Straight to Hell

by John LeFevre

  After a few more weeks of killing myself with long hours and longer nights, some subconscious survival instinct kicked in to remind me about Artie’s friend. I need a respite from my monotonous work-drink-sleep-repeat existence and would like to meet some more interesting people. Artie enthusiastically arranges a date.

  When the day comes, I’m excited, not because I think I might get lucky, but because I’m legitimately looking forward to broadening my social circles. As per my daily routine, I hand over my responsibilities to the New York desk around 7 p.m. and head out. I stop at the ATM machine in the lobby where Citibank Tower, ICBC Tower, Bank of China Tower, and Cheung Kong Center all converge. Walking out at this time of day is like running a gauntlet of temptation. It’s the witching hour for wayward bankers, and everyone seems to have a devious plan for the night. Unlike in London or New York, bankers in Asia are friendly with many of their competitors, and socialize together.

  I run into a friend and colleague, Ben, who suggests going out for a few drinks. He moved to Hong Kong not long before me, and as a fellow London transplant, he is also friendly with Artie. So, I counter by inviting him along to my drinks date. It’s a fairly good hedge. If the girl is hot and into me, I can tell Ben to fuck off and I know he will respect that. And if I have no bid, then we can ditch her and go out drinking together.

  “What!? You’re meeting Artie’s friend Lillian? Tonight? You motherfucker. He’s been trying to set me up with her for months. Fuck yeah, I’m coming.” So my hedge might have just turned into a bit of a sword fight, but oh well.

  We have thirty minutes to kill before I’m supposed to meet Lillian at the Captain’s Bar, which conveniently happens to be in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental, where I’m still living. We head upstairs to my room and pour a couple of Johnnie Walkers. I need to change anyway since I am still acclimating to the Hong Kong pollution and tropical humidity.

  By the time I emerge from a quick shower, Ben has made himself at home and already has a plateful of cocaine laid out and ready to go. “Hey, man, you want?” Well, isn’t that considerate of him.

  Forty-five minutes later, we’re still blowing through lines. That’s when it occurs to me, as I am sitting in my hotel room half dressed with another dude, ripping lines of cocaine, that a hot, young, rich girl is downstairs sitting by herself waiting for me.

  I am now going to show up late for a date, tipsy and high, and bring with me another guy as the third wheel, one who himself intends to turn me into the third wheel. This night is off to a great start.

  We have one bag of cocaine left, which should be plenty for a Tuesday night. The only problem is that, having torn the first bag, we have only one functional bag left, thus no ability to split up our supply. I lay out the ground rules: “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll keep the bag, and then when you want it, just signal me. And then you keep the bag until I signal you. The only rule is that you can’t do more than two lines until the other person has a turn. Agreed?”

  I already know this is going to be a disaster. The bathroom at the Captain’s Bar is probably one of the worst places ever to do drugs. The bar is ground zero for traveling business executives and captains of industry, and is otherwise packed, almost exclusively with banking colleagues and competitors. There’s only one stall and one urinal, and a constant parade of drunken pinkie-ring-wearing toffs stumbling in and out.

  Of course, Lillian is already there. Perfect. The place is packed and she has a table that fits the three of us. She is just as Artie has described—smoking hot, exuding Asian glamour and Hong Kong sex appeal, i.e., everything about her looks expensive.

  She’s not fazed at all by the sight of two of us. It’s as if she ordered one pizza and the delivery guy accidentally brought two.

  Things start off with the usual meet-my-friend icebreakers, from “How do you know Artie?” to “Where’d you go to school?” Two things are becoming very clear rather quickly: that she’s a really nice, cool girl who likes to party, and that both of us want her.

  Ten minutes in and we’re on our second round; the only thing holding us back is the pace at which the drinks can be brought to us. Ben makes eye contact with me and clears his throat. It doesn’t register. Five seconds later, he does it again, this time clearing his throat twice and nodding his head. I get it now. So I take the bag from my pocket, slip it into my napkin, and pass it to him underneath the table.

