Like I have written before, I like Home Club and it's something I look forward to after a week's worth of work. For the first time in almost three years of Friday nights there, something unpleasant happened to me there.
The club was having their anniversary party last weekend, with free flow of alcohol (albeit for just an hour and with a jacked-up cover charge) so it was no surprise to see the place overflowing with tight black jeans and converses. And young girls. And tight black jeans. Young girls in tight black jeans. Free flow of beer. Young girls and free alcohol.
Unfortunately, things didn't turn out as fine as it should have.
The party really starts at 1 a.m. when everyone is sufficiently pumped and warmed up to the music and the dancefloor gets really fun and sometimes, a little rowdy. When I say rowdy, it's never in the "HEY BRAH WERE U LOOKIN AT MAH GIRL" faux-Alpha Male kind of way. There's light moshing but as far as I know, everyone has looked out for one another because it's more or less the same old crowd who are genuinely enjoying themselves.
I managed not to get too kiasu on the free alcohol so mind you, I was still sober at that time. In fact, I wasn't buzzed enough to go flailing around like a moron like I would have liked myself to do on Friday nights. A relatively fast and loud song hits and it's the cue for the Same Old Crowd to do their usual bump-into-each-other thing but today's Free Flow Day and the pit got a little more violent than expected. Normally, I don't join much because no matter how much the guys there know each other, shit happens and I like my arms enough to keep them connected to my body.
So, it was a little more violent than usual but I thought, ahh what the fuck and jumped right in. Oh shit this is really quite violent, the pushing and bumping is more furious than a regular Friday night. Oh shit someone falls, I know him and a few of us help him up with the usual "Hey you alright?" and then the "HAHA YOU'RE WEAK!" from everyone after we are assured that he didn't get paralyzed by a stray elbow to his neck. And then we go back to what we were doing and I get bumped pretty far back.
And it was at that time when I found out that I've backed up into this girl who was part of a group who were just having their fun by the wall. With all the adrenaline rushing through my entire body, I'm not surprised that I didn't realise that I almost killed the poor girl who almost crashed through some glasses and other assorted dangerous hard pointy stuff. I was taking a break and being all "Whoa that was crazy" to my friends when I felt a tap on my shoulder and when I turned around,
BOP!I got a palm shoved right into my face. (I realise how I could have used a less 60's-comic-book-sound-effect other than "BOP!" but that's really how I remember the hearty shove into my face sounding like. Bop.) Of course, I was bewildered as fuck and even got ready to physically defend myself when I realised it was just this tiny girl in white (not taller than 160cm and not weighing more than a my left thigh) who gave my face a nice whack. Looking back, I'm so relieved I was calm enough not to bop! her in the face as that would have given me a very nice charge of assault on my name, which is something not very pleasant.
Of course, I would be lying if I said that I remained calm, ordered a Gin and Tonic, taking a small sip from it and asked her "Young lady, what do you think you're doing?" with a raised eyebrow. I shouted at her "WHAT WAS THAT FOR?" and her friends all crowded around us and shouted back at me, telling me how I pushed her friend and other stuff about me being not so much of a nice person, to say the least. I told the girl in white "Hey this is not your dancefloor." which was actually a reference to one of her friends spilling a drink on Nicholas before the Bopping on my face. Yes, I have noticed that group of girls earlier that night and I got rather annoyed by how nonchalant she was about pouring a quarter of a glass' content into my friend's back. But of course, not enough for me to cause bodily harm to any of them or to spoil my Friday night with.
And this is where the fun really began, a huge chunk of the crowd just stopped dancing and were trying to peel us away from each other but I was very insistent on having a good talk with the girls. I think this was what made my friends go "Oh you're drunk, forget it Arthur" because you know how drunk people always try to push the peacemakers away while trying to get within bopping distance of the other party? I was like that but God, I just got smacked in the face. ? And it didn't help that I had this "This is fucking ridiculous" half-smile going on, so that probably added to the "Wow he's a drunk motherfucker" image I had. But I got smacked in the face! Would
you have taken that lying down, even though it was from
just a girl?
After a lot of peeling away and persuasion from everyone around us, we gave it up and I went back to, you know, actually enjoying myself in the club. Even though I was kind of asking for it when I was singing "TAKE HER OUT" at the top of my lungs to Franz Ferdinand which was playing at that time but hey, that was slightly creative. After that song, I decided I really needed a break so I went out to look for Jules but the girls just had to start cheering and applauding the fact that I was leaving. I'm sorry but I just couldn't take that and I walked back (very calmly this time, may I add) to them, "What do you want, really?" Then it got pretty ugly again with them crowding around me and shouting stuff I can't make out so I just shook my head and tried to walk out again. I thought, I can only take so much in one night, this is enough.
The girls then started shouting at my friends, and that REALLY FUCKING pissed me off. I walked back again and told them, "Look, I'm
right here. What do you want to tell me?" The girl who was talking very angrily to Zhi Wen kept quiet and had nothing to say at all. Let's just call her "Angry Girl" for the ease of your understanding because she re-appears in the second part of the story. I had to settle the matter right there so I asked the one standing closest to me "Are you calm enough to talk to me?" and she said "Alright, let's go."
We went out and I was standing against the railing, with the entire group of them surrounding me and we proceeded to talk things out. The Calm One was a butch, called "Chris" and we even shook hands after introducing each other. That should give you a good idea of how level-headed she was, as compared to some of her friends. We ended up concluding that everything was accidental and no one really wanted to cause harm to the other party even though there were a lot of side-tracking from the other girls: "BUT YOU'RE A GUY AND SHE'S A GIRL!" (which was quickly shot down with my "Are you sure you want to bring that into this discussion?")
So, things settled down, Chris and I even managed to joke about how "that side of the dancefloor belongs to me, not you" but no, the night was even close to being over yet. Part 2 will be about the same incident, but with a slightly...erotic twist. I'm not trying to milk this for what it's worth but I really wrote a lot in this entry and I need a break so don't think that I really enjoy getting shoved in the face by random girls.
I'm amazed I managed to finish this entry without joking about how the most masculine member of the group of girls turned out, not ironically, to be the most rational one. Oh wait, I just made it. My bad.