It was five of us. Expat English teachers from a high school on the outskirts of Wuhan.

Our school being in a remote location, we were getting stir-crazy and needed a shot of bright lights, big city nightlife.

We met up around 8 in the evening outside our school’s front gate and piled into a beat-up gray Renault van; a “chicken van” as it’s often dubbed in China Expat nomenclature.

The chicken van made regular runs from our school to the Wuhan city center and was rickety and squeaked, creaked, bumped and thumped along as our driver, a middle-aged local, with minimal teeth and a scraggly flattop, grunted, growled and honked at everything moving as we sped by abandoned Soviet style apartment blocks, vacant factories, and an active chemical plant, its storage tanks glowing gold; its smokestacks spewing steady streams of milky exhaust into the tar of night.

The traffic flow, chaotic beeping, vehicular madness multiplied like swarms of bees and hornets as we neared the neon night of the city center.

Hard cyberpunk blasted from the van’s distorted dashboard speakers, and during the journey we debated prurient topics, like who you’d rather fuck: a morbidly obese fempat or a smoking hot, post-op Thai ladyboy.

(The ladyboy won, hands down.)

We cut onward into the municipality’s veins, by the black river, and saw shiny skyscrapers flanked by varying architectures of iron, and cruel, rectangular, brightly lit buildings backdropped in smog.

The streets were heavily peopled. Bikes, buses, cars, walkers, vendors; a myriad of human smells, hives of activity.

Here was the commerce, life and leisure of an economic colossus, a church of capitalism, an emerging superpower...

Our Captain was a China vet, a grizzled Welshman, a muscular, crewcut, cleft-chinned former SAS.

The wild-eyed savage in his starched and creased Iron Maiden T-shirt, camouflage cargo shorts- his usual attire, despite the damp, 7 something Celsius winter weather...

The Welshman was showing off the green dragon tattoo on his upper right arm to our driver’s nodding approval.

The Welshman’s glaucous eyes, w/their drooping lids, crow’s feet, and his sneaky wry smile and fangled set of choppers told of time, the Commonwealth and too many sweets, and the cheeky, sprite geezer spit on the street and sparked a smoke as we disembarked from the van.

Wuhan’s downtown air was different, slightly sulfuric, and its temperature felt a tad warmer than that at our school’s sprawling hillside campus.

“You’re 62, mate?” queried Piggy, the chubby young Londoner aside the Welshman.

“Never underestimate the importance of a good night’s sleep and a proper shave...” the Welshman retorted, ejecting twin chutes of smoke through the flared nostrils of his long nose and nodding us in the direction of a nearby bar.

A muck-faced beggar in grayish rags, missing both legs, crawled by us on his forearms, prostrating along the street.

He beseeched us in a local dialect none of us could understand, but linguistic barriers couldn’t obfuscate his angle, and he clutched a tattered KFC coffee cup with a ratty, crudely affixed QR code for donations...

Piggy winced. Being new to China, and Asia, I could see it affected him. The only thing that affected the rest of us was olfactory. Fucker smelled like the floor of an abattoir.

“In China, the beggars are controlled by the triads. It’s a racket. Probably got his legs cut off for not paying off gambling debts. And now his wife’s a hooker, too, I bet. Pun intended.” The Welshman observed, seemingly attempting to calm Piggy, whapping the Pigger a playful elbow to his Buddha belly.

Most China expats, after enough time in the PRC, had a similar gallows sense of humor as the Welshman...

“What, so since he’s got no legs he can’t slap on deodorant? He’s still got arms,” chimed in American Randy, nosehair Randy, the chinless, the doomsday prepper, the flat-earther, the near midget with a walrus mustache, always in Adidas tracksuits, the raging asshole who could never put down his phone.

“I doubt deodorant’s the biggest of his worries...” I assured, testily, wanting a beer already.

二

We entered the bar through the baroque, towering, 3-meter high ovular pecan brown wood entry door and made into the mist and volume of the establishment.

The place was a behemoth square-shaped venue that had an ersatz Euro gestalt- assorted oak veneer plinths with faux marble statues of Greek gods, a celestial ceiling, off-white walls with crown moldings, caryatids and Odesa corner onlays, and an array of prismatic overhead lights in rainbow spectrums, lasers, and strobes over the proscenium in the far left of the main room where a Filipino band played.

Our crew soldiered up to the reverse L-shaped drink counter and waved over one of the bartenders, an early 20s, tall Chinese goddess in black knee-high platform boots, hip-hugger green sparkly short shorts (revealing delicious rear décolletage) and shiny silver halter top that showed off her taut midriff.

