By Drake Moreau

I’ve always associated Wudaokou with the opening scene of Blade. A young American guy with a dumb and full-of-cum look is led by an attractive Russian past a burley bearded bouncer into a nightclub. It has every characteristic of a night club: flashes of darkness amid strobe and techno lights, minimal maneuvering, bumping, pushing, tugging, tripping, biting. And wetness. Everyone in clothing appropriate for Carnival yet still drenched as if they’d run through sprinklers. As we all know (if you don’t, consider this a spoiler alert for the movie Blade), the liquid is actually blood, the American guy’s actually in a vampire-infested den, and just as he’s about to get eaten, Wesley Snipes swoops in and wipes everyone out with a sword.

Yeah, so that’s how I pictured the club scene there. And then, last month, I visited Wu Club, and the resemblance became even more apparent.

~

I couldn’t bear to go sober or before midnight. What the hell would I have done there? I was afraid I’d walk in and feel like John Kimble from Kindergarten Cop as peppy kids wreak havoc on the classroom, except the classroom in this case was a dance floor and wreaking havoc involved consuming a substantial amount of (certainly fake) alcohol, and peppy meant horny. (Though I probably wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to use the line, “Who is your daddy, and vhaat does he do?”) I’m no old man, but I like to think of myself as having evolved from the undergraduate party scene. So my friend Stan and I decided to have drinks in his apartment, then move on to 1F, then 2F, then Aperitivo, and finally Smugglers. We thought it would be a good idea to at least prepare in some way for what we were about to encounter, and nothing symbolizes Wudaokou in Sanlitun more than Smuggler’s.

We arrived at Wudaokou around 1:30 or 2. The cab fare just added insult to our sure-to-come injury. Wu is basically a cellar with accessories. After walking down a few sets of stairs and getting the back of my hand stamped, I began to taste the air. You might say I should be accustomed to that from living in Beijing, but alcohol-sweat fumes have their own unique flavor. The first room, comprising a few sets of sofas and tables with a bar and stools on the side, was so low in energy and stuffy I thought people were passing out from living with their own boring selves. The adjacent room was the main attraction, with loud Top-40 music featuring shitty techno beats added to songs like Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know, a bar menu with a slew of 10-kuai shots, and the essential feature: dark corners.

The club’s finest element of class came in the form of an elevated platform about a foot high with a stripper pole stretching from its base to the ceiling. And for the proverbial icing on the cake — rings hanging from the ceiling. Yes! Olympic-style rings spaced about shoulder-width apart, just hanging there, ready to be used for gymnast feats of strength or super-charged dance moves. Both require lucidity. What the hell do the owners think goes on in this space? Maybe drinking more will make the reasoning apparent.

Most surprising, though, was the proportion of black to non-black people (if you’re offended by this statement, you’re probably a racist who deserves the nearest Thousand Oaks Country Club). This was like a dirty, grimy Soul Train dance floor, with much trashier music and equally shitty dancers. Sprinkled in between were young Western students ready to take Beijing, greater China, and the international political and economic arena by storm with their passion and intellect for China and its affairs, and by the sheer arrogant stupidity that comes with unruffled youth.

Stan and I moved to the bar and ordered the usual shooters and shots: slippery nipples, red and blonde headed sluts, blow jobs, tequila and vodka. It wasn’t long before the dance floor called out to us. I casually made my way over to a couple of young girls dancing together. Long hair swinging over their shoulders, one in a short dress and the other in even shorter shorts, they immediately grabbed each other’s hands and started dancing closer to each other. I was effectively eliminated from the equation without even having entered it. In the words of the infamous mid-naughts’ My New Haircut YouTube clip: “Fuckin’ skanks!”

Thing was, this was a situation that I couldn’t move on from. Stan had the same problem. We didn’t fit into the two demographics Wu apparently caters to: blacks and Western students (good on ya if you’re both). Furthermore, Stan and I were in this ambiguous cloud between “too young to count as creepy old men and not give a fuck” and“too old to start grinding up with students.” What were we to do? Like the awkward dude who sways at a rave, we maintained our unwanted presence on the dance floor. We were like the Chinese government: fully convinced we had to be there to make sure everyone was content and having a good time when in fact everyone just wanted us the fuck out of their faces.

All of a sudden, I could feel it coming on… the drunk munchies. Apparently Wu’s delicious beverage menu is accompanied by a food menu that is equally representative of the bar’s quality: 10 RMB burgers and 15 RMB pizzas. “Burger me up, Wu bitch,” I stammered at the counter.

I waited, surrounded by masses of fine black booties shaking with a few big black men watching and occasionally joining the shaking. I turned over my shoulder to look into one of the semi-circled booths indented into the wall. On the table rested a bottle of something in a bucket of water, several glasses half-drunk and others empty, and a perfectly uneaten cheeseburger on a plate. The amount of willpower it took to not walk over and indulge myself, I tell you, is enough to fuel a thousand suns. I harassed (playfully?) the barkeeps, asking them where my food was. Waited a few minutes and asked again. My dick will mashang lai up your ass if don’t bring my grub!

Finally, the kitchen stuck out a burger on the windowsill. I snatched it, nodded at the staff, and proceed to inhale. I think it took me five bites to demolish the thing. Still hungry, I turned to look for Stan and saw him stumbling on the dance floor with a girl in some weird position in his arms, like an upper-body Kama Sutra position gone horribly wrong. My watch read 3:30, but the hour hand could also have been 4, so… 4:30? I remember telling myself to get the hell out.

I managed to hail a cab surprisingly fast, heading east. I used one hand to flip through my phone, seeing if there was anybody I could call. But in my mind, I’d already won. In my other hand was another burger, one that I didn’t have to pay 10 kuai for.

