The cheap excuse of age

City life is tailor-made for the young, especially after a certain hour. And that's as it should be. That's the tendency, not a hard rule.
Here's the problem I see: people of a certain age read this tendency as a ban, a prohibition on taking part in the city's social life, especially the nightlife.

This holds true even for those who, while no longer young, aren't exactly old either, and who still have a real emotional and psychological need — and the human right — to enjoy social activities of every kind. Not just the usual four couples of friends in the living room or down in the basement rec room. I mean really throwing yourself into the fray, among strangers, music, colors.

To justify themselves, they invent excuses, fooling themselves more than whoever's listening: I'm old, I'm tired, I'm not into the music, I can't handle alcohol anymore. And yet they risk a heart attack running or cycling in the hills on Sunday morning, polish off bottles of wine and whisky alone, and sink into drunken, melancholy thoughts in front of the fireplace, listening to Albano, Ricchi e Poveri, and Pooh, blubbering out of despair more than emotion.

I don't give a damn. I know the city is made for the young. But by law, IDs get checked to keep minors from drinking, not to ship fifty-year-olds home. If it isn't forbidden, I claim my right to take part. Not always, but not too rarely either. Mind you, I don't sneak into college parties like I did thirty years ago. I pick places, venues, and occasions, and if they pass the test, I jump in.

At times it feels like everything and everyone is telling you to go back home, you pathetic old shit. It's a feeling: it's our damned, dysfunctional, misplaced sense of inadequacy talking. Just shut it up. And if someone really does look at you that way: walk on by, he's the asshole.

Hang in there, don't give up. Sometimes, at some point, something happens, a small thing maybe, but one that hadn't happened in a long time. Then you realize that the kid you used to be, you still are to this day. When you get home you find yourself elated: "So it can still happen!" In front of the fireplace you pop open a cold beer, the last one, the umpteenth. You crank up Moby or Daft Punk. And what's slightly salting your beer are tears of joy.

Like I said, I don't give a damn, and I keep at it. If no place inspires me, worst case I take a nice long walk: Italian cities at night, without bewildered tourists or busy residents, are even more beautiful. I'll stay home when my brain or body has turned to mush. When I no longer need a cheap excuse to stay stuck in bed or in an armchair.

P.S. In Bangkok, it has to be said, it's easier than in Padova.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Fun according to me

I've always known how to have fun, in any place and any way, at any moment. I also go to the typical places for fun. Not all of them, mind you, but some. I recognize them right away: they have some ineffable quality that satisfies my instinct.
I go there on my own, too. I've always loved doing that. Sometimes I may seem aloof, absorbed, even gloomy. It's only appearance. Maybe I'm tipsy, and having a grand old time in front of the stage of my mind. Besides, I observe and listen. The music, of course, but not only that.

I know what fun is. I know it better than the person who smiles at everyone and "plays" the extrovert. I have earned a degree, a master's, and a doctorate in fun. All honoris causa, of course. I simply don't have fun in a prescribed, pre-established, prefabricated way. In general, "pre-anything" gives me hives.

For me, fun is something spontaneous, instinctive, creative. My idea of fun is, like pretty much my whole lifestyle, a form of art — forgive me for saying so. It's a somewhat unusual, exotic form of art, though, one that seems to belong to other shores. A bit like the African masks, the Japanese prints, or the Tahitian dances that made their astonishing, disruptive entrance onto the European cultural scene of the nineteenth century.

I don't think I'll ever stop trying to have fun. Nor stop succeeding at it, if all goes well. It's even possible that I'll drop dead having fun.
Yes, come to think of it, I really hope that's how it ends.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Portrait

I'm sitting on a stool at the counter of a Thai place, sipping the Negroni the bartender just made me — good Negroni. A few minutes later, the same bartender hands me a notepad that has a whiff of 1980s junior high. On the open page there's a pencil sketch.

It's a face, in profile.
My jaw drops in surprise, and then I smile at him.
That face is mine.
I don't know how much it looks like me, but it's definitely me. And the less it looks like me, the more I like the idea, because it means that by observing me and letting his creativity run free, he was able to imagine me in his own way.

