and now, with all the formalities out of the way (trying to be as p.c. as possible, don't want to alienate my korean following yet), i will recreate for you my friday.
on thursday, BFWII invited me to a 'karaoke birthday party' to take place the following night.
BFWII: 'you like kareoke, right?'
me: 'oh, yeah, of course'
me: 'although i do have a lifetime ban at a few establishments in the metro area'
BFWII: 'don't worry, we're going outside city limits for this one'
me: sigh of relief
(this is what literary folks call foreshadowing)
well, friday rolls around, and there is something just a bit off about the universe. first of all, i was completely sleep deprived from the shenanigans from the night before. then, at lunch with BFW's both I and II, the first restaurant we tried to go to was closed until 4, and the second didn't have steak for the steak sandwhich BFWII ordered, and then didn't have the first 2 types of beer we tried to order, since after the steak incident, we all needed a beer. throughout lunch, i am pretty sure each of us was having a different conversation with the other 2, but we all thought we were on the same page. we were not.come to find out, it was a hunter's moon the night before. duhhh.
no wonder, a) i spent the whole night before crying on the ex-bf's driveway and b) there was no steak (or beer)
somehow we each survived the work day. well, to be fair, i dropped BFWI off at his house on the way back to the office, so his work day ended at noon, and BFWII bailed to 'go meet a friend' by 2, so i survied the work day. those wimps totally bailed.
BFWII and i made plans to grab dinner and pre-game drinks at 7ish. just enough time to wash off last night and grab a quick nap.
well that never happened. 7:00 came around in just enough time to clean myself up enough for my big karaoke performance. i did spend a significant amount of my free time brainstorming possible song options, mostly by googling 'most embarassing karaoke songs ever'. 'milkshake' by kalis wins, hand down.
so BFWII arrives and we head off for drinks and something to pad our stomachs for the heavy night of drinking and intentional humiliation ahead of us. we exchange some witty banter between 'getting to know you' type topics, such as parental marital statuses, hobbies, favorite songs, childhood vices (i sucked my thumb and had a blankie, btw).
once we got a good thing going with our buzzes, we headed over to the official pre-game at the b-day girls house. i quickly realized no amount of bangs would have made me arty enough for this crowd of graphic designers and urban outfitters employees.
commence even more serious binge drinking.
we pile into Arty Bat Researcher's station wagon and head off after a few beers. being the only girl in the car, so obviously in 'bitch' position, i hadn't really been paying attention to my surroundings, until all of the sudden i looked around and find myself in foreign territory, literally.
i don't remember stopping at border control, but we certainly weren't in the dirty south anymore.
hmm, i thought to myself, i don't remember seeing any waffle houses or sonny's bbqs in a while. the traffics not that bad either. oh, and why are all the signs in korean?
BFII had definitely forgotten to mention we were actually going to korealand for karaoke. how authentic.
but i'm traditionally a good sport, which is probably why he invited me in the first place, so i just rolled with it. and walked into 'storefront with blue neon sign' in 'generic korean shopping mall' like it was the cheers bar, and i was one of the regulars (i never watched cheers much, but you get the ref)
having no basis for comparison, kareoke bar #1 seemed fairly classy, considering it's modest exterior. there were nicely dressed korean women re-applying make up at the lobby bar, expensive looking korean liquor bottles on the blue back-lit shelves of the bar, and halloween decorations on the doors to the karaoke rooms.
i should mention here, just to give you an idea of how extensive my cluelessness was, i was not aware that we would be doing karaoke in our own private room, lost in translation-style. i thought we would be doing kareoke like i had done in the past. in the middle of a crowded, smoky local bar, with a heckling crowd of strangers. turns out i'm actually more comfortable with that idea, than an intimate setting in a private room with a bunch of arty people i just met, who also happened to have very judging eyes under their bangs.
unfortunately, the well dressed host informed us that there were no rooms available at this time and our options were either to wait until 1130 (it was 930 at the time) or try the other bar, karaoke bar #2, conveniently located a few storefronts down in the same strip mall.
we sent an ambassador for the group ahead of us to report back on weather karaoke bar #2 had a) rooms available b) beer. once we received an affirmative on both a and b, we set out for bar #2. somehow, via selective hearing, we ignored that the bar was also advertising its 'girls'.
