I write this only because my mind has not ceased turning for four days ... four strange days since the night that a business associate showed me to a brothel in the suburbs of the city of Makati, in the Phillipines. Quite honestly, I had no idea where I was going. A local bar was the description that had been given -- go with the flow the advice. Supposedly, this was my partners former neighborhood, and the bar his old favourite...
When the taxi stopped, I emerged, suited, in to the steamy night air. After the filling Italian food and wine wed enjoyed half an hour earlier, I desperately needed to relieve myself. After my partner concurred, the surroundings started to sink in. I was standing in a dingy, unlit laneway, one of whose sides featured a rotting wooden fence and an open plot strewn with garbage. Ten or twenty metres back, leaning over the plot, were what looked like residential buildings. On the other side of the lane, an array of structures decked with glaring christmas lights sat back from the minor throughfare. The one we had stopped outside of was only approachable through a roofed courtyard, reminiscent of the barbeque areas Id navigated so often in my childhood in suburban Australia. It even had Aussie-style wooden tables. The only difference was that this one also sported a small cigarette shop to one side, tended to by a nameless face whom my associate initiated some kind of shortlived exchange with. Other than the vendor, the courtyard was otherwise empty. At its rear, a flight of worn-looking stone steps, straddled by what came across as a weak and dying attempt at some ornamental tropical vegetation, led up to a secondary courtyard. Various stagnant and dirty ponds sat by the side of the stairway, filled with unhappy-looking carp. Knowing I was vegitarian, my partner cracked some tasteless joke about consuming them. I was too drunk to be offended.
The upper courtyard, which was at the front of the building-proper, was filled with about fi... Læs hele novellen
