Blok M news update, April 2003

Changes

These days, Blok M is a bit like a car engine that’s not firing on all cylinders. Some nights the places are packed and humming, others - all too many, I’m afraid - have all the bustle and excitement of a Trappist-run funeral parlour. The Blok is, in effect, a microcosm of the expat community in Jakarta; there are fewer guys around, and the Bali bombings have had their effect. The old hands, the diehards who are denizens of Jakarta, are still there propping up the bars and carousing away their evenings in glorious dissipation. But there are virtually no transients these days, the consultants, salesmen and entrepreneurs who pass through on business; this has hit in particular the up-market business girls who ply their trade in the big hotels, quite a few of whom have migrated to the Blok in search of greener pastures. The company guys who are here on contract seem to be the most vulnerable, as their operations downsize and put projects on hold, or defer them; they are the ones who have to pack up and go when the going gets tough, regardless of whether or not they want to stay - and to a man, they do.

It says a lot for the resilience of the old place that - with one sad exception - it’s kept its character and atmosphere, and in true Indonesian fashion meanders along in its inscrutable and eccentric way. Mr Micawber would have been proud of the owners and managers of the bars on the Blok - something will always turn up. The exception is Top Gun, my old stomping ground. A month or so ago there were ugly whispers on the street that the management had gone completely doolally and was revamping the main bar. True – there’s now carpeting on the old stone floor, and that dingy lighting that was part of the atmosphere of the place has been replaced with bright lights that would do Blackpool proud. Even more horrible, I hear that the management is planning to introduce live music in a desperate bid to attract more punters. I have this apocalyptic vision of the worst of the Oscar’s bands pounding out their decibels to an empty, characterless bar. Top Gun, RIP.

D’s Place

You can tell when the other bars are doing badly - all the girls flock to D’s Place early in the evening. Just as the sight of seabirds well inland means that there are storms on the coast, the girls are an economic barometer. I sit upstairs, sipping my Pernod, and nod to each group as they come in; ah, here are the Oscars old girls, that’s par for the course, but hang on - they’ve come with the fledglings, oh dear, it must be a really bad night there. And next, a gaggle of the Top Gun girls - they have a lean and hungry look, the rent must be due. And what’s this? Some of the smart girls from Lintas Melawai, a couple from the Club, dismayed to find that they are upstaged by the younger denizens of D’s Place. What most of the guys don’t see behind this influx is a vicious territorial war going on; the D’s girls all have their corners and their tables marked out, and woe betide any interloper who tries to move in. By about eleven o’clock, after the ladies’ lucky draw, the intruders retire as gracefully as they can, licking their wounds and bestowing saccharine smiles on everybody.

Oscars

I went down to Oscars one night to see if there was any life under the stone at the end of the street. Yes, I know, I’m an incurable optimist, the more so after a skinful of tequilas chased down with Bintang and followed up with a couple of Pernods. The management have, bless their cotton socks, made a valiant attempt to whip up trade - they’ve put a large fish tank behind the bar, populated with some of the less expensive varieties of exotic carp. I was sitting there, talking to the goldfish, when Tony (the manager) came up to me and asked why I was talking to the fish. I explained that there was more life in that fish tank than in the whole of the rest of the pub, and that I quite fancied the sultry fish that was languidly waving its fins at me. If fish had eyelashes I’m sure it would have fluttered them at me.

Lintas Melawai

I have to update the info on Lintas Melawai. 11 o’clock is no longer the break-even time to go, if you want to see any action it’s all after midnight. The sad thing is that for the most part it’s now just the regular girls, there aren’t as many amateurs and good-time girls as there were before. And more ominous, there have been some ugly scenes involving non-western expats who get drunk and turn aggressive on both the girls and the regular customers.

The reveller’s nightmare

One of the drawbacks of being a Blok M reveller is that just as you’re slumping gracefully onto the bar counter in a beatific alcoholic haze, you suddenly find yourself next to the girl of your (wet) dreams. She has a body to kill for, a dazzling smile, and lust written all over her face. She asks you for a light for her cigarette, your eyes meet, you offer her a drink - and in the immortal words of Casablanca, ‘this could be the start of a beautiful friendship’. But even as your fuddled senses tell you that you’ve hit the jackpot, a little warning voice reminds you that your get up and go has got up and gone. As you weep into your beer and quietly curse the Demon Drink, the sweet young thing slips you her handphone number and disappears into the night.

To prevent this tragic scenario the hardened regulars (perhaps an unfortunate expression, given the circumstances) have recently discovered that miracle of pharmaceutical science, nature’s gift to the erectionally-challenged - Viagra. They get their supply from seedy little shops that advertise ‘obat pria perkasa’ (which roughly translates as ‘medicine to make men strong and powerful’).

Sallying forth one day in search of a supply, I came across a likely shop discretely trading under the name of "Dr Viagra". To call it a shop is perhaps an exaggeration, it’s really a lopsided wooden shack divided into a shop front and a back room. The place is dim and squalid. There’s a dirty glass-topped counter in which one can make out grubby boxes of sex aids, jellies, creams and evil-looking unlabeled bottles of dark liquid. The shop assistant peered wide-eyed round the back room partition, then disappeared again. A bit later he emerged and staggered towards the counter. His skin had an unhealthy pallor and glistened in the half-light. With a shaking hand he tipped four tablets out of a grimy plastic bottle, and dropped one on the floor. As he scrabbled for it I looked again at the wares under the counter, and wondered what depths of sexual frustration (or depravity) would drive any normal bloke to buy stuff like that.

Well, that’s about all for now – as the saying goes, ‘watch this space’ for periodic updates.