Sarong Party Girls

by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

  Albert took a slow sip of his whiskey and set down the glass, sighing again. He put his right hand on my thigh for a moment, thought for a minute, then removed it and took my hand instead.

  “Jazzy, how old are you now? Twenty-­four?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure where this was going but it didn’t feel good. Twenty-­four is that age when he turns his assistants into pumpkins! Luckily I had two kopis that morning so I could still think quite quickly. No matter how bad twenty-­four is, twenty-­six is worse! So I just nodded and smiled as sweetly as I could. At that moment I really wished I had one of those Japanese-­girl dimples. Everyone knows that Albert likes his girls fair, with big eyes and a cute smile—­Japanese-­y lah.

  “What do you want in life?” Albert asked. He was still looking at my legs; I could feel his thumb stroking my fingers.

  I started to feel a bit weird at this point. Sure, after too many drinks at Front Page, Albert sometimes got touchy-­feely with the girls—­at those times of the night, even I would sometimes get some of that, regardless of his big policy about not shitting where you eat. But whenever that happened, Albert was usually just very huggy, sometimes maybe kissing you on the cheek—­you know, playful shit. But this time, he wasn’t drunk and he was looking quite serious. My god—­would I actually have to consider whether I would have to say yes to my boss or not?

  “Well, I like working for you . . .” I said.

  “But Jazzy, you are a smart girl, you know—­you must have bigger goals, right?” he asked.

  This, I wasn’t sure how to handle. Of course I have a goal—­but obviously I can’t tell him I am hoping to meet some expat Prince Charming and live a better life, right? Not that many Singaporean guys are so understanding about life ambitions like that. They think it’s some big insult to them that we don’t want to marry an Asian guy, like they’re not good enough or whatever fuck. (OK, that may be true. But even so, they really shouldn’t be so petty and take it personally. Life is just like that.)

  So I just said, “Eh, boss, I’m very happy where I am—­you don’t need to worry about me. OK?”

  Albert sighed again. “You are not getting younger anymore, Jazzy—­you have so much potential,” he said, squeezing my hand and patting my thigh. I guess the conversation was over.

  “I just want you to carefully consider what I’ve asked you,” he added, leaning back now. “It’s time to grow up. If you really don’t have any other options—­have you thought about working in circulation?”

  chapter 4

  First, we figure out the Chinese bitches.

  At least that was the plan. (Part one of it anyway.) If girls from Mainland China were coming over here to try and steal our men, we need to figure out how they’re doing it! I had texted Fann and Imo first thing Friday morning before going to work that day—­I’d just laid out my strategy to them the night before after all, so it was still on my mind. Besides, I was trying to find a way to distract myself from my mum, who I suspected would try to drag me out to the wet market before work that morning. My god, that woman really had never met a chicken backside she didn’t like—­whenever I go marketing with her, each chicken backside also must stop and look ten times before walking on. “Meet outside Lunar—­11 p.m.,” I said to the girls in my text. “Last one buys first round.”

  Then, just when I was lying there, thinking of our strategy, what to do tonight at the Lunar, a club that we’d heard was just filled with China girls, my mum of course decided to bang on my door and nag at me. Hello, ­people here have a serious mission, you know—­after giving the girls that big lecture last night with all those Excel spreadsheet-­type points, we need to follow through tonight!

  “Huay ah! Sleeping still?” my mum was shouting. I could tell from how her voice was getting louder that she was starting to open my door and pop her head in. Aiyoh, I don’t know why, after so many years already she’s still calling me by my Chinese name. My god, Ah Huay is so cheena! I told her how many times already that my name is now Jazeline, but she still catch no ball. Before I started working, I changed my name already—­not in my passport lah. That would be too much work. But starting from secondary school I already told everyone—­from now on, just call me Jazeline. This name is quite power, you know—­I know I made it up lah but it’s a name that nobody else has! Jazeline is not Jasmine or Celine or any boring name like that—­it’s damn special. In the whole of Singapore, only I have this name. When ­people hear it, they confirm know they’d better pay attention to me. All these things, I told my mum so many times already. If she wants me to succeed outside of her small world, how can I do it without an ang moh name? Why she cannot understand?

