I was stood up by a friend and was standing in front of the cinema somewhat at a loss when I bumped into a vague acquaintance, a jolly villain by the name of Micky, half-Goan, half Maharashtran, he looked like a giant hairy coconut dressed in neon hippie hip-hop gear with an avalanche of dreadlocks pouring out of his head and an aura that glowed "nasty boy" from a mile off. I knew him as a sleazy hustler who chased foreign girls about and bludged a good time out of them, and I'd always kept my distance. Now suddenly he's my best friend, latching onto me like a drowning mollusc, drooling with compliments and hearty hail-fellow-well-met bullshit. His delinquency intrigued and amused me, I'd been stood-up and needed company, Mumbai is best with a chaperone to run interference, so I decided to get a closer look at him, letting myself be shanghaied into a night of Bombay revelry a la Micky the Moose.
I've been to many nightspots in this 7-island city, techno-parties in 5-star hotels and members-only discos where one can stay till 3 AM, but they were all full of boring, moneyed people dancing politely and checking out each others designer clothes, much like in Sydney but without the hip music, inevitably Hindi pop slops. I was looking for something different, wilder, sexier, where the celebrants really got down dirty to boogie. Such as the nightclub scenes in Bollywood movies where the whole crew explode into heart-stopping dance maneuvers and have orgasms writhing to the beat. Dance is my number one sport and joy, I've studied and performed pop dancing in many hot clubs from a young age and if I'm gonna find wild and dirty dance anywhere, surely it's Mumbai.
But it didn't look like it was going to happen in real life, the few clubs we visited the couples danced desultorily. The wildest it got was walking the mean streets late at night and checking out the trannies, prostitutes and junkies around Jahengir Art Gallery and Churchgate Station, it's so dangerous only last night a guy was stabbed there 7 times. A bad-arse movie yeah but I also needed something a bit more secure.
As we wandered a back alley we heard live music wafting from a gaudy door into a dingy basement. We went in to get an earful and a beer, it was an airless concrete box with concrete tree-roots snaking along the ceiling, and were sat down with much ceremony by a platoon of waiters done up like militaristic Maharajas. The motley crew of musicians wailed on and on, strangling a Hindi pop tune via a sputtering microphone as I ordered drinks and gazed patronizingly upon them. We were the first customers of the night and much was expected of us.
Then the mob of waiters parted to reveal a line-up of girls, mostly in western fashions and with too much make-up, all gazing hopefully at me. I realized what we had stumbled into, one of those infamous Bombay bars where "bar-girls" are available for company if one spends unstintingly. A burly madame flounced out and sat next to the band, glaring at me as if challenging my manhood, a real man must spend up big, Mister White Sahib!
I stared at my beer while Micky appraised the trade and, as all Indian men do, decided the lone girl in the sari was the only talent there. I quickly paid for the over-priced drinks and escaped before we were further fleeced. I don't know what the story is, I imagine the door at the back led to private rooms somewhere, the club being nothing more than the foyer of a brothel, or maybe the girls just danced more lasciviously the more money you threw at them. In a city where prostitution is illegal, I've never seen so many working girls, there's one area, B.T. Road, where they seem to flock in their thousands.
Micky announced he was hungry and so we called in at an eatery where he proceeded to eat like a hippopotamus, they brought the stuff to him in buckets, he reminded me of King Kong tearing into a dinosaur the way he chomped on and on, and later on he drank like a fish, pouring down booze as if into a black-hole and I got jumpy over the bill, how did those dumb blond girls he roped in put up with this? He sold me a sob story that he had changed his ways, no more smoking hashish, no more hunting firanghi girls, only a small drink now and then, he was a new man. All because his last tourist lover had gotten pregnant to him and then pissed off, refusing to take him on as the father and this had broken his heart. Hmmmmmm, so sad... I was really impressed.
Next up was the Voodoo Club in Colaba, India's one and only gay (sometimes) club, but only on Saturday night, then it's a poof's free-for-all that out-does Sydney's Oxford street in swishing and squealing, but Friday night, the night I'm out and about, is pussy-punters night, resident hookers prowled by desperately hungry men. Yet I thought it would be perversely interesting to watch Indian men in a taboo milieu, cute boys in sports-gear hopping into break-dance, dumpy businessmen in safari-suits trying to do the Watusi, dowdy shop-wallahs stepping on hot-coals in their attempt to be hipsters, all trying to impress the girls with their jerky moves. Luckily the DJ played cool hip-hop music and I was kept happy for a few hours while I watched the mugs crack onto the whores. The best looking girl in the joint, an Indian Anita Ekberg, blond hair and all, was swept out the door by what looked like a British bloke who threw me a furtive look as if he were on some dangerous mission, he was so closely chaperoned by a grim-looking goonda Indian pimp I suppose it was indeed a risky venture.
