by Mike Stoner
I’m silent. I smoke. I swig.
‘Pak only gets everyone single-entry visas. Check the small print on the visa you got. Means you need his permission to leave, and you need about a million rupiah to pay the exit. And if you leave early he doesn’t pay your flights.’ Kim laughs. ‘That’s why half the people aren’t here drinking, they’re saving or crying. They didn’t realise they’d been screwed over ‘til they got here. Bit like you.’
‘I said it before, I’ll say it again, Pak’s a cunt.’
—Ha ha. Stuck here then, numbnuts.
‘Oh well,’ I say, ‘fine with me.’ I take a deep drag on my kretek and smile. I’m here for the year. A long time baking in the oven.
—You’ll be well-baked.
—Shut it and leave.
—OK, OK. I’m going. She leans over me to give me a kiss but I turn away.
—Bye.
‘So who’s coming on tonight?’ asks Kim.
‘Me and Donald. Donald wants to dance, don’t you, Donald?’ Jussy-boy holds the end of his tie up to his face so he can ask the upside-down duck.
‘Not tonight,’ says Geoff, ‘I’m getting up to go camera shopping tomorrow.’
‘I’m up for it,’ Julie.
‘Me too,’ a knock to my knee.
‘Yeah, why not?’ says Marty.
‘I’d better try out this night life,’ say I.
So we finish our beers and queue up to pay Mei.
‘Where are you faggots off to then?’ The Canadian with the big glasses shouts across from his table. There is no humour in his use of the noun.
‘That’s nice, Barry. Nice turn of phrase.’ Kim shoves his roll of notes into his front pocket, having paid for his beers. ‘Why? You hoping to come, man?’
‘Not with you faggots.’
‘That’s good, ‘cos we didn’t fucking ask you.’ Kim heads off to the street. ‘Thanks Mei. Take care.’ He throws Mei a smile and a wave over his shoulder.
‘Have good night, Mr Utah,’ Mei replies.
I throw a glance at Barry the Canadian and he stares back without smiling.
‘Enjoy your night, new faggot.’
I say nothing, but immediately wish I had as I walk away. The confidence of the late thinker is always a gallant yet futile thing. Even New Me can’t think quick enough. But now a choice of responses flows into my mind as I step into the sticky night air; ‘Will do, arsehole,’ or ‘Better than staying here with you, dick-wad.’ Anything similar would have been better than nothing.
Geoff waves us goodnight and walks off in the other direction. We head toward the main gate to flag down a taxi.
‘Why’d she call you Mr Utah? I ask Kim.
‘Thinks I look like Keanu in Point Break. Johnny Utah.’
‘You look nothing like Keanu.’
‘I know, but I still take it as a compliment.’
‘And what is it with that guy back there?’ I ask.
‘He’s a wife-beating dick.’ Julie pulls a lipstick out of her jeans and applies it quickly as she walks. ‘He’s here to escape jail back home. Broke her arms, allegedly.’
‘He’s been hiding out here a few years. Thinks us teachers are just passing tourists and that he’s the real expat. He does some wheeling and dealing dodgy business and is sniffing after Mei.’ Kim nods at the security guards who are almost asleep at the gate.
We leave the estate and step out onto the bustling main road, where minivans, becaks and cars are still avoiding each other by inches; back in the real Medan.
‘Let’s not talk about him. Let’s just get stoned. I say we start at Hotel Garuda.’ Jussy-boy licks his hand and runs it across his hair.
So that’s where we start.
The taxi pulls up outside the hotel. Kim is in the front and the rest of us are squeezed in the back. Naomi is straddled across Marty’s and my legs. She wiggles and adjusts herself a little too much and I’m finding it more annoying than alluring.
Kim pays and we all fall out the back of the taxi. Before we’ve taken two steps away from the car, two boys with trays covered with various makes of cigarettes and lighters hanging around their necks come up to us. One of them is about eight years old and the other maybe ten. The eight-year-old has big black rings under his eyes and his shoulders sag as though he’s ready to be carried to bed. The others try to sidestep around them, but the boys move from side to side trying to block them. They look like they’re practising dance steps.
