Quarter Year

“You know, just casual, fine dining,” he said.
“Mul, seriously, do I need to wear a dress to this place?” I asked. Mul was being very vague, but his answers were leading me to believe that we were going to a very, very nice place.
“Yes of course,” he said.

I immediately made a mental inventory of what I had in my backpack, three dirty t-shits, two pairs of 80s inspired workout shorts, a pair of stained capris, yoga pants, a black hippie skirt that smelled a little bit like fish and a jacket. No dress. We had spent the last three weeks trying to hang with the local farmers and rice field workers, the dudes at the night markets cooking meat on coconut shell fueled fires and the families riding beside us on the hot, dusty roads, covered in dirt. Fine dining had not been on the radar. Until now. I began to panic. I don’t usually care that much about clothes, but I like to be appropriate. As with everywhere we travel, we just want to go with the flow and in Jakarta, with Mul and his friends, that meant at least pretending like I had showered that week.

It might have been the culture shock that added to the stress of the moment. We had come from Bali, a place that we thought we understood. I have never been able to understand a place where appearance matters so much, where brand names are flashed around and what you do/who you are is the first thing people want to know. We don’t live in that world and don’t know anyone who really does. We know people who are wealthy, but not people who care so much about it or showing it. This was a truly new kind of travel experience for us.

Mul had been showing us around his neighborhood and wasn’t responding to my calm attempts to guide us toward a place that sold clothing. I was starting to really freak out, really freak out, like when you have to go to the bathroom while sitting in rush hour traffic. You try to be patient, look at your options, can you get off the freeway? All lanes blocked. Could you get out of the car and discretely do it on the side of the road? Nope. The last option is always to go in the car, find a cup or something and I really really didn’t want to do that. Wearing my fishy skirt and pit-stained t-shirt was its equivalent.

“Mul, I need to go to the mall,” I declared, louder than was appropriate.
“Okay, we’ll go,” he said. “And over there is the beach, and…”
“No, now!” I said. It was 6:05 and we had to leave for dinner at 7pm. There was no time for another “little detour.”

I immediately worried that the places he would take us would be well out of my price range, but I was willing to pull out the credit card for this one. Luckily, the department store that he took us to was reasonable by US standards, about the same you would spend at a Macy’s. High, but not too high. The boys gave me 15 minutes to find an outfit, so I ran around grabbing dresses and skirts. I settled on a loose black dress with ruffles down the front. When I belted it with a $5 sale belt, it looked kind of good. I decided that I needed stretch pants too because it was too short to wear out in conservative Jakarta. LOL!

When we got back, we had 20 minutes to get ready. Mike was already feeling worn out and didn’t want it to be a late night. Despite his sad state, he dutifully changed into his only clean shirt and his dirty black linen pants. He looked really good, especially from a distance and in a poorly lit room and with a little deodorant, he smelled passable.

Passable!!!

I was now concerned with the fact that the dress I had bought had no sleeves and with the burns in healing mode, I looked not unlike a leper. In romance novels, the poor girl was always outfitted with a huge closet full of brand new designer dresses just her size. I found the real life equivalent in Mul’s old bedroom. His closet was stuffed with outdated 80s pants suits that his mother no longer wore. Jackpot! I found an amazingly shoulder padded blue satin wrap that also sported a tail. I figured it was NYE and since everyone else treated it like the biggest, funnest holiday, so should I. Mul laughed, but assured me it was fine to borrow.

We drove downtown in heavy traffic, everyone was trying to get into the city. We pulled up to the restaurant and they did a bomb search of our car. Since the car was so nice and the people inside obviously not a threat, it only required us to roll down the windows. The restaurant was a very upscale Korean barbeque place. This excited us, since it was one of our favorite meals at home. The food was delicious. And I was so glad we had made the stop at the mall.

As we were planning to head home, Mul informed us that traffic was so bad that we wouldn’t be able to be taken home, we must accompany him to the next stop, which meant drinks with his friends. At his assurance that we would only go for a couple of drinks and leave around one, we were relieved. We had been up since 5am.

In the entryway, we passed a group extremely thin, very heavily made up girls wearing almost nothing. I could assume nothing other than they were escorts. We were led up the stairs, through a labyrinth of white marble halls with doors into private rooms. I couldn’t see into the rooms, they had no windows, so I just assumed they were for, you know, “business.”

Of course I could have asked Mul to clarify where we were going. But we had been playing the “what are we doing” game all day and I found it exhausting with no actual factual exchange. Also, I rather enjoy the solitary and imaginative game of “figure it out yourself.” When we were introduced to Andy, he was the perfect character for the story that was building in my mind. Andy was from San Diego, but now living in Jakarta. He was to only person who looked the way he did that I had seen in Indonesia, and he appeared to have a scar that ran about 8 inches along his hairline. His strong connections with the people that I was now understanding to be “important” and his constant here one minute gone the next act made him a man of mystery . He was a nice guy and very casual too, but behind his disarming nature, he was constantly reading people. I tried to read him back, but failed to find out more than that he had come over to help create clubs in Jakarta. I would have been disappointed to find out that he was only a club promoter or consultant. Luckily for me, that information was never made clear either and the mystery remains.

We followed into a room that looked like a small lounge. It was a private room, but it had a full bar with a full wait staff. The room contained many large chairs, that when put together formed couches. They were arranged around a center table at which a few people were sitting. There was a large tv on the wall, playing music videos and I soon realized it was for karaoke.

In the room we were greeted by a woman, about 28, wearing a camel bowlers cap, a loose leopard print shirt that came tight at the waist and knee high black boots. The thing that was most remarkable about her was that she was not wearing pants. I immediately took her to be a prostitute, as she was wearing ruffled underwear, a similar pair to the ones I had bought at Victoria’s secret for sexy times. Don’t get me wrong, she looked good, but in my mind, there was no other explanation until the guy in the Nikes came over and introduced her as his wife.

