A Dead Nightclub and a Taco (Part 2) – Mad Chaos: March 8, 1999

Ralf Takes the Toll Road

The drive to the Meridian nightclub seemed like a journey with Ralf’s babbling between playing CD’s and all. Sparing the insipid details, let me cut to when we finally arrived at Hurstville. You didn’t miss much in the detail factor let me tell you but one thing worth mentioning is my astonishment when Ralf took the toll road.

For once, Ralf was taking himself out of the scenic route rut and he didn’t hold back in flaunting his choice of direction. Parking Ralf’s car in the only spot of the small car-park Ralf began jabbering about how he had a bad feeling about being there. Turning his system off with his naïve thoughts that some Lebs would hear it and steal it (As if it’s that great anyway) his thoughts that everyone was after him, looking at him or wanting him did not fade when we entered a pub to the side of Meridian’s entry.

The Show About Nothing

Renowned for talking shit and sometimes talking so much shit that it’s about nothing, I would have to say Ralf is the show about nothing. Just like Seinfeld, Ralf is the reality of nothing, from his constant barren babbling to the scenic routes he takes simply because his half-witted directions and thought lead him there. Ralf said that Meridian was free before 9:00 p.m. but when we arrived there ten minutes before that Meridian wasn’t even open.

Talking to the bouncers out the front we realized that it didn’t open until 9:00 p.m. and what’s more, it wasn’t free entry. Ralf tried to talk incoherently of how his cousin worked in the bar next door and he used to get in free all the time and she would let us in. Not only wasn’t she there but I started to believe that this character didn’t really exist, just another cowboy in Ralf’s sci-fi adventure puzzle, it didn’t fit. The last time Ralf had been to the Meridian was a year ago, plenty changes in that time.

A Pub Next to Meridian

Being dressed in my blackened best nightclub clothes the bar that we walked into wasn’t my cup of tea. Everyone was hillbilly and dressed casually and then there was I, overdressing Ralf and feeling self-conscious. Ralf wanted to get a drink for himself so that he did and despite me wanting to sit outside and be depressed by myself that I had gotten myself associated with Ralf’s voided mess of a mind he urged me to sit with him.

Sitting upon a round table in a pub to the right of the Meridian Ralf had his drink and when he was finished we made our way outside. When Ralf’s taste-buds get a whiff of food’s aroma or when he thinks about food, his taste-buds go into overdrive. After drinking his pub beer we headed to the other side of the car-park where there was some cultural shop. From there he bought himself some kind of taco and sitting in the car-park out of view of the opening nightclub he ate his food.

Pokies and an Old Girlfriend

For the time that Ralf was enjoying his food he acted as if he didn’t want to be there by constantly talking about people stealing his stereo and his bad vibe about being there. My plans were to get out of the cold air and since Ralf wasn’t intent on walking into Meridian yet as there wasn’t much of a crowd gathering I offered the next best thing, the pub on the left side of the Meridian.

When Ralf had finished his food and after ten debilitating minutes of sitting around and sharing Ralf’s world of slow behavior we made our way into the pub or tavern which is fairly renowned. Acting out of touch as soon as we got in there I wanted to sit on the tables so we could look on at two fairly attractive girls with their male counterparts but Ralf tried to change the subject by sticking his money into pokies.

Ralf had avoidance for the female portion of the pub and I saw his playing the pokies as an excuse not to sit near them. He tried to tell me that one of them girls was an old girlfriend of his and when he said “I feel repulsed by her, if she goes into Meridian tonight I’m not going in there, I’ll throw up” I knew he was trying to make excuses not to be there.

The two girls I wanted to sit near turned out to be nobody but that didn’t stop Ralf from playing the boring pokies that took his money. Looking around at other people playing the pokies as Ralf was I noticed a guy betting as if it was a $1 machine but it was a one cent machine. This extravagant betting paid off as he came out with $50 in the pocket.

A Crazy Lady at the Machines

Then there was this lady that reminded me of a more feeble-witted person than Rochelle. Taking some money out of an Eftpos machine it looked as if she was betting away her doll payment. Making a scene at one stage, she struck me as a crazy and forgetful woman when she approached two women on the poker machine she had just been playing.

