KAOS

Publix sex, drugs, nudity, transexuals, Goths, monsters and businessmen. A club for all. Let me start at the beginning.

Kaos founders Lee and Bradley set up Kaos as an underground party that was in total contrast to the mainstream gay scene. Rather than being a place where muscle marys could stand around giving attitude and posing, which played commercial music and anthems, it was to be a place for all those alienated by the commercial gay scene. And for a number of years it had a strict dress code. You had to dress up, in an interesting way. Not necessarily leather or bondage, not necessarily drag but you had to make an effort. This meant that only a certain kind of visually daring person came, or people who were game enough to try.

Well, this was the Kaos seventh birthday party. And I was the opening DJ. My first London gig. Lee had warned me not to play anything with vocals in it. We don't want to hear a woman screaming take me higher, take me higher, he said. I knew that there wouldn't be many people there for most of  my set, so I selected a mellow warm up set, preparing to take it harder as more people arrived.

Bill and I arrived early. So early, in fact that we came while the head bouncer was training his security team in the finer issues of door security. We just sat in the  corner and watched. Some of his presentation involved physical handlocks and immobilising techniques. Some of it was tips on how to spot trouble and how to handle it. For example, one bouncer stands back and watches the whole room while the other goes forward to talk to the troublemaker. One of the female bouncers asked him how to handle someone pulling her hair from behind. He demonstrated what he would do. If he'd had any hair, you can believe me when I tell you I wouldn't be pulling it myself! A lot of what he said made sense. You give people firm rules and boundaries, and then let them have fun. Play safe. Don't be obvious with your drug taking. And in the case of Kaos, don't walk around with your willy out. Well, that rule lasted till about 4 am and then there were too many willies out to control...

My set went well. The room was empty when I started at 11 but I had a good roomful dancing by the time I finished at 1. Doctor Mu, a beautiful French DJ, towering about everyone else at 6feet 6 plus mohican was a gentle giant. He did my make up for me, painting a strip of fluorescent orange paint on my head and down my spine. This looked quite cool under the UV, though a couple of people asked me if I was a Hindu or a Hari Krishna follower. Oh well. Billy painted on a black eyemask, like Robin, Batman's pal and pranced around all night like an impish superhero, getting a lot of admiring looks from various people.

DJ Halo followed me. Apparently she was a stuffy librarian years ago until someone invited her to Trade and she took her first pill. The rest is history. She's a top underground DJ and has just been asked to be resident at the new Trade. Yes, the wonderful icon of all night partying is relaunching!! Dr. Mu followed, then Wandson Maxx and finally Lee started at 7 am (Choronzon). Wow, what a night of musical excellence. I danced till 9 am! What wonderful, wonderful DJs. What wonderful, wonderful music.

Now what about all this sex, you ask. Well, let's say the club was very permissive. There were two back rooms. One was a kind of lounge area with a big cushion covered dais. The other was just a plain old fashioned dark room. The darkroom was, well, dark and I cannot report on what went on in there. The lounge was not dark and what I saw was not really what I wanted to see but it involved two large naked men and a transexual. At one point security came in and asked her not to put her stilletos on the mattress. I was going to point out that her legs were mostly in the air but it seemed best not to interfere. The shoes came off and the bouncer went away satisfied. I'm sure the cushions were very grateful.

Later the nudity seemed to spread to the dancefloor. A very tall, handsome young man with a magnificent body and a very impressive piece of tackle spent a good part of the night wandering around naked with a can of Heineken in one hand. A few people rang his bell, so to speak, at which he strangely shied away. 'What does he expect to happen?' asked one of my friends, not known for his compassion and understanding. 'He just wants to get fucked by trannies!'. That's probably true. The venue is a transgender club the rest of the time and there were a lot of middle aged men in suits wandering about looking very out of place next to the six foot drag queens and punky gays. And HIndu DJs...

More sex scenes...a man ordering a drink at the bar getting fingered by the man behind him. A woman in leather rubbing herself against my butt as I was buying a drink 'it's alright love, I'm not trying to fuck you, you can relax' she purred. Two lesbians kissing while a man on his knees rimmed one of them. Oh my gosh, I certainly wasn't in Kansas any longer! A bit later I was by the bar and a drunken Russian turned to me and said 'I still love pussy! Tell me you don't love pussy!' I affirmed that this was indeed the case but at that point his drinks arrived and we parted.

