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<\/a>Friday, as the clock struck six and the week turned into weekend, work into play, sunlight into shadows, I arrived at the novelist\u2019s house in a taxi with a man who had introduced himself to me three weeks earlier as \u201ca famous poet.\u201d Also with us were Indonesia\u2019s foremost newspaper columnist and a daughter of one of the country\u2019s richest businessmen. We were there for a party celebrating the novelist\u2019s birthday. A man and a woman, possibly searching for the privacy to flirt far from the crowd inside, opened the gate for us. Across the front yard, the door opened into a library supported by columns of shelves stocked to the ceiling with books, journals, and browning newspapers languishing on the edges of the shelves like satisfied women in an orgy painting. Under a window overlooking the backyard was the novelist\u2019s desk\u2014a terraced field of open books held down by a laptop. How odd that she let strangers walk right into her study as if it were an exhibition, not an innermost sanctuary where she could feel safe enough to attempt secret magic. Soon I realized it had to be her intention.<\/p>\nThe back door transported us to a yard with a makeshift stage on the right. A band was playing dangdut<\/em> songs to a crowd of a dozen men and women, writhing and waving their punches to the melody. A beauty in a purple tanktop and an orange handkerchief skirt floated over to greet us.<\/p>\n \u201cHappy birthday, lovely!\u201d said the columnist. The rest of us echoed.<\/p>\n The poet introduced me as an editor in a publishing house.<\/p>\n \u201cHello. I\u2019ve enjoyed reading your work.\u201d My nerves took the better of me: \u201cHow young are you now?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, that information is classified.\u201d The novelist winked and glided away.<\/p>\n I wandered around the property. The wet soil of the backyard gave way to an open kitchen guarded by a hardwood table laden with profiteroles, croquettes, fried cassavas, and colorful bottles with ribbons and a happy-birthday card hanging around their necks.<\/p>\n The poet picked up a croquette, dipped it in a bowl of chili sauce, and stuffed it in his mouth. \u201cCome, I want to show you something.\u201d He led me through an open door to the right of the kitchen, which brought us into the bedroom. \u201cDon\u2019t worry, I want to show you some photos,\u201d he said. The sheets were crumpled, a nightdress was folded over the foot of the bed. Photographs of the novelist were hanging on the wall: naked, smeared with trickles of blood.<\/p>\n \u201cHer own menstrual blood,\u201d the poet told me. \u201cShe intends to take a nude photograph of herself every year to record the changing of her body\u2014the Female Body, you see, emphasized by the blood\u2014until eventually there will be no more blood.\u201d<\/p>\n It hit me like a solid right hook: Will beauty vanish along with the blood? Is blood necessary for beauty, for sex?<\/p>\n On our way out we passed a group of bright-eyed teenagers who rushed in to take selfies beside the novelist\u2019s bed.<\/p>\n I saw the columnist sitting by himself by the snacks table. In his dirty grey T-shirt he looked like a scraggy old bump. I separated myself from the poet and sat down beside the columnist. \u201cI\u2019ve been meaning to tell you all evening, it is an honor to meet you.\u201d<\/p>\n He waved me off. The gleam in his eyes told me he enjoyed the compliment, though. I started talking about his recent column that I had analyzed in preparation for this opportunity. When the poet invited me to this party, I had suspected that the columnist, a close friend of the novelist, was going to be there too. I was zeroing in on a specific point that he\u2019d made when he said, \u201cYou look awfully pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n It depresses me to silence.<\/p>\n Now left alone, I pouted before the snacks table like a bulimic nerd who had been abandoned by her prom date, wondering if my opinions had been so dull, if my approach had been so tactless, if the columnist simply didn\u2019t want to discuss his writing past work hours. After all, there was a party going on.<\/p>\n The bulimic nerd gave up and dipped her fingers into a plate of greasy croquettes, catching the fluttering end of her blue bell-shaped sleeves to keep it from getting oil. The band was playing louder and the vortex of dancing people was spinning faster. I watched the novelist shake her ass in the eye of the vortex before it spit out two sore-thumbs in the form of white men\u2014one in his early forties, skinny, serious, bespectacled, and the other in his fifties with a body like a teapot. Speaking French, they wound up at the end of the snacks table. The teapot made a superficially flattering comment on my fuckability.<\/p>\n \u201cI speak French,\u201d I said halfway at them.<\/p>\n The teapot moved closer.<\/p>\n I sighed with regret.<\/p>\n He told me they were geologists, or cartographers, or something like that, and they were going to explore Kalimantan the following week, but would be back in Jakarta the week after that.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere do you live?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cKuningan area.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m staying in Hotel P\u2014, that\u2019s very close to Kuningan. I can give you a ride home.