Downtown Singapore;

beyond the gleaming discipline and the orderly streets of orderly hookers, beyond the turtle chop-shops and the yabba stands. Down among the alleys where it stinks of shit and food there’s this bar. Get past the gangsters, walk quickly past the cages. It looks like an abortion clinic, non; all halogen, disinfectant and sorrow. The staff all wear surgeon gear. Breathe deep and you’ll smell that old-school colonialism, when our boys went mad from the opium and the tropical fever.

The 4 Humour Bodily Fluids Christmas Coconut Lounge: a homesick, nihilistic fever-dream. Now get up there, because they’ll probably shoot you in the face if you don’t.

What’ll it be? Martini mixed with the tears of broken-hearted virgins, or something dryer, maybe squeezed from spastic ginger twins. Breast-milk and Benolyn? Don’t worry, smile. Chase it down with fermented bile. Watch the technicians screening the fluids, or pretending to. Have a bloody, bloody Mary, have it thick and positive. Nail a yellow pus monkey brain. Drink their cells and lives. Trust those little glassy-eyed students: you’ve come this far.
76 Robertson Quay, Singapore