I had the dinner and drinks. I had the bouquet of flowers. Then I had the stripper.
It’s been a lovely chain of hen’s nights.
My high school friends told me not to drive because they said I was going to be drinking. I drove anyway and we ended up with an early night after just dinner, long overdue catch-up chats, and more conversation over a drink each. And while it was probably nothing like the way they’d planned it, I was just happy to see faces I hadn’t seen in ages, one of which I’d only ever seen attached to a light blue school pinafore.
The dear OCFers threatened crazy antics, but Tze San got posted to Kuantan for a couple of weeks, and we decided on a relaxed dinner with way too much dessert instead. I believe the bride-to-be was the only one stuffing her face in chocolate fudge but that stuff was seriously just too good to resist. She promises to be good this coming week, especially after she (finally!) tried on her evening gown and realized it shows every single bump and curve. Oh dear.
No way were my colleagues going to let me off so easily.
A simple “We’re buying you dinner” turned out to be a surprise party at an apartment owned by one of them, complete with balloons and a ton of food. Cheese crab, sweet and sour crab, Guiness Stout pork, kai lan vegetables, Domino’s Pizza, KFC, noodles, fried rice, cocktail sausages, jellies…
Then we started on the drinks.
Somewhere around half past nine, the doorbell rings and two of us open it, only to be greeted by three men, one of whom was in tank top, jeans, and construction hat. “Oh look,” says one of us in terribly mocked surprise. “The air-con guy is here.”
In a construction hat at half past 9 on a Friday night? Right.
He was fairly good looking, terribly shy (we think it was probably his first night on the job or something), and probably freaked out by the sight of 9 girls screaming at him to “take it off”. I was so not one of them, but even I was a little surprised at his ill-fitting, slightly daggy gray briefs. Well, he did cost only RM500. Apparently, for RM600-RM700, you can get hairy, sweaty men in g-strings with the occasional ball sticking out of them. I’m so glad my colleagues were working on a budget.
Oh and the whole time I was wearing a kid’s plastic tiara with a veil that kept falling off. My editor has a heap of pictures she threatens to post on her next editor’s note.
About 11.30pm or so, we decided to adjourn to Bangsar Baru. Or at least, they decided to. I stepped out of the apartment, still in my tiara and veil, but also with a pair of silver cone-shaped party hats for breasts, and a necklace with 13 Polo mints (or Lifesavers, whatever you call them) strung on. My mission for the night? I had to find 13 men who would bite the mints off the necklace.
The fun began before I even got out of the car. People were staring, taxi drivers were stopping in the middle of the road to openly gawk, three Caucasians approached us to ask for directions and say a word of Congratulations, and a European man came asking if he could take a picture with me (he did). We settled on a popular pub/eatery and a very loud Indian stood up to shout his admiration for my pointy silver boobs so we went upstairs to the bar to begin our search for nice, preferably very cute, Caucasian men.
Okay, so not all of the 13 were Caucasian, less than half of them were what I would term “very cute”, but they were all very nice. There was the cool waiter, the (we suspect) gay friend of a friend, a couple of random Caucasian men who shook my hand/kissed me on both cheeks and said “Congratulations” after politely picking off the Polo mint, the group of very enthusiastic men who each had their turn and advised me to put off my wedding for another 20 years, and a rather shy fellow who had his head shoved in my direction by an eager friend.
Then there was the very excited dude who missed the necklace entirely and landed on my neck, and the 6′ 4” hunk who picked me up ever so effortlessly and slobbered all over the last remaining mint in the process of picking one off himself.
We had the funniest time.
Extra appreciative mention goes to the 9 colleagues who dug deep for the night of revelry, and went to a lot of trouble preparing for it. I definitely did not expect it, and am totally touched. The next person getting married is in for a lot of fun. My unmarried colleagues are henceforth: a) never going to marry; b) never going to tell the rest of us if they plan to marry.
