Paying homage

New Year’s Heave

The last thing I’d intended to do this New Year’s Eve was to go down the Blok, but the gravitational pull of the dear old place just drew me in. The weather had a hand, too - such a dull day, gray and miserable as only South Jakarta can serve up in the middle of the rainy season. By nightfall I just needed to get out.

Braving the rain and the traffic on Jalan Fatmawati I crawl towards the Blok and park right outside Top Gun. The rain has slowed down to an arthritic drizzle, but there’s a heavy clamminess in the air that bodes ill. Pushing open the bar door is a pleasant surprise - there’s a good mix of girls and customers in the place, and the bar staff are in a jovial mood, The place is understatedly festive; a few dangly doodahs hang from the ceiling, and a clutch of tastefully pastel-coloured balloons dangles over the band area like some gentle parody of the sword of Damocles.

I settle down to a few glasses of Chateau Oz at the bar and exchange greetings with the staff and the owner, Pak Ahmad. As I look around it suddenly strikes me that the Indramayu Sweet Young Things are out in force tonight - and there are very few of the jaded OEM’s who seem to have achieved semi-permanent residency status over the last few month. Their absence is a big plus, as for the most part they’re a pretty joyless lot.

As expected, there aren’t many guys out tonight, and those who have ventured into Top Gun don’t stay very long. They drink and chat with the easy urgency of people who are on their way somewhere else later on, and don’t want to put down roots in Falatehan for the night.

Dumb show

Turning attention to my very favourite Indramayu girls I count upwards of a dozen or so, half of whom were Top Gun regulars back in the late nineties. And how well they’ve worn! The lovely Anis is still flitting around - though a little slower than of yore - and really looks very demure in a simple white blouse and short well-cut hair. “Demure de merrier”, I muse to myself as she flashes a grin of welcome across at me.

The dress code for the evening is restrained but fashionable, and a lot of grooming has been performed before leaving home - especially the hair, which shines with that magical lustre that is the hallmark of Indramayu folk. Belts are definitely in tonight - broad ones, bedazzled with beads, cut glass and sequins. They emphasize the slimness of the girls’ waists in an innocently erotic fashion, and beg to be ripped off in a moment of feral passion.

But the pièce de résistance has got to be the one and only, the inimitable, the larger-than-life, Dumb and Dumber. Her ensemble and makeup are absolute show-stoppers, and the guys gawp as she fixes them in her sights. Her hair has been subtly glossed and straightened for the occasion, which lends her a deliciously spurious air of sophistication. The makeup is basic and functional, her naturally prominent eyebrows pencilled into sweeping black lines that hint at a common ancestry with Spock of Star Trek. But the real nightmare is a breathtaking botch of colour and texture that borders on genius.

Her eyes. Heavily mascaraed, they give her a sultry ‘come up and see me sometime’ allure - until she lowers her lids to reveal what may best be described as fluorescent emerald eye-shadow liberally sprinkled with silver glitter-dust. But no sooner have you gulped and boggled at this stunning touch than your attention is drawn to her mouth. Naturally full and sensuous - indeed, one of her most attractive features - her lips have been coated with some sort of salmon-pink industrial-grade lip gloss that agonizingly clashes with her eye makeup.

She’s wearing a pair of skintight jeans with an illegible motto stitched across the seat, and an embroidered top that plunges to display her magnificent cleavage. “Like the Grand Canyon in miniature” is my immediate thought on peering into the shadowy depths as she leans alluringly towards me to cadge a drink. As she sits down on a bar stool she immediately fails the Reveller’s bum test - her ample backside is broader than the diameter of the stool. Turning to speak to a friend she pivots on her posterior and her jean waist drops - to reveal that she’s wearing a pair of those ‘bits of string’ black knickers.

Standing up to walk to another table, she totters and wobbles because she’s wearing a pair of the highest heeled shoes you can get, and I fear for the dear girl’s safety. As she safely overflows onto another bar stool I find a long-forgotten definition from my ‘O’ level physics course springs to mind - “If when slightly displaced from its mean position a body’s centre of gravity falls, it may said to be in a state of unstable equilibrium”. And that sums up dear old Dumb and Dumber perfectly.

Crystal balls

Unlike in previous years I’m not going to begin to speculate on life in and on the Blok during 2008. The place has become an automaton, a machine with set routines and greater predictability, and nothing is going to change that. It’s become entertainment, whereas in the past it was entertaining. But one thing is crystal clear - if the price of drinks continues to go up at the rate it did in 2007, it’s a certainty that sales will go down and there’ll be fewer customers.

One of the girls I’ve known for many years, and who only rarely goes to Top Gun these days, immediately remarked to me that much of the fun seems to have gone out of the place, and that it’s lost a lot of its character. She’s quite philosophical about it, and shrugging her shapely shoulders says that it’s the same everywhere these days.

Epilogue

I decide to go home before midnight and see in the new year at home with the cats. The reason is purely practical, as the streets will be packed with revellers and navigation nigh on impossible. Swinging open the bar door I’m faced with a deluge. The rain has intensified, and I thank my stars that I managed to park right in front of Top Gun.

As the car squelches down Falatehan and I swing through a small lake by the bus station entrance towards Melawai, I reflect that really we should be thankful that Blok M has managed to cling on to some of its old magic during the era of commercialisation, and is still a good place for a night out.

Pulling into Jalan Fatmawati my worst fears prove to be all too real, and it takes me more than fifteen minutes to crawl the fifty or so metres through the cheering, clapping, firework-tossing crowd to my street turning. The cats are nowhere to be seen, presumably having scarpered to take refuge from the hurly-burly of the street mob and their whiz-bangs. And so to bed, to sleep off the old year.

To all friends old and new, wherever in the world you may be, my very best wishes for the New Year - and if you’re fortunate enough to be in Jakarta, keep the aspidistra flying!