‘OK. Give me twenty kretek,’ Kim says to the smaller boy, but the bigger boy is there first with a packet. Julie also gets a pack as Marty and Jussy sneak past.
‘Please mister, buy my cigarettes. Marlboro, kretek, menthol, Davidoff.’ The young one is in front of me, banging my thighs with his tray, looking up with child’s eyes that have lost their wonder.
I ask for a pack of Marlboro and a pack of kretek. The older boy is suddenly there, jostling the younger one out of the way with his shoulder.
‘Eh. Back off. I’m buying from him,’ I tell the bigger one. He tuts and heads off to another taxi as it pulls up.
‘Thank you, mister, thank you,’ says the young boy. ‘And a lighter? You need a lighter?’ He is following us across the street to the hotel.
‘OK. Yes. How much?’
He tells me and I pay him with some notes and tell him to keep the change. I want to give him the contents of my wallet, but hold back. We go up the steps to the over-lit building. I still want to turn back and give it to him. I’m not sure if the reason I don’t is because of wishy-washy Old Me or ‘don’t give a shit’ New Me or just because I know that it won’t really help the boy.
The hotel is glass-fronted, alight with sequenced flashing bulbs, decorated in fresh paint and attended by a doorman in full London Mayfair Hotel doorman garb. The rest of the street is peeling and crumbling colonial Dutch facades, rubbish piles and potholes. The hotel looks as out of place as a diamond in a cowpat.
‘Those kids always put me in a downer,’ says Julie as we enter the hotel. The reception hall is large and wide with a marbled floor. An antique becak and a grand piano are centrepieces, reflecting expensive lighting in their polished surfaces.
I too feel on a downer, although I haven’t exactly been off one.
As the group of us climb a curving staircase to the first floor, taking two steps at a time, I ask, ‘Does that always happen?’
‘Fucking mafia-run kids, man. Always on the streets, all night.’ Kim leads us along the corridor towards the sound of Bon Jovi coming from behind double doors at the end. ‘Forced into selling cigs and then the older kids hide around a corner somewhere, take all the cash and hand it to the local mafia errand boy. He then probably hands it to his boss who then probably gives it to the Godfather or Big Boss or whatever the fuck they’re called in this country.’
‘Kids are abused all over the place here. It’s depressing but you have to get used to it.’ Naomi is walking at my elbow. Her closeness is making me uncomfortable.
‘No one should have to get used to that,’ I say and take a longer step to get ahead of her.
Kim pushes the double doors open and we enter yet another world: smoke and drums and guitar solo and a packed room of about three hundred people. They sit around tables and stand in groups facing a stage. A guitarist kneels on one leg while his hands dance up and down an electric guitar. Three girls with cleavage and skirts that stop where their legs begin swirl their orange-dyed hair in perfectly timed circles to their version of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’.
We walk through the smoke-filled room and a waiter comes to us. He takes us to a table right at the front. It is already occupied by a group of Indonesian men. He says something to the group and they nod their heads and smile at us and leave the table.
‘Please, please sit,’ shouts the waiter.
We’re right in front of the stage. The lead singer smiles down at us.
‘Us bules always get the best seats,’ Julie says through cupped hands over my ear.<
br />
‘Why?’
‘We’re good for business apparently. Get white people in or sitting next to you and everyone’s happy. We’re like status symbols. And they think we’re loaded of course. Everyone wants a bule as a friend.’
I’m not sure everyone would want us as their friends, if they really knew us, but I nod anyway.
‘What is a bule anyway?’ I shout over last bars of the song.
‘Albino. They call us albinos,’ she yells back.
‘Cheeky bastards,’ I laugh.
We order drinks and light cigarettes and watch and listen as the band starts a perfect intro to Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’.
—The best rock intro ever, Laura shouts from my left. I look, expecting to see her eyes wide and alive and head moving to the music, but Naomi smiles back.
Now you’re happy; now you’re not. Music: the magician of nostalgia and emotion.
The first two or three notes are sometimes enough. The needle is placed on the record, the crackling starts and the notes line up and form their clever little refrain of a moment of life. Another track from Old Me’s Greatest Hits. Rock on.
