Think live rock band plus good company in Mag:net, a bee on top of a huge trophy as the prize in a local primetime game show, and Cameron Diaz in My Best Friend’s Wedding.

Now, think half-drunken bikers who seem like they have been sitting there since the clock hit 3:00 pm, the inability to breathe through the pungent air, beers that go for P25, and the piercing resonance that comes from the poor speakers around.

But that’s not even the best part of it all: think 18” television set with an intense UAAP basketball game as background, for words that pop-up but are perpetually out of sync.

Welcome to Franky’s, folks. Your not-so-typical bar, restaurant, and karaoke haven that will soon be the object of our desire—or so we think it will be.

Picking the perfect rendezvous

Kara: The last time I sang in front of a crowd was back in high school. The performance turned out to be a complete failure, and the only thing learned from it is that I could never carry a tune even if my life depended on it.

You can only imagine the horror I felt after being confronted with this new assignment—“Is this some sort of practical joke?”, I thought to myself. It was clear that I had to go through hell and back—that my days as an awkward 13-year-old schoolgirl would haunt me to no end.

It has been a week of frantic phone calls to friends and family alike, trying to ask around for the perfect place to do our open mic stint; I had to make sure everything fell into order. I sought for redemption—I needed to save myself from my own shame.

After hearing about Franky’s, I admit that I felt quite vapid inside. It possibly came from the relief of having an actual place to go to, the excitement, and the huge amount of nerves that were slowly eating me up. The period of waiting felt like a dragging Calvary, which wouldn’t let me taste the feeling of salvation. Salvation to me, at the time, meant finally being lost in the moment of grabbing that microphone and singing my heart out with Ken.

My Thursday night was spent tossing and turning in bed, filled with the anxiety that I was less than 24 hours away from something I both want to run to and run away from.

Getting there

Ken: After a gruelling exam testing my comprehension of logarithms, it is routine for me to take a breather and relax for a moment. Much to my delight, I was up for a different kind of comfort, one involving embarrassing myself in a sketchy bar with a probably half-drunken audience.

My van took a left at Raja Matanda Street and stopped outside Franky’s. I peered through the tinted windows, spotting a bunch of tied up dusty rice sacks filled to the brim with folded newspaper in front of an abandoned store. “Franky’s, what a clean, well-lighted place,” I thought to myself. Thankfully, Franky’s was the quaint little hole-in-the-wall beside that monument.

Standing outside the open door, I watched a bunch of workers giving each other sloppy high-fives while slurring out the lyrics of a familiar Eighties pop hit. I took a gulp—that could be me in a matter of minutes.

As I entered the brooding establishment, the fuming smoke filled my nostrils, the sensational singing tore through my cochlea, and the cheerful male guest relations officer guided us to our seats. Looking around, Franky’s seemed like a cozy hangout for the types of yuppies who admire dim yellow lighting, movie poster artwork—the likes of the punky Romeo and Juliet to the cyber-thrilling Ghost in Shell—and international bar fare, from the American french fries, to the moi caliente calamares.

The main event

When my less-than-stellar skills in Tagalog came to everybody’s attention, we thought it would be, in kinder words, more entertaining to sing a Filipino anthem. The song that would seal our performing fate was Ogie Alcasid’s duet-torch song, “Bakit Ngayon Ka Lang?” At least I wouldn’t have the murky spotlight all to myself, I’d be singing alongside my co-staffer, Kara.

After being handed the glittering microphone, we were on stage, more like on floor, with dancing jitters in our bellies. We were both trembling as the instrumental intro played on and the nearness of the actual verse slowly crept through the wires.

As the first line waited to be sung, I was quite hesitant to even open my mouth. But, alas came in the surge of confidence, or so I think, and I sang the male vocals with much delight. My partner, although while on the way kept on babbling about her anxiety, surprised me with so much gusto—it even seemed like she wanted more than what we bargained for.

The verses have been smooth sailing (at least for our amateur ears), the melodic chorus clung to our tongue like an age-old tradition, and the bridge—oh that make-or-break birit moment—swept everyone off their feet with matching “Kiss! Kiss!” screams from the estranged bikers who took time to listen through our number. But then again, maybe they simply had no choice but to bear with the pain that is our singing skills, or the lack thereof.

When we were finally through with our duet that basically comprised of a hodgepodge of tiny giggles, broken high-pitched vocalizing, and mispronounced Filipino words (the latter can all be accredited to me, thank you), we had a silly smile of relief signalling ‘finally it’s over’.

I guess our performance was a success in a sense that we didn’t cause anyone’s ears to explode of sheer sound-terror, or shatter any of the beer bottles standing on the tops of the tables. With our talent, I believe that our duet could pass off as a William Hung-like audition for Philippine Idol.

A night out cannot happen in less than 60 minutes. Moreover, an eventful one does not even take place in less than three, tops. But this one did—complete with the smoke-on-your-hair-and-all-over-your-body kind of vibe. The suppressed feelings of tension before and the sigh of relief after is a different kind of drug we’re positive you won’t get from anywhere else.

Saying that karaoke isn’t for the introverted is categorizing the occasion and putting it in the wrong sub-group. Defining karaoke as a ‘something for everyone’, on the other hand, is undermining the potential it has to be a unique experience.

The best means to end this perhaps, is to start saying goodbye with a “Karaoke is – “. But, as the experts we think we already are, an even better way of bidding you adieu is by grabbing that microphone and, well you know the drill—“Every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you. That is how I know you go on…”