Tiny Superstar
When I arrived at the concert, my first view was a clamoring wall of sweaty, living meat. The push to get inside the dilapidated stadium grounds was awe-inspiring to behold. Hundreds and hundreds of Khmer people, all jostling together, lit by garish fairground lights and generator-powered lamps vied for entry as hawkers shouted from stalls and the bass thump of live music thudded over huge loudspeakers, a giant searchlight passing over the area in broad, lazy sweeps.
Kahn had surprised me in my house by coming over to pick me up, bristling with excitement. He had the night off, so he figured we’d go and enjoy the last of the Chinese New Year celebrations at the fair ground. I pulled on my boots hurriedly and jogged down the stairs after him, hopping on the back of his moto and tearing off through the busy, chaotic streets, a cigarette hanging half-forgotten out of my mouth.
Once the initial shock of seeing so many people packed together wore off, and we had parked the moto, Kahn and I strolled through the crowd (our hands firmly on our wallets) and maneuvered our way to the front of the line. I stood up straight and puffed my chest out, making myself an ominous monolith that the Khmers parted for as water does a battleship. Once we had acquired tickets, we continued through the thronging crush and pushed our way into the concert grounds proper.
The chairs in the makeshift stadium were all plastic and arranged haphazardly on a poorly tended soccer field, with a ramshackle stage erected on the far end, decked out with a rudimentary light set and various Cambodian flags and phrases. The spotlight that illuminated the performers was, I discovered, the searchlight I had seen earlier, and it would periodically break off from the act and scan the walls around the field, catching rowdy youths jumping over the wall in an attempt to sneak in.
This was all very entertaining, watching the police converge on these renegade kids and empty their pockets like school bullies, but the actual singers were terribly dull, squalling in toneless, keyless Khmer and accompanied by swaying girls in revealing costumes who made lazy attempts to dance with perpetually bored expressions on their faces. I was swiftly growing tired of this, and the abominable presenter, who wore a white suit and far too much makeup, who would come on after each act to perform a little standup comedy. I knew it was standup comedy because after each punch line the drummer on stage would supply him with a poorly executed rimshot, and he would wait for laughter and applause that never came.
Throughout this entire experience, the crowd remained silent and unmoved, watching with wide, dark eyes and constantly eating suspicious looking snacks and drinking from small plastic bags filled with a nameless juice. The saddest example of this was when the presenter introduced the mainline act, a Thai singer named something like Ropoa, and he and his friend held out the microphone to the crowd, to amplify their wild cheering, and was greeted by a wall of stares. Unfazed, they screamed again that it was Ropoa, and seemed to earnestly expect applause this time, but as always, the crowd stayed still and silent.
Ropoa was no more interesting than any other act, and I was looking longingly towards the door, when an act came on that transfixed me to my seat like superglue. I watched with a mixture of horror and delight as a Cambodian midget, dressed in shining PVC pants and a red, open-necked shirt strutted onto the stage, and began an energetic rap number. I stared, open-mouthed, as this tiny homunculus, thirty five years old, according to Kahn, strolled back and forth across the stage, doing what I can only assume is the Khmer equivalent of busting out mad rhymes and phat beats. Rather than leave the stage like the other acts, he remained, and was joined by a taller companion. I remember thinking “Oh, god, I hope they beat him with a stick,” and I was not disappointed.
The taller Khmer proceeded to humiliate the midget in as many ways as possible. Having him stand up on a chair, count in other languages, recite phrases, and whenever he made a mistake, hit his head viciously with a sound that carried to the back of the stadium. It was one of the cruelest displays of intolerance and savagery that I have ever seen, and I laughed all the way through it.
Nothing could possibly have topped that, and the ensuing acts certainly didn’t. Luckily, Kahn received an urgent phone call and had to go back to the house, as one of the other guards had lost his keys and they needed someone to open the gate. He offered to leave me there, but I jumped at the chance for escape.
We hurried through the packed stadium like salmon swimming upstream, occasionally physically pushing people aside in our made rush for the motos. Once there, we hopped on the back and Kahn revved the engine energetically, and we tore off through the streets as a break-neck pace. We thundered over potholes, narrowly dodged traffic, pedestrians and one pig, and blazed through the midnight streets with a headlight that would periodically turn off for distressingly long stretches. I grinned like a maniac the whole way through.
Upon arriving at the house, we chatted with Channah, Dome and Ta for a while, unlocked the gate and smoked a cigarette. Kahn was eager to get back to the concert, but I told him I was sleepy, and needed to go home. He drove me there, and I gave him a dollar to buy some beer when he got back to the concert, and once he had disappeared down the end of the street, I went across to the Mekong and met up with Joe and a couple of other ex-pats. We sat around and chatted until the small hours, Joe closing up the shop and joining us on our side of the bar, swapping stories and making plans for the weekend, when we will take a bus up to Krachet, smoke a hell of a lot of ganja and, with luck, roll on ecstasy for the whole weekend.
