Night of the Living Dead

Salami slices

As all good bankers, politicians and criminals know, one way to grab a lot of money without anyone noticing what you’re doing is to apply the salami slice technique. You skim the teeniest amount from each of a large number of transactions in the certain knowledge that it’s so small the customer/voter/victim will be blithely unaware of what’s happening – but added up, the parings amount to a tidy sum.

Now what, I hear you murmur as you scratch your head, has this got to do with a Saturday night out in Blok M? Well, the answer lies in a brief encounter I have as the clock turns eleven in Top Gun.

It’s been an odd night. Not at all bad, but in some indefinable way not good, either. I’m restless. I feel a mental itch that can’t be scratched, a vague gnawing in the stomach I sometimes get when I’ve eaten a meal but don’t feel quite satisfied. Deciding to cut my losses I tear myself away from the charms of an eminently beddable Sweet Young Thing with whom I’ve been drinking for the past half hour, and wind my way towards the bar to pay my bill. As I approach the pool table I hear a familiar voice call out, and it’s an Ozzie guy I see every few months or so on his South East Asian circuit.

We exchange the usual pleasantries, but when I ask him how it’s going this evening he gives me a slightly quizzical frown and says “Well quite honestly, I’m getting bored.” As we look round and I replay the evening’s events and action, I have to agree with him. There’s nothing tangible, no smoking gun, no single thing I can put my finger on, but the feeling is palpable.

Thinking back to my grand entry into the bar, I recollect that the regular pool gang are late in, and when they finally start playing their games are slow and a bit lacklustre. The usual pool girls aren’t there either, to spice up the action and get the guys laughing. There are very few Indramayu girls in the bar tonight, the reason being a grand wedding out in one of the kampongs to which many of them have gone at the crack of dawn. The guys are a mixed bunch, more out-of-towners than regulars, a jovial enough group but separate from rather than part of the Top Gun crowd.

The band is competent and professional, but nothing special. They’ve got no sparkle, no oomph, no liveliness. They play all the right tunes, but never seem to hit or to create a mood. Only one couple takes to the dance floor and half-heartedly hug each other in a vague shuffling motion to the music, and the onlookers aren’t paying much attention to the band, the dancers – or anything else, for that matter.

The guys and dolls in the Twilight Zone lack any zest, their get up and go seems to have got up and gone – the whole tableau looks rather like a scene from a particularly morbid zombie B-movie I saw on TV earlier in the week called Night of the Living Dead. And this just about sums up the atmosphere in the bar.

Putting all these things together I realise that there’s no single cause of this rather boring night, just a lot of little things that, piled up on top of each other, make it so. Yes, it’s the little details, the tiny sparks, that set the place alight and make it go with a swing; and I reflect again on how unique, and how fragile, is the Blok M experience.

Jellyfish

As I’m sitting at the edge of the band area and finishing off my last Pernod, who should I see at the next table but the inimitable Dumb and Dumber, our favourite D&D Indramayu girl. Interestingly, she seems to have developed a new hunting strategy. Whereas in the past she’d roam the bar with practiced and deadly accuracy, now she’s sitting quietly with a couple of her friends and a clutch of rather befuddled guys.

She displays herself at the table, looking really quite alluring and very sensual as she sways quietly to the rhythm of the band. I’m suddenly reminded of a Portuguese man-of-war, that most attractive and deadly of sea creatures; like her marine counterpart, she lures her victims within reach of her tentacles and gradually enfolds them in venom.

Remnant sale

The absence of my beloved Indramayu Sweet Young Things throws into stark relief the quality of tonight’s turnout. I turn to a friend at the bar and comment that it’s rather like a remnant sale in an Oxford Street clothing store – lots of bargains and a few very good buys, but the overall effect rather cheap and dowdy.

After ten thirty a smattering of the Indramayu regulars straggle in, and I wonder if they missed the morning bus and spent the day sleeping, or came back on an early bus in order to hit the Saturday night high spot. Either way, their presence livens up the place considerably for a while.

Good-byee, don’t cryee

Thus go the words of that well-known First World War marching song – and it pretty well sums up the Reveller’s mood as he saunters down the street to catch his bajaj. Count your blessings, I tell myself: it’s not been at all a bad evening, rather an average one that provides the yardstick against which spectaculars like last Saturday are to be measured. This lifts my spirits as I turn left and walk past the dingy arches and ochreous shadows of the bus terminus, and cross the road to my eagerly-awaiting driver.