Flashbacks

I spent the best part of Saturday photographing a bar. We started at 9am in Hong Kong’s Wanchai district. Wanchai is a haven for older white men who want to score younger Southeast Asian girls. I haven’t hung out there in about ten years. When I first came to Hong Kong I had no money and used to walk there from home every weekend to dance. I remember I didn’t have pockets in my “cool” clothes, so I used to put my house keys in my mail box, then tie my mailbox key to my shoelaces. I didn’t drink, because I never had cash, and I never spoke to anyone, because you just don’t want to explain why you can’t even pay for a bus home together, or come up with a reason why the bed is just a piece of wood that’s supposed to hold a mattress. My friends came and slept on the floor anyway, because it beat sleeping in the park. Now I have a bed and a futon, but nobody stays over any more – they all have houses of their own.
When I was walking to the bar I passed a 24 hour disco, windows all covered up and an endless thumping of dance music vaguely muffled. The girlie bars were still open too, and I was glad to see they now use little girls in polyester hot pants to lure customers in, instead of the ancient and wholly uninspired “mama sans” that used to invite you in back in the day when I walked those streets.
Photographing the bar bought back endless memories too. It smelled just like the room I used to live in during my first summer after college – above a bar, next door to a bar and opposite a bar. Twelve rooms altogether, all sharing 2 bathrooms (one for boys, one for girls). The light bulbs were always being stolen, so I learned how to shave in the dark. It was a great summer. It’s okay to be poor and working 3 jobs when everyone around you is also poor and working hard and, most importantly, young. I had a double bed, and Pony lent me a small refrigerator which I kept cheese and beans and which kept me alive together with the stale pastries I salvaged from the deli trash.
We took six hours, photographing booths and drinks and private rooms, and all the time it was like the radio was stuck in 1986. The memories just kept piling up and up till I really felt a little touched when the Neil Diamond, Barbara Streisand duet “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” came on. I was only about 11 years old when I used to play this song incessantly on my Walkman, and it was weird to realize I still know it word for word; especially when I think I had absolutely no experience of breaking up from a serious relationship when I was 11. Then again, I was singing my heart out to Bronski Beat 3 years later, even though I had no idea what a homosexual was. The music also slipped back into hippie times, and when the 25 minute instrumental version of “Marrakesh Express” finished I was just about ready to walk out of the job. I repaired myself by illegally downloading everything I could find by Bright Eyes when I got home and then, when I was sure I loved it, I bought it, and played it until there was something like truth stirring my blackened soul.

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I talk to myself a lot. For posterity, I wanted to record the various names I use to refer to myself and their variants:
Dom, Domboy, King Dom, Big Dom, Big Bad Ass Dom, Big Bad Ass Motherfucker, Big Boy, Dom Dom, Natty Dom Dom, Natty, Fatty, Fatty Dom Dom, Fat Boy, Daddy, Mr Me
I think that’s all of them – I’ve been writing them down all day as they come up.