The thing is, once you get used to the place it's totally welcoming. It's so honest and upfront and accepting that it actually makes the commercial gay scene with it's poseyness seem positively dysfunctional.

And I discovered the very best line to put off unwelcome chat ups. You just grab them and introduce them to your future husband. 'We're getting married next week' you say. It works a charm!

Sorry but I don't have any pics to post...

Austin Reed: A Gentleman's Tailor

Bill had a dream that we would wear white tuxedos when we got married. And we'd carry white tulips from Amsterdam. And I figured that it would be nice to arrive in a white stretch limo. Well, that changed a bit. I ended up booking a  14 seat shocking pink Lincoln instead.  Anyone who's watched Thunderbirds will get the resemblance to Lady Penelope's FAB 1. Who gets to be Parker I don't know. So: limo. Tick. We ordered our white tulips. Tick. We ordered a two tier white wedding cakes that we will decorate with red rose petals. Tick. So the only thing left on the wishlist was the white tuxedos....and these were not going to go the way of the limo and change to shocking pink.


Bill was tired after a late night on the town ( i had resisted the temptation to go to a nude sex club) so I got up early and headed to town with Colin, our host. Richard and Su-Il, the married couple in the house had rented their suits from Austin Reed and they couldn't speak about their experience highly enough. But I know Austin Reed to be a very classic British tailors: they've been in business for 110 years. So I went there with some trepidation. How would the very conservative staff react to a couple of classless queens wanting to rent a tux?

I needn't have worried. The entrance to the shop was very modern, with a spacious interior. Rentals were on the third floor and we took a gleaming glass cage lift to the top. Inside was a contemporary modern designers dream:armchairs, chrome, buffed aluminium. Wandering to the trendy bar area we asked a guy if he could help me rent a tux. As expected, he was slightly cool but as soon as he realised I actually wanted two tuxedos something changed and he grew much warmer. I booked a fitting for 3pm and phoned Bill (still languishing in bed) to meet me for dimsum. Incidentally, the dimsum in London are far far better than in Malaysia. Chinatown has a high standard but my old local restaurant in Dalston served us a wondrous meal last week. While I was in Amsterdam Colin took Bill to another place in Docklands which Bill swears was the best dimsum he'd had in his life. And this is hypercritical Bill we're talking about here!!! The best in his life. I've gotta go there..

Back to the fitting. We showed up at 3pm. Our assistant Alex (we were on first name terms by now) was with another customer so he asked us to sit at the bar and enjoy a complimentary drink. Imagine! Sitting in gorgeous leather armchairs sipping a gin and tonic waiting to choose a tuxedo! I looked up at the ceiling and realised that all the lampshades were inverted bowler hats! Very James Bond...At this point Bill had his laptop out and i was taking pictures with my phone: as soon as the staff saw this they came to tell us the password for the wifi. If I tell you the whole password I'll have to kill you. But suffice it to say that it ended in 007. Very very James Bond. The whole place has that kind of old school spy who loved me feel, but it's still FRIGHTFULLY modern...

Alex was incredibly sweet. He helped us to choose our clothes with a very light touch, listening to what we wanted and tirelessly letting us try out different combinations till we were happy. Colin, Andrew and Richard arrived towards the end of the fitting. It was Richard's birthday and they were already a bit loaded before they refueled with GT's at the bar. Alex took the drunkenness and friendly ribbing in good humour, even dishing it right back at Richard.

Well we didn't take any pics of the happy couple. That will have to wait until the big day. But Billy looked so fucking handsome in his tux, I can't tell you!

Just when we were leaving Alex told us that this new contemporary modern Austin Reed is only 4 weeks old. It's part of a new campaign to shed their fuddy duddy image. I'm completely sold on it. Getting married is such a big thing and to be treated with such civility and warmth is unforgettable. I will never go anywhere else again. I'm a convert for life. And I'll always recommend them. Good job Alex. Good job Austin Reed.