  “So lazy!” my mum said, shouting even louder when she saw I was still in bed. Aiyoh. “I need your help to buy things from the market—­you better hurry up otherwise I got nothing to make for your pa’s dinner tonight!” She didn’t even wait for me to say anything before slamming the door. I knew that if I didn’t just jump up to follow her, she confirm would come back in two minutes so—­no choice is no choice.

  By the time I quickly put on some clean shorts and T-­shirt and brushed my teeth, my mum was already sitting by the door holding her wallet, wearing her slippers, looking damn grumpy. When she saw me come out, she just jumped up and started walking out the door. I swear, this woman moves faster than anybody I know.

  When we walked to the wet market, I realized how late it was—­no wonder she was in such a bad mood. If you want to go to the wet market, you must 6:30 A.M. wake up and fasterly go. Eight A.M. then go marketing? At that hour on a weekday, a lot of market uncles got air also they won’t bother selling to you. They’re tired already—­time to close shop and balik kampong.

  So by the time we started walking around, her favorite fish uncle was holding a fat red rubber hose, washing his stall and splashing pink water everywhere. Even though my mum tried to smile at him a bit, he had nothing to sell her. “Sorry lah—­even my reserve fish all no more already,” he said, actually looking apologetic. “Hallo, now what time already! You now then come?” Luckily her second-­choice fish uncle still had a few pieces and the pork uncle also hadn’t packed up his stall otherwise my mum will confirm spend the whole weekend saying I made her to go to NTUC and buy not-­so-­fresh fish and pork.

  I was feeling quite sotong at this moment. Damn tired, first of all—­didn’t sleep enough, of course, since I ended up having more drinks with the girls last night to celebrate our plan. On top of that, my mum was walking so fast through the wet market, trying to get to her vegetable boy and the flower auntie before they closed shop. Since some uncles had already started cleaning up, the floor was damn slippery; running water sloshed around our toes. But my mum was not affected, of course—­she just glided through the market as if she were going down a slide. Guniang over here was just desperately trying to keep up—­and not splash any pink water on my legs.

  Whenever my mum stopped, she would try and give me some lesson. “Huay ah, when you buy chicken or duck ah, if the uncle doesn’t kill it in front of you, you must remember to always press the skin a bit—­got bounce back then it’s good. Never bounce back then don’t buy. Too old already.” Or, “Make sure you see the color of the fish eyes before you buy—­cloudy one means not fresh.”

  All these things—­I don’t know why she’s wasting her saliva to tell me. I’ve heard it all how many times already! Finally, I got a bit fed up. “Ma, you damn long-­winded lah,” I said when she kept trying to push a winter melon into my hands to make me feel it. “If you use less saliva, maybe you can finish your shopping faster.”

  Wah—­that’s when she got angry.

  “You think I’m just being naggy for the sake of nagging you, is it? Ah Huay ah, you how old already? You won’t always have your mum here to buy food for you, cook for you every day, you know? One day when you get married, who is going to go shopping for you? You’d
better learn now otherwise nobody will marry you! Or worse, you get married and your husband so unhappy he divorce you. Then your life will really be over. With men—­you must always know how to feed and pamper them otherwise their stomachs will lead them outside.”

  I almost wanted to laugh. Me? Go shopping in a wet market? As if! When Jazzy gets married, a Filipino maid is going to do all her marketing. Some more, the kind of shopping my family will do is confirm not shopping at a wet market—­it’s the “drive your car and go to Cold Storage on Sunday with the kids” type of shopping. More expensive also no problem. You think Jazzy’s husband is going to want food bought in a low-­class wet market with bloody water and chicken shit all over the floor?

  I know this is all my mum always expected from her lousy life—­in fact, all things considered, it’s much better than the life that her mother had. Her ma grew up on one of those old pig farms! But please—­my mum should know that their lives will not be my life.

  “Ma, please lah—­this kind of lesson, I don’t need to learn,” I told her.

