Somnambulated
That night we chose mohammed sultan over the pub crawl at boat quay – madam wong’s, which is virtually the only place where anyone can hope for any action on a Monday night. Staked out at the bar as usual for our indulgent-lethal volumes of martinis and shots and housepours and admired the cherubic bartender on display (who serviced us very well indeed) after dismissing the sluts sitting beside us, both males, so termed when they started gyrating and executing stripper moves in unison. Lol… nice thing about the mohammed sultan stretch is this prevailing spirit of spontaneous exuberance; the crowd’s absolutely all out for fun and everyone’s almost always smiling and wantonly friendly after a while. Zouk and Centro are really pretty and glamorous but you see these beautiful people decked out in the most unpractical clothes, checking people out in relation to themselves and strutting around with inclined heads sans laughter like ostriches and suddenly you feel they’re not that attractive after all, and yet you still find a need to live up to them and so this tiny bit of restraint sets in for the better part of the night (when club culture’s supposed to be about euphoria and catharsis). Chinablack’s fly though =) it gets many kids who can’t hold their liquor well and it’s fun to watch and fool around there once in a while on a supercilious detached level on one of the days when you, happily, exercise sufficient restraint and aren’t one of them hoho!
Alright, back to that night and to the stranger who could - and did - strum my heartstrings across a dance floor. We went on to dance as the dj was spinning music we could understand – hip hop and a little house. Clara was already tipsy on two drinks then so I had to keep myself lucid and just kept looking around, looking around… and looking around… and then I spotted him. At first he was just this guy in reflective shades and I started grinning when I saw him, for shades are so ridiculous in a dark club. And then my gaze moved down to rest of his face and the shades were forgiven (and appreciated at the other end of the spectrum of reactions), for he did look so… well… cool. And hot. He saw me grinning away and smiled back, opening his lips to form a lovely wicked grin. Yeah, after that it was the usual volley of grins and winks and come-ons that wouldn’t mean anything if he didn’t look so hot I was all for ravishing him there and then.
And he was lovely. He wasn’t drinking, and was sitting on a stool which put him in the thick of dance floor action as it was in the centre, on a side. He would be sitting still at first as his posse flanked him and danced around, sometimes whispering things into his ear, and he was always aloof, and checking the scene out. Once, this girl dancing before him turned around to chat with him and I was royally displeased and started eyeing them homicidally, but he responded by smiling coyly and shaking his head and waving a hand to indicate that there wasn’t anything going on in between them. Sweet! He was so hot. He got up from his stool to dance at intervals and I sweated… hot moves, that guy! It was as if he owned the crowd. He always looks around so self-assuredly, and when he dances it’s in the space before him, without anyone in particular (read: not a slut), but with the whole crowd whom he condescends to grace with his dancing (but you know he’s detached, not raving out of control like the rest of them) before he returns to his detached perch again to watch on coolly. And once, he started clapping in time to the music and smiling that trademark grin and nodding, surveying the scene and it felt that the wole club was dancing for him, following the beat of his hands like performers would their masters. He was so lovely he makes me wish I had a photographic memory, the type that can capture dreams perfectly.