November 20th: Reeb redux against better judgment

Day 64

Woke, did laundry, blogged, ate lunch, blogged some more, made a grocery run (wine and bananas for E, coffee and tissues for A).

Night fell and we went to the club. Erin was instructed to keep me sober and not let me on the mic so my voice could recover. She failed both objectives. The girl from Beijing, English name Linda, was there again and gave me a bracelet, of bulky turquoise, red beads and tiny sand dollar donuts. I thanked her evn though it's probably not going to be worn by me again.

Alen and his crew had us sit at a table near the back when the floor show began. The two girls on rollerskates with the strap happened again, and I got video footage of it.

A beer was placed before me and another bottle clinked it in toast. I took a sip, it appeared to be Corona. I turned the bottle and the dreaded Reeb label was there, to my horror. It begins! I announced to Erin, "This night is over."

I took pics of the floorshow girls and a melee erupted to my right, two Chinese girls in a scratchy catfight. The crowd turned their attention to it, but I implored them to maintain their focus on the impressive trapeze stuff before them, even pointing at them and remarking, "Oh my god" to trick them into thinking they'd missed something incredible.

We moved to a balcony room and pitcher of Reeb were brought out. I had a glass, then was bade to go up and MC. Erin picked up my slack. Alen really wanted me to say a lot, so I ran through trite phrases like "Let's go" "Make some noise, Haimen," and "Hell yeah." The more the Reeb kicked in, the more random my phrases got:

"Punch it!.... In the face!...Make it bleed!....Like Holyfield!"

"I'm the guy who yells things while you're trying to dance!"

"Loud noises!"

"Get out of the WC, the party's out here!"

"Turn my headphones up! Turn them shits up! I'm serious, I can't hear nothing out of my left side!"

"Erin Rock is off the schedule for letting me get on the mic! She is fired, Haimen! You don't know what I am talking about!"

It got ridiculous.

Afterwards, it got more ridiculous. We went to restaurant so ghetto the WC was an alley. Alen and I pissed in one darkened corridor while Erin squatted in a another one. Erin was massively Reebed. She knocked four sets of chopsticks on the floor and tried to teach the people at the table the words to the "Fresh Prince of Bel-air" theme song. (Did I mention she was fired?)

One dude, the owner of the club, spat wads of phlegm over his shoulder. Linda wrote in my notebook that he didn't like me. What gives? Another woman from a different party came in to toast us (the Reeb kept coming) and sat next to me. Linda pointed at her, hissed in my ear, "Fuckyou" kinda like "she is fuckyou" if "fuckyou" were a synonym for bad. It made me laugh.

We ate cucumbers and peanuts. We were offered cigarettes, which I declined, but Erin ended up smoking four of them for reasons she's not entirely sure of. The food and MC'ing had sobered me up some and I drank some tea and two bowls of water. I threw on some hip hop for the restaurant's sound system, made frequent trips to the alley WC.

When the night closed, Linda helped Erin walk her bike back as I pedaled slowly ahead. Erin started a hiccuping fit a couple blocks from the school and nearly took a header into the bushes and the filthwater canal below it.

"Reeb is the devil, dude," I said, "You know how you play records backwards and it's suppposed to be satanic? Reeb is beer spelled backwards. It is Satan."

We got the bikes in and Linda went into my place, staggering and such. I tried to explain that it was a school dorm and that wouldn't be kosher. I tried to hold her up, but she slammed like a felled tree. I decided to give her a few moments rest, but then I, too succumbed to the whims of the sandman. She had fallen across the bed like a train track, so I too had to lay myself out crossways. We were kind of like a Lincoln Log sculpture: "Sleepers at Quarter After" or some such nonsense. Uncomfortable.