The invite has gone out for the company holiday party later this year. The place where it will be held is the epitome of hip. As is fitting for a praedominantly younger crowd, in a happening place such as San Francisco.
This is how a reviewer describes it:
"A distinctive "you wouldn't know it was there" vibe on the outside keeps this place pretty under cover. I had a good time here at a friend's birthday party, where he had rented the back room, but in general the main lounge (both in crowd and in decor) was a little too slick for me. Think Marina via North Beach, and you kind of get the idea."
I remember the place in question very well. It's lao di fang to the max, man.
It used to be 'Allain's French Seafood'.
For a long time it was a taxi-bar with abstracted-looking Chinese ladies in skin-tight cheongsams, drinking champagne (sparkling non-alcoholic apple cider) bought by visiting gentlemen from Hong Kong and Taiwan at inordinate prices, or dancing with customers pressed up close.
At times a seedy place, where assignations were arranged and a large-handed matron kept the girls and the clientele in line.
[If only she could've kept the air-conditioning in line - It was always much too warm inside, also very humid, and far too dark. That last quality showed calculation.]
One of my business associates in the early eighties loved the joint - a Chinese businessman from Irian Jaya. It was the only place where women would talk to him. He often dragged me there to witness his conquests. I still shudder when I think of the troll-bitch matron. I no longer do business with that man, and have long since lost contact with him - he's probably still quoting Chinese soap operas in lieu of actual conversation.
[The fat Shanghainese gentleman from Taipei also came very often, but he went there purely to drink. They kept a bottle of very rare cognac just for him. His wife would've killed him if she knew - She was a very proper and controlling woman.]
Sometimes I miss the slithery cheongsams with slits up to here - the curvy thighs, the evident padding in the upper realms, wobbly high-heels, the faltering attempts at conversation, half of which eventually lead to furtive proposals that I teach someone English after hours.
By which they really did only mean 'teach English' - the inability to speak like an employable American woman was very keenly felt.
Mingled aromas of mixed floral perfumes, spilled cider, and stale food bring back seductive echoes from that era.
It was long before the mercenary Korean girls took over the taxi-bar circuit and Karaoke drove most such places out of business.
So of course I'm very much looking forward to the party. I do hope the martinis are as good as they were in 1983. Memories are what make the holidays special. I shall be viewing my innocent and unknowing coworkers through the coloured spectacles of the past.
Alas, none of them could get away with wearing a cheongsam, nor acting happy-tiddly on just apple cider.
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6 comments:
So...did you succeed in teaching them English?
Yes, I think you owe us all the steamy details; I feel certain that Lev, for one, would be all agog.
Oh very yes, we are expecting some juicy details! In fact, we deserve them!
Wax poetic, wax lyrucal, wax descriptive. Balls it all, just wax!
---Grant Patel
Grant-bhai,
I notice that you left a comment meant for this post inappropriately under A MIDDLE AGED MAN AND LITTLE CHILDREN.
You wrote: "What kind of panties were they wearing under their cheonsoms? Or is that too personal a question? Did you get a chance to peruse?".
Firstly, what makes you think that I 'perused' their panties, or where their panties might have been (not that they weren't wearing panties, but rather that their panties were not visible - it was a dark place)?
I am not in the habit of scoping out the nether garments of the opposite gender (or of any gender). If they become, fortuitously, evident, that is icing on the cake (and icing makes me all gooey inside), but I will not go out of my way for a blick of bliff. Nor will I bend my neck and crane my eyes to see the hidden - especially in a dark place.
Besides, when wearing a cheongsam one does not wear panties that waist themselves low on the hips, but rather an item which has its waist at navel-height; whether it has aught of cloth to cover the crumpet is another matter. And some old-fashioned ladies wear naught underneath, so as not to spoil the effect with unsightly panty lines - although most cheongsams will have a lining that prevents discrete lace waistbands from forming a visible 'imprint' on the outer surface of the garment.
Older women might still wear a chipao instead - it is looser, and not as highly cut. And one can wear baggy pajama-style pantaloons underneath. Properly speaking, the ladies on the Two Girls Brand trademark are wearing intermediate garments - the somewhat more sexy chipao of the twenties, rather than the full Cantonese wild girl cheongsam of the thirties (which was still quite a bit tamer than the hot-mama slink-o-rama cheongsam of the fifties, yet more stylish than the dowdy shmatt made popular in the seventies.
Now, the question comes to mind, Grant-bhai, what kind of panties do YOU prefer? Silk, cotton, synthetic? Lacey, paneled, plain? Delicate webbing, the merest cup of cloth, or the all-encompassing broad-span pentagon? Long thong or granny baggy? Loose, tight, or slightly wrinkly? Please do, do, do go into detail. We want to know about your panties, Granty-poo.
And Spiros, there are no steamy details. None.
No, I did not teach any of them English - What kind of English would they learn after hours, in limited time, at a well-lit coffee shop in the non-Chinese part of town?
And no, I did not 'assignate' with any of them - no detailed steaming there either. One need not be a show-off businessman to enjoy such places, and often it is far better not to even pretend. The girls are much better conversationalists when they realize that one is not loaded with rubles, not likely to be a sugar-daddy, not likely to underwrite expensive treats or gifts, nor make any impositive demands. The rare "champagne" one buys for them under those circumstances might actually be alcoholic (same price as the sparkling apple-cider, same bottle, just marked differently), and they'll let their hair down. As much as anyone can let their hair down with a white man one might find it bad advertising to be seen being too friendly with.
Their English got better. And I learned about the underbelly of C'town. I never learned anything about their underbellies, nor did I enquire or investigate.
Some of them smelled real nice, though.
Cheese, dude, don't get her knickers in a twist.
---Grant Pantywanty
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