Check out the neon in old town Geneva, and the Ba-Ta-Clan strip club next to the spaghetti restaurant:
[Not my photo]
I’ve been in the Ba-Ta-Clan a couple of times, quite a while ago. A friend of mine was very keen on the place, and seemed to spend most of his evenings and nights there. He was a small, quiet chap with lank hair and a wispy moustache. He looked anaemic, and he chain-smoked Muratti Ambassadors with a trembling hand. A couple of the girls who worked at the Ba-Ta-Clan he called his friends, and he was always encouraging me to go along with him of an evening.
Frankly I didn’t fancy the idea: I had no idea what sort of place it was inside, and I didn’t really have any desire to dip into what I felt was a very seedy pastime. Besides, I was a student and had very limited financial resources, and I suspected that it would be expensive. I was right: when I finally did accompany my friend he had to first of all pay a significant fee to get in, but once we were in, the drinks were astronomically priced. I can’t remember exactly now, but I think they were around three or four times the price they were in the rest of Old Town.
When we entered I was very conscious of how dark it was. This made it seem quite small inside. Up at the front was a stage with garish lighting. The body of the room was filled with small round tables and bistro style chairs, whereas at against the walls were more comfortable booths with burgundy velour upholstered seats situated around a table. The place was relatively empty of people, although the air was filled with smoke, and so it was hard to see clearly.
A blond girl was dancing: I remember she had a lot of sequins on her and she seemed to sparkle. When she finished she came over to the table we were sitting at. (I should note that there was no nudity involved in her dance routine). “Bonsoir, Crease!”, she said in a thick French accent (my friend’s name was Chris) and sat down. Then another girl came over: I think she was blond too. Then there began some bizarre ritual involving buying these two girls drinks. I don’t remember the details, but it wasn’t just a question of “What would you like to drink?”, it seemed more like a negotiation in which Chris tried to persaude them to have the most expensive drink, and they would banter with him about it being too expensive. You know the type of routine “Have this”, “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly, “Go on, really”, “Well, I don’t know, maybe I’ll just have a beer”, “Don’t be silly … have the Champagne”, “Oh Crease, you are so naughty” et cetera.
Since the conversation was all in French it was a little difficult to think of much to add (my restaurant French was excellent, but making smalltalk with buxom French dancers in sequined costumes was challenging, to put it mildly – “Votre costume – c’etait fabrique ou, exactement?”). So I sat mostly in silence for quite some time. Since Chris was paying for everything, the two girls paid me no attention whatsoever anyway, which I was quite relieved about.
After about an hour of heavy Muratti smoking, Champagne drinking, and listening and watching the two girls coo and fuss over Chris, while a series of similarly sequined individuals pranced about on stage, I decided it was time for me to leave, which I did, leaving Chris to his fate. I strongly suspect he never did more than just sit there buying them drinks and basking in their mock affection of him. I think that affection was something he was sorely missing in his life.
So that was a wash. I think I went back one other time a year or so later, and it was pretty much the same story.
An interesting aspect of the social dynamic was that these two girls who were Chris’s “friends”, would often get on to the “X” bus that I took downtown at the end of the day. They would get on in Meyrin, where they lived, and were probably on their way to work, as I was coming home from my work. And every time they would look straight through me, as they got on, without any flicker of recognition, despite the fact that I easily recognised them, and that of course they had spent an hour or more sitting face to face with me in the recent past. It was as if, because I hadn’t bought them a drink, I was irrelevant and thus invisible. At least that is how I interpreted it at the time.