By Drake Moreau

Last weekend, Yugongyishan, a miniature dungeon-style music venue hidden behind a wooden door near Zhangzizhong Road, brought a hip-hop legend, a man with a name of such repute that you quasi-expect him to show up in a red cape and mask with turntables strapped to his back, his superpower being the ability to spin tracks and scratch vinyls that forces enemies to dance (think Jim Carrey’s The Mask when he sings his samba/Latin song and all the cops break out in song and dance).

I’m talking, of course, about Grandmaster Flash.

In many ways, he didn’t disappoint. I showed up right on time, around 1 am, avoiding the opening acts that I heard were so horrendous it made people almost want to go to Haze for auditory relief.

Per usual, the venue’s dark, grimy feel immediately made my nose hairs recoil, but also made me think this was somewhat appropriate for a DJ who reached his prime in the late-70s/early-80s. He clearly has not moved on from the glory years. But why should he? Old school hip-hop is the tits.

Contrary to my Lil’ Jon escapade, I had less than a handful of drinks before showing up. So I remember shit.

The crowd was in a trance once the Grandmaster hit the stage with a bumping, rhythmic, hip-seducing tantra fueled by heavy bass beats and classic rhymes. About a half-hour into the show, which felt like a warm-up, GMF, like many of the males in attendance I’m sure, blew his load wayyyy too early and played his most notable track, The Message. It’s probably his most influential contribution to music, enough to get him into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a fact that he had no reservations boasting onstage. Which also points to just how sad the whole spectacle was, if you looked at it in a different light: here’s a legendary DJ, the first DJ in the R&R Hall of Fame, and he has to brag about it to the 100-person audience in a semi-underground Beijing music club.

That being said, once The Message played, the floor never stopped moving. It was a sea of jumping sweatbombs, like the “wave” that people in stadiums make, but of sweat-pouring people just grooving. Head-bobbing, fist-pumping, hip-thrusting, mosh-pitting… it was all there.

Tracks included Biggy’s Juicy (which prompted GMF to scream the question, “How many of y’all miss Biggy?” and then, after screams and woohoos from the crowd, him repeating it again), Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit (which spurred all the punk and grunge douches in the crowd to start a mini mosh pit – pretty pathetic, really), House of Pain’s Jump (I’m sure you can guess what kind of reaction this got from the crowd), and DMX’s Party Up (an anthem you can’t help but rock out to, especially to the lyric: “Y’all niggas remind me of a strip club, cause every time you come around, it’s like I just gotta get my dick sucked”). In fact, almost every song he played was a sick, dance-heavy party song, but I can’t fucking remember a thing. And not – I repeat – because I was drunk. It was just so much fun that I wasn’t paying attention to what he was playing.

One moment that made me feel very 很不好意思 for GMF was when he played Eminem’s My Name Is, and at each “chika-chika, Slim Shady” point, he’d scream out into the mic “GRAND MASTAAA” in a deep kind of voice that only a big black man can do. So, everyone is dancing and loving another rapper’s song, and he’s up there inserting his own name into the middle of it. You may be thinking that other artists do that too. They are sad bastards as well.

Bottom line: the Flash sucks at scratching. Seriously, the guy was slower than my Chinese colleagues responding to emails. And his posse in the corner of the stage that lip-synced every single word to every single rap song he played (one dude was in a vomit green t-shirt, you couldn’t miss him) was a travesty. Not to mention, he didn’t even come out for a fucking encore. He played till 2:30, an hour and a half, and then just walked off. Kind of toolish if you ask me. (Then again, I’m one to talk, right?) But at the end of the day, everyone walked out with their clothes drenched and huge smiles on their faces.

Oh, and I finger-banged a chick on the dance floor.

Like him? Hate him? Just don’t pretend you don’t know someone like him. Drake Moreau can be reached at drake@beijingcream.com. |Drake Archives|

Considering Beijing is the capital of the world’s most populous country and one hell of a city, it’s a joke that the month’s big social event is Lil’Jon at Spark. On a Sunday night.

Spark, by the way, was the hottest club in town until the owners decided to charge 200 motherfucking RMB for cover. (For guys, that is. Girls pay 100 RMB.) But Lil’Jon is Lil’Jon, and naturally, I had to be there.

My buddy Rollo brought me to his friend’s pristine three-bedroom apartment: bare walls except for a shitty framed Asian calligraphy painting, plus a measly 23-inch flat screen that didn’t belong on the wooden dresser (it clearly came with the place). Rollo and his friend, Twizzler, work together, so when we all sat down with our whiskeys, waiting for some others to come over, they organically devolved the conversation to office politics.

Before long, though, my ears perked up.

Rollo: “Yo, are you going to bring the Taiwanese chick tonight?”
Twizzler: “Nah, I’m going rando tonight.”
Rollo: “What about the Chinese girl?”
Twizzler: “Naaaawwwhhh” (with a smile/chuckle)
Me: “Jesus, what is this? A game show?”
Rollo: “What about your NEW YORK girl?”
Twizzler: “Hah, no, she’s in Hong Kong, man.”

Turns out Twizzler — and to my surprise, a bit of my man Rollo — is a bit of a pole vaulter, hopping all across town and the cities that he travels to. All good omens for the night.

We talked a bit about our tickets, which came from an agency called Send Me Tickets. The people who run it strike me as morons. Their plan is to shell out a lot of dough for a big name like Lil’ Jon (real gem there) to develop their brand. So what did it cost to bring in the big guy with a three-word vocabulary? Thirty. Five. Fucking. Large. That’s right, $35,000. That’s dollars. Meanwhile, they’ve come up with a brilliant scheme to recoup all that through ticket sales: charge ladies less to attract all the male sharks in Beijing, people like my friends here. Guys pay 300 RMB at the door and 200 pre-sale, while girls pay 100 RMB at the door and 50 pre-sale. Such gender discrimination. I shit 50 yuan for breakfast. How does Send Me Tickets expect to break even with this rugrats scheme?

