Kinky!

So I'm teaching English to an S&M dancer.

We met when I went back to a bar in Golden Gai for lunch last week. She works as a barlady in a couple of bars around the area and we had a really good chat while I was having lunch. I met a couple of other really odd but harmless artist people while I was there. And she really wanted me to teach her English so that she could explain what kind of dance she does to foreigners. She said she'd pay me my usual hourly fee plus give me free drinks, so I agreed.

She has a very distinctive name, so I looked it up on google and found out what kind of dance she does and what kind of crowd she hangs out with. I have to say I was slightly concerned at first that I might find myself getting tangled up in something unpleasant, but then I was like "fuck it, she was really nice."

So I went to the bar she was working at tonight, which is called "Bikini Machine," pretty small and decked out in 70s colours and fur everywhere with loads of bikini-clad female shop-window dummies. And bikini-clad Barbie dolls on all the shelves. My beer was even served in a glass shaped like a woman's body wearing a bikini. We started chatting:

"So, what did you do today?"
"Uhh, first I went to school, then I danced. But it was really bad, I made mistakes."
"Oh? Like what?"
"Well, I fell over."
"So, the kind of dance you do, does it have fixed patterns which you have to get right?"
"Well, it's SM, so I wear bondage gear..."
"Essay?"
"SM"
"Uuh, like writing?"
"No. Bondage. Leather. SM."
"OH! S and M! I get it - yeah, Sadomasochism... yeah, for some reason we shorten it to S and M in English."
"Yeah, I have to wear really high heels, and sometimes I fall over."

And so on.

Then, after about half an hour a group of about thirty Japanese people comes piling in, celebrating something and the bar goes from being completely empty to rammed full. So I wait around kind of awkwardly for her to finish serving customers (apparently it never normally gets that busy). It was really odd, because usually I inevitably become the focus of at least one person's attention, if not several - but it was truly like I was invisible. You wonder all your life what it would be like to be a fly on the wall, and for about 20 minutes I was, like some anthropologist living with the natives. Then somehow that changed and I ended up behind the bar serving people for little while. And then I agreed with her that it would be better if I came back on a quieter day.

My walk back to the station was made considerably more enjoyable when I walked past another tiny 10 person bar with a lone salaryman in it doing a karaoke version of Numa Numa (I love this video).