[Image credit: jakarta100bars.com]
I lived temporarily in Jakarta for about 6 months, over a decade ago now, and the time I spent there sits in my memory like a jumbled, foggy-lensed fantasy ride.
Part of me still doesn't believe some of the stuff that happened to me during that time, so if you find yourself somewhat in disbelief reading my story, don't worry, you're not alone. Read it as fiction, if you prefer.
OK, deep breath, here we go.
So, I was working in the office 5 days a week, on a pretty hectic project. But since that's uninteresting, this will be the only time I mention it -- just don't get the impression I wasn't getting any work done. The project was just fine while all this was going on!
My work-provided serviced apartment just happened to be about 10 minutes' walk from a small strip of bars called Blok M. If you haven't heard of Blok M, it's an area well known by locals and foreigners as a place where the latter might hook up with the former, quite often with an unspoken financial transaction attached.
The first time I went there, I was nervous and shy. I sat in a corner and ordered some food I didn't want and only looked up from my phone occasionally to observe what was going on around me. It seemed like there were hundreds of pretty girls and a handful of foreign men, with not a single guy unaccompanied. Except me, of course. Some were chatting animatedly with their lady du jour, others playing billiards, or breaking out dodgy moves on the dance floor.
The music was loud and the air was smoky, and the flashing lights threatened to put me in a trance, but I stayed that first night, and I kept coming back.
To me, Jakarta was simultaneously oppressive and freeing. I didn't know basic things like how to catch a bus or where to find a mall, but I was also unobserved and un-judged. I was a foreigner working in a faceless, unfamiliar city, so it was only natural I gravitated toward those dark, seedy, neon-lit bars, just a few streets away from my bland, sterile apartment.
So yeah, I was hitting those bars every weekend and even regularly stopped in for a few quiet drinks on the weeknights after work. I got somewhat known by the staff and regulars, and had a few regular girls on the go. And for a while, life was grand.
One of the most popular bars on the strip was called "Top Gun", and one night I was there in my usual seat, just surveying the scene and fending off all the freelancers trying to bump up against me "accidentally on purpose" to get my attention, when I locked eyes with one of the prettiest girls I'd seen in my time in Asia.
She wasn't just pretty, she had a real depth of beauty to her that really struck me. Her eyes flashed across the room like Christmas lights, and once I'd noticed, my gaze was continuously drawn back.
So, I held her eye contact for a second, then when she looked away, I went over to her table, sat down and said, "I win".
She said, "what?”
I said, "I win, you looked away first."
She laughed, and, with the ice broken, we fell into a great, natural conversation over a few drinks. She told me her name was Hannah.
I ended up taking her back to the apartment and we barely slept in between multiple sex sessions. Hannah was as perfect and addictive out of clothes as she had been in them -- every inch of her was perfect -- and when we were resting in between sessions, we talked about all sorts of things, from the bars, to being Muslim, all the way through to the meaning of life.
She said she didn't hang out in the bars usually, and was just there to see her dodgy friend, who was looking for a Bule (Bahasa for "Bull"; that's what the girls called foreign marks), because her rent was due. Hannah had a decent job working in a Korean restaurant and never went home with anyone.
Except me, of course.
When she eventually left in the early afternoon, she didn't ask for money, but I slipped IDR 500,000 (about $35 in the US) into her purse and told her to go shopping and buy herself something nice for when I'd see her again. She gave a little secret smile that I became very familiar with over the ensuing months.
So I saw Hannah a few times over the next few weeks, but my time in Indonesia was coming to a close. I think we only had 3 weeks to see each other before I had to give up my apartment and head back to Singapore to work on another project. Part of me wanted to see her every day because I knew we had limited time. But the more sensible side of me knew that the more contact I had with her, the more it would hurt when I eventually had to leave.
So I was cautious, and when the time came to go, I didn't make a big thing of it. I just quietly headed to the airport and disappeared.
But not without first getting Hannah's number and adding her on my Facebook.
I thought about Hannah a lot while on my contract in Singapore. I had to suffer through six months of mind-numbing boredom before finally finding an excuse to get back to Jakarta for work.
As soon as I got the news, I immediately got in contact with Hannah to make sure she was teed up to see me. She agreed.
I have to be honest, in my head, I had taken things a lot further than they had gone in reality. I was thinking of her like a girlfriend and knew I wouldn't be hooking up with any other girls. Hannah was my only focus.
So I got over there, met her at a mall and bought her lunch. It was all good and she came back to the hotel room with me. We sat down on the couch and I tried to start something up, but she stopped me and moved my hand away. She said, "I have to tell you something". I knew she wasn't going to tell me anything good.
She told me she had a boyfriend, it was serious and we couldn't do anything physical, but she hoped we could be friends. I was visibly disappointed and a little shaken, but I held it together and agreed as if it were no big deal. I'm pretty sure she would have seen it on my face, though. I'm not good at hiding my emotions.
OK, rookie mistake. I realized that, during my boredom in Singapore, I'd built Hannah up in my head to be girlfriend material. Man, it hit me hard. Surprisingly so. But it was no big deal, I just should have known better. A girl like that doesn't stay single waiting for some fat white Bule to maybe come back and sweep her off her feet!
I wasn't in the same apartment this time, but I wasn't far from Blok M, so I jumped in a Bluebird Taxi and headed over to the bars to drown my sorrows. And I managed to convince myself I was getting over it.
Another week passed and I made an attempt to hook up with Hannah again. I had genuinely deluded myself that it was all sorted out in my head, and I intended to nobly respect her request to be "just friends".
But if I'm to be honest, I was fully prepared to say anything I needed to say, even to myself, to recapture that feeling she'd given me six months earlier.
When she replied to my text, she said, "I'm sorry, I can't I'm really sick." I thought, "right, sure you are, sick of me" but replied, "ok no worries, maybe another time."
Surprisingly, she replied "if you want you come to my house?"
I smiled, perhaps a little evilly, as I replied to her text in the affirmative.
Fortune favours the bold, right?
This post is the first of an (at least) 8 part series. The next part will be posted soon.
I believe story is the key to human knowledge -- the native unit of storage that is understood by our brains.
So I share this personal story, despite the fact that it makes me vulnerable, because I believe someone out there might learn something from it in a way I can't even predict or understand.
If you get something from it, please leave me a comment and a like. Or, even better, share your own story and give me a link to read it.