Bar Girl Ch. 06

Chapter 6. Bar Girl Routine.

A Bar Girl's world. Fatal Accident. Olav the irrepressible. The girls' first payday. Amor meets shabu. Girlie has a happy encounter.

By the end of her first week at Talent Spot, Blen was well on the way to developing a personal stage image, and by incorporating elements of performance, had established her niche in the bar. When customers entered, she would move to the front of the stage and flamboyantly wave both outstretched arms up and down to attract their attention, then make the BJ sign, and point towards the booth. When Mama signalled, she would drop her camisole and dance directly opposite the indicated customers, in choreographed manoeuvres, using her thong and the bar poles as effective props. Though business was slow, her assiduous soliciting had interested two or three customers sufficiently each evening to result in trips to the booth, and her raunchy displays kept bums fixed in seats for a second or third drink.

Her performance in the Wet-T contest had impressed Blen on the mental map of desirable girls, which many locals kept in their heads, and with her, the route to Talent Spot. Following the rush of custom on Monday night, rumours had filtered through the ex-pat community, who had little to do but play pool and gossip, of this pretty and biddable young oralist at Talent Spot, who tried to hypnotise her customers. Some, not content to recycle this fun to relate piece of tittle-tattle, decided to form their own opinion. Consequently, Blen had spent much of the week bringing contentment to the sunset years the proactive pensioners of Angeles City.

Blen calculated that she was earning about 1250p in commission and salary, and this ensured she began each shift motivated and enthusiastic. She was able to pay her daily living expenses out of her miscellaneous tips. She was even getting return customers already. On Friday night, Mr Hirohito greeted Blen like an old friend.

Blen was no longer worried about credit. In fact, she was confident enough to buy more costumes from Mama's catalogue, and was positively looking forward to sending an impressive remittance to her sister at the end of her first fifteen days when her salary and commission would be paid. Amor, whose credit was much greater, was doing less well. Although more sexually experienced than Blen, she did not have a stage presence.

Some girls catch the attention of customers by verbal assault, some by outrageous exuberance, some, like Blen, were natural exhibitionists who thrilled in nakedly exposing their teenage charm for consumption by hungry eyes. Amor did not have a strategy that came naturally to her, and tended to fade into the background. If she found herself 'one-on-one' with a customer, her attractions - and she was quite as pretty as Blen - were quickly appreciated, but such occasions were rare in the bar, where all the girls competed keenly for each customer's attention. Apart from one bar-fine, she was averaging 50 pesos a day from ladies drinks earned when a customer would buy drinks for a group of girls and she happened to be in the group, or when a customer rang the bell and bought all the girls a drink. To pay her rent and interest she would need 4800p, and then another 1500p for food. She was on track to come up short, and would need another six bar-fines just to break even on the month. That, with no money remitted home. Six bar-fines seemed unlikely.

Life had settled into a routine of nights in the bar, and days in the lady-house relaxing and recuperating. Girlie held her own in the competition for clients, and was occasionally away on bar-fine, so it was Blen and Amor who found themselves constant companions and confidants at the bar and lady-house. Blen paid for all Amor's food to make things a little easier for her.

Amor could see the possibilities of prosperity, but her credit seemed always to move fulfilment beyond her grasp. However, she loved her new life. The lady-house was comfortable and companionable. There was always interesting conversation to be had. Vendors, knowing that the girls had spending power, would frequently call to demonstrate the tempting trinkets they had for sale. The girls, who had been out on bar-fine, would return with tales of their customers; how nice or awful they were, how good they were in bed, or how disappointing, and especially, how well they tipped. Amor compared the comfort and fun of her present life with the arduousness of her life a few weeks before, labouring in the fields under the hot sun all day for several bowls of rice, returning home tired and dirty at dusk, to fall asleep on a mat on the floor. By contrast, dancing to her favourite music in an air-conditioned environment, then sitting and talking with her friends did not seem like work at all. Sleeping on a sprung mattress was a new and pleasurable experience, as was having leisure time to sit and watch television. The girl-talk was upbeat, and always fascinating. In the province, talk was of how bad life would be, now the talk was of how good. She could also see things coming right for the other girls.

