I was sitting in a bar in Wanchai the other day gazing out onto the street. I like getting a table right on the pavement at Devils Advocate, Heat or any of the other bars along Lockhart Road. Watching the nighttime parade of humanity is better than any reality TV show I’ve ever downloaded.

The view seldom varies in terms of the many categories of people but sometimes the juxtaposition, aided and abetted by my friends Johnnie Walker and Jack Daniels, helps to crystallize useless ideas within what I like to call ‘my brain’.

One category you see every night is that which HK blogger Hemlock has called the “Hong Kong Association of Gwailos Married to South-East Asian Women of Humble Origins”. (Hemlock is generally quite funny; one would think he could come up with a more acronym-friendly name for this group. I, for one, cannot begin to pronounce GMSAWHO, at least not when sober.)

Now before I go any further, I should like to state for the record that I don’t look down on either gwailos or Southeast Asian women (well, most of them are shorter than me). One of my major beliefs is that it’s hard enough to find happiness in this world and if two consenting adults can find it together without hurting anyone else, more power to them.

And while the circumstances of their birth may have prevented these women from receiving the benefits of a Western liberal arts education, thereby enabling them to find gainful employment as a pet psychiatrist or co-host of The View, many of them have more street smarts than your average triad member. They’ve figured out a way to escape horrendous poverty with nothing more than five-inch stiletto heels and a push-up bra. And when you compare their newly moral lifestyles to the shenanigans of Britney, Paris and Lindsay, who can really say who is the better role model for future generations?

However, without much formal education, most of these women are unable to discuss the finer points of world affairs, have little interest in the poetry of Allen Ginsberg and are prone to giggle at the Monty Python line, “Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, I drink therefore I am,” while having virtually no idea of who Rene Descartes was, much less Monty Python.

Oddly enough, in between pretending to understand cricket and lighting their farts, men sometimes want to have such conversations. “But wait,” you ask, “isn’t that what friends are for?” No, actually that’s a Burt Bacharach song. Which few men would admit to liking.

So the other night, sitting in that bar on Lockhart Road, I saw two very different men, walking down the street wearing the same T-shirt in the space of about 30 minutes. The shirt said, in very large letters, “Metaphysics” and then had a definition of the term underneath in very tiny letters that I could not read. However,
that simple coincidence gave me the idea for a new business venture.

My idea is a chain of Metaphysical Bars. Basically, instead of going into some disco dungeon to pull out some sweet young thang for an hour’s worth of physical activity, a Metaphysical Bar would be where you pay some mature and educated woman to hold a serious conversation with you. The kind of conversations that you can’t have at home or with friends. It’s a variation on an old line – you’ve got metaphorical filet mignon at home so when you go out, maybe you don’t want hamburger but what about a nice Chilean sea bass?

As you enter, you are greeted by the manager: “What kind of conversation are you looking to have today, sir? The existence of God? Picasso’s blue period? The US presidential campaign? Are you looking for an argument or agreement?” Or perhaps, like a Thai sauna, the women are sitting on sofas grouped according to intellectual specialty or university degree. You’ve got your Poetry Corner, your Sciences Sofa, the Political Pit and others. Possibly a fashion section – not to discuss Stella McCartney but to teach men desperately needed lessons like how not to wear socks with sandals or why the shirt they’re wearing looks really gay (or not gay enough, depending upon your preference).

Will this work? The question should be, why didn’t anyone think of it sooner? Actually they did – in Japan, naturally, where for hundreds of years geishas skilled in the fine arts and sciences entertained the rich and powerful late into the evening. Today, while geishas have mostly disappeared, they have been replaced by thousands of hostess bars in Tokyo, where educated women looking to make some extra money for LV bags sit and talk with Japanese businessmen but don’t go home with them.

Like any business, I plan to start small and then gradually expand my empire. My first bar will be a tiny but comfortable place offering a little bit of everything. Future openings will be more specialized, targeting a variety of different demographics like men over 40 or lesbians.

Never again will you need to fear being in a Wanchai disco raided by police looking for overstayers. In my bar, we will be raided by university professors – not checking passports and ID cards, they’ll be arresting women with phony diplomas.

Of course, the bar will need a catchy name to lure in first timers. Personally, I’ve always wanted to have a business called Spike’s Slut Shack. But in this case, that might give the wrong impression. So I went out and surveyed friends, asking them for suggestions. My favourite was Head Fuck, though I doubt the Hong Kong liquor licensing board would approve that. Another suggestion I liked was Oral Fixation: our motto could be, ‘We give good head’. The IPO is at the printers now.