Saturday Night at the Titirangi RSA

Brake lights burn in the black. Turns and bends, reverse, gravel squirt. It begins in a dark carpark. Boots crunch. Ditch bourbon cans in potted plants. Follow booming bass that trembles the ferns.
Within: parquet floor, snooker felt, cues in racks. Union Jacks, medals, mortars, Vietnam vets with shrapnel in their backs. Crowns, poppies, silver ferns. Pictures of Elizabeth, ensigns, emblems. Rifles nailed to the ceiling; suspended Spitfire propellers. Silver hair, pink men, golf shirts. Portraits of platoons. Buttoned sleeves. Clean gumboots. Paintings of Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs.
Wildman Hollands howls down his Sermon on the Mount through the mic, amplified extra-loud, drowns conversation out. Nanas block their ears with their palms; vets from the El Alamein campaign shake their brains at what passes for entertainment these days. Ironic hipster daytrippers tilt their glass. Cuzzies play under the table, squeeze between totemic knees.
So long as you slap that membership card on the bar there’s a stool for your arse. Bargirl winks, makes the drinks cheap. Twenties are pushed into grandkids’ palms: Go on, buy us a bag of salt and vinegar chips and some fizz. Bring your old man something from the pie warmer. Ain’t had me dinner.
Wildman Hollands’ commands have the hips wiggle and fingertips jitter, makes lips unstiffen, makes feet roll on ankle-balls, makes folks’ toes nudge their insoles, their fingers tap the tabletop. The Titirangi RSA: hive of humans buzzing in the bush bright with fairy lights, biffing ciggy butts in the kauri grove, making the night vibrate. Shrine to a pickled battalion, a room of tombs, a party in a catacomb. Dart boards, horses, motorsport. A champ sinks a shot and tucks his flannel in; his missus brushes dust from his sleeve and he rechalks.
There’s a man with one arm in a patched combat jacket, on a scooter, yelling at the barmaid, slopping rum in his basket. He has pink eyes, hair which wilts like daffodils in a week-old vase. He smiles likes he spits, out the corner of his mouth. Leather, denim, bleach, lipstick, gel, nugget, steel toes, shields, badges.
A new generation, skinny-jeaned, piously slides into a booth, compare their brand-new club cards. Grandkids of past club presidents, veterans of family nights, crépe paper, disco lights, they grew up here. Learned what expression to wear. Dad’s over there, playing the pokies, and look, there’s Mum yelling BINGO. Hope she won.
Better tuck ya voice in. Pour a glass of thin beer. Settle in for fifty years. Watch outsiders come, slum it, and disappear. They’ll put it in a poem or somethin queer.