Rollo, Twizz and I took a couple more shots to take the conversation elsewhere. Eventually, a trio of ABCs show up in high heels and short form-fitting dresses that hug their thighs, and we split up in cabs (not before taking three more shots of vodka each).

We walk into Spark and I’m already a mess. The green lasers in the front bounce off the mirrors (right, I forgot to mention… there are lasers at the entrance, with fucking mirrors. HOLY SHIT). I almost bump into solid surfaces several times, but a quick dime turn later — the equivalent of Indiana Jones jumping over the decapitating blades in The Temple of Doom – and I’m inside.

Twizz leads us to a small table with a curved bench. I’m following like a drunk lapdog. The place is a goddamn madhouse. Picture Subway Line 1 at 8 am. But in Spark.

A woman brings a bucket of ice. Twizz, behind her, presents a gorgeous-looking bottle of Absolut. I pour everybody a shot and then fill ‘em back up.

Girls are out in full force and looking to party. Another ABC (or maybe she’s Chinese, but it doesn’t matter) grabs me and we start dancing. Her hips and general pelvic region dig into my hips and general pelvic region. I grab her waist and continue the grind. Lil’ Jon makes his appearance somewhere in the middle of our tantric dance, and I know this because I can hear him give shout-outs to Beijing and some of his trademark catcalls.

I bring the girl back to our table for a shot/drink. Meanwhile, Lil’ Jon has created the perfect diversion. Everyone is either toward the front of the table or out in the crowd on the dance floor. We take a shot, continue making out, and I don’t know if it was the music or mood or me or a combination of all three, but the demon inside this girl suddenly grabs hold and she pushes me down onto the bench next to the table. First she straddles my chest and then begins sliding her way down. No way this is happening.

(EveryBODY. EVERRRRRRYBOOODDDDY.)

She continues kissing me all over, her hands fondling everything in front of her. Then, I could feel my belt buckle being undone.

(Get the fuck out of here. HOOOOOOKKKKAAAAYYYY.)

Before I could even scream out the chorus to the song Shots, she was singing oral praises to Lil’Drake.

(Uh-yessssir. YEEEEAAYEEEAAAH!)

Again, everyone was pretty preoccupied with Lil’ Jon and his shenanigans to notice us.

Next thing I remember, I’m in my underwear in bed. I slowly lean up, look at my watch, and see the big hand on the 12 and the little one 30 degrees to the left. It’s Monday, mind you, and my phone is out of minutes. As I flip the blanket across my body to go use the bathroom, a condom wrapper flies across my line of vision in the empty apartment.

Like him? Hate him? Just don’t pretend you don’t know someone like him. Drake Moreau can be reached at drake@beijingcream.com — shoot him an email if you attended the Lil’Jon concert on Sunday, and you might find yourself in a future column. |Drake Archives|

I was disgustingly smashed on a recent Tuesday when the name came up. It’s all anybody’s been talking about nowadays, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, even though everything being reported is the same, vague crap. No one knows what’s going on, so everyone repeats everyone else, with splashy headlines. The only guy with any balls to really stir up the pot is me… plus this other asshole, RFH, who published some fantabulous junk on this very blog. [Ed’s note: Goddamnit, Drake.] Well, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to get serious for a moment. That’s right, I’d like to talk about Bo and his hot wife, who I’ll refer to by the James Bond villain-like initials G.K.K., and WLJ, otherwise known as Bo’s “right-hander” (that’s what I call him: that trusty right hand).

It started on a shitty Tuesday night, made shittier by Bo Xilai. I was at one of those massive Chinese restaurants off Dongzhimen Inner Road with red neon lights out front and cars parked on the sidewalk, employees standing around doing as little as possible without getting fired, trying to entice you to enter their restaurant because their food is so different and delicious and cheap.

There were about 15 to 20 of us, mostly people I didn’t know, friends of a guy we’ll call Margarine (no relation to the sugar, he just acts like a wuss). I was to his left. Two seats to his right was an Italian girl who, in her thickly accented English after many, many shots of baijiu and bottoms-ups of beer, shouted, “So how is this so bad, this Bo zy lai?”

The table turned to her in silence. We were like an audience of moviegoers after Bruce Willis realized he was a ghost in that movie whose ending I won’t spoil for those who haven’t seen it (The Sixth Sense). No one really knew where to start.

One tightwad in dark-rimmed glasses started giving a lecture the way Tao did during his radio interview about who the former Chongqing Party secretary was. I quickly got bored and annoyed and interrupted him by forcing everybody to drink in honor of the party (or did I mean “Party”?). The dimwit Italian wore the blank expression of a goldfish.

I shouted some inexplicable things. It was all for shits and giggles, blowing a bit of tumbleweed through the vast expanse of imagination. I began doing an Aristocrats routine. Bo Xilai was in front of this talent agent and mounts Neil Heywood while saying, “Imagine this is a dungeon, imagine this is a dungeon,” and then Heywood says, “No, Bo, you have it all wrong, I’m Marcellus Wallace, BITCH, and we’re in Zed’s basement” – and here he takes out a red-ball gag and puts it on himself, then slobbers a bit as he mumbles – “and you’re in a zip-up leather suit…” So then Butch walks in – which is really the right-hander Wang Lijun – and in front of the talent agent he begins dehumanizing Bo Xilai while G.K.K. pulls out a shotgun, which is the cue for the French woman to say her one line: “Zed’s dead, baby.” I wasn’t exactly sure how Bo Guagua fit into all this.

Perhaps I didn’t actually say all this, only thought it. I don’t know if anybody listened. It doesn’t matter. The dinner ended with the Italian girl getting drunker and falling on her ass because she passed out.

And then I did something very uncharacteristic that night. She was drunk, stumbling, lost – so I put her in a cab and went home on my own. A WLJ awaited.