Her hair was dyed, tied into Harley Quinn pigtails, and I wondered if she was an aspiring model or at least a luxury car show girl...

We complimented Harley on her winning of the genetic lottery, and she stoically tapped at her tablet while we ordered a bevy of beers, strictly Corona, none of the local piss, and whiskey shots, Jack on the rocks.

Each of us swiped our phones to pay, and we collectively ogled Harley Qing’s shapely derriere as she slinked off...

We cut a path through the miasma of smoke, bar staff moving like missiles, rushing drink trays, and we dodged phone zombies, randomly arranged tables, and found a vacant booth in the corner, not far from a trio of pool tables.

Doomsday Randy was pointedly saying to Piggy: “It’s not that I’m homophobic! I’m simply scared of gays. Like, an irrational fear, like I go to San Francisco or Dupont Circle and I’m thinking dudes are just gonna run up and buttfuck me, you know? I start to understand how women feel, you hear me?”

We scooted into the booth, eased into the pleather. A smiley young mushroom haircut waiter in a tacky tuxedo and oversized eyeglasses, arrived with our drinks and offered us a free plate of neatly, symmetrically laid slices of dark meats and cut fruits.

I sampled a strip of the meat and found it to have a bizarre, pungent, heavy taste. Certainly not sapid.

Canadian Chad, in his black HIV sweatshirt and ripped up blue jeans, Chad the crazy long legged, lanky, gangly fuck, Chad we call the slender man, examined the meat with squinting, sapient eyes, and shrieked and gagged. Upper lip curled, prognathous jaw extended, he offered an unusual appraisal.

“Bro, that’s fucking dog! That’s fucking dog, bro! You ate dog! I know that smell from anywhere. They ate that shit in Korea. Only kimchi is...”

I couldn’t hear the last of his words because the music was too loud, but I could easily detect his distaste, and he made fake puking gestures and burst into sardonic fits of laughter, pointing and snapping smartphone photos of my snarled mien.

“Can’t imagine how much melamine is in that dogmeat. Your kidneys are fucked. You won’t have them harvested, probably, so that’s a win...” Randy conjectured, snarling and yelling over the table, before he grabbed a slice of purple dragon fruit and began chewing it with his mouth open.

“Yerr ... Only live once. Fuck Cujo,” I yelled back, and guzzled my Jack on the rocks to ablute my mouth of the taste and guilt.

Piggy was sweating, staring, his mouth agape, the pudgy punter practically mesmerized by the skimpy bikini dancer, a light-skin lovely with the big bulging Fan Bing Bing eyes of a green tea bitch.

The vixen worked the pole on a birdcage-like podium opposite the bar, gyrating, thrusting her feminine geometry to the hum, bumps of the beat. Her lithe little body shaking in hypnotizingly lusty motions; her lissome movements full of gymnastic aerial V leg splits and bad bitch twerks.

“Welcome to Communism!” Chad the Slender barked at Piggy, slapping on the Pigster’s back in a congratulatory gusto.

“Fuck Communism!” Welshman bellowed, raising his shot glass and we clinked cheers and guzzled what I hoped to be genuine whiskey. It was genuinely smoky, peaty, if nothing else, and rushed into my bloodstream with rapidity...

三

Aside from the dancer, the bar was pretty pathetic, I gathered, scouting around. Having been in Shanghai before and partied in bitching bars and clubs, this place was a joke. Felt like a simulacrum. There were hardly any ladies, other than a few scantily clad skeezers, sitting suspiciously alone at the bar.

The Welshman, noticing me checking them out, leaned over and whisper-screamed into my ear over the Filipinos’ blaring, shitty acoustic rendition of Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood...”

“See that one over there, in the red? Those fishnets, the rack, the makeup like a geisha? My buddy working in town, he picked her up, sent me a photo. 1000 RMB for the night. Said she was a screamer. Called her Moaning Lisa...”

“Said she was cock-eyed, though, so he fucked her doggystyle.”

“Probably why she’s wearing those shades.”

“Strabismus.”

“Whatever...”

“If all else fails, we head to a massage place. Get wanked off, have a dip in the jacuzzi. Not a bad way to finish the evening, I reckon,” the Welshman affirmed, chair-danced and sparked another smoke...

Our mission was twofold: We’d come for fun. And for cunt.

Looking around, though, there wasn’t much pussy to be found, at least of the free will variety. Very few debutantes here...

The bar was hazy thick in clumps of cigarette smoke and largely populated by small groups of local dudes drinking 3% alcohol beer, cradling their phones; many playing a drinking game that involved shaking a cup full of dice.

