The good times are back

Voltaire once said that guilt is when you let good things escape you. I’m sure he meant nobler things, but just to widen the sieve of definition, I’m sure he thought of the good times as well. Therefore, the phrase "guilty pleasure" seems like a paradox. Why feel guilty about pleasure? Life is too short.

In the cusp between our early 20s and late 70s, so are memories. Making them, however–whether we remember them or not–is an infinite endeavor.

People have funny ways of showing that they care. The more they’re into someone, the more they mack on useless people; the more they ignore calls or SMS messages, the more they test someone if the ardor is reciprocated by acting like designer cretins. In the same breath, people have funny ways or proving they’re having fun. They dress really lousy–as in PJ lousy (not rolled-out-of-bed sexy, more like mud-pack blah)–have recycled conversations about who sucks and who slept with who and pretend to be really bored. What’s happening? Is boring the new fun?

I grew up listening to Coco Banana stories. As a child, I thought that this was some kind of ice cream parlor, like the ones I would go to with my Dad, except that crazy and beautiful people went there. I later learned that it was a majestic parlor of grandeur, where overdressed was underdressed and people outdid each other in misbehaving. I couldn’t believe my luck being born in such a dismal era, where people again started caring what others thought and wore jeans to weddings – boring!

I can safely say I popped my disco cherry in Euphoria, but that was fake. I went there with my Dad and drank Shirley Temples until I got my very own Euphoria card from my dad who got tired of coming with me. While people my age had ambitions of becoming doctors or lawyers, I just wanted to be an Absolut girl but didn’t have the rack to measure up, so I became a semi-drunk instead. From Euphoria/Faces came Mars, then my all-time favorite Stars/Republic and the crimson-tinted memories of Pravda. It’s funny, if you think about it. Whereas my dad shook his booty in Louie Y’s Wherelse?, I shook my nonexistent booty in Marcel Crespo’s Wherelse? almost a decade later. A dude who worked for both incarnations told me that if I weren’t a chick he’d be calling me by my Dad’s name. Since he was a bit vague and scary, I never ordered a drink from him again.

That, I must say, was the cusp of good times. Plain old disco, shallow and fabulous. When Wherelse? closed and Orange became the scene of a tragedy, we knew that it would be a long time before our asses would shake it again, in this town at least.

Then a miracle happened. A club, a good old one with velvet ropes and lines (in and out, literally, for the club and a mirrored VIP room for the vainglorious fabulous few), girls in skimpy, slutty clothes again (yay!) and boys up to their dirty tricks. Embassy Super Club has come to vaporize our consciences, dehydrate our sorry bodies, rain our Mondays with pink slips and, of course, give us again something to damn do on a Saturday night.

Embassy, run by my favorite blonde Tim Yap, Temple’s Erik Cua, DJ Jon Herrera and Uva’s Fernando Aracama, opened last Tuesday, Chinese New Year’s Eve. The scene was wonderfully familiar. Crowds, feet trampling on my poor Pucci heels, namedropping galore, and for those who actually got in, plain fun the good, old-fashioned way. Fun where talk was cheap, gyrating to absolutely beautiful strangers and the occasional pop of bubbly in the fashionable corners of the club.

As I drank the second bottle of beer in my life (the first was at a Rolling Stones concert, where they were not serving martinis), I even forgot that a bottle of brew had the carb content of a loaf of bread. Fun, fun, fun! Yes, it was great to be a ditz in a place that encouraged you to be one.

One thing about working in YStyle, I learned, is that it serves as an excellent pickup line, if you’re a man without a conscience. At the end of the night, I got seven numbers of women who I contracted to shoot for the section. I think I should really start changing that pickup line since I think I’m sending the wrong messages.

One thing you also realize about a club is that the paid stamp on one’s palm has become the new friendship bracelet, as evidenced by my friend Patrick Reyno, who flashed his hand to us: "Look, I paid, I refuse to namedrop." Tim looked really touched. I guess that means I’ll have to shell out, too. Sigh.

I remember writing an article years ago about having fun, and I never received so much hate mail. I know that life is so much more than booty calls, pickup lines and vodka breaks. But if bored becomes the new fun, what will we do in our off hours? Sometimes you have to let out your inner slut/rake. It’s utterly liberating to play the role. To live it is another thing. Where else can one play this role any better than in an exceedingly slick, exceedingly sceney mecca like Embassy Super Club? Gentlemen, splash on your Drakkar Noirs and ladies, put on your Charles Jourdans because the good times are definitely back.