I Wanted to Be Alone: Part 1

The urge for beer became insistent and I left the house with no particular intention other than to get drunk on my own, preferably by taking refuge in a dissolute Phnom Penh hostess bar where I wouldn’t have to be sociable or converse with anybody. That was the plan – to become quietly stupefied in backstreet bars where I wouldn’t be dragged into conversation.

My first port of call was not somewhere for the skittish. The customers were 50% Caucasian, 25% Asian and 25% black African. Plus they were all 100% drunk and ugly. I saw a forest of middle aged, male faces, some strange and cartoonlike, some just derelict and haggard, all of them undesirable, and despite it not yet being 9pm, everyone seemed well stoked up already.

Before I could even get to the bar, a vast boozed up Northern Englishman with bulging muscles and cauliflower ears suddenly loomed over me, grabbed my shoulder and shouted in a dur-brained way,”How ya doing mate. It’s f*cking great here, innit? I tell you what mate, if you can’t pull in here, you must be f*cking queer.” I nodded in forced agreement and the drunken hod carrier wobbled off, beer belly straining the buttons of his shirt, into a morass of blithe banter and shrieking girls.

As I shuffled onto a bar stool a melancholy queue of hideous old crones with a combined age of about 230 suddenly perked up. All were wearing identikit revealing tops showing far too much mahogany colored skin with everything in all the wrong places. I began to feel slightly unwell.

I studiously avoided the welcoming glints in their eyes and responded to their hectoring questions only obliquely. When that didn’t work, I closed my own eyes and counted to a hundred like a child pretending to be invisible hoping they’d realize I was an incurious man who didn’t need complications. Failing to take the hint, one moved in for the kill.

Even with the Stones playing at full blast, her shrill voice knifed through my ear and her aims were immediately clear – indulge in a bit of flirtatious chit-chat, perhaps get drunk together, maybe get confidential and then afterwards intimate. Her eyes told me that she had no objection whatsoever to being treated like a piece of meat.

But no, I didn’t want to talk and no, I didn’t need an attentive boon companion and yes, I’d like to be silent and was happy to be alone in the wild like Job, ‘a brother to dragons and a companion to owls’ while I fired a few lagers down my throat. Yet still she sat heavily and carelessly against me like a human millstone around my neck. I ordered another lager and downed it in three before settling my tab and walking outside brushing aside motodops and mendicants on my way.

Back outside the sky was as black as pitch with not a star to be seen as I shuffled towards Tahiti Eden. Last time I visited this bar, I sensed that I was inside a rapidly sinking ship and most of the staff had already boarded the lifeboats and paddled away. Tonight the lights were out.

On my way to a contingency port of call, I was fortunate to witness a short but sweet fight of sorts between two skinny Khmer youths outside Gold Star night club. I arrived at exactly the right time to see the smaller of the two – let’s call him the karate kid – go into his fighting stance and flutter his arms about making elaborate martial arts moves. Unfortunately for the karate kid, his protagonist proved to be a top drawer fighter and more than a match. After just seconds he simply walked over and scissor kicked the kid on the chin sending him down like a sack of potatoes. It was game over and the winner delivered the coup de grace by stomping on karate kid’s head a couple of times before striding off down the street like he owned it – which I guess he did at that moment in time. Seconds later, the kid was hauled to his feet to contemplate what was left of the evening while staggering hither and thither on jelly legs.

Another soulless small rectangular, white tiled room: another ebullient girl on the stool next to me. At least this bar was a clean comfortable cell of a place with spotless white tiles and the staff didn’t consist exclusively of ugly old women.

Opposite my perch, a fitfully vivacious girl was performing a back rub for the benefit of an uninterested, monumental-headed Chinaman with a face like a sad old sea lion who was slouched over a banquette. At the other end of the bar, a middle aged Caucasian looking like a feisty old alcoholic tortoise fondled his stubby holder before raising it and his beer to his mouth for a heavy swig at five second intervals. It looked like he was finishing strongly in a drinking race and was already drunk enough to be watching a television that didn’t happen to be switched on. Occasionally he’d glance over at me at me like I was his only living relative. These bars aren’t places for the young, active and carefree.

The girl next to me leaned over with the air of sharing a confidence.

”I know you,” she said, simply.

And then I remembered how and where. Two years before, she’d been working at a neighborhood noodle shop where I occasionally ate. She had then been an unattainable goal of mine. A nineteen year old who had just burst into flower and whose beauty would distract me from my soup. However, she was a good girl and didn’t speak English. Moreover, I was hitched at the time.

The passing years hadn’t mitigated her noticeably happy and cheerful nature and despite now working in a failing hostess bar rather than a cheap restaurant, she seemed content with her lot.

She raised the drink I bought her and winked at me over the rim. Her English was far from fluent but had been nonexistent the last time we’d met. Her voice was breathy yet eager and helpful. Distracted by this silky voice, I over poured my lager and the foam spilled onto the bar. While she was using a paper tissue to clean it up as best she could I decided she was still as charming as a village green.

I’d met her when she was a mere civilian and remembering that fact, my guard dropped and a voice in my head whispered that I could confide in her and trust her. Her hand arrived on my upper leg and buoyed by this provisional thumbs-up, I sensed that I was about to become entangled in this young woman’s plans.