Okay, do you see pants here?

I took a seat on the couch and looked around. The girl sitting next to me also looked like a hooker. She was wearing a dress that you could really only refer to as a glorified shirt. I could have seen the lower half of her ass had she had one, but being only 85 pounds, it sort of eliminated that body part entirely. I felt so huge next to her that in my mind the scenario played out of me hopping around the room like Godzilla shouting things like “Mmm, big girl eat little girl for snack!” The meat wouldn’t have tasted very good, however, as she appeared to be completely strung out. Having been wrong about the last woman, I battled my mind not to jump to the same conclusions, but the “dress” was leopard print and my mind leapt. Prostitute!!! Andy came over and introduced her as his girlfriend, Tatiana. Apparently she was just Russian, not strung out. I was confused. I didn’t know what was what.

The place turned out to be a full fledged karaoke hotel sort of thing. The private rooms were not for having sex, but were meant for singing karaoke with friends. Each room was about 10‘ x 25‘, except ours, which was much larger. None of the other rooms had full bars or full wait staffs and they didn’t have a karaoke guy to play the songs for you. In our room, Mul took the mic first. It turns out, he has an amazing voice and when he was singing, you thought it was the original. When he was done, he held out the mic to us and said we should sing. I was very hesitant, as the only two times I have done karaoke in public have not turned out so well. The first time, I was asked to leave the stage by the DJ for throwing out the f-bomb during a rendition of “Dust in the Mother F-ing Wind.” I thought it was a good version, but he did not. The second and last time was a couple years ago on Queen Anne. Nicole and I chose the Shaggy song, “It wasn’t me” to which the DJ asked if we were sure that we didn’t want to sing Paula Abdul. We were offended, but after clearing the dance floor by leaving whole verses without any of the quickly spoken words that we hadn’t realized were even in the song, I understood.

It has been my experience that karaoke is getting more and more serious. The bad singers pick short songs that everyone likes singing, like Madonna, while most of the hardcore karaoke’s use the venues as their own private rehearsals for struggling music careers. Mike wouldn’t have known these things, since he has refused to enter a single karaoke bar in the 8 years we‘ve been dating, finding them to be his version of hell.

When he downed his drink and went over to pick a song, I was SHOCKED. I was nervous too and simply said, make sure you know all the words.

He picked up the mic and began with a simple and semi-popular song “Be with you.” I will say that it was horrible in comparison, just as mine would have been. I laughed nervously, making eye contact with people around the room who were also laughing. Good, I thought, at least they think it’s funny. The girl with no pants snapped a few photos of him singing. Then their faces went straight again and they began talking to each other. I sang sometimes with him, my voice worse than his and we drudged through the song. Mul and Michelle were supportive, but as soon as it was over, I was so relieved.

Mike got up and got another drink and Michelle slid over next to me. The girl with no pants picked up the mic and started singing a popular Chinese song that all of her friends knew the words to. They sang along and Michelle leaned over and said, “She used to be Miss China, you know.”
“The one with no pants?” I asked.

Michelle was an excellent source of information; another bite sized girl whose boobs were falling out of her dress was the most famous model in Indonesia and the quiet guy in the corner was head of an international bank. It also turns out that the guy in the Nikes, Henry was the friend who’s family owned 500 million barrels of oil. No I’m not getting those numbers wrong, you can do the math as I did and realize that the men in the room were the kind of people who owned America.

As the new year approached, hats and horns and glasses of champagne were passed around and we all shouted the countdown at Henry’s lead. He came over and toasted us. And at midnight flashes were going off like crazy. I was trying to capture Miss China on film, which I never had much success at, while she was trying to capture us. “I hear they don’t even work for five months of the year.” “She’s having her birthday at a French chateau.” “What does he mean when he says he ‘washes windows‘?” The less we said, the more mysterious we were.

Seriously, why are YOU photographing ME?

A little after midnight, champagne in hand, I followed the group downstairs to the club. We walked in and up to a great spot a little above the dance floor with a great view of the scene. The music was loud and you could feel it in your body, but you would still talk. It was something I had never experienced before and when I told Mul how awesome it was, he said this was the best sound system in the area. I suppose there are better, but I can’t imagine what they sound like. Henry owned the club of course and only as I sat down to write about the evening did I put together that the luck of getting the best table in the club, having walked in well after it was filled to capacity was no luck at all. I should have figured out that we were in the VIP section when I asked where the bathroom was and was immediately escorted by one of the bouncers standing guard around the couches that we occupied.

Real escorts

Michelle and I hung out on the couch and talked about the real escorts dancing on the bar. Nothing happened to prove them to be anything but hookers and they frequently got off the bar to talk to well dressed men before getting back up. One by one, the crowd thinned as they started accompanying various guys to the dance floor and elsewhere. Mike sat and talked to another one of Mul’s friends and I danced by myself. None of the other girls in our area had much interest in dancing, but I couldn’t help it.

I am really the only one dancing to “The Final Countdown” SAD!!!

Eventually we went back upstairs, but this time to a smaller karaoke room with some of Mul’s other friends. All the guys were taking shots of Jim Bean from the bottle and grinding with each other. The girl who had passed out with the mic in hand got up to puke in the bathroom and I took this as my cue to take over. I can’t recall the first song that I sang. I didn’t pick any of them, but since no one else was paying attention I just went for it. I got a few pulls from the bottle and ended the night as all great nights end — singing a duet to “I finally found the love of a lifetime” with a complete stranger. See title photograph.