Friday frolics

On the ball

In a complete break with my time-hallowed tradition of playing lousy pool on a Friday night, I’m on a winning streak. Crazy slam-happy shots find the pocket with unerring accuracy, rail shots bounce sweetly at just the angle I intended, and the black ball whizzes to its pocket as though magnetized - I’m on a roll, basking in a brief efflorescence of fame and glory. Good things, though, are always short-lived, and so it is that after an hour or so my game slumps back into its usual mediocrity. But while it lasts, it’s a sweet interlude.

Ale and farewell

One of the nice things about Top Gun is that it’s so delightfully easy to slide from pool into frolics, and by one of those happy coincidences my fall from form coincides with the entry of a whole gangload of Indramayu lasses. Now some cynics remark that it’s odd how my game always seems to go to pieces when the Sweet Young Things pour in, hinting - heaven forbid! - that my mind is no longer on the game. Or rather, it’s on a different kind of game. Anyway, settling down with a brace of sultry beauties I gallantly call for tequilas all round, taking advantage of the management’s special deal of three slugs for only 50k.

Now the trouble with tequila is that once you start on the stuff it’s difficult to stop, and dangerously easy to rationalize yourself into a Mexican haze of oblivion. Yes, I say to myself, at this price you can’t afford not to drink it - and the dear girls do like it so much it’d be a sin to deprive them of this simple pleasure. But there’s a sinister side effect of this treacherous nectar - as I’ve remarked before, it doesn’t coexist at all happily with other drinks. So when an old friend orders a couple of rounds of beer, within a few minutes I’m ready to sing under the table.

My two charmers have by this time wandered off in search of more remunerative company, leaving me to chew the fat with a couple of guys I haven’t seen for a while. Gazing benignly at the gathering throng through the smoke-filled air, and beaming at a new gaggle of Indramayu Sweet Young Things who’ve just come in, I experience a state of near nirvana.

Vultures and victims

But duty is duty, and as eleven o’clock draws near I decide to move my base camp to My Bar ready for the late night frolics. There’s a good crowd in the place, the music isn’t too bad or too loud, and all is set for a good night’s revelling. But there’s a rather nasty cloud on the horizon - one of the mamasans is mustering her girls at the end of the bar, ordering them here and there like some imperial general despatching his elite troops into action. A couple of the Sweet Young Things under her tutelage are obviously very new and inexperienced, and not happy at being dragooned like this. It makes me angry that the bar owners don’t give these old hags their marching orders, as they’re parasitic excrescences who sour the atmosphere and cause a lot of ill feeling among the girls.

A little later I’m sitting next to a guy who’s well primed and full of himself, so the mamasan marks him as her next target and shoves a quiet little thing into his arms. He starts to stroke and grope the poor girl in a most ungentlemanly manner, whereupon she wrenches herself away, glares with simmering fury at the mamasan, tightly folds her arms and defiantly struts away. “Good for you, girly!” I say sotto voce, and smile encouragingly at her.

I enjoy an hour of flirtatious conviviality, renewing acquaintance with a bunch of Sweet Young Things I haven’t seen for a week and making a couple of new friends. This is how it should be in the bar, I reflect - meeting, chatting and canoodling in a relaxed and relaxing ambience. The old hags who peddle their girls like prize animals have no place here.

Saturday slump

The right stuff

Now that it’s firmly established itself as one of the premier players in the Pelatehan league, Top Gun is a pretty accurate litmus for the state of the Blok on any given night. An early evening buzz in the old place usually means that all’s well elsewhere, and the night has promise. This Saturday evening the atmosphere is a bit low key but still very pleasant, with a fair number of guys mellowiing into their weekend to an easy hum of gossip and good-natured banter. But there aren’t many girls around, and precious few of the regular Sweet Young Things. No, it’s the heavy mob from Up North who predominate; they lack the petulant sparkle of the Indramayu girls, and prowl through the bar with feral determination.

