Cheryl Tan: Sarong Party Girls

“Jazz, you OK?” Sher had finally come back from wherever she’d gone. Neither of us had seen Imo—or Louis, for that matter—in a while.

“You look a bit… too high,” she said, cupping my face.

“No lah, I’m OK. Don’t worry. I just need some air.”

I turned back around again, leaning against the cool stainless steel railing that kept us from falling over onto the sprawling dance floor beneath. I could feel Sher rubbing my back. It felt good. Her face leaned in next to mine. We both looked over at the floor beneath us, filled with bodies jammed next to each other. I couldn’t remember the last time we went to a club and didn’t have a VIP table—we were all getting older already lah. Going clubbing on the main levels is for the youngsters—us old birds have no energy anymore to push and squeeze and get noticed in such a crowd. Sher was pointing at something below, a group of Ah Bengs in a small circle with one of them in the middle. Each one stood firmly in a spot, holding on to his pleated pants waistband with his right hand, as if trying to steady himself while he rocked violently from the waist upward. The other hand was raised up high waving above his head. Even though we were one floor up, we could hear them shouting, “Yo ah yo! Yo ah yo!”

Aiyoh—this phrase so old already still want to say! Back in the eighties everyone was lousy at dancing lah, so the main way was just to yo back and forth to the music and shout “Yo ah yo!” Nowadays, everyone knows much more about dancing, but these Ah Bengs somehow are still out there doing this nonsense.

“Oi!” Sher suddenly shouted, leaning over slightly as she waved and pointed at the group. “Yah—you, Ah Beng! This one not 1985 anymore, you know. You still Yo ah yo? Lau pok lah!” The Ah Bengs stared up, looking confused. When they saw Sher waving her third finger at them, they started to whisper to each other, holding their hands up to cover their mouths as they talked. Typical brainless type—we are so far up, how to hear anything?

My god. It was too much. I started laughing, at first just a little bit, but then when Sher started laughing also, we held on to each other and just started laughing louder and harder. I even slapped my hand on my thigh so hard I could feel it getting hot from how painful it was. But then suddenly I started to feel something else—it began in my chest. A burp, I thought? Next thing I knew I was leaning over the railing, shooting crap out of my mouth like one of those big fire engine hoses—I could taste Chivas, and some green tea mixed with bits of the noodles my mum made me eat before coming out.

I remember two things happening as it started—Sher’s left hand catching my shoulder as I bent over, and her right hand quickly grabbing and holding back my hair. She waited one minute for all of it to really finish before saying, “Eh, we’d better faster siam.” When I opened my eyes, I saw the Ah Bengs all staring up at us, pointing and shouting. A few of them were touching the tops of their heads and then pointing even more. I could hear myself start to laugh again as I wiped the corner of my mouth, making them point even harder. Then one of them pointed toward the staircase and they all started to move. Sher grabbed my hand, swiped my handbag from the booth and we both started running for the secret back VIP exit, not even stopping to see where Louis was so we could give him his two air kisses goodbye. We didn’t stop laughing until we reached the roti prata stall ten minutes away.

“Aiyoh, Jazzy,” Sher said as she clinked her mug of hot ginger tea to mine when we had laughed until there was no more sound coming out and we actually had to buy a twenty-cent packet of tissues to wipe our tears dry. “You tonight ah,” she said, “were really number one.”

So, when it came down to it, when Sher begged me to come to her wedding, after all the nights we’d been through over the years, how could I not give her face?

Outside the wedding banquet hall, Imo, Fann and I were standing around, looking chio and dressed in gold just like Sher texted us to, and saying hallo to her relatives all. “Auntie, congrats ah?” I said when I saw Sher’s mum.

Auntie looked like she’d lost some weight, maybe to fit into the turquoise and gold cheongsam she was wearing. She looked at me a little bit sad, like she wanted to say something. I felt bad lah. I had seen her almost every week since primary school, though I had been avoiding their place for months. But we both knew that now wasn’t the right time. So she just smiled sweetly and squeezed my hand. “I think Sher wants us all to line up right on the inside by the door,” she said, leading me through the large double doors to the ice-cold banquet hall and pointing to the area just to the right.

The music started the moment I took my spot. I almost started to cry—I only needed to hear five beats to know what it was: Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting.” Sher and I used to sing it all the time in secondary school. And then also after that lah—but by then the song was not so happening anymore, so we secretly sang it, like, only when we were in the house type. (Outside the house, if we hear people singing it, we’ll just blink and stare at them as if they are bloody kampong idiots. Which is true lah.)

After I didn’t do so well in my A levels and I applied to uni in Australia, Sher would always say, “Just think of Richard Marx and this song. We will always be best friends even if you go. Don’t cry, don’t cry.” In the end, something lucky happened—I failed the entrance test, so I kena stuck in Singapore anyway.

But why would Sher purposely play this song at this moment?

The lights dimmed and a small, sharp spotlight came on, swirling around the room in big loops before stopping at the doorway. The circle of light got larger and larger until suddenly two figures stepped into it. Everyone in the room started clapping.

Sher was glowing in the dress she had eyed for five years now, the one that was slim and silky, designed to look exactly like Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s negligee-style wedding dress. “Marry an ang moh prince must have ang moh — style princess dress!” she had said when she showed the magazine photo to us a few years ago and we all told her the dress looked too plain.

In the end, Sher was right about the dress, of course—when I saw her stepping through the door to her wedding banquet, she looked just like a princess. Her hair was done exactly like the photos of Carolyn that she had cut out and stuck on her mirror—tied in a loose bun in the back with some of her fringe draping across the side of her face.

I saw her looking around the room to the sides of the door, looking for someone. Looking for me. But just before she caught my eye, I turned away.

Ang moh princess, my foot. I couldn’t see her husband yet but I knew who he was. Mr. Lim Beng Huat. Black spiky hair, oval wire-rim glasses when he wasn’t wearing contacts, bumpy button nose. Rolex watch, one gold tooth. Typical Chinese guy.

I couldn’t even look at Sher. I just kept thinking over and over, There goes her Chanel baby.

Of all the bosses in the world, Albert is not the worst.

He’s quite funny lah. But definitely not the worst. Sure, there was the time when he almost got in trouble for rubba-ing the neck of a new NUS grad when she was on deadline one day. It wasn’t even anything special—everybody knows he does that to everyone, after all. But this guniang happened to be one of those modern women types—you know, those girls you are hearing about more nowadays, those who cannot take a joke. When she got angry and said she wanted to file an official complaint, he just laughed and explained to her that aiyoh, that’s just the way he is—just being the fatherly uncle type, wanting to help people feel less stressed when they are on deadline so he just goes around the newsroom giving them neck massages. To make sure she wouldn’t really go and file a complaint, after that, for a while, Albert had to go around rubba-ing various people around deadline, just to prove that he’s not lying. Older women, ugly ones, even guys—everyone got his special neck rubba. My god, for a while we were all a bit uncomfortable, but really—we had no choice. In the end, the girl had no case lah. And Albert took us all out to Front Page for big drinks when she finally quit and it was all over.