Girlie was earning enough money to clear her credit in a few months. Blen would clear hers on her first payday, and send money home. Precious was doing best of all. She had started referring to Klaus, not as her customer, but as her boyfriend. He had told her he would return to see her again, in a few months. But, for Amor, the heavy burden of her debt cast a very dark shadow over her future.

As the experienced girls discussed their customers, it became clear that the worst put down was that he was "Cheap Charlie". Of course, the bar-fine was an all-inclusive fee, but the girls always tried to give something more than a fuck measured in pesos.

Most customers came simply to gorge on enough sex to last them through the sex famine that awaited them at home for the rest of the year. They lacked a biddable or affordable companion in their own country, and for a brief period wanted to enjoy the warmth of a soft body laid against theirs, and the gentle grasp of a velvet vagina on their dicks, in place of their familiar, coarse hand. But, when a girl provided the full 'girlfriend experience' and not just the hooker experience sometimes available back home, but the full 'fantasy girlfriend experience', love and lust combined; then giving the girl only her trike fare home, or worse, nothing, as a tip, made the girls very angry. Appreciation, crystallised as a generous tip, recognised the girls' special effort, and absolved the customer of many minor faults.

On Friday, shortly after the sun had ceased to climb in the sky, Precious finally returned to take up her bed at the lady-house. She came bearing bags of booty - gifts bought for her by Klaus while in Puerto Galera - and small gifts she bought for her friends. This was her first real experience of the lady-house and the girls she would live and work with. Customers being so scarce, during the day, the lady-house was crowded with its full complement of boarders. Then, at night, the six roommates would lie in an orderly row across the bed.

Having paid the trike driver, Precious smiled at the girls sitting on a rank of chairs placed outside the lady-house. Some she had seen at Talent Spot, but owning to her customer appeal she had not had the opportunity to become acquainted with them. She made a tentative entrance into the living room. Amor, who was sitting with Blen watching television, shrieked her name, and a noisy rush to embrace ensued.

Amor took her hand, and led her back outside. "Come and meet our roommates."

"This is our kababata, Precious," she told the row of seated girls.

Amor then introduced them individually, concluding, "... and Anabel and Marivic are our roommates, the other girls are in the front bedroom."

Pleasantries were exchanged, then the four girls returned inside and showed Precious up to their bedroom. Amor gave her the key to her locker, and they squatted on the bed. Precious opened her bags and handed a Puerto Galera T-shirt to each of her friends. Then she pulled out beachwear, jeans, shorts and costume jewellery, which Klaus had lavished on her.

"Tell us about Klaus," pleaded Amor, "What is he like?"

"He is available, he is a single guy, he has his house in Germany and his job is from the government."

Amor clasped herself with delight.

"Malibog?" asked Blen, curtly.

"Always horny," confided Precious, "he always gives me boom-boom before sleep and when he wake. Sometimes he like to boom-boom me five times before he is tired."

"Aaiieee. I want boom-boom," cried Blen, "I'm hungry for boom-boom, may I borrow him one night only?"

"Cherry girls last," suggested Amor, "experience girls first. Maybe he would like two girls, Precious. I will go. Ask him."

"I do not allow him two girls," said Precious firmly, "When we marry maybe, but now I do not want distraction."

"Marriage!" chorused the girls.

"Really, he ask you?" asked Amor.

"Not yet ... but I know he enjoy me ... I make him happy ... So ... why not?"

Anabel, who had come into the room, remarked, "You can give one-hundred-per-cent but that is not enough for some guys, they will take your one-hundred-per-cent and butterfly to a new girl."

"Klaus is not like that ... he is a nice guy," replied Precious.

"All the girls like a nice guy, but a nice guy also like all the girls," was Anabel's discouraging response.

"And some nice girls like the girls also." It was Girlie, who was now standing beside Anabel in the doorway.

Precious rushed to hug her, and the other girls waved and greeted her enthusiastically.

"Did you know Girlie is a tomboy now?" Amor said to Precious.

"What is this? What has happen?"

Blen related Girlie's recent adventures in saphism, and when she had brought Precious up to date Amor urged, "Tell us about last night. Did you have three girls in the bed?"

