disco is dead

friday night i hooked up again with B and V and over a beer a plan emerged to head to the disco. do i like discos? no, but i thought i should at least experience an indian one. B and V, being european, adore discos the world over.

there is a rule in bangalore that you cannot get into a disco unless you bring (or are) a woman. there is a reason for this. first i should explain that indian males often remain entirely "wholesome" until they get married. this is often not by choice. or at least not by their choice--it's usually that women won't allow anything to happen until marriage. this makes the typical indian male obsessed with finding someone to marry as quickly as possible. it also leaves him in a perpetually hot and bothered state. now the disco tends to attract the few not-so-conservative indian girls out there. we're talking tight sleeveless shirts and skimpy skirts. while this is the way everyone under 20 dresses at home, you just don't see it here, and it suggests, at least in the minds of some males, that these girls might not insist upon waiting until marriage. once the guys realized where these, um, more liberal minded girls were congregating, they arrived in droves. cover charges skyrocketed, but not enough to trump the mating drive. fights fueled by certain pent up energies broke out as several guys would compete for the attentions of one girl. hence the rule and the high cover charge we would surely be asked to pay.

we had no women in tow, but well-connected B knows the doorman, who probably also realizes that the white man isn't gonna go nuts when confronted by a woman in a skirt, though i wasn't so sure about V and his one track italian mind. we were offered entry for 600 each (about $14), which includes 2 free drinks. i applied the best of my formidable negotiating skills, but could only get the price down to 400 each. we then learned that the dance floor was closed until further notice, so we'd essentially just be sitting around drinking like anywhere else, though the doorman tried hard to sell us on the atmosphere inside. turns out that there'd been a crackdown on clubs, the new police commissioner enforcing a disco license law that was previously ignored. every dance floor in the city, if not the state, was shut down until various fees and fines were paid and paperwork processed. this was a bit of a relief for me and a crushing blow to B and V. we sure as hell weren't gonna pay the big bucks to sit on our asses, so we left and instead paid the small bucks to sit on our asses and drink at the nightwatchman, a nearby bar. B's indian friend N joined us and we (well, they really) came up with a drunken strategy for the next night (i.e. tonight) involving a secret late night club and go-go dancers.

i'm giving this evening a 20% chance of success, and a 10% chance of something terrible happening. still, i dare not miss it.