When eventually I crawled up into bed, exhausted by my long day, I reflected that most people my age work in video rental places and bookstores. At times like that, I feel very, very lucky indeed.
Kahn had surprised me in my house by coming over to pick me up, bristling with excitement. He had the night off, so he figured we’d go and enjoy the last of the Chinese New Year celebrations at the fair ground. I pulled on my boots hurriedly and jogged down the stairs after him, hopping on the back of his moto and tearing off through the busy, chaotic streets, a cigarette hanging half-forgotten out of my mouth.
Once the initial shock of seeing so many people packed together wore off, and we had parked the moto, Kahn and I strolled through the crowd (our hands firmly on our wallets) and maneuvered our way to the front of the line. I stood up straight and puffed my chest out, making myself an ominous monolith that the Khmers parted for as water does a battleship. Once we had acquired tickets, we continued through the thronging crush and pushed our way into the concert grounds proper.
The chairs in the makeshift stadium were all plastic and arranged haphazardly on a poorly tended soccer field, with a ramshackle stage erected on the far end, decked out with a rudimentary light set and various Cambodian flags and phrases. The spotlight that illuminated the performers was, I discovered, the searchlight I had seen earlier, and it would periodically break off from the act and scan the walls around the field, catching rowdy youths jumping over the wall in an attempt to sneak in.
This was all very entertaining, watching the police converge on these renegade kids and empty their pockets like school bullies, but the actual singers were terribly dull, squalling in toneless, keyless Khmer and accompanied by swaying girls in revealing costumes who made lazy attempts to dance with perpetually bored expressions on their faces. I was swiftly growing tired of this, and the abominable presenter, who wore a white suit and far too much makeup, who would come on after each act to perform a little standup comedy. I knew it was standup comedy because after each punch line the drummer on stage would supply him with a poorly executed rimshot, and he would wait for laughter and applause that never came.
Throughout this entire experience, the crowd remained silent and unmoved, watching with wide, dark eyes and constantly eating suspicious looking snacks and drinking from small plastic bags filled with a nameless juice. The saddest example of this was when the presenter introduced the mainline act, a Thai singer named something like Ropoa, and he and his friend held out the microphone to the crowd, to amplify their wild cheering, and was greeted by a wall of stares. Unfazed, they screamed again that it was Ropoa, and seemed to earnestly expect applause this time, but as always, the crowd stayed still and silent.
Ropoa was no more interesting than any other act, and I was looking longingly towards the door, when an act came on that transfixed me to my seat like superglue. I watched with a mixture of horror and delight as a Cambodian midget, dressed in shining PVC pants and a red, open-necked shirt strutted onto the stage, and began an energetic rap number. I stared, open-mouthed, as this tiny homunculus, thirty five years old, according to Kahn, strolled back and forth across the stage, doing what I can only assume is the Khmer equivalent of busting out mad rhymes and phat beats. Rather than leave the stage like the other acts, he remained, and was joined by a taller companion. I remember thinking “Oh, god, I hope they beat him with a stick,” and I was not disappointed.
The taller Khmer proceeded to humiliate the midget in as many ways as possible. Having him stand up on a chair, count in other languages, recite phrases, and whenever he made a mistake, hit his head viciously with a sound that carried to the back of the stadium. It was one of the cruelest displays of intolerance and savagery that I have ever seen, and I laughed all the way through it.
Nothing could possibly have topped that, and the ensuing acts certainly didn’t. Luckily, Kahn received an urgent phone call and had to go back to the house, as one of the other guards had lost his keys and they needed someone to open the gate. He offered to leave me there, but I jumped at the chance for escape.
We hurried through the packed stadium like salmon swimming upstream, occasionally physically pushing people aside in our made rush for the motos. Once there, we hopped on the back and Kahn revved the engine energetically, and we tore off through the streets as a break-neck pace. We thundered over potholes, narrowly dodged traffic, pedestrians and one pig, and blazed through the midnight streets with a headlight that would periodically turn off for distressingly long stretches. I grinned like a maniac the whole way through.
Upon arriving at the house, we chatted with Channah, Dome and Ta for a while, unlocked the gate and smoked a cigarette. Kahn was eager to get back to the concert, but I told him I was sleepy, and needed to go home. He drove me there, and I gave him a dollar to buy some beer when he got back to the concert, and once he had disappeared down the end of the street, I went across to the Mekong and met up with Joe and a couple of other ex-pats. We sat around and chatted until the small hours, Joe closing up the shop and joining us on our side of the bar, swapping stories and making plans for the weekend, when we will take a bus up to Krachet, smoke a hell of a lot of ganja and, with luck, roll on ecstasy for the whole weekend.
When eventually I crawled up into bed, exhausted by my long day, I reflected that most people my age work in video rental places and bookstores. At times like that, I feel very, very lucky indeed.