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.