Change (Hong Kong)

With my devil horns and Sophia with her angel’s halo, and after finishing off our bottle of South African Amarula with Patty and her friend Martin on our roof, we headed out in the masses of Lan Kwai Fong.

The scene was out of a Hollywood disaster movie, thousands of people where in the street, blocked in by metal fences. We got trapped into the uni-directional flow of the masses and tried to sneak out of it by jumping a fence.

“Hey! Hey!” a policeman yelled at me. “You can’t go that way!” he said as we stood outside of Beijing Club.

“I live here.”

“Where do you live?” the policeman asked.

“Here on Wellington.”

“Where is your letter?”

“What letter?” I was surprised.

“If you live here, the police would have mailed you a letter to allow you to get around these metal fences.”

“I don’t have a letter.”

He smiled. “Then you don’t live here.”

“What? I do live here!” And that’s when Sophia tugged on my arm. She could sense me starting to pick a useless fight with a police officer.

“Its okay, officer. Happy Halloween!” And Sophia steered me away. Then she leaned over to me as we crossed the street with the throngs – like we were in the middle of a huge human cattle drive. “You got to get your temper under control.”

“I know. I know. I guess I sometimes look for opportunities to break rules. But sometimes the rules are made for good.”

“Well regardless if the rules are good not, don’t start a fight because you can.”

I was quiet and swallowed what she said. “You are right. Sorry about that.”

Sophia turned to me and smiled. “Wow. I am impressed.”

I laughed. “What? You are impressed about what?”

“You are changing.”

“Well, I am not perfect. But I can try.” And then suddenly we were at Queen’s Road again and at a stand still. No one could move. The crowds were mostly drunk and in costume.

“This sucks,” Sophia commented.

“I got an idea,” and I led Sophia, Patty, and Martin into an alley way and up a large group of stairs. And we got onto the main road again and walked through the crowds by Dragon-I and LKF Hotel.

Finally, we took the hidden pathway between Propaganda and Gecko and came out behind Mix and in front of the 24 hour hot dog. As we were moving through, two kids in Halloween costumes with plastic jack-o-latern pails. They stopped in front of Sophia and I thrusting their orange buckets in front of us.

I felt horrible. I had no candy on me. And I actually had no coins.

“I am sorry. I have no change.”

The mother of the two laughed hard. “What? No. They want to give you candy. You two are the last people. So that means you are lucky.”

“You are giving us candy?” Sophia asked.

The woman laughed again. “Yes. It’s Halloween. We are going out and giving those dressed up candy. And you two look adorable. So they wanted us to stop and give you our last two pieces.”

“That’s so sweet,” Sophia replied. I agreed and we both reached into their pumpkin baskets and pulled out the last candy pieces.

“Thank you so much!” I exclaimed.

The kids smiled and became a little shy. Then their mother told us, “Happy Halloween!” And with that they were gone.

“That’s the first time in my life that kids have given me candy. I like that a lot. That’s the way it should be. Giving instead of taking. Things are definitely moving in a different direction.” I said.

And just then we saw a fat, Chinese man with a wrestler mask on. His protruding belly shook as he bounded the stairs. And he looked drunk or confused or both – and he turned this way and that. And suddenly, he turned completely around and written on his back was, “Fuck me free!”

Sophia and I looked at each other and laughed.

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