She runs back into the room, all naked white flesh, and jumps in beside me just as Slash starts playing, a little scratchy, a little worn, but still impressive. She presses her body against mine, throwing a leg over my thighs and an arm across my chest and around my neck. My arm around her back pulls her even closer.
‘Strange choice of music for waking up to, Appetite For Destruction?’
‘It is and it does just that, wakes you up.’ She kisses my chest and we lay there silent for the duration of the first track. I smile at the ceiling. I’m lying in bed with a beautiful girl who I don’t know, yet I feel as relaxed with her as I would when I’m alone with myself.
‘You haven’t even asked me what my job is,’ she says.
She’s right. What the hell we have been talking about?
‘You’ve known me all of a day and not even interested in what I do.’ She flicks my nipple.
I ask her what she does.
‘I pick up ice-cream salesmen, shag them and get a lifetime’s supply of Mr Whippys, Mivvis and teas.’
‘Well sorry. I’m only selling ice creams for the summer, then I’m hoping to train to become a teacher. Your Mivvis will dry up.’
‘Oh well. You can leave now.’ She makes no attempt to get off me. ‘No Strawberry Mivvis, no more rumpy-pumpy.’
‘If you like Mivvis, I’ll buy you one every week.’
‘OK, in that case you can stay.’ Her hand rests on my abdomen and the warmth of her touch spreads across my stomach and down to my thighs and everywhere in between.
‘So what do you really do?’
‘Let’s get all coincidental. I teach. I work in a language school teaching English.’
‘Let’s get married.’
‘Not yet. Give it another week, don’t want to rush things.’ She presses a finger to my lips. ‘Silence for the best intro in the world coming up.’
We listen to the opening of ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’. I don’t disagree with her, mostly because she’s strumming along on my penis. Slash’s fingers dance up and down his instrument while Laura’s dance up and down mine. When the song’s finished and all strumming is over, we kiss.
‘I think we need to see each other often,’ she says, once her lips have separated from mine.
‘You haven’t even asked if I’ve got a girlfriend.’
‘Have you?’
‘No.’
‘Want one?’
‘If you’re offering?’
‘I am.’
‘Cool.’
She rests on her elbow and looks so deep into my eyes and for so long my vocal cords seize up.
‘Do I scare you?’ She leans her face in close and our lips are nearly touching again.
I shake my head, although I am scared, but not for the reasons she’s asking. I’m not scared she’s a psychotic stalker or scared she’s moving too fast. I’m scared because I don’t do this. I don’t fall for girls I hardly know. And I’m scared in case it goes wrong and in case it breaks me. I’m scared because I’m scared of all that and I’ve only known her for about twenty-two hours. It’s scary shit, being scared.
‘Don’t think I’m a slut for sleeping with you on the first day?’
Shake my head.
‘Not worried I’m rushing you?’
Shake.
‘Believe in love at first sight?’
Shake. Nod. Shake. Not sure how I should answer.
‘I don’t either, but you do make my heart very, very fluttery, and I’ve never had that before.’
Smile.
‘And I’ve never ever slept with someone so quickly. Normally he’d have to swim the Channel or climb a metaphorical Everest to get in my sheets so easily. So what’s going on, Mr Whippy Man?’
I shrug my shoulders, kiss her lips, hug her. I haven’t a clue what’s going on.
‘How about we just go with it,’ I whisper. ‘It feels, it feels…’
‘It feels good.’
An understatement, but I say, ‘Yes. Good.’
We lie there, skin on skin, legs intertwined like ivy, strands of her hair in my mouth, my hands on her back. I sense her life moving around her body and can feel it seeping through her flesh, her breasts, her hands, and every part of her body that touches me, into mine.
Into mine.
Into mine. A scratch. A jump. A moment stuck.
