Where In The World Is Evan?

Whilst I’ve mentioned baijiu in several previous posts, I may have shied away from revealing the full extent of its corrupting influence. More than anything else I have ever known, Baijiu makes people stupid.

Last night some friends and I all met for dinner in a local Indian restaurant. Unfortunately O had been enjoying the company of baijiu prior to arrival. So much so that shortly after arriving he vomited bile under a seat cushion and had to be chased, by me, down the middle of one of Chengdu’s main streets, in the rain, without shoes on. After catching up with him and sending him home in a taxi, I returned to the restaurant to find that Sergio and J were getting stuck into a bottle of baijiu that they had bought earlier. As J proceeded to get drunker and drunker I explained to him the ill advisedness of taking ecstasy after drinking so much. Seeing the seriousness of my intention not to give him any drugs he consented to going home while Sergio, Chloe and I got a taxi to Mix club.

After taking some very nice e, dancing for a couple of hours, and moving to another club, I was shocked by my sudden and violent removal from the dance floor. No not bouncers, but rather a resurgent J, whom it turned out had continued drinking after we left and had become fixated on my refusal to give him drugs. Drunkenly shouting “Out of the picture, am I? Out of the fucking picture!” while half-heartedly throwing punches at me. Considering the state I was in I took the only conceivable option; embracing him as tightly as I could to limit his swinging distance.

Shortly afterwards J was placated by offers of free Chivas Regal and iced-tea by some Chinese guys. Little did they know how badly this would end for them. At first they relished the attention they garnered from having a hugely drunk and boisterous laowai drinking with them. It was when J entered the dance floor, however, that things started to turn ugly. Grabbing a Chinese man under each arm, and holding them rigid in a head-lock, J proceeded to stick his tongue in their respective faces, before pressing their heads together in an attempt to force them to kiss.

After losing interest in gay match making, J decided that it was intensely amusing to hip-and-shoulder other foreigners off the dance floor. Retreating from his relentless assault I found a seat and sat down. Not being able to sit for long I soon returned to dance, but J was nowhere to be seen. About two hours later, however, he came lumbering back into the club carrying a bunch of individually wrapped roses, passing them out to anyone who’d take one. As he approached the seat where I was sitting he thrust a rose into my hand and announced “Don’t worry, I didn’t pay for them, I stole them all of street urchins,” before tripping on a step and tumbling head first over the back of a couch. As he lay there prone on the couch I quietly stood up and walked away as casually as I could.

Buy the time I walked across the room to the crowded dance floor J had disappeared from the couch. Assuming that the bouncers must have finally put a stop to his rampage I settled back into dancing. Just like in classic horror films, however, where the bad guy always comes back for one last fright, J suddenly reappeared in the club an hour later, slightly more sober than when I saw him last.

As the e was wearing off, and J had scattered the once crowded dance floor, we decided to leave. As we walked out into the courtyard in front of the club J was spotted by the children from whom he’s stolen the roses earlier in the night. As then crowded around demanding money J started throwing them up into the air, and they ran away in fear. As J lumbered after them, ignoring our calls for him to come back we decided to leave him there, and got a taxi back to Chloe’s apartment where we smoked a little pot before I went home to get some much needed sleep.

Of course, J now denies any recollection of last night