toward the door. Just before we closed it, I saw Big Boobs climb onto Nigel, straddling him and lifting her long hair up at the neck so he could run his hands all the way up her back as she gave him a lap dance. I guess now that the boring gay guy and square female colleague are not there anymore, the fun could really begin.

  I was still a bit dazed as we slowly walked down the stairs, which seemed as grand and beautiful as it did earlier—­maybe even a little bit more, since Keith was still holding my hand and guiding me down the stairs. I tried to block out everything I saw that night—­if I did, I could at least pretend in my head for a few minutes that he was my date and he was leading us down the stairs to our Rolls-­Royce outside.

  “Why were you here, Jazzy?” he asked.

  “Well, Kin Meng thought you might need some normal ­company . . . you know,” I said.

  Keith’s face got serious a bit. “Oh goodness—­I never need the company in that kind of setting that badly,” he said. “He really shouldn’t have brought you there. I’m very very sorry, Jazzy.”

  At the foot of the stairs, we heard music. Some kind of Mandopop in the background, layered with waves and waves of cheering and laughing. Eh? Were ­people watching a football match in there?

  I followed the sound to a heavy bronze door on the other side of the lobby. A stocky Ah Beng in a tuxedo opened the door for us even before Keith and I got to it. Once we stepped through, the cheering and laughing got louder all around us. The room was quite big—­not as big as Lunar or any of those clubs but larger than your usual bar. And all around us were cushioned circular banquettes filled with men in suits—­a floor of padded pods all facing a stage. Onstage, a row of nine girls in strapless mini sequined dresses lined the background while one stood in the front, her shiny gold heels just a few centimeters away from the tip of the stage, where a row of men were seated on bar stools, leaning forward.

  “More! More! More! More!” The guys were shouting all together. A short Ah Beng, also in a tux, was walking up and down the stage with a mic in one hand, using his other hand to wave and rile the crowd up even more.

  “Hallo, hallo, gentlemen! Are there any more ­people who want to hang flowers on this beautiful lady? Look at how chio she is! Her hair like silk, face like fairy, legs long long,” the Ah Beng said. “Hallo, little girl—­come, show them a bit!” The crowd cheered louder. The girl tucked her hair beh
ind one ear, winked at the crowd and bent over to pull up her minidress very very slowly. The guys started shouting even more, but she stopped just before getting close to her panties. (As if she was wearing any.) A few started booing but a young guy in the front row jumped up and said, “OK—­I buy her the five-­thousand-­dollar garland!”

  Once there were really no other bids, a fresh-­faced girl got onstage holding a garland of red plastic flowers. The minidressed girl bent her head so the garland could be placed around her neck, then she waved at the crowd, blew a few kisses to the guy in the front row and joined the rest of the girls in the back row.

  “Don’t worry,” Keith said. I guess he noticed the worried look on my face. “He’s not buying her ser­vices—­well, not really. She does have to come and sit with him for a drink—­and if she is open to more, she can negotiate. But the five thousand dollars doesn’t buy him a night or anything like that.”

  “Then—­why is he paying so much?” I asked. I tell you ah—­guys sometimes are damn fucking crazy. Pay that much—­at least must get some product out of it! What’s the point of throwing away thousands of dollars on a few plastic flowers. If you go to a wet market, you can buy the same thing for fifty cents!

  Keith shrugged. “Competition? Winning? Showing other guys that you are the one who can spend the most? Isn’t that what guys care about in Singapore?”

  The room was very quiet now. The Ah Beng onstage was in the middle of introducing a new girl, one who looked exactly like all the others except that her minidress was powder blue. (Each girl was wearing a different color—­it made me think of Teletubbies.)

  “One hundred dollars!”

  “Two hundred dollars!”

  “Five hundred dollars!”

  “Eight hundred eighty-­eight dollars!”

  A bidding war was going on between two banquettes of balding Chinese guys in the middle of the room.

  Keith elbowed me softly and leaned over. “Shall we?”

  “Are you crazy? How would I have that kind of money?”

  “Kin Meng’s company does,” he said, grinning. “Don’t worry—­I’m going to sign that contract they want tomorrow. Well? Go on.”

  So I stepped into the center of the main aisle, waved my hands until Ah Beng looked over, probably wondering what in fuck’s sake I was trying to do. Before he could say anything, I shouted, “Ten thousand dollars!”

  chapter 9

  It wasn’t that I had a cock day at work.

  No—­I guess what was more disturbing was that it wasn’t as obvious as that. I mean, things were still a bit weird with Albert after our talk in his office yesterday and that whole crazy business about asking me to think about the circulation department and all. I kept wondering what he might be planning, but thank god he didn’t bring it up again. So, who knows?

  I was distracted all day, however, because I couldn’t stop going over all the things I saw at Temple of Heaven last night. China Girl, New China Girl, George going down on Long Legs right in front of us. I thought about texting Fann and Imo about it, but I didn’t even know where to begin. (At least Kin Meng was nice and texted me in the morning asking if I had a good time. Of course I said yes. Though I was mainly just glad that he didn’t seem angry about my ten-­thousand-­dollar garland. I guess the deal Keith signed must have been fucking huge. I wish I had thought of exchanging phone numbers with Keith when he dropped me off. Even if he’s gay, if he’s in that kind of money range—­who knows? I’m sure he has straight ang moh friends who also make that kind of cash! Aiyoh, Jazzy here sometimes really doesn’t think straight.)

