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Last time we left our heroes heading towards Club Black, full of beer and empty of sense. Club Black is
the sister venue to Black Pagoda. It’s dark and loud, with an open feel, and best of all, later in the night
they put on shows. Does it feel just a tiny bit disquieting? Maybe. It’s certainly not a typical venue, it
feels more like an after-hours club.
By now I am full to the gills with beer, so I do the obvious thing – stop. Haha, of course not, I move on to
Jack and Coke. The show is in progress: the stage full of girls clad in body glitter and high heels. As we
lazily survey the goings-on, a couple of young friendlies move in. As is to be expected, Mr Nites has
photographed them before, so conversation flows, drinks are bought, and innuendos are insinuated.
JM’s temporary best friend is getting frisky, and she leans in and gives him a cuddle. As she pulls back
it’s obvious that her body glitter has left an imprint all over his front. He motions me over and we chortle
at the glitter now covering his clothes.
Fired up by 14 beers, 2 Jack and Cokes and a lifetime of never turning down a chance to be an imbecile,
I grab the girl next to me, lift her up and swing her around, finishing by rubbing her front on my torso like
a sexy pan scrub. “You call that a glitter rub, THIS is a glitter rub”. After we agree that I am clearly the
bigger idiot of the pair, it doesn’t take us long to realise that this might be a problem down the line, as the glitter seems to be sort of everywhere already. Mai Bpen Rai – we plough on, eventually finishing up and heading off home.
Mid-morning the following day, I finally stir. Lying in bed I notice the glint of glitter on my sheets, and
upon pulling them back realise the full horror of what I’ve done: it’s a spangly version of the famous
Godfather scene, but for horse’s head read an ocean of glitter. A flutter of panic grips me: the night’s
excesses flood back, and my steady girl is arriving this afternoon. First I need to survey the damage.
My clothes, discarded in a pile, are covered; I seem to have had the foresight to have a shower when I
got in, so now I’ve got Liberace’s shower; my phone and wallet are heavily bejazzled; the money IN MY
WALLET is glittery. I message Mr Nites. Sure enough he’s in the same situation.
I set to work. Three hours of laundry, mopping, showering and scrubbing later, the glitter has gone from
ubiquitous to merely blindingly obvious. Given that my girl is jealous, paranoid and ever-vigilant – i.e. a
Thai woman – I have to devise an at least superficially plausible story. Befuddled by the remnants of the
14 San Migs et al, I shamble through the recesses of my brain for an excuse. Two mugs of tea and a
bacon butty later, suddenly the pieces fall into place. Songkran, water ban, people partying, tourists.
Bingo! “We were out for Songkran last night and tourists were letting off party poppers of glitter instead
of water”. Genius!
My girl arrives and I get out in front of the problem. “You won’t believe what happened last night” I say,
“….”. A warm, glittery smile spreads across my face at the success of the deception; a success that lasts
exactly the amount of time it took to say it. “Looks more like a girl’s body makeup to me” she retorts.
You will be pleased to know that we’re still together – my girl and I that is. I think I wore her down with
my insistence that popper-wielding tourists were to blame, and I still catch the knowing wink of glitter
most days in my condo. There’s an expression where I come from for things that are difficult to remove:
“Sticks like shit to a blanket”. Here’s the Bangkok version: “Sticks like glitter to a drunken moron”