The ethnic bus tour

Yesterday I took a bus from Liverpool Street to Tottenham...it was rush hour and a long ride. Even though much of London has bus lanes many of the streets are narrow and they still get into jams along with everyone else. It was a very nostalgic ride. A few years back I used to work in a clinic in the City and this was my route home. In 1990 this area was also the scene of one of the most audacious and successful bomb attacks by the IRA when they exploded a van by the Stock Exchange. Almost 8 miles away at home my windows shook with the blast and my cat moved under the bed. There are still checkpoints in the City as a result.

On this visit I’m not in a hurry to get anywhere, Taking the Underground is faster but you don’t get to see anything. The bus is slower but at least I can watch the road and see what’s changed. This was a great ride – the bus chugged its way though so many ethnic areas: first the city of London, suits and office workers, mostly white, everyone rushing from one place to another clutching coffees and sandwiches. There are Pret a Manger branches everywhere. Pret make delicious sandwiches and coffee out of natural ingredients without additives and I really wish there was one in KL. Then Shoreditch, with clusters of Vietnamese restaurants and strange clubs and bars that look abandoned during the daytime...next Kingsland road, where we used to live – at this point the bus filled with Turkish and black women. Next Stoke Newington, where the police station used to be notorious for its racism. The area is shared by blacks and Orthodox Jews but as it was after sundown on Friday there were none of them to be seen. It’s a strange fact that Muslims pray on Fridays, Jews on Saturdays and Chritians on Sundays. Between them the Abrahamic religions have got the weekend covered!

I got off in Tottenham where our hosts du jour David and Dewey live. It’s also the home of Tottenham Hotspur football club. I lived here too, long long ago, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and there was a recession. 25 years later there’s a recession in the UK again and the old Labour mantra ‘No more boom and bust’ is simply - no more.

Quite an amazing bus ride, quite an amazing city and quite a ride down memory lane.  I'm a tourist in my hometown!

For those of you who don't know me, I'm in London for a month with my partner Billy. We're here to get married. He's been keeping a wedding diary. Before you ask,  I'm not starting this blog just because Billy has...I'm starting it because he hasn't been keeping up and we've been doing so much! I think the last thing he wrote was before we had our first night clubbing in London and that's nearly two weeks ago.


So I'll start there. At 5am on Sunday morning. The alarm went off on my phone and  we fell out of bed.   It was pitch black outside. 30 minutes later four of us were standing at a bus stop watching a bus pull away. Unbelievably, it was too full to take on passengers. Where was everyone going at 5.30am? I felt like a tourist. What a strange city...By 6.30 we were queuing outside the club and by 7 we were inside and our winter clothing was safely in the coatcheck.



Beyond has moved since my days in London to a club called Area. To me it looks pretty much like the old Crash, but it's a few doors down - still under the arches of the railway bridge in Vauxhall. One main dance floor and 2 smaller ones. The main dance floor plays more commercial electro house with deejays like Steve Pitron  and the other two offer alternatives.


Well I had a ball. Although it took me a while to get into gear, I really enjoyed myself. The main dance floor was fun. People were friendly and mindful of body space but the music often veered off into diva land (although mdmes Madonna, Maria and Gaga were notably absent from the playlist - what a fucking relief!).


The music I most enjoyed was in the chapel. Ariel from the old DTPM was there, spinning some magic and a coupla other fellas. I was in a dream. Hours of songs and my hackles didn't rise once. It's hard to describe to people in KL how limited and dull the music on the gay scene there is. It's all they know. If you can't see, you can't imagine colours. It's a closed musical loop between deejays and young clubbers which never progresses or grows. Beyond  for me it was like seeing in colour again. If I ever win the lottery I will personally invite all the gay promoters and deejays on an all expenses paid trip to London clubland.


Around 11am we went to Later. This surpassed Beyond. I danced till 4pm when, sadly, we had to go home - not because the club was ending, it had many hours to go, but because our host Andrew was feeling poorly.




The best part of the night was the honeymoon feeling. Billy was in top form - smiling, teasing, glowing, looking like a mischievous imp. We caught so many people's eye, attracted so many positive comments. When you're happy you become like a little focus of light and people are drawn to you and the group you're in.


I didn't mention the drugs did I? That's because such things are unmentionable and anyway you shouldn't ask!