Saturday 21st October
The storm before the calm
Regular readers who recall the Shagger’s tale of matrimonial woe will appreciate a new twist in the litany of mishaps that can befall any of us in our dedicated pursuit of lechery.
Enjoying a cool beer on the veranda with a friend the other day, we comment on how cannily observant the female of the species can be here in Indonesia. Minutiae that Sherlock Holmes at his most brilliant might never have noticed, that Hercule Poirrot with his ponderous Gallic genius could easily have overlooked, are just grist to the mill of the local girls.
My friend explains that he was the hapless victim of a singularly brilliant piece of detective work in which it wasn’t something that was left at the Scene Of The Crime that proved to be his undoing, but something that was removed from it. The scenario is depressingly familiar. The wife is away for a few days, there are exotic temptations on all sides that would try the chastity of a saint, so being a healthy red-blooded sort of guy he deftly lines up a particularly tasty bit of crumpet to help allay the boredom of life at home alone.
Now the fellow is careful. Very careful indeed. In his line of work one careless mistake can cost millions of dollars - even lives. He sweeps the place absolutely clean, so there’s not the slightest trace of extracurricular activity anywhere in the house. Imagine his surprise, then, when She Who Must Be Obeyed storms down the stairs and accuses him of having had a girl in the house. Vigorously protesting his innocence, he’s convinced that she’s bluffing - another skill honed to perfection by the little darlings.
She holds up an innocent-looking bottle of shampoo and confronts him with the fact that it was almost full when she left, and now it’s half empty. As my friend is not over-endowed in the follicular department it’s hardly likely that he’d have used it all himself - ergo, someone else used it, and used it in quantity. Now as we all know, most Indonesian Sweet Young Things are blessed with a luxurious growth of long black hair and consume shampoo by the gallon. So two and two is put together, and the evidence - though highly circumstantial - is enough for him to be summarily tried, judged and condemned.
The ever-resourceful chap has a flash of inspiration and promptly blames the pembantu. Now under normal circumstances this is an excellent line of defence - the local housemaids are notorious for helping themselves to anything in an open packet or bottle, these things being looked upon as one of the few perks of a desperately underpaid job. His wife grudgingly accepts that this is possible, but the seed of doubt has taken deep root and he lives under a thundercloud of suspicion for some time to come.
Saturday is effectively the last petrol station before the motorway, the final fling before a few listless days sans revelling. I kick off the evening in Top Gun where there’s an amiable crowd of lechers and loafers carousing the night away, and a barful of simmeringly eager Sweet Young Things. I have a few leisurely drinks and play a desultory game of pool, but there’s an unsettled atmosphere about the place that makes me want to move on rather than stay, so it’s up, out, and across the road.
Settling into the maelstrom of My Bar the first thing that strikes me is the frenzy of guys and girls swapping hand phone numbers, banking those naughty little digits against the rainy days of the holiday closure. Now in my early years in Blok M whispered assignations would be made to meet up somewhere for a romantic meal together, or perhaps to slope off for a bit of discrete dalliance - there was always a frisson of anticipation, a last touch and maybe a kiss before going our different ways. The hand phone has taken all the excitement and much of the romance out of the occasion, taken away the magic and devalued it to a mundane transaction. I wonder how we ever managed our social lives before the coming of this insidious little menace.
The music plays, the drink goes down, and the girls circle like birds of prey on the lookout for their next meal. A couple of real charmers come and sit next to me and we have a very pleasant chat and mildly flirt away the evening - but I’m determined to avoid the pre-holiday sting and keep a friendly distance. As they start to come on much stronger I politely smile and move out, back across the road to Top Gun.
During my absence the atmosphere has changed - it’s got a liveliness and pulse that it lacked earlier in the evening, so I join the swim and edge my way to the far end of the bar where I have a better vantage point for watching the action. As I relax and sip a refreshing glass of Pernod my eye catches an old flame - she of the White Mini Skirt and an insatiable appetite for whisky-colas, who has earned her fifteen minutes of fame in the Reveller’s scribblings.
I haven’t seen her around the Blok for a few months, so I get into conversation to ask where she’s been all this time. Working in Bali is the answer, as a barmaid in a pub that’s owned by her best friend who married a guy she met in Blok M and who now lives there. She’s only back in Jakarta for the Id, and has just called in to see a few old friends. I buy her some weird concoction that’s a garish cobalt blue and reeks of Vodka, and off she wanders to chat to her buddies. Each time she reappears she gives me her cute little girl’s smile, and I begin to suspect that she has designs on me. When she demurely hitches up her tank top to show me one of her latest tattoos my worst suspicions are confirmed - so I express an urgent desire to see all her tattoos, and whisk her straight out of the bar.