Sunday, August 19, 2007
Young, Dumb and full of Cum
It was an expression we used to use to describe our (male) teenage years; to validate stupid choices we made back in the day. Once or twice, our stupidity almost cost us our lives. Or led us into temptations that really, should have been ignored.
One of these for me was in Kuantan, an unusual little Malaysian town that sits a little off the beaten track, midway up the peninsula, east-ish. It's the kind of place they sell crushed birds' heads on the street as aphrodisiacs.
Anyway, I was about 18 and travelling by road up through Malaysia with a lesbian couple, who had been ‘mothering’ me somewhat as we jaunted up through Johor Baru, stopping off at wonderful obscure places – including the delightful Pulau Rawa, enjoying the company of my lesbos and various adventures along the way. We stopped for a night in Kuantan – the plan was to head off to Telok Chempadak next day to go see the giant turtles.
I needed a break from the girls and ventured out solo. I arrived at a particularly dodgy bar, the only caucasian in sight was me, and took a stool at a large high table and settled into a cold one alone. Watching. Looking for possibilities.
Soon enough, a Malaysian with a beard and smoking a pipe (both really unusual in this part of the world) joined me for a chat. Nice guy. Transpired he was the SE Asian Rep for Guiness Stout and he immediately got me onto his favoured inebriant: Half a pint of Guiness with a shot of dark rum thrown in it. This concoction tends to get you very shickered in a short time and soon enough I was. I ended up having a few more guests at the table – a mix of Malay, Chinese and one Japanese dude who was a pilot I think – we were all drinking Guiness Rums and all having a great time getting shitfaced, talking rubbish.
A covers band was playing, not a great band and I made a passing comment that the guitarist wasn’t up for it – and that I was qualified to say so as I had a pretty good handle on guitar. Dumb. Really dumb thing to say for a couple of minutes later I heard the announcement on the P.A – ‘Now, please welcome, all way from New Zealand, to pray guitar with band, put your hand aparts for Mister David’.
So, off my face, I’m now up on stage, strapping on a copy Strat and trying to find a song the band – and I – knew. Hard when nobody really speaks English too well. Short story – I’ll tell you what sounds bad, really really bad: It’s when some drunken white boy is playing ‘Black Magic Woman’ when the rest of the band is playing ‘Evil Ways’. Same artist (Santana), different songs. While it was a disaster, the crowd were fairly forgiving and when I got back to the table it was like I was a rock star. I start changing the subject from (lack of) guitar playing ability but just then, the band stops cold. The whole bar goes real quiet. I look over to the door, and 3 gangsters are standing there, looking menacing, scanning the bar like they are looking for someone. I think they'd been there for a few minutes but for some reason they had signalled the band to shut up. I'll never really know why it suddenly got heavy but maybe they were gonna shake some poor dude down or something?
My Guiness guy whispers to me “Be cool – that’s Club 47. Don’t stare and we'll be fine” (Back in the day, the various Chinese Malay ‘mafia’ groups all had numbers for gang names, all preceded by 'Club' - Club 108, Club 63 etc etc. This was Club 47 and they seemed to command a lot a fear among the patrons. Something was going down and it didn't feel good.
To this day, I have no idea why I did it. What the fuck went through my head just before I decided to shout out – really loud ‘Club Farkin 40 farkin 7 are fucking wankers!’
'Wankers - yeah you!' I added for good measure. Followed by a big drag on my ciggy.
Why!! Why would I do this? Y,D and full of C!
Idiot.
Anyway, I realised I was now in deep shit. All my ‘friends’ left my table very quickly and departed by the rear door. The head gangster, whose eyes were fixed on me, stopped his goons from tailing them. So, I’m the focus I guess, and I figured I’d better take this head on, deciding to make them think that I was mentally deranged in the hope that this strategy might save my ass. At that moment, I noticed the butt of a pistol being purposely revealed under his jacket. OK, so I am going to die now, In Kuantan. This is suddenly a very bad night. A bad bad situation.
Bolstered by booze though, I swung my legs off my stool, and prepared to approach them.
What I did not realise is that when I shouted out my abuse, a guy walking past me had dumped a crate of Coca Cola on the floor, right next to my stool, and high tailed it. I stepped straight into the crate and the bottles’ caps jammed over the sole of my Doc Martin. So, imagine this, as I swagger up to the gangsters, I’m walking real lopsided and awkwardly with 2 dozen small coke bottles stuck on my right foot. Step, swing, THUMP... step, swing THUMP. Etc.
But hang on, I think to myself...this is good, it could help convince them that I am mad. I think I peed my pants, which would have helped further. Should’ve foamed at the mouth as well really.
Anyway, so I walk up to the goons and confront the main man face to face. I put up my hand and bent down to finally get the crate off my foot, then stand again. At this stage he is holding back the goons, mildly bemused I think.
He says: “So, you think you tough guy”
Me (pissed and shitting myself): Yep, I arrrrmmmm very very tough Mister 47 guy, (hic) very very tough indeed la”
He: How tough you mister guitar man? (Smirking)
Me: This tough.