Drake Moreau can be reached at drake@beijingcream.com. |Drake Archives|

My apologies for being out last week. The editor of this blog, Anthony Tao, broke some of his own self-aggrandizing journalistic rules when he said I was “sick” last week. That’s not true at all. In fact, I was simply incapable of reporting back to him because I had been coming off a bender over the recent Tomb Sweeping Day. [Ed’s note: that's being sick, you twit.] My body felt like it had been frozen and bashed with a spiked club (think the bad guy from Terminator 2). My liver probably looked like it just went through 12 rounds with Manny Pacquiao. But the stories, oh my, the stories…

A friend who I met in Beijing, Jiminy Cricket (JC), had received some free coupons for Grey Goose bottles at a bar in the Solana area (another oasis of Western shops and restaurants located just north of Chaoyang Park). JC and I walked in to a loud, smoky room with standing tables semi-circling a live Cuban (or Filipino) band that played really good Cuban and other Latino music. A low reddish tint crept in around us, which illuminated the smoke circulating around the bar, giving it, and me in turn, an odd Alfred Hitchcock feel. Like true men, we immediately found an empty table, threw our coupons in the waiter’s face, and within minutes were chugging straight from the transparent Goose bottles. As we poured our cups with an obscene amount, we also took some mini-pulls from the elegant carafes.

As the band played some hip-swinging, booty-bumping rhythms, I started talking to a mocha-skinned French Canadian lady – we’ll call her Marie-Claire, or MC. I can’t remember at all what MC does out here, but she had the rack of a goddess. Hanging like perfectly plump fruit, it was very hard for me to focus on whatever it was we were talking about. Eventually, the Goose lifted my mental censor to the point where I could blurt out exactly what I was thinking.

Me: You know, it’s been hard for me to really listen to you because you have such amazing breasts.

MC: Aboef, attencion, apoof-apleuf, comme ci comme ca, cigarrrrettte, more franglish words

Me: I’m sorry, what did you say? Seriously, your breasts are just incredible. Are they even real? Can I check? I’ve felt fake ones before, I can tell the difference. They may be the most perfect I’ve ever seen on a woman.

MC: Homph homph homph, wat ahre u say, croissant.

Before I knew it, she grabbed my hand, pushed it against her tit, then promptly slapped me lightly and walked away. Mixed signals much? Or maybe these signals were clear but the Greyness of the Goose was clouding up the part of my brain that transcribes this shit.

Back at the table, JC was talking to some Chinese guys, and it looked like he was giving them a hard time. When I walked over, he was flailing his arms, head cocked back, hands gesturing for emphasis with some shoulder-raising while occasionally jabbing with his finger. JC, it turned out, was going off the rail about how “fucking hot” he found local Chinese girls, but there was one major problem: they never shaved around their rosebuds. He was asking the locals at our table what their experiences were, and with little to work with, he instead just gave them his take: Not only did they keep bushes the size of Ludacris’s afro, but they didn’t even have the common decency to trim; the least they could do is give us some Edward Scissorhands-style creations with all they have to work with.

The music started to captivate me as I continued downing vodka (with splashes of Red Bull somewhere in between), and all of a sudden John Travolta emerged from the inner depths of my soul. I looked around for MC, took her hand with grace and intention, and pulled her onto the dance floor ready to woo her. What happened next was sort of like the Chappelle Show slow-motion sketch in which Chappelle demonstrates how everything is cooler in slow motion: laundry, walking through a club, everything. I pictured myself in slow-motion twirling MC, her lovely lumps floating through space into my palms (or face), switching hands and directions with ease. What JC told me later was that in less than a minute I actually stepped on her foot no fewer than three times but still tried to twirl her and switch hands. This led to her bumping into a table near the dance floor because I could not control my force. I remember this, though, so it’s cool. I saw her bump into the table, but when I apologized, she started to blame me even more, so I ended up pointing out her clumsiness. After all, she should have known not to accept my invitation.

Turns out that a Chinese girl near our table saw me and immediately sparked up a conversation when I walked back to quench my thirst with the Goose. This girl, a Tianjin native who we’ll call Seedling, had seen my dancing and was thoroughly impressed. She asked me where I learned my moves; I replied, “Honey, dancing like that’s not taught. It’s something you’re born with.” Fact. She was floored. Seedling literally took the glasses off my face, threw them on the floor, grabbed my head with both hands and shoved it into her mouth. Her aggressive nature was as crazy as her looks were decent: low-cut black shirt with short shorts revealing lengthy legs glamorized by heels. I really didn’t have a say in the matter. I mean, throwing someone’s glasses to the floor is an act of war. And I had brought no guns to the battle. It was over before the next words were spoken.

She brought me back to her place, somehow. I don’t know how we got the fuck out of Solana, because that place is a graveyard at night. It’s like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, everyone out on their own in search of a better place (or a vehicle to take you to a better place), navigating a barren landscape, only your instincts and maybe a few kuai for survival. Anyway, the shocker came when we pulled into Season’s Park. I had this image of Freddy seeing us and screaming at me to “go get ’em, tiger,” or, “You’re my boy, Blue!” or something frat-tastic like that.

She ripped off my clothes and I did likewise to hers, but it wasn’t until we were both fully naked that I came to a realization, a transcendental understanding of Chinese women, you could say, that I never expected I could achieve. JC was right. I was, without warning, notice or preparation, deep in the jungles of the Amazon.

Drake Moreau can be reached at drake@beijingcream.com. |Drake Archives|

By Drake Moreau

I’ve been trying to be good during the week, those days consecrated by work, The Man, so one Thursday night I decide to mix things up a bit and go bowling.

Just south of the West Gate of Workers Stadium sits a KTV mansion with a huge alley one floor above. My friend Braxton and I walked in with a bag of beers and steely intensity. Now, I’m not one for bragging, but compared to the average Joe, I am a hulking monster on the lanes. I’m the Rudy of the wooden course, undersized and overlooked, but I will ruin your day if you’re the Georgia Tech quarterback and time’s running out in the fourth quarter of a blowout win. I’m a goddamn sniper when it comes to picking up spares. I average 160 to 170.