Girlie sat down with them.

"It open my eyes," she began, "I did not know how tomboys enjoy each other before."

Part of each day was passed in gossip between the girls present about those who were absent, often catty venting of resentments and jealousies. Some girls resented Blen's closeness with Mama, and were jealous of her earnings. Picking up Daddy Don's usage, a catty little jibe would be made about 'Mama's little sperm-hoover.'

'Mama's little sperm-hoover has left her toothbrush in the shower. Do not steal it; you may catch a nasty disease.'

Precious was Dreamboat.

'If Dreamboat tell me how wonderful Klaus is, just one more time, I will scratch her eyes out.'

Amor was Mousey, because of her timidity.

'Was Mousey working last night? I did not see her, was she hiding under a chair?'

Girlie, who was neither too successful nor too unsuccessful, was a lightning rod for little resentment and fitted in well with most of the girls.

When not passing time in the lady-house, the girls' favourite way of passing an hour or two before work was 'Malling'. They would go to a local mall or, best of all, the huge SM Mall up at Clark, near the airport. This transported them into a completely different world of affluence, comfort, and conspicuous consumption. Their barangay had mud roads and rickety, wooden buildings lit by oil lamps at night. Such simple appliances as they possessed were either ancient or broken. The Mall contained the promise of their new world. It was air-conditioned, neither too hot nor too cold. The humidity was low, so clothes regained their comfort within minutes of entering. Then there were the awesome arrays of consumables. Every conceivable household appliance, brand spanking new, and energy efficient was available, 40-inch flat screen televisions, designer clothes and shoes, and the most immediately desirable item of all, the prolific displays of cell phones.

Blen and Amor would pour over these displays, choosing their preferred purchase for when their fortunes turned. They dreamed of the exciting calls and texts from foreign lands, bringing news that a customer was returning, or betters still, that their boyfriend was on his way. Precious had been the first to return with a cell phone, courtesy of Klaus. He wanted to be able to call her when he returned home. It could even take photos, which she could send to him.

The Mall also contained fast food outlets. As a treat, Blen would buy a meal of chicken and rice with a cola drink for herself and Amor at Jollibees, then they would wander back to Talent Spot, taking in the street life, spotting which girls were with which guys, and looking out to see if Mr Right was bar-hopping.

Their new, protein rich diet, began to alter their appearance. The slender, stick-straight bodies, typical of provincial farm girls living on rice and a little vegetable, gave way to more rounded shapes, with slightly heavier breast, more rounded bellies and slightly padded thighs. The careful observer could see that Amor might yet find her unique selling point but, for now, that required a little imagination.

The short trip to Talent Spot became routine, and Blen and her friends had taken an interest in the competing bars ranged up Fields Avenue. Big, brash, new clubs particularly interested them, and the door girls had let them peek inside. Blen was amazed at the interior size, the multi-levelled dance floors and sheer quantity of dancers. Once, the girls had been approached by a Mama-san as they stood looking at an impressive outside edifice.

"I haven't seen you girls before, where do you work?" she had asked.

When told that they worked in Talent Spot, and were new arrivals, she asked if they would like to work in a major club. They hummed and hawed, and she had asked how much they bar-fined for. When told 1200 pesos, the Mamma-san said she believed she could bar-fine them out at 3000 pesos, and they should consider working with her.

"You are very pretty girls, and we will present you nicely so you can command a premium," she told them.

"You can ask our Mama, if you like to buy our licence," Amor had replied.

On their second Thursday, the journey from home up as far as MacArthur Highway was uneventful. The traffic on the highway was congested, as ever at this time of day, and the vehicles snatched forward as space appeared in front of them. Horns blared and traffic enforcers, with handkerchiefs tied over their mouth and nose against the haze of exhaust fumes, waved at the traffic ineffectively.

As they stood at the roadside, waiting for an opportunity to break into the traffic flow and claim right of way with a wave of the hand, off to their left they heard an engine racing. Turning, they saw an SUV stealing part of the sidewalk for its own use and accelerating up the inside of the traffic column towards them. The girls hastily moved backwards out of its path. The SUV was rapidly gathering speed as it advanced, and appeared to be racing to fill a gap in the traffic that had temporarily appeared a little further up the road. At this point, a tragedy unfolded immediately in front of the girls.

