Saturday 7th June
Top Gun lite
One of the best lessons I learnt when I started my Blokking career was, ‘don’t force it’. If you’re just not in the mood, or feel a bit below par, leave the Blok alone for a night - it won’t go away. I’ve known guys whose personal motto has been just the opposite - ‘the Blok or bust’. Guys who’ve hobbled into the bar on crutches, rolled through the door in wheelchairs, limped to their table with legs in bandage or plaster, or snuffled the night away through a haze of flu and antibiotic misery. To misquote those famous words of General Pierre Bosquet, “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas le bar.”
So it is that on Friday night I reluctantly decide discretion is the better part of revelling, and languish at home soaking up the best that satellite TV has to offer. As I click from channel to channel in a desperate search for something that doesn’t assume I have a sub-95 IQ and the memory span of an amnesiac hamster, I drift into a shallow sleep with the TV still droning on, dreamily fantasizing that National Geographic is making a documentary about white miniskirts and thigh-length shiny plastic boots.
On Saturday night my batteries seem to be half charged, so I think maybe I’m OK for a go at the Blok. The thought of another night of mental atrophy convinces me that I’m more than ready, so I set off for an early night of R&R.
The world seems to sense that I’m below my best. Street urchins hop solicitously out of the way rather than throw themselves in death-defying bravado right under my wheels; old geezers step aside and gently wave me by instead of suddenly getting an urge to amble unsteadily across the road to greet another old geezer; bike riders pull into the side of the road and slow down as I approach them, and one of the local cats nips sharply out of the way rather than give me its usual arrogant stare and dare me to just go ahead and flatten it.
Even the main road traffic feels for me. A member of the Jakarta Constabulary gives me a weary nod as I absent-mindedly go through a red light, when - on true form - he’d have me hauled over and fishing out the old merokok before you can say ‘it’s a fair cop guv’. A battered old taxi slows down to let me swing left after the bus station; an archaic bajaj veers out of my way without my flashing and hooting at it - and a decrepit Metro Mini stops to pick up a passenger without blocking the slip road.
These are good omens. The Gods of Jakarta are beaming benignly on me tonight. I am protected, I can do no wrong. I even seem to miraculously miss the jagged pot holes in Jalan Felatehan, and find a parking slot right outside Top Gun.
Top Gun is quiet. There’s a handful of guys playing a serious game of pool, a gaggle of older girls hanging around the door nattering away in Jawa, and the usual toing and froing of bar staff who don’t seem to have any obvious reason to be toing and froing.
Having been on short rations for a couple of days, I’m ready for the magical recuperative powers of a sop buntut. After stacking away the rice and chilies I glance round the bar, and spot a guy at a nearby table who’s also absorbed in a sop buntut. Now with only half a dozen customers in the bar, it’s quite a coincidence that two of us should be simultaneously enjoying the same collation. Is he a regular devotee of the dish, I idly wonder, or has he learnt about it from my enthusiastic reviews in the blog posts?
Sadly, the sop doesn’t quite have its usual savoury edge. It comes suspiciously quickly after I order it, and good though it is it lacks that little je ne sais quoi that made the previous two helpings something special.
The bar is slow to fill up, which is about par for a Saturday night. More of the older Indramayu girls arrive as ten approaches, and upon asking a couple of them where the fledglings are tonight they tell me they’ve gone to the Shangri La because the pickings in Blok M have been pretty meagre over the last few weeks. “Well, with some Top Gun girls now aiming for the million mark, can you blame the guys for losing interest?” I ask. The girls shake their heads with an expression that says, “The younger generation; what can you expect?”
The older girls all seem to be dressed in black tonight, which adds to the overall lack of liveliness in the place. Even the OEM’s are drably decked out, making the bar look a bit like an Oxfam shop in the middle of a clearance sale. A flash of white boots with chrome heels catches my eye, and one of the girls sat near me remarks ’she must be a dangdut performer’.
Serious violence is rare in Blok M. An occasional cat fight, sporadic brawls between guys so pissed out of their skulls that nobody gets really hurt, are the usual fracas. But a couple of weeks back there was, I hear, a very ugly scene in D’s Place in which a bottle was smashed on someone’s head in a spat over a D’s girl between a regular and her boyfriend. Details are sketchy, but I gather it was a serious incident. This memory is triggered by something I notice in Top Gun. I don’t know the cause, but one of the pillar mirrors has received an almighty wallop that’s given it a massive and quite spectacular starburst crack.
‘Sway’ was the alias of one of our regular Blok M Forum contributors. I say ‘was’ with great sadness, because he is no longer with us. His death has left a great gap in our little online community. I never met him, never spoke to him, but he was a friend whose virtual company I greatly enjoyed and valued. He joined the forums in August 2007 and was an avid lurker until October, when he began to join in our discussions. In the time he was with us he was a prolific contributor, making no fewer than 348 posts in the forums.
Sway was a courteous, urbane, and witty contributor. He was both thoughtful and thought-provoking, gentle and generous in his response to others’ posts. His writing matured in style and confidence over his time as a regular contributor, and he had a wicked way with words. But most importantly, he wrote with an open heart. He epitomised the true spirit of a Blok M reveller - a lust for life, a hearty appetite for the best the Blok has to offer, and a deep appreciation of the dignity of all the Blok denizens, from the highest to the humblest.
I speak for all the Forum regulars when I say Sway old friend, thanks for your companionship and your contribution to our community. You came, you saw you conquered - the Blok became part of your life, and your life became part of the Blok’s. Revel In Peace.
By eleven I reckon that I’ve had the best that Top Gun has to offer, and decide to throw in my chips. It’s been a pleasantly restorative night on the Blok, just what the doctor ordered. Then I wonder how my old GP in Blighty, an urbane but rather straight-laced kind of chap, might have prescribed such a treatment. I can hear him, in my mind’s ear, saying “Well, you’re a bit run down, old chap - nothing that a little rest and relaxation won’t cure, so I advise you to go out and get totally rat-arsed in Blok M tonight.”
I wonder if, like many Brits, there might have been a bit of the reveller lurking behind that cool facade. The great difference between him and me is that I discovered it - and lived not only to tell the tale, but to write about it.
One thing I can’t help noticing though, is that you are more an observer than a doer - are your days of actually picking up girls over? (I hope this is not too much of a personal question.)
Comment by Special Brew Man — 15 June 2008 @ 11:30 am
It’s a fair question, but the answer is not a simple one. Cost is the main factor. The Sweet Young Things have quite simply priced themselves out of the market, and hotel room rates have risen remorselessly over the last couple of years.
Add to this the fact that there just isn’t the range of quality there used to be, and most of the girls have become very mercenary - making what used to be fun and games a mundane business transaction.
So the answer to your question is, yes, I’m more an observer than a doer in Blok M - but there are plenty more fish in the sea.
Comment by Reveller — 15 June 2008 @ 1:35 pm