One of the good things about a quiet weekend night is that you can get a lot of pool games in, and enjoy some good-natured banter with your mates as you take it in turns to demonstrate how awful your weekend game is. Eventually, after missing a couple of ludicrously easy shots, I excuse myself from further play with the excuse that I’m suffering from battle fatigue - and nip across the road to My Bar. A bad move. Pounding out of the bar at heaven knows how many watts is their hallmark power-hammer music, so I do an about-turn and go straight back to Top Gun.

It must be an illusion, but there do seem to be fewer bodies in the place than when I went out just a minute before, and it’s lost some of its momentum. Even so, it’s still infinitely more hospitable than the nightmare across the street. Getting back into the swing I spend an enjoyable half hour restoring my spiritual equilibrium - when suddenly a familiar figure lurches into sight, and beerily announces “I’m on the piss tonight! How’s yerself?” As I politely inform him that it’s a most enjoyable evening, he fixes me with a pale, quizzical eye and asks “Are you from English?” “Indeed I am, but how did you guess?” I quip back - but such social niceties are entirely lost on the dear chap, who grins lopsidedly, nods inanely, and wobbles off in search of another victim.

Barking up the wrong tree

Taking advantage of a time out in the pool playing I decide to slip out of Top Gun and walk down the street to see how One Tree’s faring. Now this place has become something of an enigma. There’s been no publicity fanfare to blazon its arrival on the Falatehan scene, no brash and boozy opening binge, no gaudy fliers or zippy handouts - in fact, nothing. More ominously for the owners, whenever I mention the place in Top Gun or My Bar the response is more often than not, “What’s that?” “Where is it?” “Never heard of it!”

Pushing open One Tree’s door I’m greeted like a long-lost friend by a trio of charming waitresses, and swept to the bar where I settle down and call up a glass of beer. Looking round I notice that the side wall wood panelling has at last been finished, and quite jolly it looks. But there’s a large, kludgy back-projection TV menacing the front corner of the bar, and which looks completely out of place amid the wood panelling and traditional pub furniture. Far worse, though, is the appearance of a pool table between the bar and the kitchen. “Wasn’t that where the tree was supposed to go?” I ask one of the staff. “The customers asked for a pool table”, is her lame reply. “Which customers?” I rather cynically murmur, as there’s no-one playing pool - and indeed, only two customers in the entire place.

Out of idle curiosity I ask to see the menu and discover what culinary temptations have been added since my last visit. What’s this? Shawermas now cost 70k? “So you’ve put the prices up already,” I remark to the waitress; “These things were 65k when I was last here!” “It’s because we only use best quality imported meat”, is the limp response. With sinking heart and grumbling stomach I read on, to learn that I may also sample such exotic delights as ‘Cheese Bargers’ or ‘Lamb Carry’. Well, if the bosses can’t even be bothered to proofread their own menu I don’t hold out much hope for the place as a serious eatery. I’d been looking forward to real trencherman food, solid sit-down meals à la Bugils - but alas, the best that One Tree can come up with is a tired old generic pub grub menu.

Handing back the menu with a doleful shake of the head I drain my beer, pay up, and head out - and I shan’t be back in a hurry. It’s depressing that the original vision has got lost somewhere along the way, leaving a sad monument that looks set to become the orphan of the Blok.

A night to forget

No preamble, no niceties: My Bar is just plain bad tonight. The music, though not loud, is repetitively boring and depressingly nondescript, and the place but sparsely populated. There are few girls about, and none of them come anywhere near the Reveller’s high aesthetic standards. Bravely determined to make the best of a bad job I try to drink myself into a festive mood, but to no avail. Everything around me seems to move in dirge-like slow motion, and the one approach I get from a downtown shark only serves to depress me further. The last straw is the entrance of the bar-top go-go dancers, who trot in wearing tinselly silver outfits festooned with glittery sequins. As they clamber aboard the bar I mutter to myself “O tempora, O mores!” and head for the door.

Pondering the My Bar disaster and the lamentable state of One Tree in my homeward-bound bajay, I reflect that yet again a noble ambition has come a cropper. The immutable law of the street is that success comes down to the three B’s - Beer, Birds and Billiards. All the rest is just padding: musical madness and peep show follies count for nothing in the Great Scheme of Things.