  “Excuse me,” he says, and gets up and heads to the bathroom. This is great; now I have her all to myself. I can’t help but notice that right after Ben gets into the bathroom, another guy goes in there too. Good: it’s going to take him a while to find a safe execution window.

  The more we drink, the less subtle our coke signaling becomes. We started with the double-throat-clear and a nod. Pretty soon, I have added a wink, and not long after that, Ben punctuates it with a table slap.

  After Ben returns from yet another lengthy disappearance, Lillian’s slightly bemused. “Are you okay?”

  I jump in. “Nah, he’s fine. He had lunch at that Indian place in SoHo, and it hasn’t really agreed with him.” Boom. That one’s a bit below the belt, but I can’t resist. Now, there is no way she’s thinking about fucking the guy with swamp ass.

  Meanwhile the drinks keep flowing. And maybe it’s because I’m drunk, but I’m thinking Lillian is getting into me.

  Pretty soon, it’s my turn to recharge again. This time, I opt for a single-throat-clear, double-wink, under-the-table-leg-kick. The only problem is that I accidentally kick the table stand with such force that Lillian’s martini glass crashes to the ground. I guess I am getting pretty wasted.

  “Fuck. I’m so sorry.”

  At this point, she’s a little suspicious or at least very confused. It’s a good thing she’s having a great time and knocking back cocktails along with us, albeit at a slower pace. Our waiter rushes over, apologizes profusely, and proceeds to sweep up the broken glass under Lillian’s feet, creating the perfect diversion for Ben to make the handoff to me once again. The bag is getting pretty light, so I know I want to make the most of this trip.

  “I’m sorry. Please excuse me. I will be right back.”

  Drunk as she is, Lillian is onto us. “Did you have lunch at that Indian place too?”

  “No. No. It’s nine p.m. so I just have to step out into the lobby real quick and dial in to this weekly conference call with New York. I’ll literally say a few words so they know I’m on, and then I’ll be right back.”

  With that, I shoot Ben a look that simply says, “Game. Set. Match. Motherfucker.”

  I move out into the part of the lobby that is still visible from Lillian’s vantage point, pretend to dial on my BlackBerry, and then pace slowly toward the stairs. Once I am confident that she can’t see me, I jog up the stairs and race to the mezzanine-level bathroom.

  Holy shit. I am in heaven. This is where having the home field advantage comes in handy. It’s a ghost town, and I’ve got five stalls to choose from. Dimmed lights, a sea of black marble, and oak stall dividers that go all the way down to the floor, creating a womb of comfort and privacy. I don’t want to just do coke here, I want to live here, that is, if I wasn’t already living upstairs. That’s when I see my double rainbow, the horizontal marble surface above the commode, giving me a perfect seat and a table. Incidentally, as a WASP, I am also comforted by the fact that the toilet paper end is folded into a neat triangle, a gentle reminder that the stall had been sanitized subsequent to its previous use.

  Relative to previous trips, I have ample time to carve out my allotted two lines, making them extra healthy to celebrate the splendor of my surroundings.

  I stroll back to the table and, seeing that Lillian is busy on her phone, quickly hand off what is left in the bag across to Ben. Now it’s time for me to focus on her. “Sorry about that. Should we get another round of drinks?” She shoots me one of those “hell yeah” lo
oks, and my heart melts a little bit. I think back to the Asian kids at boarding school, segregating themselves in the dining hall and spending all of their time in the library. Sitting among the blond girls and the lacrosse players, we thought we were the cool ones. We didn’t have a clue. Back in Hong Kong, those “nerds” are actually the kids with the green Lamborghinis and the nightclubs and the racehorses.

  In between all of these shenanigans, the three of us are having a really great time, a natural rapport that you wouldn’t have expected considering the way the evening started. She’s making plans to take us to the Jockey Club and on a junk trip, to this private kitchen and to some local dim sum house. Things are really looking up in terms of the quality of my Hong Kong experience.

