Work has thankfully slowed down a bit…
Well, that’s not quite true. There’s just as much work as ever, but I’ve decided to return to a more humane schedule regardless.
Thursday night, I went to Brix for the first time – along with a colleague – on the recommendation of one of my clients, who told me it’s his favourite club in Singapore. Brix is fairly notorious for being full of working girls, but my client told me this is less true on weeknights. He said Thursday night is a good night to go, and this was corroborated by some female friends (who happened to add that in any case the working girls there are usually really cute). All my friends also described the club as being fairly “upscale,” with a good lineup of DJs and cover bands playing solid R & B.
The buzz on Brix turned out to be true. Inside, there were working girls everywhere, clinging to creepy old European guys (who, incidentally, outnumbered every other demographic in the place). Mostly, I find I’m uncomfortable observing interactions between these two tribes, although on this night it was interesting to see that even working girls have their standards.
I saw several of them dismiss a heavily-perspiring, aggressively unfashionable (white shoes, golf shirt tucked into jeans) guy on the dance floor, and I watched one girl shake her head at a decent-looking guy as she made a sign-language gesture regarding his wedding ring.
My friends were also right about the music. The band was taking a break when we arrived, but the house DJ was spinning out the likes of Marvin Gaye, Stevie, the Black-Eyed Peas. The band started their next set with Sly Stone, followed by some kind of Greek folk slash dance jam fusion (the lead singer was a funky-looking Eurasian woman whose hair was finely braided with strands of coloured ribbon, George Clinton style).
We stood there soaking up the music for a little while, and then there was a tap on my shoulder. Three college girls had come up, and they were asking me if I would keep an eye on their handbags while they danced. I’d never gotten such an “assignment” in a club before, and I didn’t really know what to do except say, “sure.”
A song or two later, they pulled me out onto the floor to join them. As we danced, I noticed they were wearing CLEO bracelets. I asked them about these, and they said they’d just been to the bachelors’ party. I’d completely forgotten when the CLEO event was happening, and the girls went on to tell me the after party was going on next door as we spoke.
I still feel a little sad to have missed it. If I were a few years younger (like, not older than the other 49 bachelors maybe), and if I’d had a few hours of free time last month, I’m sure I would have gotten into the whole experience. The CLEO staff were hard-working, sweet and a lot of fun. Not to mention a group of cute, eligible bachelorettes in their own right. The few other bachelors I met – including Hali (the second oldest) and Brendan (the winner) – seem like great guys.
Taking a second look at it, my bachelor bail-out posting from a few weeks ago sounds so gloomy – and even bitter. I was really, really burnt out when I wrote it, and it doesn’t paint a very accurate picture of my feelings, now or then. It’s true that I felt a little outside the demographic of the group of bachelors, so it seemed like I’d have to spend a little extra energy to fit in. If I’d had any spare energy at all last month, I would have given it a go. I would have liked to have totally embraced the experience and lived it fully. When it was all said and done, I would have liked to have written a funny little piece about it. But I was simply out of gas.
Being selected at all will go down as a great memory, and the magazine itself is one of the best life-souvenirs I could imagine.
Anyway, the three college girls at Brix got a chuckle out of the fact they were dancing with “uncle bachelor” and one of them offered a kind compliment: She said that if I’d been among the guys at the party, the ‘hottie factor’ would have been higher. Very sweet of her.