I don't even know if it's a good drawing, technically speaking. I like it, but I'm no expert. I can have a competent opinion on a piece of writing, an idea, a movie, a piece of music, but when it comes to drawing, I understand very little. To me, every effort at GENUINE creativity is beautiful. My little niece's drawings have always looked like works of art to me, in their own genre.

In a world where you have to stay on your guard and slip away so you don't end up as an extra in some goddamn "video story," running into someone who draws your portrait while you don't even notice is a pleasant throwback. A return to the past that, amid the disorientation of the present, feels like a good omen for the future.
Kudos to the "bartist" — part bartender, part artist.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

PARALLEL - Bangkok, Thailand

...dozens of glasses
on the table top
the dj spins techno
trance and hip hop
the fine tuned vibes
send the mood glide high

The TV car - Bangkok, Thailand

The usual crowd sits in two rows:
football, curries and cheap beer
flood with good mood the atmosphere
and help all conversation flows.
A sudden force engulfs the scene
and in seconds every movement stops,
spoons are hanging in mid air,
all the faces turn as one.

The 25th hour - Patong, Phuket, Thailand

 

Ineffable, elusive
Pathologically shy
Spotted by few people
Just when dawn steps over night
Barely one time photographed
By the man who took this shot.
Ladies and gentlemen
This is a rare chance
The 25th hour
Was there for nearly an hour
And about an hour later
It got swallowed by the past.

 

Unexpected hostility against the pedestrians - Hong Kong

A fisherman at Hong Kong harbor and the hazy skyline in the background

It's Sunday night and Lan Kwai Fong is not very lively. To be honest I'm not very fond of the place. In the weekends it gets crowded with assholes all dressed up, driving their fathers' expensive cars and, stamped on their bulldog faces, an arrogant expression that seems to say: "I have all this because I deserve it. Because I am what I am and you are a heap of shit!" And the bouncers - poor bastards who get paid nothing and treated badly, maybe with their work permit hanging from that lousy job - who back them up, always watching whether your shoes are shining, your shirt is freshly ironed and starched, if you smell like misery or have a misfit look, a wanker one or, even worse, both of them. On workdays they can't afford to be too picky though; they invite you to go in, and if you're wearing flip flops and undershirt they will still try to humiliate you, but in a more pathetic way: "Hey, that's not good..." they'll say as they spitefully pinch your shirt with two fingertips "...next time you dress better, OK?" Yeah, sure, next time I'll spray a couple of drops of Eau de Manure on the redneck shirt I'll be wearing. Get out of my way...you asshole, minion and pitiful loser.

They just have different rules - Thailand (with some photos)

Everything...no rules! Actually they only seem to have guide books

One arrives to Thailand and soon starts to spot the differences. How hot…in December! It was snowing back home. Everything is so cheap, you can eat with a dollar…with that money I can't even get a coffee where I come from. And finally the most surprising of them all: everything that is forbidden where we come from is allowed here, or at least tolerated. In the worst case scenario you can buy it with a bribe.
You can purchase pirated DVDs and software in broad daylight. Fake driving licenses, university degrees and membership cards of various type. Imitation jeans, shirts and bags. You can display the sign of an illegal business and nobody says anything about it. You can spot four people without helmets and a dog riding a motorbike, and the police is fine with that. Twenty kids in the back of a pick up truck, instead of hiding, are all laughing and singing. After 2am bars cannot sell alcoholic drinks but if your beer is poured in a paper cup or a coffee mug then it's alright. Nightclubs are competing for who pays the biggest bribe to the police, so that they can stay open until late and the competitors are forced to close early. And then sex, orgies, viagra, cialis, kamagra, women…young, old, fantastic, horrible, shameless or chaste women. Yeah, here you can even find chaste hookers. And then homosexuals, bisexuals, transexuals. Even asexual ones.
Hey, I can do anything I want here - the newcomer inspired by promises of freedom and impunity will be thinking - this is great! Hooray! And his holiday soon turns into a sequence of troubles.

