Day ten

Woke up and wandered down the street to have my nutrient filled morning Diet Coke. It's curious: I'm used to India now. I walk down the street and I am curiously unmoved by the beggers and giant bullocks with tasseled horns and sharp smelling cilantro sellers: they're part of daily life now. i guess one can grow accustomed to anything.

In any case, we left for work at a respectable hour and did not even get ripped off by the rickshaw guy, which is always a refreshing change. I'm beginning to enjoy the morning rickshaw ride, motoring by the mediterrenean-colored military housing and the morning markets and all the varied and colorful sari shops and of course the dangers: the Stinky Bridge and the road that isn't paved and fills your lungs with a delicious mixture of silica dust and exhaust. (Slap your pashmina over your mouth and pray.)

I reviewed more CD's and did some research for the world music page, which I apparantly am overseeing. Lots of good possibilities there.

Hopped a rickshaw home and went for another of my long and aimless walks. The villa really is in a nice portion of town, leafy, affluent, and quiet. I found myself in some sort of cluster of private schools - Montessori is inexplicably huge here - then wandered among some apartment complexes and leafy green parks. Women gather to gossip in the parks and men gather outside the tea joints to do the same as the sun goes down.

It was Mira's birthday, so we had plans to go out. I had a delicious pineapple and some cereal and strawberries for dinner, then we went over to Mocha, the same somewhat bizarre Euro-ish dessert bar we went to the first day. We hung out there and chatted, while I amused myself by watching tragically hip young Indian guys wearing bandannas and creative facial hair smoke shisha (hookah.) They brought out an incredibly huge slice of chocolate cake for Mira (which was pretty much half a cake) inducing sugar rushes in everyone but me. I may be the one person on the planet who dislikes chocolate cake. I did have a nice Moroccan mint tea.

We adjourned to Taika, yet another covert Bangalore dance club. This place was billed curiously as a "spa bar" which pretty much meant lots of blue and white accents and many potentially dangerous little flickery candles. Drinks were expensive and the clientele was upscale: rich Indian businessmen in tailored rocker-wear outfits sipping Merlot, giddy looking businesspeople from England and the USA, and an interesting contigent of totally zonked looking Asian girls. (One just kind of stood there and swayed in a space cadet way for hours.)

I ordered an overpriced whiskey and sat on the curious bed-esque seating for a while. However, this became progressively more awkward as quite a few of the guys at the bar were staring at me then making giggly wink wink nudge nudge commentary to his buddies. Since I don't understand any Kannada or Hindi or Tamil or whatever they were speaking, I like to pretend they're saying things like "Oh, what an excellent taste in clothing you possess, madame! I salute you!" but I suspect in fact they're saying something akin to "lol you know them american chix r nasstttyyy you feel me bro hur hurr." Sigh.

One particularly impressive specimen had long black hair and a stripey Frenchish t-shirt. He would look at me pointedly, toss his hair like he was starring in a Herbal Essences commercial (he's got the urge!) then take a suggestive sip of hi wine. Not that this wasn't amusing, but one can only take so much.

So I decide that screw my lack of talent, I was going to get up and dance. Tragically, the music was that kind of thumpy alien-noises sort of house music that is only attractive if you're on Ecstacy or from Mars, but I made the best of it, attempting to avoid occasional pitfalls such as pervy old English guys attempting to get down wit da bidness or whatever and aforementioned cracked out Asian girls. I also accidentally sustained a minor cigarette burn. (does this make me a skank? do accidental cigarette burns make you a skank? does anyone know?)

The others got sick of avoiding cigarette-related injuries and large drunk sweaty people and got up to go to the other room. I however was kind of enjoying myself and decided to plunge back into the fray, after setting myself a half serious challenge: if those guys were gonna stare so openly, I should at least get a free drink out of the deal.

So I did. I spent a bit on the dance floor, some guy wandered over - the same one who'd shown us to Taika's covertly hidden door actually - and began giving me the universal Guy at A Club spiel. "Where are you from?" "What's your name?" "I am very highly paid and successful! And drunk!" I smiled and nodded until he offered to buy me a drink, successfully scored a not cheap whiskey and coke, then continued to smile and nod a while more as he hit yet more of the neccesary Spiel high points (low points?) - "Do you think I'm sexay?" "Phone number?""Wanna go out for dinner?" "Can I hold your bootiful hand?" I continued to play along until an oppurtune moment hit then acted very guilty and put out about the tragedy of having to return to my friends, but maybe I'll see ya around sometime, you never know! Then I skedaddled.

I suppose this means that I am a. going to hell and b. taking cruel advantage of drunken, horny men, but I see it more as revenge for open-mouthed drooly staring. I might as well make it slightly more expensive for them. Anyway, I hauled back over to my friends who were sitting somewhere nice and quiet and civilized. Mira wondered if we could score some free drinks for her as well, but I don't know if he was going to fall for that one a second time.

It hit 11:30 and as usual in Bangalore, we were hustled with great haste out of the club. My new boyfriend stumbled on by but I don't think he saw me. I may also have been hiding behind Chris.

Okay, I probably am going to hell.