A waiter enters with our next round, staring at Arthur with a blankness that says he has seen worse but this is still pretty bad, then backs out of the room with the empty jug.
Holding the mic a solid foot from my face, I carry on, promising the world will never take my heart, and close my eyes because I guess embarrassment doesn’t exist if you shut out the whole world and focus on the song. The microphone gets closer to my face somehow. My voice gets a little louder.
I can maybe see the appeal in this.
Sweat patches have already appeared under the arms of Arthur’s white T-shirt as he sits down next to me and pats my knee. His hair has started to look a little damp. But there is a brightness to his eyes that I want for myself, so I am probably going to have to keep my eyes open and get off the couch.
He leans into me. ‘I think the ice is well and truly broken. You ready, G?’ I screw up my face and shake my head. ‘It felt wrong as I was saying it,’ he laughs. ‘But are you? Ready?’ The next song is loading up. Now or never, Gertie.
If anyone later asks me what happened in those three-and-a-half minutes, I couldn’t tell them. Such is the pull of the stage that my body is no longer my own. My mind is clear of anything except the microphone in front of me. I sing (or at least sound comes out of my mouth, depends how generousyou want to be with the terminology), I dance, I flip my hair. I definitely slip on some spilt voddy and there’s a wet patch on the side of my jeans now, but I just turn it into a few floor kicks. Totally intentional.
I take on Ricky Martin. And I conquer.
And so the floodgates swing open.
I take the next track, too, not that anyone is in a huge rush to steal my spotlight, and thank goodness I spent a portion of my youth learning the dance to ‘Everybody’ by the Backstreet Boys to drown out the sounds of my parents arguing. It’s paying dividends now.
Arthur can’t wipe the grin off his face as he jumps in every so often with a wildly pitchy harmony or interjects with a loud ‘Woo!’ or ‘Yeah!’ We can probably all blame the alcohol at this point, but I really think he just can’t sing for shit. He ordered a jug of beer and it is already a third empty, in contrast to William, who is now sipping at the most expensive whisky on the menu (though judging from the wince that accompanies each sip, price in this case does not align with quality). Who also, speaking of, Arthur has coaxed into getting up and taking the next song. He spends some time at the screen choosing before nodding to himself and making a choice.
The synth beats of ‘SexyBack’ pulse through the room. William isn’t a half-bad singer, when he gets close enough to the microphone to be heard. Bee certainly doesn’t think so, shimmying and throwing her hands up and around from her seat. She is a particular fan of the many, many body rolls. Although I don’t want to be judgmental, and have no right to be given that my karaoke experience is precisely two songs long,this isn’t really the crowd-pumping song I expected it to be. There’s a lot of lyric-less music in between each exhortation to get our sexy on, and while the music spends thirty-odd seconds running down at the end, William sits down to a congratulatory kiss from Bee who, bolstered by her man’s performance, gets up shouting, ‘My turn!’
Her selection of ‘Barbie Girl’ is pretty on-brand. She wore pink for weeks when the movie came out. She even has a knock-off of that Chanel necklace Margot Robbie wore in the movie.
Bee has always been a natural dancer, or maybe she’s just good at making it look natural, which may be the same thing. Her moves are fluid, boneless, and she tosses her head back with the serenity that comes from knowing your body is appealing to everyone who looks at it. William is definitely appealed. He can’t appeal his eyes off her. (If my dad was the kind of guy who made dad jokes, he would like that one.) He even joins in as her Ken at the right moment, getting up to grind on her. Ahh, ahh, ahh yeah.
‘Oh, I’m having so much fun!’ Bee yells into the microphone, causing feedback to emit.
‘Well, Barbie, we’re just getting started,’ William replies in a deep, rumbling voice.
There’s a collective sigh. Even the room itself seems to sag. The weird first-date energy has left the building and karaoke has worked its magic.
Bee and I sit together on the couch cackling as William and Arthur slug through ‘Dead or Alive’. I really question William’s choice of ‘It Wasn’t Me’. Is it the sketchy subjectmatter or the wildly inappropriate fake accent in the rap? Bee is consistent in her breathy pop vibes (one could argue that Britney’s ‘Everytime’ is a bit of a mood killer, though), while I’m a jukebox who lets Arthur choose the songs. He has a little too much fun with it. The MC Hammer probably isn’t necessary. I manage to wrangle Bee into a mostly mumbled rendition of ‘Untouched’ (our brains can’t quite match up with our mouths by that point, but we mostly remember the routine we did for the Year 11 talent show),but all four of us are unstoppable once the Celine Dion comes out.
There is a direct correlation between how full the little glass table is of empty jugs and shot glasses and the increased quality of our performances. The waiters have for some reason stopped clearing the empties as they bring in new jugs. The table is a lake of spillage that drips onto the floor, with jugs and glasses floating gently across the surface. But we don’t care because we are international pop stars.
‘Would you sing with me, Bianca?’ William asks, extending his hand to her where she sits. She giggles and takes it.
Their rendition of ‘I’m Too Sexy’ is straight-up indecent. This can’t be done in public. In my vodka haze, I chuckle at the thought of security guards watching the CCTV and blushing at William and Bee crawling on the filthy floor towards one another, before the microphones are abandoned and they just start making out. That gunk is going to be hard to wash out of their knees.
‘Okay!’ Arthur yells over the music. ‘Why don’t you two get some air? Some water?’ He pulls on the back of both of their tops. They are silent but compliant as they leave, only ahint of shame in their posture. Arthur grins at me, eyes slightly glazed but his whole face lit up with joy, then grabs the nearest microphone to start a dramatic performance of ‘Go the Distance’.
Walking into a karaoke room is like falling into a vortex. Is it midnight? Is it three in the afternoon? I imagine it would be a massive mind-fuck to come here during the day, because the concept of time doesn’t exist. It has been both five hours and five minutes. Did Arthur extend the time without us knowing? But also, how is there not enough time for the list of tracks that remain to be tackled?
The back of my throat burns. I’m going to pay for it tomorrow. I don’t care.
‘I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun!’ I shout at Arthur. He grins in response and turns to the screen. It looks like he’s swiping and moving things around. Then he turns back to me as an acoustic guitar intro starts.
Oh my god it’s Enrique, and Arthur’s holding out a hand to me. He’s asking me would I dance if he asked and our fingers intertwine and…yes. Yes, I would. I definitely haven’t spent any time considering it, but his hand feels warmer than I imagined. Stronger. He tugs me a little bit closer every time he goes for a high note that he never quite hits.
Because you can’t just half-ass Enrique, I’m learning. Enrique demands your full commitment. And so you give your full commitment. I pull Arthur’s hand back just as hard. Throw my head back to belt out my own pitchy moan.
But then there’s the quiet part. We’re singing at a whisper. Words of love, words of passion. They are words, I know, justwords. Not long ago we were singing about wet-ass pussies. Just more words.
But he is looking at me. Won’t stop staring at me. And he’s not smiling anymore. Words can’t just be words when his eyes look like that. If I didn’t know better, I would think he means what he is singing.
It really is a lot of very intense eye contact. Especially while telling me he just wants to hold me. He could do anything he wanted to me with those hands.
Not that I’m any better. Eye contact is for two people, and it won’t be me who breaks it. I might even be squeezing his hand back harder, like it’s the only thing tethering me to reality.