“All right, lads, let’s find fanny!” hollered the Welshman at the top of his lungs. He then guzzled the remainder of his beer, and we split into two squads, a team of two and a team of three.

The Welshman slid out of the booth, rose up and continued: “Don’t let any of the local blokes cajole you into drinking too many. It gives them face, like, ‘Hey, I have a white friend!’

“Have a quick shot or two, on them, and then break out. But don’t be daft and do a Wendell Brown.”

Deploying, weaving about the floor, the Welshman and I happened upon a table of non-hooker looking lovelies in short skirts. We locked onto our targets and approached.

They were probably half our age and would never talk to us in Britain or America- unless we were rich. But here, in Asia, we had a fighting chance, asserted the Welshman, saying how girls like that in the UK wouldn’t even spit on him.

“I’d lick up the water from off the floor of her shower.” I was saying as we neared the pussy, my face twitching with lust.

I’d instantly been enamored by the pussy at 11 o’clock, the shoulder length hair brunette, with the resting bitch face and those hyperborean cheekbones; the gorgeous maiden, coyly crossing her shapely satin pantyhose wrapped legs, staring down at her phone, twirling her wavy hair with her fingers.

Fuck, she looked like a total bitch, which made me want her even more, and I wondered what color panties she might be wearing up under that super-skanky microscopic skirt...

But, closing in, a duo of chunky lizard-face local dudes cut off our path, smiling and patting us on the back, offering us shots, likely employing a common Asian continent cock-blocking tactic.

We reluctantly accepted, following their popped-up polo shirt collars to an adjacent table, wanting not to have a Wendell Brown.

After a shot, and pretending we didn’t speak Chinese, and them speaking minimal English, we shook their hands, politely stepped off, and disappeared into the bar’s stratosphere of smoke and were disappointed to find the pussy had vanished.

Even worse was that a pair of local police floated forth, menacingly, like ghouls, in front of us.

四

One of the cops was pointing his smartphone, taking pictures of us. The other greeted us in English.

“We must see your passports, please,” the English speaker, the younger, taller of the pair spoke, mechanically, in a British-inflected Chinese accent.

The older, shorter copper, the one wielding the phone, examined our passports, visa pages, and snapped smartphone pics of them with splenetic fervor.

We had valid passports, visas, so it wasn’t an issue. However, what happened next was unexpected, certainly at this bar.

The English-speaking cop, produced two small urine specimen cups from his coat pocket, handed them to us.

“Please provide urine samples. We check for illegal contraband,” said the young cop, in a coldly formal cadence.

Being a tad buzzed, I reached for my fly, was about to whip out my dick and piss right there. But the cops winced, and the English speaker waved me off, forming an X with his arms, and pleaded: “No! No! No! We take you to WC!”

In the bathroom, Piggy, Randy and Chad were already there, looking something between pissed off and confused.

Drug tests at expat bars are common these days, in Xi Jinping’s China, but they aren’t too frequent in predominantly Chinese bars...

Chad was stuttering, trying Fabian tactics, something about a kidney issue, his blue eyes getting watery.

But his protesting was otiose. The coppers were stolid, unwavering, and ushered us one at a time into a stall and watched us each stand over a shit-splattered squat toilet and piss into their cups of truth.

“Please provide...” politely requested the younger copper, guiding me into the dookie booth, and when I broke out my little brother, he stared straight at it, smiled licentiously as my silver piss filled the cup.

A gaggle of other cops showed up soon after, all of them donning facemasks...

One of the newcomer cops, wearing blue latex gloves, disappeared with our warm, freshly bubbling piss while the English-speaking cop made small talk with us, mostly about basketball, then about Kobe, and who we blamed for the helicopter crash.

A few minutes later we were released. All of us, except Canadian Chad, the slender man, who was asked to “come to station.”

We didn’t ask why.

Leaving the WC, I saw the educator, towering above the police, cowering like a wounded giraffe, breaking into tears as the coppers encircled him.

The vibe at the bar completely killed, we decided to boogie, and head to the massage parlor early.

五

The spa was a quick five-minute walk away, and on the way there, we spotted an apartment building, its residents emptying, panicked, many in pajamas, piling into cars out front, tires screeching as they tore off hastily.

“Might be another jumper.”

“Or a building fire.”

“Another maid with a flamethrower, trying to juice the insurance cash to pay off her gambling debts.” Randy chimed in, rambling.

Randy’d taken a fancy to the maid in Hangzhou, had written her in jail, tried to visit her before she was executed via firing squad...