ALBINOS AND
ACTION MEN
K im and I drink kopi susu under a blue tarpaulin at a lean-to made from a few pieces of wood. We sit at a wobbly bench watching the owner of this fine establishment pour boiling water into something that looks like an old sock. From the bottom of the sock comes very good coffee. There are three men also sitting at the one and only table in this roadside shack. Two are playing chess and the other is watching intently through the haze of smoke that pours from the cigarette hung from his lips. Traffic passes by just a few feet away. Blown exhausts and horns mean conversation has to be turned up a little. And it’s bloody hot. Kim keeps picking his shirt up at the front and shaking it. Each time he does this he says, ‘Fuuuck, it’s fucking hot. Whoa, it’s fucking hot.’
I’m enjoying the heat. My shirt sticks to my neck and back and every now and then a little trickle of sweat runs down my temple. The heat makes me know I’m somewhere different, it confirms I’ve changed my world, that I’m being different. My old life has gone.
‘Fuuuck, it’s fucking hot.’ A shirt waggle.
‘I know, Kim, I’m sat here next to you.’
‘But fuck, I know this country’s supposed to be hot but this is fucking hot.’
‘You hot, my friend?’ asks the chess-watcher.
‘Fucking hot, man.’
‘Hot is good,’ he laughs. ‘Is my country. Is good country. Hot is good.’
‘Yeah man, good country, very bagus country, but fucking hot today.’
‘Where you from?’
‘Canada. You?’ asks Kim.
‘Ha. You not American. Good. Me from disini, from here, Medan, my town.’ He throws his cigarette out onto the street. ‘And you, my friend? You Canadian?’
‘English.’
‘Ah, David Beckham, you know? Very good footballer.’
‘I know. Yes. But I don’t like football.’ Not bloody Beckham again.
‘Manchester United? You like?’
‘No, I don’t like.’ I smile at him and sip my coffee. A drop of sweat plops into it from my nose.
‘Shame. Very good team. David Beckham very good.’ He lights another cigarette and his eyes focus on the chess board again.
Kim waggles his shirt and opens his mouth.
‘Don’t say it.’
He looks at me mid-waggle as if I’ve just told him I’m sleeping with his sister.
‘But it is fuc…’
‘Kim.’ I raise my eyebrows at him. ‘Anyway,
I’ve been meaning to ask, is it true bule means albino?’
‘Around this part of Indonesia it does, apparently. We’re albinos to them. All white and sickly and albinoish.’
‘Racist buggers.’
‘Yeah I know, but I bet you’re racist to them too.’
‘No.’
‘Confident answer, man.’ He scratches the side of his head. ‘So you don’t generalise and think they all want to talk about Man United and are all a little simple when they ask “Where you going, misterrr?”’
I pause to think of a response that doesn’t confirm I’m something I never want to be. I can’t think of one.
‘Fucking racist, man. We all do it. We all are. We all make generalisations about everyone we meet. I bet you even did when you met me for the first time: fucking dope-smoking Californian who says fuck a lot. Bet you fucking did.’
He has a point, but I choose not to answer.
‘And why did you tell him’—I lower my voice and nod towards the chess fan—‘you’re Canadian?’
‘Just in case. Americans aren’t always popular with these guys. Like I said, everyone generalises. Ethnic cleansing; major bad-ass generalisation.’
I tip my coffee cup up as far as it will go and drain the last of the sweet milk from the bottom.
‘Plus I don’t consider myself to be American.’
‘Why not?’
‘I was adopted. Rumour has it I was a Vietnam war baby. Guessing my old man was out there. Met a woman, left me in her, then split.’
Now I see there could be a slight Asian look to Kim. Olive skin, dark hair and eyes.
‘I put up with some shit when I was a kid. Always been a bit bitter about the great old US of A.’
A silence rides the heat between us for a second while Kim stares at the chessboard.
‘So why did you disappear so early the other night?’ Kim asks, changing the subject. ‘I thought you were enjoying the music and you were on for some filth with Naomi.’
‘Music was good. But I’m not interested in Naomi. And I’m still tired too. Getting used to the culture change is knackering, I suddenly needed sleep.’
—You wanted to be alone with me, tell him.
I shake my head and hope she’ll rattle back below to keep him company.
—Alone with me and my sexy little body and not so shiny bright teeth.