  It doesn’t take long for Ben to give me the signal, this time starting off a bit more subdued—only a double-throat-clear and a nod. It’s apparent that he’s pretty drunk and has forgotten that I’ve already handed the bag back to him. Trying to help him out, I cough in response, while pointing to his pocket with the hand that I use to cover up my cough. Slightly more frustrated, he goes again—a double-throat-clear, a nod, and a wink. So I respond back again, this time with a throat-clear, and then I thrust my head forward as if to point in the direction of his pocket with my chin. I do my best to get through to him, but he’s clearly getting increasingly aggravated and confused.

  He remains undeterred. Losing any sense of subtlety whatsoever, he goes all-in with a double-throat-clear, followed by two nods with simultaneous winking. Just to make sure that I see him, he takes his index finger and points directly at his eye with each wink in exaggerated slow motion. He’s hammered.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Lillian snaps, implicating both of us but glaring only at him. “Are you guys doing drugs? Because I like to have fun, but I am not cool with anyone who feels the need to use drugs.”

  “What? No. Of course not. We don’t do that,” I jump in, adding some confused-looking body language. “Let’s get some more drinks.”

  This is where things get a bit hazy for me. I experience a complete and total blackout. The next thing I know, I’m in a bed. Next to me is a girl. It takes me a few more seconds to process; it’s Lillian. I look around; it’s not the Mandarin. Why the fuck didn’t I just go upstairs to my room? That’s the entire point of drinking in my hotel bar. Apparently, despite everything and in spite of myself, I have somehow ended up back at Lillian’s apartment and in her bed.

  Amazingly, I have also come out of a blackout just as things are starting to get hot and heavy; I didn’t miss a thing. The plan has worked out after all. I sit up and look around, just to make sure I haven’t emerged into the middle of some freaky shit. Thankfully, Ben’s nowhere to be found.

  Things are just about to happen, when I realize that between the quantities of alcohol and the cocaine, there is zero chance of me being able to perform right now. To buy some time, I employ my go-to move in this scenario and head down south. This gives me a chance to make sure she’s satisfied, while also freeing me up to try to jump-start my own engine.

  A solid twenty minutes pass, and my ignition isn’t even turning over. Fuck. I pull myself up, drenched in sweat from the suffocating bowels of an obviously expensive duvet. “Sorry. I’ll be right back,” I say as I rush toward the bathroom. I’m not typically self-conscious but it’s always a little weird walking around a girl’s bedroom totally nude on a first date.

  I lock myself in her bathroom, turn on the lights, and just stare at myself in the mirror. I imagine this is how Larry Bird or Rickey Henderson used to get himself psyched up before a big game.

  I run the faucet so that she can’t hear me, and then I start masturbating feverishly, with the only objective of marching back out there like a champion. That’s when I look down and see my crumpled jeans on the floor at my feet. Staring back at me, peeking out of the front pocket, is a small white baggie. Of course, I have no idea how it ended up back with me, but miracles do happen. Not that this will in any way help my cause in this situation, but in my inebriated state, I decide that the right thing to do is to rip as big a line as that small bag will afford me.

  “Hey, are you okay?” She’s so sweet.

  “Yeah, just washing my face. I’ll be right out.”

  Apparently, Lillian also has two dogs—little fucking ­Pomeranians—and they’ve just emerged from who-knows-where and are now scratching and sniffing around in front of the bathroom door. But, at this point, I’m not going to let anything stop me.

  I dump the contents of the bag onto the sink’s edge. There’s surprisingly more in there than I had thought. Using the bottom flat edge of her face wash, I shape the small pile into what loosely resembles a line and then kill it.

  After that, I get back to the mission at hand—getting myself hard. The dogs clearly sense something strange happening and start yapping in sporadic little pips. That’s not helping my cause. They continue, speaking to me in Pomeranian: Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher. Baseball. Kevin Spacey. Cock-blocking asshole mutts.

  I tear open the empty bag, turn it inside out, and lick its remnants. Surely, that’ll give me the boost I need. Once again, my logic is totally backward.

  “You’re not doing drugs, are you?”

  Here I am, locked in a stranger’s bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror, sweat pouring down my face, white powder all over my nose, and my limp cock in my hand.