Now I look around and I do the only thing left in my power – I stub out the cigarette I’m holding, on my forehead. Really rub it in too. Normally it would have hurt but the adrenaline killed any pain.
This bought me about 2 seconds and in that 2 seconds, I espy, through the door in the street behind these dudes, a baby blue Mercedes saloon, waiting. And I just know it is Mr Guiness cause he spent half the night telling me about his bloody car.
So, I say “Now, excuse me I need to put my coke crate back on. One minute please, Mister 47.”
He is still bemused I guess - and not quite ready to execute me.
And as I bend down as if to 'put the coke crate on' I sort of lunge between their legs and roll onto the street and somehow get back on my feet and hightail it to the Merc. They’ve seen me coming, open the back door and I dive in the back to the sounds of a gunshot and a bullet embedding itself in the wall alongside the car – A warning shot I think? But fuck me, despite that, I have never, ever been that shit scared again in all of my life.
The car screams off, with half of me still hanging out of it - and boy, did Mr Guiness and his two mates ever give me a bollocking. We scream off in the general direction of Telok Chempadak but take some near-hidden side roads and end up 45 minutes later in a kampong in some swamplands in the middle of Malaysian nowhere.
Long story – transpires it’s a bona fide opium den and this was to be the beginning of a love affair with opiates (in all forms) that would, in a few years, drop me on my ass big time (but that’s another story).
While I am vehemently anti drugs these days, please remember I was young and dumb and full of it.
Anyway, it is a powerful thing the old opium. It doesn’t look like fun cause you can’t fuckin’ move really – you just lie or slouch there saying fuck all, kind of dreaming (but you are awake, just) and you get this really nice warm prickly feeling all over your body – especially under the nose and around the neck and shoulders - and it just feels so goddam nice. Any worries you had are, for the time being, non-existent. I guess that’s why Mr Guiness took me there? This shit is really very euphoric (at first). It would be the warmest most ‘flowy’ drug in existence.
Some time later I wake up. It’s about noon. I am relatively straight again and recall some of the events of the previous night.
Now I need a pee and I find this ‘sort of bathroom’ thing outside the kampong. When I look in the mirror I freak. I kid you not, there is a blister the size of a golfball on my forehead man! I lean forward and gingerly, gently touch the blister and it just explodes – splooshhy stuff – all over the mirror. Yuk.
Upshot?
Mr Guiness is pretty pissed off – as he can never go back to Kuantan he reckons. And he’ll need a new car – but he does make arrangements to get me to Telok Chempadak – that day - and also to get someone to go to my hotel and tell the lesbos to bring my gear and stuff. He was a pretty good man really. He did save my life and that counts for something in my book.
I still have the scar on my forehead.
Yep, it can be a dangerous thing for sure – being young, dumb and full of cumb.
One of these for me was in Kuantan, an unusual little Malaysian town that sits a little off the beaten track, midway up the peninsula, east-ish. It's the kind of place they sell crushed birds' heads on the street as aphrodisiacs.
Anyway, I was about 18 and travelling by road up through Malaysia with a lesbian couple, who had been ‘mothering’ me somewhat as we jaunted up through Johor Baru, stopping off at wonderful obscure places – including the delightful Pulau Rawa, enjoying the company of my lesbos and various adventures along the way. We stopped for a night in Kuantan – the plan was to head off to Telok Chempadak next day to go see the giant turtles.
I needed a break from the girls and ventured out solo. I arrived at a particularly dodgy bar, the only caucasian in sight was me, and took a stool at a large high table and settled into a cold one alone. Watching. Looking for possibilities.
Soon enough, a Malaysian with a beard and smoking a pipe (both really unusual in this part of the world) joined me for a chat. Nice guy. Transpired he was the SE Asian Rep for Guiness Stout and he immediately got me onto his favoured inebriant: Half a pint of Guiness with a shot of dark rum thrown in it. This concoction tends to get you very shickered in a short time and soon enough I was. I ended up having a few more guests at the table – a mix of Malay, Chinese and one Japanese dude who was a pilot I think – we were all drinking Guiness Rums and all having a great time getting shitfaced, talking rubbish.
A covers band was playing, not a great band and I made a passing comment that the guitarist wasn’t up for it – and that I was qualified to say so as I had a pretty good handle on guitar. Dumb. Really dumb thing to say for a couple of minutes later I heard the announcement on the P.A – ‘Now, please welcome, all way from New Zealand, to pray guitar with band, put your hand aparts for Mister David’.
So, off my face, I’m now up on stage, strapping on a copy Strat and trying to find a song the band – and I – knew. Hard when nobody really speaks English too well. Short story – I’ll tell you what sounds bad, really really bad: It’s when some drunken white boy is playing ‘Black Magic Woman’ when the rest of the band is playing ‘Evil Ways’. Same artist (Santana), different songs. While it was a disaster, the crowd were fairly forgiving and when I got back to the table it was like I was a rock star. I start changing the subject from (lack of) guitar playing ability but just then, the band stops cold. The whole bar goes real quiet. I look over to the door, and 3 gangsters are standing there, looking menacing, scanning the bar like they are looking for someone. I think they'd been there for a few minutes but for some reason they had signalled the band to shut up. I'll never really know why it suddenly got heavy but maybe they were gonna shake some poor dude down or something?