The grotesque artist street - Pattaya, Thailand

Christmas in Pattaya

There is a little street in Pattaya: it's the last section of Walking Street, on the port end. If Walking Street were an intestine, a long bowel full of feces and sludge (both metaphorical and real), we would be talking about its rectum, its sphincter...in short, its asshole. 
It's a rather dark place (not surprisingly, considering the anatomic analogy), without bars, restaurants and clubs. Just the sea on one side and a few hotels on the other. The music is muffled: you could almost say that this is a silent place. In the evening a few Thai guys come here with their guitars, they sit on the curb and start singing some songs. Not in Thai or in English, as most of us would expect, and as they used to do until three or four years ago. They sing in Russian. The young Russian tourists who come to Pattaya like to go to a couple of discos (Mixx and Lima Lima) located a few meters away and they are the ones these buskers are performing for. In Russian, of course. Groups of Russians stop by and the boldest among them start to sing along. Not very well to say the truth, but as they leave good tips they are born with and pardoned. 
A few meters away there are some portrait and caricature painters: they produce the usual second rate stuff that can be found pretty much everywhere. Just before the big lighted banner, with a little luck one can run into two of the most picturesque characters of the area.

Vulture-like place - Bangkok, Thailand

Photo by adaptorplug (CC)

One can say that every bad place is bad in its own way and when it comes to bad places Bangkok offer is one of the widest worldwide. Take the movie The Hangover part II for instance, which is based here: even though it's filled with unlikely situations it still provides a very realistic - often real - panorama of decadent joints.
Although I have been regularly coming to Bangkok for ten years I still need the assistance of M. - a friend of mine who is just a tourist, an occasional visitor - to find one that can still surprise me. I'ts not only about the bars with the theme dressed up girls, the ping pong show joints, the ladyboy cabarets, the go-go bars, the erotic massage parlors, the disco-pubs and the after-hour clubs with the free lance hookers. Not only Patpong, Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy then...in Bangkok you can also find stuff like this.
As soon as I get in I shudder as one does when coming across something that charms us just as it revolts us. In a way it could fit into the last of the categories listed above, as the girls don't work for the owner of the bar, or maybe they do it but just indirectly, without getting a wage or instructions and orders. However, some of the peculiar features of the place and the dynamics of the social relations suggest to create a dedicated category in order to classify it.
Some details - the table, the movements and the sober appearance of the waiters - remind of some Bavarian taverns. The counter could be the one of a town festival, with a drink list hanging from the wall behind the panting and vaguely improvised bartenders. The widespread use of wood, tiles, neon lights and cheesy pictures of famous sites (the leaning tower of Pisa, the Coleseum, the Arc de Triomphe) bring back to mind some Italian bars of the '60s and the '70s. The ingredient that interrupts this journey of the imagination through comparisons with faraway places is obviously the presence of dozens of women. Some of them have already lived all the days of their splendor but the number of pretty and young ones - according to M. - has increased since the last time he was here.
The air is leaden with a slightly dismal atmosphere, like a cattle market in lean times. "It's a vulture-like place", is M.'s comment, and even if you are not familiar with the expression as soon as you set a foot in here you understand its meaning straight away.
Most of the ladies are arranged in a semicircle, shoulder to shoulder, leaning against the walls or the furniture of the half of the room that faces the entrance. They are wearing office or evening dresses, they have nice hairstyles and are soberly made up, no vulgar or pornographic details, the hottest ones are hot in a rather discreet way. Only few of them sit at the tables scattered around or at the huge counter that curves at the center of the hall. This is where the majority of the customers are, many of them visibly bored, almost disinterested, sipping beer, chatting with friends or looking around, not necessarily at the women.
What a difference between this place and the traditional venues of the Thai sex industry! Decadence here is a matter of design more than of ethics. The indecent element is missing and the libido as well, disappeared with the exaggerated theatricality, the vulgar colors, the blinding lights and the deafening sounds. Now and then an invisible DJ plays some songs but for interminable minutes the only soundtrack of this grotesque movie is the hum, the clincking of glasses, the squeaking of stools, the background noise of a nigthclub at closing time, when the lights are switched on and the last song fades away while the patrons still linger inside.
The ladies keep trying to make eye contact. Most of the time the customers give a hint of a smile and then look away. Or they look away without even the lenitive effect of the faint smile. Probably this is only something that I feel for them though: the girls seem to be already accustomed to this kind of reaction.
Once in a while a man calls one of them. A little startled she - and sometimes also the one that stands next to her - answers: "Who, me?". And then she walks the five or six meters that separate her from what turns out to be more than a customer: he's a firefighter in a building ablaze, a Saint Bernard at the site of an avalanche, a lifeguard in the rough sea. In short, he's some kind of savior. With this pace, though, only 5% of them will be saved: they are too many and too little seems to be the attention they manage to attract. The remaining 95% will have to go back home and hold on to their poor little daily job, if they have one. As we will learn later on through a friend of M.'s, in fact, most of these part-time employees of the sex industry have very common occupations and the younger ones often turn out to be students.
The Japanese customers seem to know something that the others don't: when they call a girl, she comes over and starts to talk their language. A very enterprising approach indeed.
Once we've finished our beers, before leaving we go to the toilet, a filthy hole in the basement in line with the style of the place. A rusty gutter along the tiled wall serves as a urinar. Next to it there are two of those disgusting Asian cubbyholes for the ladies. The customers have to pay five baht per entry but with twenty baht you have unlimited access for the whole night. In order for the investment to be profitable one needs to go to the lavatory more than four times: who can resist in here for so long? Another tip will also disclose the secret that shrouds those couples that instead of walking down to the underworld of the pig pens climb the stairs in the opposite direction: upstairs there is a cheap by-the-hour hotel where more or less obscene transactions are carried out.
We leave the place and as soon as we're outside Bangkok slaps us with a blow of heat, humidity, smells and noise which suddenly delivers us from that weird torpor that had mantled us. It's as if the vulture-like place had narcotized us. Perhaps we were just stunned but it is also possible that it was another spell of a city endowed with mysterious powers.
After all they call it City of Angels: the metaphysic ingredient must be hidden somewhere.