it took very few minutes upon entering (like .045) for BFWII and i to realize we were not actually in kareoke bar #2, we were in korean brothel #1.
regardless of the brothel situation, our group of 13 took a seat in the room the proprietor led us to, which happened to also be a sauna. i'm talking no less than 95 degress in that box. he began to show us how to use the remote, which was only in korean, as was the long list, and, oh yeah, the lyrics on the screen.
somehow, it wasn't until we started inquiring about liquor prices that we started to get suspicious about our surroundings. our very friendly host (read: angry pimp), informed us, as though it were a bargain, that a bottle of scotch would be $200, and with that, they would wave the room charges. so, $30/hour would be waived if we purchased a $200 bottle of scotch. thats a bargain even my grandmother couldn't pass up. we had to press him for beer prices. another bargain there, $6 for domestic and $8 for premium beers.
as the man went around taking our beer order, BFWII nudged me with a 'we need to get out of here, fast' look, i responded with a 'you got me into this mess, you gotta get me out of it, immediately.' look (which may have looked the exact same as my 'holy shit, we're in a korean brothel face', i'm not sure, the only shady thing this room lacked was mirrored ceilings).BFWII took my cue and called a group meeting. during the meeting we weighed the pros and cons of staying.
pros: we had a room, and there was a kareoke machine in it, with a microphone, and they did serve beer
cons: we weren't fluent in korean, and none of us carried a black american express card, since that's the only card with a large enough credit limit to handle the check this guy was going to slam us with
a majority rules vote revealed that it was time to move on.
this point was reinforced when we opened the door to an open door across the hall that revealed more than 20 ladies in waiting, in addition to the two who were lounging on the couch in the lobby. yes, we all agreed, we definitely made the right call on this one.
so we headed back to kareoke bar #1. as soon as we walked in i suddenly found it's air conditioned interior comforting. to explain the difference between the two interiors, imagine the difference between a tanning salon and a spa. karoke bar #1 was the spa.
i was also much older, and wiser, at this point, and finally realized that this both kareoke bar #1 and korean brothel #2. remember those nicely dressed korean woman i commented on earlier? well, turns out, they too were prostitutes. but they didn't scare me quite as much as the ones i had just seen. probably on account of their freshly applied lipstick.
as soon as we arrived back at bar#1/brothel#2 to wait until 1130 when a room would be available, i immediately began taking tequila shots by myself at the bar (not really by myself, the ladies were there with me). one thing i did learn is that if i am not totally off my face drunk (brothels are very sobering places to a novice), i actually enjoy tequila shots.
BFWII and i reinstated our buzzes, chatted for a bit with a korean man who we discovered was actually a very famous korean comedian (he could've said he was a kroean prince and we would've bought it), and although it wasn't yet 1130, and we had yet to belt any phil collins lyrics into an unsanitary microphone, we decided it was time to plan our escape.
fortunately, my good friend caroline, who i had promised i'd text if the karaoke was fun and if i thought she should come join, hadn't made other arrangements, and was surprisingly willing to make the 10 mile drive to rescue us. i suggested she bring her passport, just in case of border control. i'll never know why that didn't immediately change her mind, but that's why i love this girl, always up for an adventure.
when she pulled up a very long 20 minutes later she was dying laughing. she could not figure out how the hell we had ended up in this place, and with no planned escape route. i reminded her she was still in the parking lot, and therefore, had no idea, but should she ever be looking for a good time, to definitely go to korean brothel #1, but bring $200 in cash for the scotch.
i have never been more relieved in my whole life to be back within city limits.
the three of us got beers and red-headed sluts at a bar very much at the epicenter of our comfort zone, were we continued to get blackout drunk, and laugh until our stomachs hurt about what we had just seen.moral of the story: karaoke is best served in front of a crowd of heckling strangers, at a very local bar, where a bottle of scotch runs for $150, happy ending not included.
....
sidebar: saying 'i knew this or that would/wouldn't happen' is pretty much the same thing as saying 'i told you so'
1 comments:
hahah!
so many good lines here. i kept trying to pick one out to say was my favorite, but... there were too many.
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