Blok M update, December 2003

Status report

Good news - the Blok is back on top form after the Ramadan interlude.  D’s Place is full most nights, with more guys than ever and the usual exotic line up of girls to entertain them.  Top Gun is doing good early evening business, but the girls all migrate to D’s Place at about ten lured by the prospects of the Ladies’ Lucky Draw and an infinitely better chance of getting a guy.  Oscars is ticking over, but some nights trade is so poor that customers are outnumbered about three to one by the bar staff.  Sportsmans is reportedly under new ownership, more details as they emerge - the hard core regulars are still there, and some nights are quite busy, but it’s not doing as well as it used to.  Everest seems to be doing OK, its mix of huge-screen TV and good music is certainly pulling in the customers, but the Reveller hears ominous murmurings of discontent from the bar staff.  The Club - oblivious to passing trends and as immune to change as ever - just ticks over quietly on the corner of the Blok in a little world all of its own.

Yes, there’s quantity on the Blok, but to the Reveller’s eye there’s less quality.  There don’t seem to be as many eccentrics around as there were a few years ago - the guys are generally less frivolous and not as wild as before, and there aren’t as many crazy girls as there used to be.  It’s noticeable, too, that the average age of the girls is getting lower - many of the older ones have either given up because of the cut-throat competition, or been edged out by the bar bosses who don’t see them as attractive assets that can draw in the punters.  Many of the sweet new things are stunningly attractive, but they live in a world of their own and seem oblivious to everything around them (including the guys), dancing and chattering the nights away in their own little corners.

Lintas Melawai

Those wonderful words of Dylan Thomas, ‘Do not go silent into that good night’, apply so aptly to the bunker days of LM.  Already the dogs of development are snapping at the heels of the old place - they’ve rather messily ripped up the undergrowth next to the pavement outside Lintas, giving the road a tattered and forlorn look.  Inside it’s the same sad story - there’s only a skeleton staff, many of the crew having already abandoned the sinking ship.  Even the cloakroom is closed, so the Reveller has to lug his biking jacket and helmet into the disco and dump them unceremoniously behind the counter.

The mirrored shelves behind the bar, which used to boast an idiosyncratic collection of exotic drinks in fly-blown bottles, now bear but a couple of token bottles each, giving the place a melancholy air of threadbare neglect.  The pool girls, too, seem to be moving on to pastures new - one night there are only a couple of bored, lethargic thirty-somethings on duty, knocking the balls around in a desultory game that - like LM - is going nowhere.

But the disco!  There it is one Thursday night, still thumping out its usual ear-numbing cacophony to a packed house.  There’s a veritable cornucopia of girls, and revellers are still pouring in, chattering and laughing, as the clock hits 1 am.  The few remaining bar staff dash hither and thither, waving frantically and bellowing orders to each other, doling out the drinks as fast as they can to the swelling crowd of parched punters and their floozies.  And it’s open season for the girls, as they stalk their prey with practised ease and drag off the willing victims.  The Reveller is swept away by the din, the dancing and the damsels, but gnawing at the back of his mind is the sad awareness that this will all too soon be history.

Of fawns and fauns and fornication

There’s something distinctly bacchanalian about the bars and discos down Blok M in the very early hours of the morning, when the drink has flowed copiously and everyone’s fuel meter is on full.  The early birds have dutifully returned to hearth and home, leaving the dedicated carousers to whoop it up until closing time.  Likewise, the more modest and sensible girls have returned to their lairs in Buncit and Bangka, leaving the field to the good-timers and the predators.  So there they are, laughing, joking and flirting the hours away, the whole world one blurred rose-tinted vision.  As the slogan on the Oscars’ staff T-shirts puts it so eloquently, ‘Nobody’s ugly after 2am’.

D’s Place management long ago abandoned the late-night gentlemen’s contribution Ladies’ Lucky Draw - for the simple reason that most of the the guys were so far gone they didn’t know whether it was the post office or Tuesday. It’s been replaced by a one-off donation from the management, and doesn’t require any thinking or action on the part of the guys other than plucking the winning numbers from the bowl of tickets. As the draw finishes, the girls do their best to look a little coy and modest - unsuccessfully, as the alchohol and the ambience have inflamed their lustful proclivities and they’re looking forward to an enjoyable (and profitable) finale to the evening’s revelling.

Closing time is one of the sights of the Blok - it can, sometimes, be quite hilarious.  Like inanely grinning satyrs, the guys are assisted out of the bar by their lady-friends and hustled into the waiting rust-bucket Pelatehan taxis - to be whisked off to a fête worse than death.  Those who have escaped, and remain unattached, wander up and down the street forlornly looking for their drivers, or vainly trying to find a taxi driver who can understand their destination.

‘Spam, spam, spam, wonderful spam!’

The Blok M web site has at last, alas, come of age - in other words, spam is pouring into the Reveller’s mail box.  Returning home somewhat earlier than usual one night after a disastrous and inconclusive Close Encounter, the Reveller brews up a mug of high-octane coffee, anchors himself to his trusty computer and logs on to check the email.  Although there’s an industrial-strength virus stopper and spam filter on the system, it’s occasionally amusing to see what sort of spam is being targeted at the Reveller.

The first message up is yet another variant of the infamous Nigerian banking scam, the second an invitation to spy on a group of teenage college girls having a dorm sex romp, the third an attempt to lure the Reveller to a site in which unspeakable things are shown being done with a mind-boggling variety of farm animals, the fourth offering to help him look good in a bikini.  This suggests that the spamhaus profile of the Reveller is a gullible transvestite voyeur with a penchant for bestiality.

As he dozes off to sleep, the Reveller has a waking nightmare in which a dark-skinned gentleman touting a suitcase full of grubby banknotes ogles college girls wearing ill-fitting bikinis having a farmyard romp.

Epilogue

As the festive season approaches, all good revellers will be limbering up for a week or more of dedicated carousing.  There’s already a Christmassy feel to the Blok - the bars are sprouting tinsel decorations and Christmas trees, the one in Sportsmans a really glittery job with the latest in fibre-optic technology making it look like a cross between a set of demented traffic lights and an alien spaceship from a Spielberg film.

The Reveller wishes everyone a merry Christmas and a happy New Year, and will be recounting his seasonal experiences in the January update - along with his New Year’s revelling resolutions.