  Just thinking about that KTV room, that night, that club, made me feel damn dirty. Of course I’m not so naive as to believe that girls like that don’t exist everywhere in the world. But to see respectable men—­husbands!—­like Sam or Kin Meng in that environment, just going along with all of it. Aiyoh—­how can? But what was making my heart the most pain right now was the thought that Sher—­our sweet Sher—­now had one of these exact types of lousy Singaporean husbands. My god! What did she do to herself?

  I still remember the night when I first realized that things were really going to shit for Sher—­and, I guess in a way, all of us as a group. The four of us—­and Ah Huat—­were all squeezed around a small table at Chin Chin Eating House. We had just finished eating our pork chops and chicken rice; we still had beer on the table, so the Chin Chin uncle still hadn’t come over to ask us to fuck off yet. Just before that, Ah Huat had invited us to come see his tuition school over at Peace Center. Walao, I tell you, this locale is a damn funny place for tuition school, man—­with all those sleazy KTV lounges surrounding it, which parents in the world would want to send their kids there for physics and chemistry tuition? But Ah Huat had told us his school was actually quite successful—­and since I didn’t believe him, we agreed to go and look-­see look-­see.

  It turned out that I was wrong. Ah Huat, in the end, was quite an entertaining teacher, jumping around the front of the class, madly scribbling all these crazy equations on the board, explaining science and all this super complex maths in his Ah Beng lingo, swearing and telling dirty jokes all the way. His students all called him “Ah Lim,” and his classroom was very small but somehow he managed to pack in forty to fifty students each hour. He just rotated his subjects all day—­one hour teaching chemistry, one hour teaching maths, then physics next, etc. He was quite funny lah—­even if I don’t know pythar gorass theorem is what cock, when Ah Huat explained it with his smelly Ah Beng attitude, I also listened. I guess if you can make ­people laugh they confirm will pay more attention. And I could tell so did the students—­they were all ­leaning forward at their desks, listening carefully to every single thing he was saying. Even I could see that Ah Huat was actually teaching them something. For a former teacher from some lousy government school, he really had made something of himself lah.

  So, no choice—­I had to admit that I was wrong, and Ah Huat almost dropped his chalk when I did. “You know,” he said, staring at me with his squinty Ah Beng eyes and stroking his chin as if he had a Confucius beard, “you should come and work for me. The school is growing so quickly I can’t handle all the admin and managerial work. I really need some sort of assistant or business manager . . .” I tell you—­if I was drinking anything at the time I would have laughed so hard I’d spit it out right in Ah Huat’s face. So typical of these kinds of ­people—­you say one nice thing to them and suddenly they think that they are equals with you. Please—­my god! As if I’ll ever work for a smelly Ah Beng!

  I didn’t want to be rude, though—­he had been nice enough to show us around his tuition school and all. So I just laughed and said, “Aiyah, come, come, I’ll buy everyone dinner.” So we all walked over to Chin Chin for pork chops. Everything was going OK—­it wasn’t say, very fun but it also was not terrible. We all didn’t know Ah Huat that well—­because hello, do we look like the sort of girls who would actually be seen with him? But Sher had known him since they were teenagers because their mothers were mah-­jongg friends for donkey’s years. At some point in our early twenties, of course both aunties had started hinting to the two of them that maybe they should go see a movie or something. But when Sher mentioned it to us—­aiyoh—­the three of us laughed so hard that she looked bloody embarrassed for even mentioning it.

  That night at Chin Chin though, we knew that Sher had started hanging out with him a bit—­we had not been so successful with ang moh guys for a few months, I told her I guess it’s OK to just hang out with him lah. Better to keep busy otherwise we might lose practice. Also, if you have someone to buy you dinner now and then, what’s the harm? As long as I don’t see Ah Huat’s fuck face so much around the four of us—­in public—­I also don’t really care.

  Halfway through the dinner, Fann poked my elbow—­her eyes rolling from side to side, asking me to look over at Sher. Aiyoh, Sher was picking
out nice pieces of chicken from the big platter to put on Ah Huat’s plate! I remember thinking, this girl—­my god—­she’s really getting out of control. “Kani nah—­tomorrow ah,” I whispered to Fann, “we’d better talk to Sher. Acting so romantic? We must stop this!” I think Sher noticed us whispering because after that she didn’t feed him anymore.

  When we finished eating, Ah Huat pulled out his box of Marlboro Reds and lit one up. Imo was telling us about how her dad was saying that day that the new HDB flats were quite nice-­looking, asking whether she had a serious boyfriend or not. Apparently the new flats were so nice that Uncle was saying that ­people should fasterly get married just so they can buy one. So he was advising her, “Imo, if you even have a not-­so-­serious boyfriend, maybe you can at least consider whether can get more serious lah—­the new flats are so beautiful. They’re a very good investment! Just go to the registry of marriage, quickly buy a flat first, then deal with everything else later.” Wah, when we heard Uncle’s advice, Fann and I started laughing and laughing. Please! Yah lah, if you want to buy a government-­subsidized flat then sure, you have to get married and preferably do it by a certain age. And it’s true lah—­the whole country had been talking about how nice the new ones are. Some are located downtown and all—­and look even more atas than some private condominiums! In fact, the other day Fann almost got slapped for saying to Imo that Waikiki Towers looks more like an HDB flat than the new HDB flats. Even so, is Uncle blind? Surely he should know by now that his daughter and all of us are never going to be like those loser Singaporeans who get married just so they can buy a flat. Cheh!

  Ah Huat also laughed a little bit, then he sucked hard on his cigarette and nodded his head over at Sher. “Eh, how?” he said, smelly puffs of smoke coming out of his chubby hairy nostrils as he talked. “Want to register for flat or not?”