By bad luck, two women were negotiating the highway in the opposite direction. Having looked right and left, they moved cautiously forward, waving at the drivers to claim the right to pass. The vehicle to the girls' left pulled forward. The women flagged to the driver of the vehicle to their right, who remained stationary allowing a space to open up into which they hastened at a trot. To the left the girls could see the SUV, which was blocked from the view of the women by the traffic, they could hear its engine torquing violently, a sound lost to the two women in the rumble of the engines around them. The SUV and women closed on a collision course.

The girls reacted at lightning speed, though to them, as the car sped forward, it seemed they moved in slow motion, their bodies heavy, unresponsive and tardy in the time frame of milliseconds allowed to them. Some, faces expressing alarm, eyes and jaws opening wide, sought the eyes of the SUV driver, as their arms moved slowly up, palm faced out and words of warning forming in their throat. Others, contorted, leaned forward as they attempted to blast a warning through the din that filled the air between them and the women.

A blur appeared on their right and powered towards the women on the right. As the woman on the left began to turn in the direction of her friend, who had been stopped in her tracks by a body-check and was starting her fall backwards, she stepped past the vehicle to her right. The SUV driver never saw her. He did not even have time to react to the brief appearance in his path of the charging man. There was a very loud and sharp, but hollow, crash, as the blunt left wing of the SUV, made contact, square on, with the woman who was half turned away from it. The SUV careered on its way unslowed, the driver struggling still to comprehend these fast moving events. The body of the woman was cannoned into the air, and appeared to fly, rotating slowly backwards about its long axis, legs and arms disposed in unnatural directions.

For Blen, time stretched and sound ceased. She froze as she stood watching the spiralling body descend into the traffic ten vehicles further along the road. The SUV had weaved and wobbled momentarily, and as the body descended out of view it had veered towards the gap it sought. As it disappeared, there was a second, louder impact, followed by the secondary spatter of debris. Suddenly, her normal senses resumed, the noise of traffic and sounds of alarm broke back into her consciousness, her head and arms responded to her bidding. She looked ahead to see a man climb from on top of a prostrate woman, and to the right to see car drivers and jeepney passengers dismounting, and streaming into the traffic towards the casualties. Her stomach somersaulted, and she felt she would vomit.

The girls turned towards one another in distress, and clustered together to give each other comfort. They inveighed against the SUV driver. The woman, who had been spared was now on her feet and came seeking her friend. The girls could only point towards the commotion, and she hurried off, distraught, in that direction. Deciding they must bear witness to what they had seen, they followed behind. The gaps between the now stationary vehicles were filled with rubber-neckers, and the girls were compelled to stay on the sidewalk, so they walked towards the gap until they could see what had become of the SUV. It had collided with a road barrier at high speed, completely wrecking its front, and dislodging the concrete barrier.

The driver, who had climbed clear, appeared almost unharmed, but was bent over and obviously winded. He was supported by a couple of traffic enforcers. The girls approached to scream at him. As he looked up, they were enveloped by the warm, sickly smell of extreme intoxication. The man slurred incomprehensibly at them. The traffic enforcers, alerted by the girls' abuse, understood that there had been another accident. The girls pointed in the direction where the body had landed and explained what had happened; the traffic enforcers gripped the drunk more firmly.

Some witnesses, who had seen the bloody, broken body of the woman, were now arriving, and the traffic enforcers were forced to interpose themselves between an assembling mob and the drunk. When the scene looked as though it might result in the summary street justice, customarily administered in the Philippines, with the malefactor being beaten to death by the crowd, the police arrived. A shot in the air caused the crowd to draw back and calm down a little. The police and traffic enforcers seized the opportunity to bundle the drunk across the highway, into a trike, and he was driven away in the custody of a policemen. The others returned, and the girls patiently waited and gave their names and addresses and brief accounts as witnesses. As they crossed the highway to resume their way to work, a body was being loaded into an ambulance.