We grab a lane, but it turns out that we aren’t the only foreigners who like to bowl on Thursdays. Apparently there’s a league of some sort, full of young expats. It was big group too, maybe 30 douche-ponies overall. Some of them were still in office attire, snazzy slacks with a striped vest over a sky-blue shirt and black skinny tie. I imagined some of them just got out of a Men’s Warehouse job interview. One of them in pleated pants looked like he used to own a Brooks Brothers franchise. If you can’t change before heading out to bowl, either your job is shitty or you’re trying to impress the wrong crowd (or right crowd for you, I guess). But the biggest problem? I was surrounded by drunken buffoons, and if there’re two things I loathe to my core, it’s mayonnaise on freedom fries and drunken buffoons.

We’re still lacing up our shoes when we hear another dude — probably fat — yell out, “C’mon, four-bagger!” Braxton and I just look at each other, incredulous, feeling like we had walked into AMC Lanes in Oklahoma City on a Friday night. And then it dawned on me the fun that was in store. HOLY SHIT WE GON’ OURSELVES A LAOWAI HUNT.

We’re a couple of beers and frames in when someone in the league approached us. He was wearing corduroys and a plaid sweater vest. In my mind I named him Chet Hollingsworth III. I bet he grew up playing lacrosse, owned a country club membership with Dad and Uncle Blane, and was used to hearing the word “attaboy.” Chet dropped three balls in our ball rack. Another fellow in a popped collar polo followed up with three more. Was this a joke? On top of the balls Braxton and I were using and the few that were left there when we arrived, there were now six more balls in our rack. Braxton walked up to that group and asked them if they could move their balls somewhere else. Let’s just say their response was neither polite nor eloquent.

Braxton came back and we agreed that a friendly war would be appropriate. First, we took their balls and placed them in a row right in front of their lane. This forced them to either loft the balls over this French Maginot line, bash through it, or, the most boring of the alternatives, pick up each ball and move it elsewhere. Predictably, those preppies chose the latter.

In retaliation, they shook up cans of beer and sprayed our lane, cackling and grinning before scampering back to their turf. Who does that shit? Chinese managers failed to notice, or didn’t care. We weren’t sure what effect this actually had on our game, since the lanes were already greased down, but they were making the douchebag’s declaration, to be answered in only one way. We had to take it to the next level.

We bade our time. Then, noticing one of them was in his last frame, we each grabbed a ball. The dude, I think it was Chet but not positive (we were nine or 10 beers in at this point), was lining up his shot, baby-stepping his way to the line, drawing back his arm in a crescent arc…

We hurled our balls down his lane. Yeah, that’s what happened.

He turned to us with a bewildered look, and when he stuck out his chest, some jostling ensued. It all happened quickly. We found ourselves in a half-embrace, like pro wrestlers at the beginning of a match, but that’s when we happened to glance down the lane, where our three balls were racing toward the pins. (Probably it was only two – I’m sure his went straight into the gutter.) We froze. The guy had a 6-7-10 split – pin on far left, two on far right. Our two balls were headed straight for the money shot.

Ah, perhaps no sound in the world is more satisfying than the crash of ball on pin, especially when it’s two balls on two pins, and nothing remains standing. (There’s a joke here I’m not going to make, cause I’m being good this week. The joke is about blowjobs.) The dude picked up a spare thanks to us.

In awe, we high-fived and hugged it out like real men. The victory culminated in everyone shotgunning beers, then slamming down the cans.

By the way, I bowled a 182. Did I mention I was a sniper?

Drake Moreau can be reached at drake@beijingcream.com. |Drake Archives|

By Drake Moreau

When I came to, a Chinese girl was the only thing that stood between me and five Chinese guys. They had a certain glare in their eyes, I remember. Like Kujo. A rage that was nearing its apex, which, if reached, would spill over and spell the end of me. As I think back on that moment now, what comes to mind is an amazing song from the amazing movie Mulan: “You must be swift as the coursing rain (Be a Man!), with all the force of a great typhoon (Be a Man!), with all the strength of a raging fire (Be a Man!)…” I think that about sums up what was going through my head.

How did I get here? Let’s rewind and see.

Drew and I started the night off at his Season’s Park apartment with an excellent drinking game that I’d like to share. Step 1: Obtain a copy of Piranha 3D. Step 2: Drink every time you see boobs, a piranha or someone being eaten. Step 3: Take a shot every 15 minutes. Step 4: Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until the movie is over. Perhaps I should say something about the movie, starting with the opening scene, which is an “homage” to the opening of Jaws: Richard Dreyfus is in a fishing boat and gets eaten by a school of piranhas. That’s when you know you’re in for an amazing experience. And we haven’t even gotten to the boobs yet.

After the film, we made our way to First Floor, but after walking in and getting blown away by grenades (Jersey Shore lingo; don’t worry if you don’t know), we hopped in a cab and went to meet some friends at GT Banana. This is a dance club in the Jianguomen area. I think I had been before, but for all intents and purposes, this trip served as my inaugural experience.

At the door, I emptied the contents of my pocket looking for my wallet: keys, phone, iPod, condom, 5-mao piece… no wallet. Drew paid my cover. It took me 10 more minutes to stuff all the miscellany back in. We walked in and stood against a railing overlooking the dance floor. After slugging back a few more tequila shots, a Katy Perry song came on (or Lady Gaga or Flo Rida or even LMFAO, who cares?), and we decided to test the waters. I think Drew warned me about this, but I was still surprised when the dance floor started shifting up and down. At one point I had to brace myself in a surfer position, knees bent, weight slightly forward. Others should have taken note, because Drew and I spotted a few casualties. One was a girl a little too chubby for her own legs. Drew pretended like the blob was taking over and shrieked and ran off the dance floor. I was too busy dancing with a Chinese girl who eventually ended up sucking on my mouth like a suction cup. I had to really dig deep, particularly given how drunk I was, to find the strength to pull her off me. Then I ran after my friend.