Next to the spa was a dead body, a migrant worker, from the looks of him. You’d see that in the city center, here and there. Dead bodies, often adventitious, lying around before they eventually got scooped up.

An aerial drone buzzed overhead, right by us, speakers on it screaming something in Chinese, but it flew too fast and was too garbled to comprehend...

The spa had Grecian pillars in the doorway and flashing red lights, floral patterns on the awning, and the signage above had the spa’s regal name, emblem. A short red-carpet was unfurled on the sidewalk, leading inside, like a hairy tongue.

I’d been there once or twice. It was a colossal place, with a locker room, showers, a sauna, steam room, jacuzzi and small swimming pool on the first floor; the second floor a cavernous lounge area with puffy, comfy leather kick-back chairs, each having its own wraparound TV, plus a decent buffet restaurant, and a third floor filled with private massage rooms, VIP suites.

Many travelers to Wuhan stay the night there, instead of a hotel...

We entered the lobby. The floors were beige, fake marble, and a Frenchy style crystal chandelier dangled from the ceiling; red ribbons hung all over the walls, and a 3-meter-high, 2-meter-wide fish tank with various varieties of goldfish swimming about was situated near the entryway.

A poster with a list of services and prices hung above the sales counter, where we were greeted by a buxom, nubile attendant in a resplendent red flowing evening dress, who booked us in and scanned our Alipay payments with a vulpine smile.

Piggy, Welsh, Randy were escorted to the elevator, up to the sauna by a leggy raven-haired beauty in a tight-fitting gold one-piece miniskirt bearing the spa’s escutcheon, and Piggy, right behind her, stared directly at her tight ass, slobbering and following it to the elevator like a syzygy.

Another golden one-piece miniskirt beauty, even hotter, this one practically all leg, led me, by myself, to another room, down a separate corridor, on the ground floor...

Legs asked me, in English, if I was a Jew.

“No, I’m Italian-American, but people sometimes think I’m Jewish because of my big nose. My ancestors are from Italy, Milan, came to America years ago.”

“I like Jew,” she said, chuckling, “so clever. Too bad you not Jew.”

“Anyone can convert, I guess. Even you. You could be a Jew. A Chinese Jew. You’d be set on Christmas.” I told her, but my joke flew over her pretty head, and her temperament cooled.

She brought me to a room that was like a hotel suite, waved me in and promptly disappeared. The room was spacious, with fancy light fixtures and had a king size bed, 55-inch flat screen TV mounted to the wall and a small fridge. The ceiling and walls were all mirrors.

A minute later another leggy, identical gold miniskirt gal stepped in. This one not half as pretty. Her head was abnormally large, and she had tiny opal eyes shaped like bent crescent moons.

However, her hourglass figure, her lower body, in particular – her hips, thighs and round ass- were most certainly enticing. Her nose and chest were both rather flat, though.

She spoke perfect English and told me her name was God.

“Would you like to sleep with me? 900 RMB,” God cooed, running her hands over her runway chest, working down to her ischium, cupping her childbearing hips and swaying slightly.

I’d rarely paid for sex and wasn’t going to pay her.

“No, that’s okay. I just want a massage, nothing more.”

God’s face contorted, first in surprise, then something that appeared hurt, then irate.

“You don’t think I’m beautiful?” she sniffed and coughed and crossed her arms, appearing as though she’d let loose a runnel of teary waterworks.

“No, you’re beautiful. Seriously, you’re great. It’s not you. It’s me. I only came for a massage. You’re very pretty, you really are.” I pleaded to her, trying to lift her spirits.

For a second I felt bad about not paying her, genuinely bad about it, but then I wondered why I honestly felt bad about not wanting to have sex with this prostitute, this “chicken woman”, this slapper...

God stomped off with an expression that was something between hurt and confused. Perhaps I was the first foreigner not to hire her “services...”

The imbibing I’d done at the bar suddenly kicked up a notch, the floor feeling uneven.

A handsome young Chinese man with a shaven head suddenly appeared like he’d walked through the wall.

Heavily tattooed, and a meathead, I worried he’d come to rough me up for hurting the hooker’s feelings, but he was chill and friendly and led me up to the sauna, and we chatted in Chinese about basketball.

“Kobe, numba wan!” he repeatedly exclaimed, in English, coughing and spitting on the floor as we walked down a tessellated hallway, and he showed me into the lungs of the locker room.

The locker room was humid and hot as an oven; floors were moist and hard. Beads of sweat trickled down my lower back, and I peeled off my Boy jacket, was handed a key attached to a stretchy red plastic wristband...