Enraged - Bangkok, Thailand

Photo by humblenick (CC)

"Sawat-dee-krap, pai Khao-San dai mai krap?"

The taxi driver nods and I sit on the back holding a chilled can of Leo. From Major Cineplex to Central Mall it's the usual, smooth Bangkok night ride, then a car sprints out of Lat-Phrao rd and cuts across our way. My driver utters a guttural sound and slams the brake pedal down. I'm surprisingly calm - it might be because of the sedative effect of the Saturday beers, my innate fatalism, or a bit of both - while the car slows down quickly, skidding a little, until our front bumper ends up kissing quite gently the pirate car's rear one.

We came out of it rather well - or at least I did - but I know that it's not over yet: I picture the worst case scenario and I hope that the other car stops soon. In vain: the guy is speeding away as if he didn't even realize what happened, and my driver, without an official opening ceremony, has already declared the beginning of chasing time.

Speeding makes me quite nervous, especially if I don't know the driver and he's enraged. He doesn't show it much but I know he is. Unlike a hypothetical Italian counterpart of his, who would have vented his frustration through a litany of a heretical-mystical nature, he's only emitting some mono-syllabic sounds, driving nervously, accelerating and steering intermittently. 

At a certain point he follows the runaway vehicle into a road that won't definitely lead us where I am supposed to go, and that's when I come out of my trance and start yelling "Stop, stop right now!" I say it in Thai, English, Italian, Chinese and Spanish. He finally stops the car near the curb and I suspect it was not because his ancestors came to the Kingdom of Siam from Toledo or Madrid. 

I quickly get out. He does the same, without minding me at all, and goes to check the damage. I don't care about him anymore, he has given me a bad five-minute-time, I spot the first available cab and flag it down. 

Now that I'm safe I think about what just happened. Often Bangkok taxi drivers don't own the cars they drive, they just rent them from a company, and in cases like this they will probably have the cost of the repairs deducted from their income. 

I take a sip of the beer that by now has got warm and I silently wish him good luck: hopefully the car got out of it unscathed, like we both did.