Here’s where things get a bit dark in the part of my brain that registers shit.

Apparently, that girl found me and brought me back to her table. The guys didn’t like that. Not. One. Bit. (Said in the voice of the Joker from Dark Knight – you know what I’m talking about.) I caught one giving me the stink eye. I asked her if they didn’t like me because I was white. She said no, that’s what she liked most about me, then leapt on me like Harry Potter onto the Snitch. Before I knew it, somebody behind me grabbed my shoulders and pulled me off the couch.

So that’s where we are. I started blabbing about how racist they all were. All I was doing was talking to this lovely Chinese girl, and they didn’t like it because I wasn’t “like them.” I threw out terms like reverse discrimination and bigotry. I think they understood approximately none of it. Who knows if I even pronounced those words correctly.

I woke up on my bed with no money in my wallet, nothing stolen, and the condom wrapper only. If you can solve that riddle, well, then give me a shout.

By Drake Moreau, Beijing Cream’s resident asshole

We all have our routines when we’re drunk or tired. My friend Drew recently introduced me to the idea of visiting spas. It’s a terrible idea. It can’t be good for the body, especially one as horribly abused as mine, to endure further dehydration in a steam room after 10-plus-hours of drinking. But there we were one night, half-naked in a wooden room, flambéing as steam filled the metal box around us.

We recounted the night that had just passed. It started off at Tairyo, the epic all-you-can-stuff-your-face place that I’m positive every foreigner in Beijing knows about. We were rolling about 10-deep or so that night. Drew and I insisted on everybody taking sake shots or bombs at least every three minutes. By sushi time, we had each downed two flasks; by the beef, five were empty; by the shrimp, seven or eight. By the time the chef was lining up the bananas to do his banana-in-flame act, the grand finale that everyone loves, I think Drew and I had outdrank the rest of the table combined. We were sloppier than a Jackson Pollock painting.

The chef kept asking if we were full (“Chi baole”) and if we were done eating (“Chi wanle”). If we said yes to Chi baole?, he kept going; if we said yes to Chi wanle?, he stopped. Drew and I started getting antsy. What did the chef mean, and why did he act differently for each response? For no particular reason, we began really going at it. With machismo and testosterone flowing – and because of some minor physical contact – I ended up finding a half-eaten sushi roll and shoving it in Drew’s face. He found some shrimp and threw it at me. Before we could hold ourselves back, we were rolling on the floor of Tairyo choking and punching each other. Tiny female waitresses surrounded us, arms extended, hands flailing, trying to cordon us from the other patrons. I think it was Freddy who eventually got up and pulled Drew off me, separating the two of us. We both stared at each other like a final Dragonball Z fight. Others glared at us as if we had just caused a car wreck during rush hour on Second Ring Road.

We hugged it out (“Hug it out, bitches!”) and walked out laughing hysterically. I don’t think we paid.

The rest of that night was honestly a blur. I remember going into Fubar because I wanted a drink in one of their special Buddha glass cups so badly just so I could smash the cup outside; we might’ve also gone to George’s for a hot minute before trying to sneak into Vics without paying. Not sure which one of us got caught, but we were gently (forcefully) escorted out. Finally, Drew pushed me in a cab and directed us to the spa.

I felt like complete doodoo sitting in that sauna with Drew, so I decided to order a massage. A comely local girl came to escort me to a private room, where I removed my robe and laid down, only wearing boxer briefs. I was falling in and out of a certain state of conscious limbo, aware of my surroundings but not of my own body within it. All of a sudden, the lovely masseuse flipped me over and started rubbing my upper shoulders, pressing down hard, then moved down to my chest and stomach. It felt fantastic. I kept my eyes closed, just enjoying it all. Her fingers pushed against my skin so hard that my muscles burned; I gave a pleasurable shrug in my still-drunk state. Then she moved down to my midriff and hips. I wasn’t quite sure what she was doing, but at the same time, I knew exactly what she was doing. In a flash, before I could even register the act, she found the crotch opening, stuck her hand in, and started pumping like a jackhammer. Pistons don’t even function this fast. The movie I’m thinking of is The Fast and the Furious. I was more panicked and concerned about the aftereffects; I mean, chafing’s a serious issue, people. Plus, whiskey dick was taking over, and let’s just say she wasn’t the most sensual handler.

At some point, mind dominated matter. I don’t know how I did it, but I willed myself to finish over her hands. As she walked out, I turned onto my side to see her hands out to her sides, gooeyness dripping down. I smiled.

I put my robe back on and walked out at the same time as Drew. We packed up our shit, laughing tiredly, struggling with the mental image of our respective beds. I looked at my watch. It was 7 AM.

Drake Moreau can be reached at drake@beijingcream.com. |Drake Archives|

By Drake Moreau

The Beijing Comedy Club has been trying to gather a lineup of comics and failing miserably. People are just generally not funny. Which is why it’s my job to appear at these showings and laugh – just not at their jokes. They are so fucking horrible and stupid that it’s funny they think they’re funny.

A few weeks ago the BCC made a big deal about their biggest night, held at Tun Bar off Sanlitun South Street. First of all, if you want to promote your organization, don’t hold an event on the sketchiest, dirtiest, grimiest street in Beijing, which makes the streets of South Central feel like my grandmother’s retirement home. And Tun? Is this a joke? My friend told me her younger sister once got her neck licked by a dude for no reason at that place. If you want to hold stand-up at a bar of neck-lickers, be my guest. Just be prepared for the consequences.

I met up with Freddy at Luga’s Villa beforehand for some drinks. I remember sitting there and taking shot after shot of tequila because the deal was 5 shots for 55 RMB. Freddy and I split two racks. Maybe three. Then we proceeded to Tun.