Another gorgeous girl flounced thru, this one like Hedy Lamarr in a black strapless evening gown, she stood under a spot-light to show off her assets, flinging her lustrous hair about provocatively. Micky was glad-handling everybody including the DJ, telling him what discs to spin, then calling for more drinks while he danced wildly with everybody in the room. As he got drunker and drunker he got more manic, demonic even, and couldn't resist asking Hedy Lamarr what her price was. She blithely told him it was 3000 rupees to which he rudely laughed in her face. For the rest of the night he danced in her vicinity with a 50 rupee note held up and flicked gleefully, as if to tell her that's all she was worth.
She flung her long hair about in a fury and stormed across the dance-floor like a martinet at war, Micky's demonic smile chasing her, his possessed eyes sharp and bright as black obsidian. This was what Micky the Goan party-boy was like up close, a monster of rapacious appetites and cruel masculinity. In all the afray, I managed to get in some abandoned dancing, a few of the whores and hip hop boys joining in, there's nothing in this world like a group free for all in dancing, letting go but hanging right with the beat in the swaying of the hips, the tapping of the feet, the rotation of the head, till the brain swims. Indians are crazy to dance and I'm mad for dancing with them. We all swung about, some fast, some slow, undulating, throwing our arms about in erotic gestures, and our legs stepping to a Bollywood routine. Suddenly the music stopped and closing time was announced. Bummer! Just when we were getting going.
Clubs have to close in Mumbai by 1 a.m. and by this time most of the punters had fled, only a few geriatrics left hanging in there, and the girls, realizing the young guys had no money, zeroed in on the oldies, for "old is gold" in urban folklore. An ancient Sikh in a turban was whisked about for one last-gasp rap dance, and another old fellow who looked like he needed a walking stick clung to a young girl as if she were a life-raft, bear-hugging the breath out of her, but what the heck, money was money and even the gerries still need to get some human touch-up relief.
Micky bellowed for more drinks and danced with the whores, their pimps, their mugs, the hip-hop boys, everybody, stomping on the floor as if to turn the cold concrete into warm wine, and when the club closed he had to be dragged out screaming for more drinks. I was fed-up but he insisted we go to a late-night dive in Colaba, "The Hawaiin Shack" and I thought I'd see the bumpy ride out till the end. In the cab he grabbed my hand and put it on his crotch. I pulled it back quickly. Though curious to discover what it was that draws in all those foreign girls who never seem to get enough of the goon, I wasn't interested, he'd done me in.
Anyway, he had nothing that was so special down there, and I pondered the cosmic question, what was the big attraction? His dreadlocks were filthy and he stank of B.O., he was high maintenance, in money and patience, so what the fuck was drawing girls to him like bees to honey? An oily tongue? (gives good head/had gift of the gab), an affability that never takes "No!" for an answer? A party-boy who really kicks off and is kind of fun? I suppose that gets them in, tho I imagine he simply scores with the stupid ones.
We got into the Hawaiin Shack where the drinks cost a bomb and the music was 'Fifties rock'n'roll, another concrete box that used to be for "bar-girls" now turned legit, it contained a scattering of nice, middle-class couples who looked silly as they attempted to jitter-bug. I myself was jitter-bugged by my Micky experience and was looking for an escape-route. He drunkenly professed love to me and promised we'd be an item in Goa, I smiled grimly and politely murmured, "I don't think so...", then split quietly into the night, alone, to get myself back safely to my hotel in a taxi.
I did meet him in Goa at the Christmas party in the Hilltop Hotel but he had cracked onto yet another blond, dread-locked neo-hippy girl and he looked through me like I was the glass door into Hell. I was so relieved. I'd had my night out in Bombay and it was a bombastic laugh, not to be repeated. I did get a fantastic dance experience in Goa to the hard-style techno they're the Masters of, possibly with real Bollywood stars dancing around me, and it was the greatest dance high it has ever been my nirvana to participate in.
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