HK exclusivity

It was a city of restriction—a Russian bar's "igloo room" required one to wear a fur coat, which had to be borrowed; the Q club on xxxxx street required members to have a facial scan. For whatever reason Jackson had a membership to Volar, and his name was on a list that was printed nightly and given out to the different bouncers, and sometimes if you were a girl they would let you in under his name, anyway; you and six friends. And the place we loved the most--sense99--was 99 Wellington street (is that right?) and you had to ring buzzer number three, then climb the staircase up past a swimsuit store, into someone's former apartment. From the balcony, where people openly smoked pot--punishable by the death penalty, people!--you could watch the hoardes below trying to find it, and failing. There was a love hotel across the street--you could get a room by the hour, during the day--and it was called something like Eve's palace, even though the rooms were only a few feet wider than a bed. We preferred this one Korean all-you-can-eat barbecue because they'd give you your own room. You'd go in with ten or twelve people, and behind you the women in soft slippers would close a panel. Inside, the television played the horse races, which we'd go to nearly every Wednesday, and we would see the analysts on the television screen turning animals into numbers that only they could see as animals.

I am thinking about this--and about the winding streets, and many tiered hills of exclusivity--because I am feeling shut out of my life right now. It's too late, first of all--5.00 a.m.--to think rationally: but basically my parents are getting divorced in their fifties, and trying to keep it a secret from everyone. Because my newest boyfriend just told me about a crush that's not me and then told that his last relationship lasted three years, and now I'm feeling like some irreverent rebound. So basicaly all of these things I thought I knew and had defined are feeling completely different. And I feel like this always happens. I have that teenage angst where you think: This always happens to me, the worst always happens to me. I am the only human who depends on things that fall apart. But then, if everytime something you had sophomorically defined as "great" and "complete" lets you down by showing itself as more complex, and having a secret history, I guess that's just the world teaching you its complexities--the small chinks in the crystal that aren't visible when you're learning about the world from Golden Books.

I will try to bring myself back to Hong Kong. There is a time and a place to describe Gabbi, the Starr House, the mansions on the hills, speaking with Phil in the back of that cab, on the long ride back to the hotel in the middle of nowhere.