3 - Bollywood Heaven

I'm feeling a little under the weather today. It's all Evie's fault. She organised us to check out the newest local restaurant, Bollywood Heaven. The reason for dinner was to try to hook up Ally with a really nice friend of Evie's, Brett. Brett knew about Evie's plan, but Ally was oblivious.

I was having fun from the moment I climbed into Ally's car and found a new blanket in her car that I teased her about.

“What's this for? Are you planning on going parking with someone?” She didn't answer. ??!!

Lulu, Evie and I were too busy moving on to the next topic to bother trying to get an answer out of her.

We met the others outside the restaurant and exchanged hugs and kisses before being shown our table. The new restaurant owners seemed happy to have such a large group in their premises so soon after it had opened. Besides Brett, the only other man at the table was an ex-resident of The Stagger Inn, Ron, who had brought his girlfriend, Rose. The rest of us were ladies single and ready to mingle.

It was BYO and licenced. Most of us had brought a bottle each and it wasn't long before we were making a lot of happy noise. The name of the restaurant made me think of the 70s song, Hollywood 7, so I sang the song out loud for fun, adding my own lyrics spontaneously, as I often do. If you know the song, sing along as you read my lyrics.

“At Bollywood Heaven it's buffet style and all lit up in lights,

at Bollywood Heaven it's really cheap – just 7 bucks a bite!

And Bollywood Beven works here too for

Just 7 bucks a night”

Kate rocked up late and looked very stressed. She needed a drink asap. She put her vodka coolers on the table and we both realised they weren't twist top. The table service was too slow for an emergency like this. I looked around the noisy table for someone that might know the art of knocking tops off bottles without a bottle opener. Brett looked the most likely, but there was a lot of noise and people between us, so I reached behind Lulu and tapped Ally on the shoulder with a bottle.

“Could you ask your boyfriend if he can open this?” I said. She passed it to Brett, then let out a loud belated sigh of disapproval for me calling him her boyfriend.

It turned out that I had Brett all wrong. He looked bewildered and tried to twist the cap off. Everyone down that end of the table offered some sort of advice on how to knock the cap off, until eventually, Charlee's friend Tammy pulled out a bottle opener attached to her keys.

“Yay! Tammy saved the day!”, cheers came from all around.

Kate hadn't had much to drink when somebody at the next table stood up and their chair fell backwards onto our table, hitting Kate on the arm.

“I'm sorry,” the man said.

“You will be!” Lulu called out. “She's in a terrible mood!”

Kate downed her drinks very quickly and was soon revealing to me how she'd just last night had her first ever one-night-stand... with a very hot, much younger man.

“You little cougar!” I congratulated her for breaking the drought in style.

Lexy overheard and all thoughts of discretion were abandoned.

“Kate, you MILF!” she shouted before raising her glass. “Here's to leading young men astray!”

“To little boys!” Evie raised her glass.

“I'm jealous,” Lulu added. “I want that.”

I looked around and noticed how uncomfortable the people nearby were. One lady in particular was giving us dirty looks. She looked really surprised each time she caught me looking at her. I whispered across the table that I thought we'd shocked the lady at the next table.

“It's the botox making her look that way,” Brett said, just a little too loud. Everyone giggled. Then the word botox was spoken so many times that the people next to us got up and left. It was obvious that the lady had used botox, and every other procedure available, but we were too tipsy to speak quietly or be polite. Oh well. Shit happens.

“Ok, let's go to the pub!” Lulu called out after we'd all stuffed our faces.

“Yay,” I said.

“Yeah, I really feel like dancing,” Kate said.

We all piled into a couple of cabs and then poured ourselves out on the pavement when we arrived outside the pub. The place was already packed when we got there. There were so many of us walking through the door together that a lot of people turned and stared. It made it easy for us to bully our way to getting a table. There was one guy sitting at a table all by himself, so Evie asked if he would mind if we joined him. Of course he didn't mind. Once we had a table, then it was just a matter of rearranging the furniture so we all had seats.

Kate didn't want to sit anyhow. She was already on the dance floor and that's where she spent most the night. Evan, the guy whose table we hijacked, wanted to impress Evie, so he bought rounds for the entire table. I never knock back French champagne, so I drank so, sooo much. It wasn't long before I was up dancing too, with a very cute young guy named Zane. We danced and danced. He asked if I wanted to take a break or keep dancing. I just wanted to keep dirty dancing. He was hot. I wasn't interested in bedding him, but the dancing and feeling his tight body through his t-shirt was fun. I yelled over the loud music that my friend Lulu had spotted him in the crowd and she'd suggested I dance with him. He'd been dancing by himself and she thought he looked lonely. He turned around and waved to Lulu through the crowd, then walked through the crowd to meet Lulu as if he was being attracted by a magnet. It happens all the time when I'm with Lulu. I figured I'd had plenty of dancing and had got what I wanted from Zane anyhow, so I followed him off the dance floor and went to find the rest of the gang. Once we were out the back at the pool tables, Zane was totally attentive to Lulu, so I played pool with some randoms. Very badly.

I looked around to see where all the gang was. It was time to regroup and get the hell out of here. It was 2:14 and the bar closes at 3am anyhow. Lulu had zero interest in Zane and helped me find everyone. She said Evie had gone off with a man, as usual, and Kate was on the other dance floor. We went to grab Kate and found the others all doing shots with some skinny drunk guy with a fat wallet.

“Put your wallet away, old fella. Time to go home,” I said to the poor bastard. Lulu looked disapprovingly down her nose. “Come on you guys. The cabs are waiting.”

It was another fun night out. I'm feeling a tad precious today.... Oh God, the rest of the gang must feel like shit after shooting all those shots. Gah!