  My mum stopped walking. Right in the middle of the wet market corridor some more. When I saw her eyes, my god, I knew that now I’m really going to get scolded.

  “You ah—­I tell you, just dream dream dream only,” she said loudly. “You think I don’t know what you think you can get? Some ang moh prince to come and bring you home with them, far far away from me and your pa? You better wake up your head, Ah Huay! Once we are gone, you’ll have no one to take care of you if these are the kinds of guys you want. These ang mohs—­they only want one thing. When they take already, they don’t need you anymore. You think I don’t have eyes, is it? Cannot see what is going on with you? See you how late then come home all the time? You think I don’t know what you do when you are outside, is it? See how you dress, put lipstick and perfume all? You think the neighbors don’t ask me why you always have strange ang moh guys sending you home so late? I tell you—­seeing your daughter do all these kinds of thing, break your pa’s heart only. He want to talk to you also don’t have words to say.”

  I, on the other hand, had many things I wanted to say, but my mum had talked for so long and was clearly so angry that I was scared she was going to cry. In fact, ­people walking by us were staring a bit by then. If she cried, then habis. The whole neighborhood will start gossiping about how Jazzy made her mum cry in the wet market.

  “Ma, please don’t be upset,” I quickly said. “Sorry, sorry. I promise I will listen.”

  My mum looked like she didn’t really believe me, but she also didn’t know what else she could say.

  “One more thing,” she said, “you’d better watch your language, Ah Huay. I heard you say the word damn just now—­do you know how chor lor that is? That word is a men’s word, you know—­women are not supposed to use it! Please—­don’t shame your pa and me by saying bad words like that.”

  I guess it’s a good thing she never spies on my texts with me and my friends. My god—­with all the kani nah here and cock there, Ma confirm will vomit blood.

  Like that, I guess my mum’s lecture was finished. So she turned around and started walking again.

  We were both damn quiet on the walk home—­guniang made sure to walk a few steps behind the old lady so we had no eye contact. I didn’t want anything to somehow get her started up again.

  Her words, even though I don’t agree, actually upset me a bit, I have to say. Clearly she and Pa think I’m no better than one of those KTV lounge girls. And obviously, I know they worry about me. Pa spent his whole life working in some cock factory as some lousy low-­level manager and never earned that much lah. And Ma—­I’m not sure if being a hairdresser in one of those super old slightly sleazy hairdressing parlors really counts as a job since she basically earned peanuts. And once they’re gone, I’m really on my own since I’m the only child. But this one is also their fault. Who asked them to take the government’s population control campaign so seriously? All the government posters clearly said “Two is enough” but they wanted to be super patriotic so they just stopped at one. So now, if I end up alone, whose fault is that?

  Also, hello, she should know that our guy friends and the ang mohs we meet and fool around with don’t pay us for anything. We are free modern women! (Drinks are just drinks lah—­even at three hundred dollars a bottle, it doesn’t count. Everyone is just having a good time.) And please, it’s not like we were like those China girls who were coming to Singapore in herds to marry rich guys. In fact, it’s girls like that who were pushing us to go out that night. Our goal: to find out how Mainland girls hook our men.

  When I sat down to think about getting to the bottom of how these China girls operate—­it seemed very straightforward. If you want to understand the mind of the enemy, then you must bravely go into their territory! If they want to come over to our country and steal our men, then we must invade their turf and learn what their strategy is. And with these girls, everyone knows there are many places where they like to do their business. But for the more decent ones—­or rather the ones who try to attract guys in decent areas that me and the girls would actually show our faces in—­there’s only one place that we can go to see the most daring (and successful) cases: Lunar, in crazy Clarke Quay.

  Of course, everybody knows about Lunar. The location of this club, I tell you, is super primo. It’s right in the middle of Clarke Quay, where—­confirm—­all the most happening bars and clubs are right now in Singapore. And on Friday or Saturday night when you want to meet your friends outside a club first before going in together—­you know, so when you walk in the door, ­people automatically know you’re with a group instead of being some fucker who has no friends—­usually you will choose a meeting place in the middle of everything. So ­people always just say, “Come, we meet outside Lunar.”

