The Twilight Zone

Olive branch

The Blok M community is small and tightly knit, and has at its best a gentlemanly way of resolving personal differences that makes the United Nations look like the Spanish Inquisition - which of course nobody expects.

As I sign up for my ten minutes of gladiatorial slaughter at the pool table, the guys with whom I had a falling out last week on the rules of engagement greet me warmly, and it’s smiles all round. There’s no need for explanations or apologies, just a tacit acknowledgment that emotions had run a bit high and a difference in expectations had got slightly out of hand. But even as a mood of relaxed bonhomie settles on the company around the pool table, I cannot help but feel a rumbling resentment of the Pool League Brownshirts for sowing the seeds of discord with their idiosyncratic confection of arbitrary rules.

A salt and battery

The first item on the evening’s agenda is to get plastered as quickly and economically as possible, so after a bottle of gratifyingly cold beer to wet the whistle I order a Top Gun Tequila Triple - three shots for Rp 50,000 all in. The pool guys look on with concern as I sink one, then a second, in rapid succession. “You don’t think I like this stuff, do you?” I intone with mock solemnity, “I drink it on doctor’s orders in order to improve my hand-eye coordination.”

Downing the third glass I run my tongue round the rim to scoop up the salt, pop the slice of lemon in my mouth and contentedly chew it into a pulp as a warm glow suffuses my tired body, a deliciously soothing exothermic reaction. Pushing the row of empty shot glasses towards the smiling bar staff, I decide to go for broke and wash it all down with a glass of Pernod. Now as regular readers will know, Pernod and I go back a long way together - to school holidays in France back in the glorious sixties. For most people born outside La Belle France Pernod is a decidedly acquired taste, and whenever a curious Sweet Young Thing cautiously sniffs my glass her reaction is exactly the same as mine to the reek of a freshly opened ripe durian.

From bad to verse

Being one of those types in whom a significant intake of alcohol induces a state not unlike tunnel vision, a clear focus in the centre of a boozy blur, I pivot on my bar stool to see what’s happening in the wide world beyond my Pernod. A familiar figure slurs into focus, and it’s the inimitable David Jardine making the rounds of his parish. Dumping a shapeless shopping bag on the bar he rummages through it and extracts a handful of books for my perusal, and the conversation takes a literary turn.

A few minutes later Dave’s downed a couple of beers and our conversation veers from topic to topic like a heavily loaded supermarket trolley. Firing quotations at each other in a manic literary tennis match, Dave trots out a couple of lines of verse. “Omar Kayam, I think - translated by Sir Richard Burton?” - “Wrong, Edward FitzGerald!” shoots back Dave. My momentary lapse is explained by the fact that a gorgeous bunch of Indramayu Sweet Young Things has just come into the bar - and Burton was, of course, the famed translator of the Kama Sutra.

Brought to book

As the Jardinian social life is largely dictated by the Busway timetable, he sups up and departs to catch the last bus northwards. Shortly after he’s gone another Dave, a guy I first met many years ago (just after I’d started the Blok M web site, in fact), summons me into his presence because he has a very serious complaint to make to the Reveller.

Worried that he’s about to berate me for the all-too-frequent gaps in my chronicling, or the tone and content of some recent offering, I’m a bit defensive as he puts a censorial hand on my shoulder and fixes me with a magisterial frown. “When are you going to stop effing about, and write a book?” he demands to know. I start to tell him that I’ve got a novel in progress but need a lot more free time than I’ve got at the moment, when he passionately interrupts my flow with “Bollocks! Forget the novel. Write about the guys and their stories. You’ve already got most of the material you need, and any of the guys in here would be only too happy to recount their own history for you!”

He has a point, and it’s something that could be done in a much briefer time frame, so I resume my place at the bar and start to mentally sketch out a plan for a book.

Never mind the quality, feel the width

This, alas, is the misguided principle on which more than one of the Blok M bars has at some time or other foundered. Some of the regulars have long suspected that in times of dearth a cast of extras is bussed in to keep the bars full of girls - which explains the rise of the OEM phenomenon.

Looking back at all the bars that have been successful on the street, in every case it’s been due in no small measure not to the quantity, but rather to the quality and variety of a small handful of Sweet Young Things. Oscar tragically lost its resident troupe of characters due to a prolonged Ramadan closure and went through a very lean period; charging the girls for entry was the cause of Pentagon’s demise, and D’s Place thrived for so long because an enlightened management set out to attract as many of the popular Sweet Young Things as it could through free drinks, lucky draws, dancing competitions and the like. Unfortunately too much of a good thing killed the goose that laid the golden egg, and it’s been downhill ever since. My Bar rose to fame and fortune on a wave of exotic fauna that was attracted by the razzmatazz and dynamism of the place.

Top Gun has now by common consent taken on the mantle of top dog on the street because it’s succeeded in drawing in a critical mass of quality totty. Saturday night’s crowd of Sweet Young Things is as good a mix of girls as I’ve seen on the Blok, with a few new ones livening up the place and adding delicious variety. As I survey the field from my new late-night vantage point in the Twilight Zone between the band area and the rear-bar pool table, I reflect that the street has survived by the skin of its teeth and come up trumps in the shape of a revived and revivified Top Gun.

Dress code

Ten o’clock comes and goes, and the bar is still a bit empty. Then, as the clock turns quarter past, in they all come - the Indramayu regulars and a good sprinkling of Betawi beauties. It’s tank tops and jeans night, I observe, as the Sweet Young Things jostle for pole position at the bar, but a few of them are very smartly dressed, two in particular; one is wearing a nicely-cut pale turquoise dress, the other a very chic red, black and white number that shows off her jaw-dropping figure to perfection.

Mating calls

The Twilight Zone is dark and alluring this Saturday night, and it’s rapidly becoming the pickup point of choice on the street. There’s a lot of canoodling going on at and between the tables, and discrete assignations are being brokered. This is exactly what dear old Lintas Melawai used to be like in its time, so here’s yet another long-felt gap being nicely filled.

What strikes me most as I sit at my new home base is the movement and mobility. There’s a constant stream of girls and guys moving into and out of the Zone, which gives it an almost theatrical quality. Some of the girls know how to make their entrance with panache, and some of the guys display a natural flair for the dramatic exit. Compare this with the static waxworks quality of D’s upstairs bar as it went into decline and the normal nightly tableau one sees in the other bars on the street, and the difference is amazing.

Tonight’s band is good, their repertoire is nicely varied, and - Lord be praised - the volume isn’t too extreme. There’s enough slow stuff to encourage couples to smooch along with the music, and from my viewing angle I’m reminded of the spontaneous band-side dancing that’s Oscar’s hallmark. Now all this is very good for business, both the bar’s and the Sweet Young Things, and it’s sure to draw in yet more quality fauna. Some of the other bar owners could profitably observe what’s happening in Top Gun, and reflect on their own choice of music and the volume at which it is played.

Life, the universe, and everything

As I putter home in a slightly lame bajay clutching a couple of books from the Jardine Mobile Literary Emporium, I reflect that while the Blok may not be the answer to life and the universe, it’s pretty much the answer to everything else. It provides shelter, sustenance, security and enjoyment aplenty on a good night. And tonight has been a very good night indeed.