The Orchid Room

Booze and stale cigarette smoke.  Mmmmmmm....  Perfume to my olfactory senses.

It all started when I was about five years old.  Thailand was just beginning to get hit with its first contingency wave of American influence and change back in the early 1960s and night clubs catering to the "farang" were popping up all over Bangkok proper.  Imitating the American lead, Thais also frequented these sleazy bars.

Among these night spots was one unassuming one in particular called The Orchid Room.  Its location was in a downtown plaza named Gaysorn.  In a few years this plaza would become one of the many hubs of Bangkok, and in the early 1960s the place to be if you were an American was in The Orchid Room right in the center of Gaysorn Plaza.

One of the unique things about Bangkok back then was that anyone could frequent these night clubs.  And, I mean anyone.  That also included any age,  any gender, any ethnicity -- in a word, ANYone; so, when Gaysorn Plaza held an annual festival event one evening, The Orchid Room was open for business and in full swing.

I remember this one particular night....

I'm five years old.  I'm just beginning to realize my surroundings.  The air is warm and the sky is dark with shining stars, and I feel a new feeling of excitement.  This night is magical.  There are lights everywhere.  The street is filled with people and street food vendors, and they're all walking around, talking and eating.  Mom has a hold of my hand and that of my sister, Mary, and we are walking down the middle of the street with people strolling about all over the place.  Dad appears from around the corner and says something about an orchid and mom nods.

I see floating balloons of every color over head.  Mom gives the man some Bhat (Thai currency) and the man gives her two balloons.  One she ties on Mary's wrist and one she wants to tie on mine, but I want to hold it in my hands, so she lets me.  We continue walking and suddenly, my balloon floats away.  I yell something, and mom looks down at me and says, "Well, that's what happens when you don't let me tie the string to your wrist.  Now, make a wish and let it fly away."  I miss my balloon.  Mary still has hers.

We walk through a large door and into a dark, dimly lit smoke filled room.  Outside, before walking in, is see a flashing neon light.  It is a pink flower and it looks like an orchid.  The room is packed with people.  There is a bar to the right.   Dozens of small round tables with filled glasses on them fill the room and lots of people are sitting in chairs or standing.  Dad is sitting in one of them.  Mom takes us over to his table and I sit down.  I look around, smelling the smoke, watching everyone drinking, laughing.  I hear the chatter and take in the wonderment. I'm only five years old.

This was my first experience of life at night, and the excitement of it would last me a lifetime.  The infectious and addictive sense of that night, sitting there in The Orchid Room with all those grownups and my mom and dad and Mary, had seeded itself; and, what I would later discover as Night Life, had taken hold and claimed my reserve through a laughter crazed and smoke filled room of a neon lit purply-pink orchid plant.  The Orchid Room had changed my life forever.

Back in the United States after some 15 years of living overseas, I frequented many disco clubs and felt at home inhaling the stale smoke while sipping my glass of wine or two during the years of my youth.  Later, I would take belly dance lessons in Sacramento and then begin performing on the small stages of local San Francisco belly dance night clubs on Broadway Street to the wee hours of the morning.  There, the lingering cigarette smoke would hang in the air and filter through my costumes as I danced for the patrons.  And, as I would dress for work the next day, I would walk out to the living room where I had left my costume just a few hours earlier, having departed the night club after an evening of dancing, and I would take in the aromas of the evening as that stale smoke and booze molecules escaped my costume drifting into the confines of my apartment.  It was The Orchid Room all over again.

The Clean Air Act and the No Smoking laws put an end to smoke clouded night spots.  And, although I know that second-hand smoke can also kill, I still miss the chatter and clatter of a hazy night club as people light cigarettes and let drift the lazy smoke into the room.  It would fill my senses as it once did decades ago inside The Orchid Room.