  So that Friday night, after guniang here got ready steady nice and sexy, I quickly hopped in a taxi. Looking out the smudgy window, I wondered how everything got so boring. After all these years in Singapore, honestly, I’m quite tired of the scenery lah. All the buildings look the same—­every year even if new ones get added to the skyline also at the end of the day, nothing looks different. If I knew this early on, aiyoh, Jazzy here confirm would have become an architect, man—­get paid big bucks to design new buildings that look exactly like everyone else’s? This one really is win. Half-­sleeping at work also can become millionaire. But then sometimes at night, like now, looking out of a taxi as it’s zooming through traffic, past the Singapore river, past the stupid tourists and expat drunks on Boat Quay, past the flashing lights of the towering bank buildings, OK lah, this is when I think, maybe this island is not so bad. I guess once I meet my ang moh and move to London or Melbourne, maybe—­maybe—­I will miss this longkang.

  Things were damn happening by the time I got to Clarke Quay. The moment I opened my taxi door, ­people were rushing over to try and snatch the cab before it got to the taxi queue. I never understand these ­people. Now only eleven o’clock—­hallo, most of the clubs are only just starting to fill up with ­people besides Ah Bengs and their smelly girlfriends. Why would anyone be so toot as to leave right now?

  Although, we should all be glad that some losers were actually leaving and clearing some space. Even though it was still quite early, the wide open-­air concourse slicing through the heart of Clarke Quay was jammed with the usual sea of warm bodies—­each one feeling all the more sticky as I pushed through because of all the sleeveless tops and too-­short skirts that everyone was wearing. This was the part that I hated the most. Technically it should only take about three minutes to walk from the taxi queue to Lunar—­and hallo, guniang here is talking about doing this in my four-­inch heels, OK! But because of all these babis and wannabes, the walk always takes damn fucking long. Like tonight lah—­I purposely planned my outfit so I could look super chio in front of all these China girls at Lunar, but the crowd at Clarke Quay w
as unbelievable! By the time I got to Lunar, not only were my arms coated with this thin film of Ah Beng sweat, but I also almost fell down from trying to avoid some lumpar flicking around his cigarette as he pushed through.

  Sher, Fann, Imo and I—­of course we’d been to Clarke Quay many many times. We never want to admit it lah, but we’d been to so many of these clubs so often that we usually don’t need to pay cover charge to get in. Once the bouncer sees us, he just knows to let us in. Unlike those ­people who come in, order one drink and sit in one corner, watching other ­people dance and go crazy all night because they themselves are too shy or too low-­class to participate, these bouncers know that not only will we buy drinks ourselves but also we usually dress nicely enough that other guys confirm will buy us more drinks. Of all the clubs though, the one place we had never been was Lunar. If you are a guy, and you specifically want to meet a China girl—­like, not one from one of those red-­light shophouses in Geylang or a sleazy KTV lounge, then Lunar is the place to go.

  So, why would we ever have reason to go there? Those guys who want China girls usually are not the type to chase us. Singaporean girls to them are too bossy, too opinionated, not quiet enough. But, as I told the girls, if we want to understand the competition, then Lunar is confirm must.

  Louis had been to Lunar a few times before—­China girls actually prefer rich Singaporean guys to ang mohs. I also don’t know why. Sometimes I think maybe they’re scared of big cocks or something. Or maybe they’re not used to so much hair? Sometimes it’s true lah—­ang moh guys, if you rubba them too long, it’s like fucking sandpaper. Anyway, when Louis goes to Lunar—­he confirm can always score. For these China girls, the other thing also is that Singaporean guys are easier to control. Ang moh guys often want to be independent and all that shit. When they meet you, even if they really like you, they usually want to date a few ­people at a time type. After months and months where you end up having to hang out with their boring friends for all these nights playing darts and pretending that you like drinking Guinness, then maybe they suddenly will wake up one morning and think, okay lah, this girl not so bad—­can go steady.