We walked into the middle of some jerk-off’s routine about “crazy Chinese culture.” Real original, buddy – a white dude bitching about China being “super crowded” and “pushy” and its people “looking the same” (which, by the way, IS RACIST… but true, since they do all look the same) is about as funny as saggy tits. Use your fucking brain to come up with something different. Here’s a tip: the best comedians make fun of themselves. Start there.

The final act was a guy named Ryan Ha. Here he is at his debut. The craziest parts – and my favorite – are when he starts degrading women, talking about how he was about to fuck this bitch but can’t because his penis is too small for the condom. On this night, Ryan was going off on another uninspired, overused bit about China when someone from the crowd screamed, “That’s racist!” My love for this heckler swelled immediately. Flustered, Ryan screamed into the mic, “Oh man, I’m gon’ have to slap this bitch right heah” (he speaks in a ghetto black accent, don’t worry about it). That comment prompted someone from the heckler’s table to throw popcorn or some other shit at him. I yelled out, “Fuck her up!” or something. I had taken three more shots and downed a couple beers since arriving, so I was pretty incoherent. I think Ryan said something like he’d see that person off stage after the show or some other ridiculous threat. I was riotously amused. All my assumptions about Beijing’s deficiency in talent, creativity, and inspiration were confirmed.

After the event, Freddy went home to his girlfriend, so I thought it’d be best to hit up a consistent hook-up I’ve had for the past couple weeks. We’ll call her “Marla” since I just watched Fight Club and Marla Singer is a pretty cool character. In a lot of ways, my chick’s like Marla, mainly in that she’s just really fucked up in the head. Let the following be your example.

Completely and utterly intoxicated, I stumble to her place. No recollection of how I get there, but all of a sudden I’m climbing stair after stair, probably because the elevator wasn’t operating (I remember this happened another time). I can’t remember what floor she lives on, so I actually go to a floor above her apartment and start banging on doors. I try being as loud as possible. In the back of my mind I seem to recall that she lived with her family, but this doesn’t register as something for me to be concerned about. Eventually – out of drunk intuition, or maybe a text – I realize she lives on the floor below, so I go down and find her. I’ve barely stepped into her room when she’s on top of me and savagely ripping my clothes off. I swear, it could have been a National Geographic special. Her mouth and tongue were everywhere, hands sending clothes flying, legs suffocating me. Then she asks if I have a condom. I tell her I’m all out (I had meant to pick some up but got sidetracked). So I figure, Well, that’s it, no sex tonight. But in my drunken stupor, to my surprise and delight, I feel a hand grabbing my boner. Marla had fully taken over. Nothing was going to stop her from getting hers. Frankly, I was pretty proud of myself that I could even perform, given the amount I had to drink. Unfortunately, I hadn’t peed recently, and Marla’s continuous bouncing and pounding pushed my bladder into a place of so much discomfort that I had to admit I wasn’t going to finish anytime soon and needed to piss before her bed became one of China’s many public washrooms. Marla has a bathroom connected to her bedroom, so I got up, bare-assed, and went. It felt amazing. Let me tell you, of all the physical sensations the body experiences, I honestly believe that nothing is more enjoyable, relieving, and enhancing than when you haven’t peed in FOREVER and suddenly release it all. I walk back into her room, prepared to just pass out and enjoy a nice sleep. As I hit the bed, though, Marla turns to me and says, “Can you wash your hands?” If you don’t understand just how fucking batshit, ridiculously absurd this is, think about it. She had just decided to have sex with me without a condom (I would have too, trust me, I’m totally clean – no seriously, I am). That’s Point No. 1. Then, I’m totally naked. Meaning, when I pee, I don’t have to unbuckle a belt, undo a button or zipper, or even touch my dick. All I have to do, really, is stick my waist out. In fact, since I had a raging boner still, I had to stand back slightly and bend down. Point is, I really didn’t touch myself at all during the whole pissing. I didn’t need to. I was naked! So coming back to bed to hear her ask me to wash my hands… I honestly cannot express the outrage, frustration, and surprise I felt at her dumbness. Needless to say, I said no, I am not washing my hands.

Her response: “Can you at least put on some hand sanitizer?”

Drake Moreau can be reached at drake@beijingcream.com. |Drake Archives|

By Drake Moreau, Beijing Cream’s resident asshole.

The brutal winters of Beijing don’t leave room for much activity, particularly for the expat in this spit-and-shit squat toilet of a city. Aside from sitting in your heated apartment watching Game of Thrones or Archer, pretty much the only other option on a Friday night is drinking the cold off your skin and making your way to a crowded smoky bar. This is a story of what happened when my friend – who we’ll call Drew – and I did just that last month.

Originally from Florida, Drew went to NYU law school and upon graduating received a sweet offer from a prestigious corporate New York law firm, but due to the global economy, the firm couldn’t bring him on right away. Instead, they basically gave him a year off, paid, to dick around. He decided to come to China. I didn’t meet him until he had already been here for six months, at which point he had a sweet-ass studio apartment in Season’s Park. Before that, he had lived with a host family while studying Chinese, which was not the most accommodating arrangement when it came to ending the nights with girls, so he actually spent most weekends in one of his friend’s spare bedrooms in Dongzhimen. The first time I met Drew, he recounted how he would bring girls back to his buddy’s spare and fuck until neither of them could breathe. I knew immediately that Drew and I would be good buds.

