“Paulll, Keevvvin,” I slur as the coy maiden extends her hand in greeting — “Meet Steve”. Her hand drops and her smile melts. That one burned. Our departure is hasty and the forlorn flexisexual is left alone on the street corner. On our post-kebab journey home we pass by her again. This time we’re greeted only by a sullen pout. She doesn’t deserve this treatment, but Wanchai has seen worse.

A few hours and several drinks earlier…

It’s a fairly typical Friday night: a friend is visiting Hong Kong for the weekend and quiet happy-hour drinks soon turn into loud unhappy-hour drinks. Sleeves are wet from spilt Carlsbergs. Steady 7pm morphs into wobbly 11pm and my guest, Paul, is up on the bar wedged between two ass-shaking vixens dancing to Shakira. Hardly a distinguished start to the evening — but it can only get better. This is, after all, the land where you pay to get laid or splay to get paid.

At the bar, we meet another friend, Angie, a tall blonde Brit. She’s in a corner chatting up a suave young gentleman who, she swears, fits her description of ‘dream guy’. Let’s call him Tim. Angie seems to be doing well with Tim. She leans in on him; he leans back. Her advances are obvious and he offers no resistance. But Tim crumbles after seeing Paul’s groin-grinding performance on the bar, and before we know it, he’s up in Paul’s face screaming along the words to the Proclaimers’ I Would Walk 1,000 Miles and dancing like a hyperactive aqua-jogger. Angie’s dream guy turns out to be Dream Gay and Paul doles out his first rejection of the night.

Hookers and Hedonism

Fenwick’s, a bar famous for its women of preposterously easy virtue, is dangerously close. It would be criminal not to treat my guest to a tour of this basement establishment, also known for its musky-smelling carpet, readily available cocaine, and quick-wristed patrons. There are two safe ways to negotiate Fenwick’s: get hammered and dance to the band as if no-one’s watching; or put your head down, stay close to your friends, and circumnavigate the bar, slapping off the plethora of hopeful hands moving crotchwards as if you’re walking through a series of turnstiles. We’ve got time and by this stage we’re riotously drunk— we choose the former.

Soon a 20-year-old girl with rivers of black hair and mountains of silicone has attached herself limpet-like to Paul. She comes up to his waist. He seems to think it a good fit. It’s hard to tell what’s going on in the shadows of the dance-floor, but it looks as if he’s at least getting some decent pelvic exercise. He is, she assures him with blatant disregard to my presence, the most handsome man in the room. She seems genuinely interested in where he’s from, even if she thinks New Zealand is somewhere in the north of Canada. When she asks him to buy her a drink, Paul all-too-happily acquiesces, not realizing that she’s ordering a commission drink from which she draws a large part of her evening’s earnings. The bill for a piss-weak vodka and orange? HK$150. It was a relationship breaker.

We escape round the corner to Neptune II, a bar equal to Fenwick’s in every respect except its covers band, which plays the same old shit from the Black Eyed Peas and Avril but is better by virtue of its hotter singer. Another long-haired 'mini-me' attaches herself to Paul’s hip while her nine accomplices mob me and Kevin. We tuck three under each arm and leave the others to brave the wilds, mixing it with hairy white guys who have copious guts spilling out the bottoms of their shirts and eyes glazed with sex-hunger flitting across the room, looking for whatever’s going. Trimmer, more urbane young men wearing suits and wedding rings linger in darker corners, enjoying the unholy affections of ostensibly amorous nymphs.