The Night of the Egg Shaped Latrines

There was one night in particular during my last few weeks in Soho that was absolutely surrealistic. Well, it didn't begin that way, but it certainly ended that way! It was a the "Leaving Do" for Christoph Mattheisen my friend and fellow computer graphics world traveller from Germany who was leaving The Moving Picture Company for some down time in Germany and parts unknown after that. Anyway, it began as most leaving do's do with the consumption of alcoholic beverages and much chatter at a pub called "The Market Place" near Oxford Circus. Things were fairly normal there -- the French were snobbishly frowning on the food, the English were slobberingly smashed, the Italians were sitting in a corner by themselves gawking at a hot waitress until she figured out they, like her, were Italian and came over and said something in Italian that made them all go white, and the Spanish were wondering why their Italian cousins were such mama's boys... Normal pub stuff, you know the deal, until... Andre "El Camaro" De Souza and his devilish little Swedish/Chinese buddy Jafe showed up with two Japanese clients from Glassworks Studio. Then things got a little whacko... By this time, the place was shutting down, mi hermanita Eli was getting a little tipsy and becoming beligerant by spontaneously yelling things like "those phackin' Italian ffffaggots!" and Andre was having some strange Indian dude threaten him for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and the Italians were beconing distraught about the next day's football match in the park and so I thought "right, time for the bus..." when at this exact moment Andre (having extricated himself from the weird little Indian guy who was now threatening the gigantic bouncers on the door with physical violence) says to me "Walshman, we're goin' ta posh it up mate. Come on." What ensued was a delightfully disorganized drunken stumble to a posh Regent Street after hours club. What none of us realised at the time was that we were following the crazy Japonese guys! Don't ask me how, but somehow they managed to not only get us into this posh after hours club but straight to the back of the club and directly into a UFO-shaped VIP room. The kind of clientel in this room ranged from a Lenny Kravitz look-alike to a woman who insisted on showing the whole room her ass while asking in a thick accent "it's good isn't it?" Meanwhile, I remember seeing Andre attempting to buy a drink from a midget waiter in this sunken bar while a weird "skater boy" rubbed shoulders with him. I decided to take a back seat to the festivities and found myself having a decidedly "Lost in Translation" Bill Murray-esque moment with one of the Japonese dudes. An then, Eli walks over and starts speaking fluent Japonese to the guy! I couldn't believe it! The next moment Andre was being accused of "not being Brasilian" by some egregiously tall black woman from Brixton - he is from Sao Paulo and just stood there staring up at her with a blank expression on his face. Sooner or later the place started to shut down while some booze-hound yelled at the midget waiter "I must have more booze!" As we headed out of the club I decided to take a leek and followed the directions to the loo only to find myself in a room full of human-sized glowing eggs. It took me a minute to figure out that these were the washrooms! Thankfully the night ended with a nice walk through Soho to Bar Italia on Frith Street and there we found ourselves in an abundance of fine cafes and panini after Andre produced a 20 quid note and proclaimed "this here is some faggot quids I got for my smile." Apparently, the skater boy had taken a shine to him and slipped him a bill. We all agreed the goodies at Bar Italia were worth it.