My Guiness guy whispers to me “Be cool – that’s Club 47. Don’t stare and we'll be fine” (Back in the day, the various Chinese Malay ‘mafia’ groups all had numbers for gang names, all preceded by 'Club' - Club 108, Club 63 etc etc. This was Club 47 and they seemed to command a lot a fear among the patrons. Something was going down and it didn't feel good.
To this day, I have no idea why I did it. What the fuck went through my head just before I decided to shout out – really loud ‘Club Farkin 40 farkin 7 are fucking wankers!’
'Wankers - yeah you!' I added for good measure. Followed by a big drag on my ciggy.
Why!! Why would I do this? Y,D and full of C!
Idiot.
Anyway, I realised I was now in deep shit. All my ‘friends’ left my table very quickly and departed by the rear door. The head gangster, whose eyes were fixed on me, stopped his goons from tailing them. So, I’m the focus I guess, and I figured I’d better take this head on, deciding to make them think that I was mentally deranged in the hope that this strategy might save my ass. At that moment, I noticed the butt of a pistol being purposely revealed under his jacket. OK, so I am going to die now, In Kuantan. This is suddenly a very bad night. A bad bad situation.
Bolstered by booze though, I swung my legs off my stool, and prepared to approach them.
What I did not realise is that when I shouted out my abuse, a guy walking past me had dumped a crate of Coca Cola on the floor, right next to my stool, and high tailed it. I stepped straight into the crate and the bottles’ caps jammed over the sole of my Doc Martin. So, imagine this, as I swagger up to the gangsters, I’m walking real lopsided and awkwardly with 2 dozen small coke bottles stuck on my right foot. Step, swing, THUMP... step, swing THUMP. Etc.
But hang on, I think to myself...this is good, it could help convince them that I am mad. I think I peed my pants, which would have helped further. Should’ve foamed at the mouth as well really.
Anyway, so I walk up to the goons and confront the main man face to face. I put up my hand and bent down to finally get the crate off my foot, then stand again. At this stage he is holding back the goons, mildly bemused I think.
He says: “So, you think you tough guy”
Me (pissed and shitting myself): Yep, I arrrrmmmm very very tough Mister 47 guy, (hic) very very tough indeed la”
He: How tough you mister guitar man? (Smirking)
Me: This tough.
Now I look around and I do the only thing left in my power – I stub out the cigarette I’m holding, on my forehead. Really rub it in too. Normally it would have hurt but the adrenaline killed any pain.
This bought me about 2 seconds and in that 2 seconds, I espy, through the door in the street behind these dudes, a baby blue Mercedes saloon, waiting. And I just know it is Mr Guiness cause he spent half the night telling me about his bloody car.
So, I say “Now, excuse me I need to put my coke crate back on. One minute please, Mister 47.”
He is still bemused I guess - and not quite ready to execute me.
And as I bend down as if to 'put the coke crate on' I sort of lunge between their legs and roll onto the street and somehow get back on my feet and hightail it to the Merc. They’ve seen me coming, open the back door and I dive in the back to the sounds of a gunshot and a bullet embedding itself in the wall alongside the car – A warning shot I think? But fuck me, despite that, I have never, ever been that shit scared again in all of my life.
The car screams off, with half of me still hanging out of it - and boy, did Mr Guiness and his two mates ever give me a bollocking. We scream off in the general direction of Telok Chempadak but take some near-hidden side roads and end up 45 minutes later in a kampong in some swamplands in the middle of Malaysian nowhere.
Long story – transpires it’s a bona fide opium den and this was to be the beginning of a love affair with opiates (in all forms) that would, in a few years, drop me on my ass big time (but that’s another story).
While I am vehemently anti drugs these days, please remember I was young and dumb and full of it.
Anyway, it is a powerful thing the old opium. It doesn’t look like fun cause you can’t fuckin’ move really – you just lie or slouch there saying fuck all, kind of dreaming (but you are awake, just) and you get this really nice warm prickly feeling all over your body – especially under the nose and around the neck and shoulders - and it just feels so goddam nice. Any worries you had are, for the time being, non-existent. I guess that’s why Mr Guiness took me there? This shit is really very euphoric (at first). It would be the warmest most ‘flowy’ drug in existence.
Some time later I wake up. It’s about noon. I am relatively straight again and recall some of the events of the previous night.
Now I need a pee and I find this ‘sort of bathroom’ thing outside the kampong. When I look in the mirror I freak. I kid you not, there is a blister the size of a golfball on my forehead man! I lean forward and gingerly, gently touch the blister and it just explodes – splooshhy stuff – all over the mirror. Yuk.
Upshot?
Mr Guiness is pretty pissed off – as he can never go back to Kuantan he reckons. And he’ll need a new car – but he does make arrangements to get me to Telok Chempadak – that day - and also to get someone to go to my hotel and tell the lesbos to bring my gear and stuff. He was a pretty good man really. He did save my life and that counts for something in my book.
I still have the scar on my forehead.
Yep, it can be a dangerous thing for sure – being young, dumb and full of cumb.