Shades of angel - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Photo by Neil Krug (CC)

I close the book, I'm about to turn off the light but I realize that I am not sleepy enough. The muffled street noise is seeping into the room through the chinks of the window frame, people are having fun outside: tomorrow is holiday in Kuala Lumpur, but I'll still have to teach.

I wear a pair of flip-flops and get out of the room. The furniture is rather lousy but the apartment is large and for once in a while I don't have to share it with anyone. I grab a chair and I take it with me to the balcony. There must be at least 25 degrees and I'm only wearing a pair of boxers, but the lights are off and I live on the eighth floor, nobody can see me and, even if they could, I am only a shadow: a dressed shadow and a naked one look pretty much the same.

I just need a look to realize - for the nth first time - that a balcony with a view is actually cool. There is a crossroads just down here, a confused knot of small streets without a traffic light: it has to bear the weight of traffic only when there's some nightlife, just like tonight. Cars, motorbikes and taxis advance with the same speed as the pedestrians, looking for parking space or for their way back home.

I almost never smoke but I light myself a cigarette. If you don't have a habit that's what cigarettes are made for. I smoke, look around and write sentences in my mind, in Italian, in English, in Spanish, with cuneiform characters and ideograms, without being able to save them, as in offline mode. Maybe, if I look carefully, I can manage to spot those Russian girls as well.

A few hours ago, when I was mooching a wi-fi signal in the lobby, they got out of the lift laughing and singing, together with those male model friends of them, some kind of self-propelled bronze statues. They were muttering when they walked past me, probably tipsy, maybe they were taking the piss out of me: I'm always by myself, writing at the PC or walking around the neighborhood, I don't open up easily like the other men in the building. What a nerd, they might think, maybe even an asshole: well, nerd is alright, and I might also be a bit of an asshole, but most of all...I'm shy! Then the one who often sits near me with her laptop - always wearing shorts and t-shirt, ponytail and no make-up - turned towards me and I almost didn't recognize her: tight black clothes, loose hair that could finally flow down her back, long and wavy, soberly made-up, just like an angel would be. Hopping as if she was dancing, nay, like a little girl with her friends at the public gardens, she smiled at me and waved her hand. All of a sudden on the contact surface between body and chair I felt some sort of liquefying sensation, not as if I was sweating or bleeding, just as if my skin and muscles were actually melting. Then it was all a sequence of changes, of temperature, of light intensity, of color shades, of perception of space, as if a new dimension had seeped into this little world of mine, and finally I understood: I was completely bonkers. I didn't really have enough time to say anything and I was afraid that she might find me quite rude, but when I got hold of the various parts of my face again, I found a smile that almost beheaded me stamped right across it: if she didn't notice that she was not only drunk, she was completely lost in a hyperspace trip. I knew better than cherishing false hopes about the future, but I sucked the present until I could almost hear the noise of a straw that drains away the last drops of a fruit shake.

The traffic jam clears, the group of tipsy guys leaves, I haven't seen the Russian angels but others are passing by: fluorescent Chinese, Indians blended with the night, alternating with Malays of different qualities of chocolate. Snazzy, with stylish hairdo, some are swaying a little, they clasp their purses as if they were afraid of losing them, or they hold on to them not to fall over: from up here, in semi-darkness, they all look beautiful.

A car alarm goes off, one of those sirens that sometimes sabotage my siestas, this time I'm not in bed but on a balcony instead, and even lounging around: I enjoy it as if it was a soundtrack slightly out of phase. Then I yawn and it's the cue I was waiting for, I pick up the stub and I put the chair in its place, then dragging my flip-flops I grope my way back to the room.

Now I can go to sleep: a balcony in the darkness and the wake of a smile have tucked the night in.