On this particular Friday night, I went to Drew’s place with multiple da pings [ED: “big bottles,” 640 milliliters] of Tsingtao. Our other buddy, “Freddy,” was also there. As we played a casual game of quarters, Drew told us about his former self. He had been engaged for a period before starting law school, but it turned out his fiancé was, in his words, “completely fucking nuts.” They had gotten into some minor argument at a fancy family function that escalated so badly that in their hotel room she ended up hurling a vase at him. Drew’s no Usain Bolt, but he was quick enough to dodge the attempted assault, letting the vase shatter on the wall. That night he took the ring he gave her and hid it. But to his immense surprise, the very next morning that crafty bitch was wearing the same goddamn ring. She had actually searched the room, found it, and put it back on her fucking finger. Needless to say, the relationship did not last much longer. The quarters game was long over by this point, each of us having drank at least four bottles and downed at least three shots of vodka, and by the end, Freddy and I could not stop laughing. This anecdote was just another sample for the growing body of evidence proving Tom Arnold’s utterly true words from the movie The Stupids: “Women: can’t live with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em.”

In prime form, Drew, Freddy and I didn’t even notice the wind as we made our way to First Floor. The bar had a cloud of cigarette smoke trapped inside its small space between the low ceiling and everyone’s heads. Crowded, but not so much that it was unbearable, we made our way to the bar, immediately racking up enough drinks for us to take over someone’s table. I spotted a friend who was with some random people, so we invited ourselves to his table and joined their conversation and drinking games.

Drew immediately struck up talk with an unattractive girl directly behind him. We were too drunk to understand exactly what she does here other than look generally unattractive, but she went on and on about how she was looking into these big-name graduate schools, like Yale, to study architecture. She was name-dropping like crazy, trying to impress us with her knowledge of architects like I.M. Pei and Maya Lin. Achieving the exact opposite effect, Drew began berating her. He asked her what her favorite building in Beijing was, and when she said the CCTV building it was game over.

Drew: “Do you even know the name of the architect who designed that shit?”
Unattractive girl: “Yeah, of course, it’s… umm…”
Drew: “Are you a moron? Are you just bitter because your vagina looks like the CCTV building so you just feel compelled to say that’s your favorite? What a waste of my time…”
Unattractive girl: “Well, why don’t you tell me who it is if you’re so smart?”
Drew: “I’m not the one jerking all over myself over going to architecture grad school at Dartmouth or wherever. And at this rate you’re going to have to blow the dean of admissions because your mouth is good for pretty much nothing else.”

Freddy was overhearing this while talking to others at the table, chuckling at random moments, and I maneuvered myself around to avoid the confrontation. I ended up meeting a cute petite Argentinean. She introduced herself in Spanish, and I was drunk enough to respond in Chinese. Eventually I learned that she worked for some airline at the airport, but I really could not have given two shits. Her long black hair accentuated her South American sass, and I swore to myself that it was on after a mini-dance took place between us to a reggae song. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a black guy with dreads who could have been fucking Vernon Davis squeezed past, turned his head to nod and smile my way, walked right up to the Argentinean, and they immediately started sucking face. I grabbed Freddy and Drew, who both had a one-way bullet train ticket to not-making-progress-ville, and said it’s time to bounce.

We stumbled past the balloon sellers and toy venders with their munchkins and eventually found our way to Punk. Drew’s brain immediately started clicking as he ordered us tequila shots when he saw Freddy zeroing in on a table with two girls. I have absolutely no recollection what they looked like. Zero. They could have been men for all I know. What I do remember is walking up to them in a strut, imagining myself screaming, “I’m Usher from the music video ‘Yeah’!” The least inebriated of the three of us, which is not saying much, Freddy was doing his best to facilitate some sort of conversation. He had a long-term girlfriend and was playing wingman most of the night. Who knows if he was doing his job. As I asked the girl what bullshit job she had here, I turned to see Drew slowly raise his hand above his girl’s head and softly stroke her hair from top to bottom. Drew continued to slowly pat and caress her hair with a look in his eye like he hoped she’d stroke his dick with the same care and gentle touch. I think it was at this point that Freddy pushed us away and told us to get the fuck home.

The next thing I knew, I was in a cab on my own heading to my apartment. I assume there’s a direct correlation between the number of drinks I’ve had and my Chinese language skills, so by that logic I was a goddamn translating linguist. Turned out though that I was speaking a whole other dialect, because all of a sudden the cab driver was yelling at me. I was in the front seat, screaming back at him. He pulled over against the curb, and so I did the next best thing any normal laowai in a screaming cab driver’s taxi would do: opened the door, jumped out and started sprinting at full speed down the street. I was Michael fucking Johnson on steroids. I can’t remember exactly where I was, but I ran down the block, turned right at the next intersection, hailed the first cab I could find and bolted. I think I turned around once in the 100-yard dash I just ran to see if he was following, and I have this image of the cab driver standing up right outside his car, the open door covering his lower torso and legs, staring at me with an evil glare. Whatever. Fucker probably refused to take me to my place.

I was pretty silent in this next cab ride. Everything else was a blur. I woke up the next morning to an empty McDonald’s bag with dried ketchup blobs all over my desk, fully clothed on my bed, and three missed calls from Freddy and a text from Drew that read: “Dude, wtf?”

Drake Moreau can be reached at drake@beijingcream.com. |Drake Archives|

Consider this your introduction to a weekly series in which our resident asshole, Drake Moreau, wades into Beijing’s seedy districts (because he’s an asshole) and writes about them like the asshole he is. Just to give you an example of the type of twat we’re dealing with, here’s the g-chat conversation in which I asked him to write this column.

Edited slightly for clarity

me: have you ever wanted to get published on a website?

Drake Moreau: why?

r u starting one?

me: i have one

it’s in soft launch

i’d like some people to write a column called “Look At This Asshole”

Drake Moreau: i definitley want to

me: can you send me something? a recap of your night out, exactly what liquors you bought or consumed or had bought for you, the chicks you scoped out, and a fight with a cab driver to end the night

something like that

Drake Moreau: yeah

im curious, how do you know about that cab driver fight?

me: uh

i was just throwing out a hypothetical

*

His first column will run next Thursday at this time. Enjoy. He’s a real piece of shit.

|Drake Archives|