Blok M diary, May 2003

Thursday night and it’s a local holiday, so D’s Place is full of noisy and very happy revellers. But the girls are a motley crew, mostly the older ones - I call them the "B Team". As I quietly hum to myself "Where have all the young girls gone?" and crush yet another empty cigar pack, I think it’s time to bestir myself and ask for the bill. It’s surprisingly light, the main item being a D’s shepherd’s pie. "Tell Darryl that the shepherd was a bit tough tonight" I quip to Wati, the barmaid, as I fumble through the debris in my pockets and dig out a few crumpled notes.

Avoiding the predatory taxi drivers lurking outside D’s door I stroll down to Oscars for a quick jar and a chat with the goldfish, but as I near the place I hear a sound that reminds me of the time I was living across the road from an abattoir in the north of France. As the music is not quite to my taste I stroll on past Oscars and take a taxi to LM.

As it’s too early for the disco I settle down in the bar for a quick primer. Now it’s an immutable law of nature that no man is meant to sit alone at a bar in Jakarta, and lo and behold I’m instantly accompanied. One thing I like about Indonesian girls is that they don’t mince their words. The Reveller’s monthly award for up-front honesty goes to this very sweet thing I’ve known for ages. Here’s my conversation with her at the bar in LM:

Girl:  Hi sayang, you buy me Carlsberg?

Reveller:  Sorry, not tonight.

Girl:  You like to go with me?

Reveller:  Sorry, not tonight.

Girl:  You boring (gets up and walks away).

As Mozart put it so well, ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ (which roughly translates as ‘all women are like this)’. A self-confessed reveller, I bet he had similar experiences in the sleazier taverns of Salzburg and Vienna. I’m sure he’d have felt very much at home in Blok M.

The problem I have with drunken conversations is that I can always remember the last bit, but never what went before it - it’s rather like taking a taxi ride in Jakarta, you know where you are but haven’t a clue as to how you got there. During a sporadically cerebral chat with one of the more erudite revellers in the gents as we both dispose of our used beer, he comes up with this gem: "Intellectuals don’t read Nietzsche or Tolstoy - only people serving 30 year prison sentences". My response: "Or if they are reading them, it feels like a 30 year prison sentence". Ah, the joys of wit and epigrammatic vivacity. The art of conversation is still alive and kicking in Blok M.

Groping my way into the LM disco I bump into an old friend I haven’t seen for ages. We soon give up on conversation though, as bellowing over the thunderously loud music is doing my vocal cords no good at all. So I wander round and round, a process I call ’stacking’. In much the same way as an incoming aircraft circles the airport whilst awaiting a landing slot, I circumnavigate the disco waiting for a place to park myself and watch the action.

I finally find a ringside seat and settle down to enjoy the action. Things are a bit spoilt by a couple of harpies who latch on to me and aggressively cadge drinks and money. They don’t respond to my polite declining - so with my most politic smile I gently whisper the Two Magic Words, and they melt into the throng.

There aren’t many girls in the bar this evening, a consequence of a couple of police raids on LM earlier in the week. Why does LM get picked out for raids, and not the other bars? Sadly, because of drugs. While the other bar owners and managers all crack down hard on drugs, it’s common knowledge on the Blok that LM is a little less than rigorous in such matters.

Watching the dancing I cannot help but notice the profound effect that Inul has had on the girls. No longer satisfied with their graceful swaying to and fro to the music, every last one of them is rotating her hips in anatomy-defying gyrations. I’m sure it’s a passing fad. I hope so, because these lascivious contortions play merry hell with my hormone balance.

The evening ends on a pleasant note as I bid a fond farewell to the gaggle of girls I’ve been chatting to, and saunter out into the early morning air to flag down a taxi.

And as I sit back and Melawai recedes into the distance, I echo the immortal words with which Samuel Pepys ended every entry in his own illustrious diary - "and so to bed".