They made it - Guangzhou, China

Guangzhou Airport, by Fabio

It's one of those nights when you abandon yourself to the fragrance of the wind, to encounters, to what life can offer you, not for next year or tomorrow, but right on the spot, on that sidewalk, many hours before the day will come and make you rationalize it all. And this process, at least in my case, is most effective when I am abroad, better if in a place where I don't know anybody, where I don't have any connections, any buoy to hold on to when the current is taking me adrift. If the events unfold in Asia then, or even better in China, where not even one's normal cultural grips can be of some help, it's even more risky, succulent and exciting. 
The right place, for this night at least, is Guangzhou, a city where the majority of the foreigners come attracted by a disproportionate giant that people here call fair. To try their luck, to make money, to squeeze one of the southern tits of this cow, China, that seems to be growing out of any control, a victim of some cell that must have gone mad. And where I, not to be the original type but because of a genuine helpless nature, have arrived by chance, on my way from Hong Kong to Kunming, a place in the South-West in whose tranquility I have let myself be lulled for more than a year.

Tonight won't end until dawn says so

Last night he gave up, overwhelmed by sleep. He fought for a while against the weight of his eyelids. Then he remembered his friends' advice. Why do you care? Tomorrow always comes. He's not that sure, chromosomal skeptic. But he concedes that at the end they've always been right. Anyway today you've got no excuse. You've slept enough, you don't have to work, tonight won't end until dawn says so. What's the point? You might be thinking. The point? Well...why? He replies with surprise. Tomorrow, as you say, will probably come. But the day after that...well...how do I know?

Image "Dancing 'til dawn" by Marianne Millar, from Allposters.com

Without a fixed identity - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Changkat Bukit Bintang is a secondary street, leaning on a mildly slanted plane. It comes out of an area with luxurious hotels, shouldering its way among massage parlours and malls, to climb up a staircase of restaurants and bars, towards the peak of that little hill. It's a dynamic area without a fixed identity, like a face that changes eyes and nose every month. On the sidewalk the waiters invite you for a drink and if you like the place you'd better stop: the enterprises here have the lifespan of an insect, tomorrow that joint might no longer be there. 

Photo of Bukit Bintang by Esther Lim (CC), from wikipedia.org

Bangkok's every night show - Bangkok, Thailand

Only Bangkok can stage shows like this everyday. While the first light of dawn turns the world greasy and gray, the last tipsy customers sway out of the club, dragging their feet as well as their tongues. They linger on the road, skirting taxis and touts. The groups are dynamic, with a fluid sort of quality: one loses a member, then gets two new ones, while another large party, bit after bit, dwindles to a couple and then to a last drunk, who will finally drift without too much noise.

The veranda of this restaurant is a perfect spot to dominate undisturbed the entire set. Lorenzo sips a refreshing fruit shake. Without facing each other, we sit side by side, watching the numbers unfolding in front. Behind a fortification of bottles of beer there hides a face of complicated make. The synthetic touch, the mud-gray hue, the distorted lines of mouth, nose and eyes, must be the result of a hard-lived night. The four or five liters of Singha beer, whose evidence lays empty and wet on the table, are likely to end a long chain of events, which probably started in a hotel room, and swerved through a streak of dodgy and dark dives.

The guy doesn't move and stares right ahead, though what he sees might be nowhere in sight. Then, very slowly, his left arm moves, while the rest of the body remains icy still. He's reaching for a tray placed next to him, but a waitress springs and arrives there first. She grabs a fresh bottle and refills his glass. He lifts it and shakily brings it to his mouth, finding the target after a couple of tries. Between two lengthy swigs of beer, he puts out a cigarette on a filthy ashtray. He places the stub on top of the mound that has been raised with zeal in three hours at least.

It's not easy to tell how old he is. Although he looks somewhere between fifty and the grave, part of that figure might be due to these nights. The waitress is guarding him from behind, and refills his glass any time he needs. The last bunch of people are now leaving the street and walking to a bar squeezed somewhere upstairs.

In Bangkok the clubs should be closed by three, but there is always some place which will open all night. All they need to do is convince the police, and the agreement normally consists in a bribe. Still, when some top brass is in a bad mood, the place might be asked to close anytime. This also happens if a new bidder shows up, and he is bringing along a richer gift.

This is the way things often work down here. But one should remember that a country and its culture need to be understood and criticized as a whole. Corruption, instability and a bit of filth, are counterbalanced by a happy and relaxed atmosphere.

I've been to some clockwork-like places before: it's true that I could hardly spot a cockroach, but I've often ended up flying off dead-bored.