Sex Festivals

I did some reporting at the first Hong Kong Sex Festival today. It wasn't as staid or boring as I imagined it would be, but being that this is HK, that's not saying too much. Some filipino sex workers tossed rings onto dildos; a cadre of drag queens marched by, chins up; lesbians in cowboy hats lassoed each other; and nearby, the ifc2 STILL looked like a sex toy.

There was also this. Among other things, it gives new meaning to the words "chair" and "utensil." I wanted to test it out but the chinese guys in suits didn't seem too thrilled about that.

Going backwards—on Sunday morning, we floated home. I was elated and generally wrecked, having just left a nearby members only club. This club was a sad freak show and fancy wasteland, a paltry forest of white waifs and unexcited eastern Europeans, apparently plagued by their previous destitute farm lives, or something. My dancing scared a group of euro trash into some side room. Holla! I was thrown off the stage again, leaving one and a half dead-looking models on stage. [Two friends], who had just met the previous night and who disappeared like cats as soon as we got to the dance floor, were soon escorted out of the club by a large Indian man dressed in black and diamond trim and sporting an earpiece. When I nudged him and asked why at a voice just loud enough to overcome the pop music, he eyed me and cracked a smile as large as it was surprising. I didn't quite understand what he told me, but I got the idea--something about a supply closet. Another friend left.

Before all that we loitered around the club, called Volar, hemming and hawing over whether to go inside. We had been wandering around Lan Kwai Fong for an hour looking for a place to just drink or dance, at one point counting twelve in our group, including, no joke, a Danish cartoonist (formerly a professional gambler) and a pack of some cool local high school seniors. We went to bar at one point called Baby Buddha which seemed promising, but slow. Another place reminded me of Mexico, or how Americans imagine Mexico to be. There was one of those good Filipino cover bands inside—standard in Hong Kong, and a point of pride for the unabashedly sleezier bars. As we left though I could hear their rendition of "Sweet Child of Mine," and imagined an infinite number of bars like this around the world, and suddenly knew the difference between a cover band and a tribute band. Before we finally did enter the club, we drank forties, as if to mourn the death of our nights.