Cheryl Tan - Sarong Party Girls

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 was 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.