Sometimes, when I get a little nostalgic, I'll wander upstairs to where my costumes are now stashed.  I'll open the costume cases and bring these now old and worn costumes to my nose, and I will inhale deeply the still faint scent of stale smoke, and the excitement and magic of Night life will once again fill my senses.

And I'm the Orchid Room all over again.

A Bangkok Family Christmas

Saturday, December 1, 2012 10:25 AM -- the very day after the very last day of November, and I witnessed my first sighting of a Douglas Fir strapped to the roof of a car driving west on John F. Kenedy Drive in Golden Gate Park.  I mean, couldn't they have waited another day or so before chopping down this innocent young fir tree?  Six hours later and the second one wizzed past me on Sunset Boulevard.

I  hate Christmas.  Or rather, I hate the commercialization of Christmas.

My first real Christmas tree was back in 1964.  It was a real big deal back then.  I was only ten years old and we were living in Bangkok on Soi 31 off of Sukumvit Road.  Back then, the Thais were just beginning to get what Christmas meant to the Americans stationed over there, and real live fir trees of any kind were virtually unknown.  So, when my friend, Becky, told me of real live fir trees being imported to Bangkok, I rushed to tell my mom and dad.

But long before that year, our beloved Christmas tree consisted of dark green plastic pieces all wrapped up in a cardboard box, which we got from the Navy Base Exchange.  Six one-foot pole-like parts with corresponding numbers embedded in each pole fitted into each other and made up the trunk out of which half-inch nobs protruded.  Into these protrusions with corresponding numbers the larger branches with the same number were attached.  These branches also came with half-inch nobs and smaller branches were fitted onto these nobs according to more matching numbers.  And, yes, these smaller branches had nobs onto which the fir-like leaves were attached.  By the end of the tree construction, we had a perfectly symmetrical six-foot dark green plastic Christmas tree.  I still remember being a part of something big as I helped to assemble and then decorate this plastic fir tree with my family.

Then came the real tree, the live tree, the tree that would make all the difference in our 1964 Christmas, imported especially for the Americans all the way from the hills of somewhere in the United States.  And it was a beautiful tree, with branches that stuck out every which way.  It was a perfect Christmas tree.  It was a special Christmas tree.

And then ten years later, back in the States, I saw it; rows and rows of young fir trees all lined up just like the apple orchards in Washington.  A sign hung on a fence, "Christmas Tree Farm".

Trees grown in a tree farm just for chopping and selling for the Holidays use of less than a month saddens me.  People ask me around the Holidays, "Why don't you ever put up a Christmas tree?"  My answer:  "There are plenty of LIVE trees outside my window that look just as lovely in the sparkle of daylight and  just as beautiful beneath the glow of the moonlight without going out and BUYING A DEAD ONE -- one that was grown specifically for chopping down or rather killing and which will ultimately end up all dried and brown lying in a gutter somewhere; a fitting place for the (by the way) once glorified Christmas tree just for a 30-day occasion of decorating and celebrating a Holy birth."  A dead tree for a Holy birth.  Now, there's a point to ponder!  It just makes no sense to me, spirit or no spirit.

I will never forget my first real Christmas tree, which was then unbeknownst to me most likely grown on a tree farm and which seemed so special back in 1964, but I'd much rather have that boxed plastic one along with some assembly required, because the assembly of this tree was more than just a Christmas tree.  It was the gathering of my mom and dad, brother and sisters on one mid-December evening long ago in a tropical country, working as a team -- a family -- building a Christmas tree from numbered plastic parts and decorating it together with laughter and joy.  And, we would eventually stand back all together like the assembled parts of that Christmas tree and agree that it was the most beautiful Christmas tree ever.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013 12:00 Noon -- A Christmas tree lies alone in the gutter at Fulton and Divisadero Streets.  Another at around 3:30 PM rolls back and forth in the cold wind on Fulton and 36th Avenue.  Both brown and dead.  Both tossed out in the streets for the garbage men to pick up.  Sad.........so very very sad....