Apparently she had won a considerable amount of money on the machine and had gone to the cashier to claim it but if this was so the credits would have still been up there. The women that were on the machine after her couldn’t have taken the money out, they looked innocent enough anyway, in their 40’s mature. This crazed woman insisted that these two ladies had cheated her of her money but I think the crazy woman was just making it all up, what a sad beast.

Barmaids and a Cashier

There were also the two barmaids where one of them was blonde and fairly attractive, the other had a very, very short skirt. Basically, you could only see a tiny bit of black under her white button up work shirt and although she wasn’t model material she was definitely something to look at with those gaping legs deserving attention.

When Ralf had lost his money we sat around for a little while looking at the barmaids but it was time to head into Meridian. Being 10:00 p.m. we had waited just under an hour so we walked through the doors, past the security and then to the cashier. Sitting behind her counter, the Singapore looking woman that had a bit of black in her had the greatest boobs I’ve seen in a while. Wearing a red dress and seeing that she also had great legs, her boobs were definitely fake but sexy at that.

Ralf and I were both gawking at her 26 year old boobs and hoped that when we entered the Meridian it would only get better, boy were we wrong. “Does Meridian pump on Friday nights” Ralf asked and as they both looked at each other and said “Yeah, it gets pretty big” I knew that they were laughing on the inside and that they were lying through their teeth. Before I got my stamp I looked inside and noticed that it was dead but I didn’t say anything in case I was wrong, I wasn’t.

Inside a Nearly Empty Club

Making our way into the Meridian we were both shocked as to how many people were actually there, a sparse few. Apart from myself and Ralf, the DJ and about twelve people would have been the mass, that doesn’t include the bar attendants. The area was fairly dark with pool tables up the top right portion from the entry, the bar being on the far left corner and the dance floor being the small square part between this and the seats around the walls.

Ralf and I looked at each other with surprise and dread that our money had gone to waste so suddenly. Making our way to round tables on the entry wall to the left we were sitting near the DJ box. There were two girls sitting in the dark part of our wall nearest to the bar and one of them was blonde and looked good looking but there was something about her, she looked overblown.

There was also a guy walking around with a light blue jumper that I absolutely wanted. His Lebanese or Italian looking body was like a cobra and his skinny body was hugged great by this gripping jumper. It had a collar and it was a woolen type material but it was more sheer than normal jumpers. That gave it the body gripping appearance and his muscles came out tremendously. Like I said I wanted that jumper and I can only estimate that it came from Hound Dog but I think it was from somewhere else.

A Dance Floor Fit for Fifty

For the first half an hour of being there our only blithe glances were at the two girls in the dark corner but they left the Meridian because nothing was happening, something we should have done earlier. The dancing area was a box area the size of my room or just bigger near the bar and in front of us.

There were railings along both sides and two entries but it looked so gay that I didn’t even want to dance up there. It wouldn’t have held more than fifty people at the most and I was already starting to feel homesick. However, as the night did progress I must admit that only beautiful women were walking in but the only drawback was that most of them had boyfriends or males with them. There were some girls that sat next to us later in the night where one of them reminded me of Kathryn back in our prime with an innocence short floral dress on that would reveal a tad if she bent over.

There was also another girl who somewhat reminded me of Phoenix but she had finer breasts, a finer body and a better personality. For the whole time she was sitting on the seats next to us with her lady friends we were practically touching but I didn’t talk to her because I wasn’t capable of anxiety-free conversation and despite her probably wanting to chat, she didn’t.

Chatting About Pants

Other women of praise were people like the blonde barmaid that was our height and was wearing black pants that had the one stripe looking like the Adidas sweatpants but clinging to look much more sexier. When I went to get my free drink I approached her and asked her about her pants just to make some conversation, that is all we shared.

There were the girls sitting right next to us and the girls right across on the other side of the room that kept looking over and making it painstakingly obvious despite their male friends sitting with them. There was a flurry of beauty but unfortunately the club didn’t get anywhere near packing out and the most people the dance area had ever seen was around twenty five of them.