  I’ve been in Asia for all of eight weeks.

  Carpet or Cock

  Living in the Mandarin Oriental is great while I get acclimated, but after a few months, I’m ready to move into my own apartment, which according to my company’s housing allowance turns out to be a three-bedroom on the forty-sixth floor of a brand-new luxury Mid-Levels tower. Bear in mind that the average-sized apartment for a family of four in Hong Kong is approximately 550 square feet, and that I’m coming in at over three times that size, as a single guy who will spend most of his time in the office or on an airplane. That, added to the legacy of decades of colonial rule, may help explain why there is some resentment toward expats in Hong Kong, particularly in the office.

  My first order of business, after taking down half the Minotti store, is to find a suitable maid. There is no shortage of experts to guide me in this process. During my many “Welcome to Asia” dinners, this becomes a frequent topic of conversation. What’s the deal with Macau? I hear Thailand is full of hoi polloi? Can you recommend a good tailor? How do I find a reliable and trustworthy maid?

  During one such dinner, I am sitting next to , the head of fixed income for Japan, who is visiting Hong Kong for the week. He doesn’t even live here, and he’s an expert on the subject. “Here’s what you want to do—go to one of those agencies and they’ll give you a phone book full of headshots to choose from. Then pick a young, hot Filipina girl.”

  Apparently this advice comes tested. A friend of his has a maid who, having failed as an aspiring model, chose the next best line of work for a person in that situation: working as a live-in helper rather than have her visa revoked and be sent back to the Philippines. Among many other things, leading up to and including sexual favors, this guy (in all fairness, he’s a broker, not a banker) likes to make her dress up in ridiculously skimpy outfits for his weekly poker nights.

  “This way, if you strike out at the bars and come home wasted and alone, all is not lost. Trust me, she knows the drill.”

  The guy sitting across from us chimes in. “Yessss! But the trick is to make sure that she’s not too hot; you don’t want her thinking she actually has a chance with you and then getting jealous when you bring other girls home.”

  The next night, I’m having yet another dinner, but this time with more of the working-level capital markets origination bankers. These guys are considerably more risk averse; they don’t have the stomach for sales and trading and lack the smarts for M&A. Just to be provocative, I throw the
advice out to the table. “I think I’m going to get a hot maid; she’ll know the drill.”

  “That’s a terrible fucking idea,” Rob Chen jumps in. “I’m married so I can’t say that I’ve ever tried it. However, we did make the mistake of hiring a young maid. She wasn’t even hot; she just wasn’t terribly ugly. One afternoon, when my wife and kids are out of town, I have to run home unexpectedly to grab my passport. I walk into my apartment only to find my maid, down on her knees, giving some random guy a blow job—on my daughter’s bed. There he is, just sitting there, with his sweaty ass soiling my daughter’s Little Mermaid comforter, staring back at me. I wish I could say he looked shocked, as if this was some crazy, fucked-up situation, but he just stared back totally unfazed, like it was just another day in Hong Kong. Maybe he thought I was next in line.”

  It turns out his maid had been turning tricks in the apartment with the steady stream of construction workers in the building for the various renovation projects.

  “Ugly and old is the only way to go,” he concludes.

  I’m sure as hell grateful I had this conversation; my mind is made up. Fortunately for me, Dennis Lipton offers to let me have his maid, Fé, once he completes his move back to the US. She’s old and she’s hideous—perfect. The best part is that, having worked under the watchful and demanding eye of Lipton’s wife, she’s very well trained.

  Maids in Hong Kong generally work fourteen hours a day, six days a week, fifty weeks a year. Their minimum wage is set at US$500 per month by the Hong Kong government, which coincidentally, also tends to be their maximum wage. For the most part, they live in storage rooms (called maid’s quarters) connected to the kitchen, rooms that are often scarcely larger than a closet. For many of them, their quarters are so small that in order to lie flat, they fold out a cot and sleep in the doorway straddling the kitchen and their room. The designated space for the toilet, sink, and shower is often overlapping, such that the shower nozzle hangs down directly over the sink and toilet.