\u201d<\/p>\n If I were trying to pick up a girl I wouldn\u2019t mention that I was staying in that crummy place. \u201cNo, thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLolita,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n He considered my response, finally got it, and walked away muttering curses.<\/p>\n \u201cI hate to see old Western men embarrassing themselves after young Indonesian girls,\u201d his colleague said.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, that was annoying,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cI myself have a wife and daughter back in France, whom I cherish very much. I don\u2019t want to disrespect them by sleeping around.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGood for you.\u201d I was going to ask him how he and his colleague got invited to the party when something stopped my breath.<\/p>\n An epiphany in the flesh: six feet something, cropped blond hair, late twenties, in powder blue shirt, loose jeans, and a rope necklace. He was walking towards the kitchen. At the threshold between grass and concrete he consulted his sidekick, a dark-haired and green-eyed boy about the same age, and then he seemed to address me.<\/p>\n \u201cYou look very bored.\u201d<\/p>\n Somehow I recovered my wits. \u201cThat man was bothering me.\u201d I pointed at my scapegoat.<\/p>\n Epiphany and Sidekick exchanged another glance.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you mind if we<\/em> talk to you?\u201d Epiphany said, producing a box of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course we can talk.\u201d Again I felt like that bulimic nerd, but this time the prom king was asking her to dance. I told them that I\u2019d heard the novelist didn\u2019t like people smoking in her kitchen, so I led them to the yard.<\/p>\n We stood in a triangle, Sidekick and I on the kitchen steps, while Epiphany had the good sense to keep his feet on the ground. He offered me a cigarette. I didn\u2019t like his brand, but my hand needed something to hold, so I took it.<\/p>\n They told me their names, I told them mine.<\/p>\n \u201cMay I call you Za?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople usually shorten my name to Liz.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLiz is so common. Za is special.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAlright, you can call me Za. It\u2019s not like your name is so special.\u201d Here I\u2019m going to call him Adam\u2014the first man\u2019s name for my first love.<\/p>\n \u201cI spell it with two d\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n As we stood there chatting, the younger Frenchman waltzed by and whispered, \u201cYou said you didn\u2019t like white men picking up Indonesian women\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut they\u2019re my age!\u201d I shouted, hoping Addam and Sidekick\u2014let\u2019s call him Robin\u2014understand French. I rolled my eyes in case they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Addam told me he had been living and working as a volunteer in Aceh for a year, escorting local human rights activists, conducting peace workshops for both the Free Aceh Movement members and the Indonesian military, and buying beer in milk cartons. He was on vacation in Jakarta and visiting his best friend Robin who had been living there on a Fulbright grant to research contemporary Indonesian literature. Addam told me where he came from, and I quoted Dylan Thomas\u2019s most famous lines.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t believe you know that. You\u2019re the first girl I talked to in Indonesia who knows about Wales. Everyone else thought it was New South Wales.\u201d<\/p>\n I stopped myself from curtsying, a little too late. \u201cI studied world literature in college,\u201d I explained, \u201cI just got back to Jakarta four months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDid you study in the US? You\u2019ve got an East Coast accent,\u201d said Robin. \u201cI\u2019m from California, doing my PhD at Berkeley.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI lived in Jakarta until I was fourteen, and then in a boarding school in Central Java, after that I went to college in Connecticut.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you do now?\u201d asked Addam.<\/p>\n \u201cA month ago I got a job in a publishing house as acquisitions editor. A feminist journal recently offered me an assignment to do interviews with Acehnese women about their love life and how they see their position in it,\u201d I said, \u201cbut they don\u2019t provide me with anything, no money for travel and accommodations, no connections on the ground to help find women who would speak to me, so\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n My phone beeped. A text message from the poet arrived, asking me if I would like to leave. I caught his brooding figure across the yard. \u201cJust go without me,\u201d I shouted.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t seem to hear me and sent me another text, this time telling me that the businessman\u2019s daughter had got herself very tipsy and needed him to escort her home.<\/p>\n Go ahead, go without me,<\/em> I wrote back.<\/p>\n \u201cSorry,\u201d I said to Addam, who was laughing with Robin. \u201cTell me more about life in Sharia-land.\u201d<\/p>\n Before Addam could answer, the poet came over and asked me if I really wouldn\u2019t like to go home, because he really needed to go. \u201cI\u2019m not going to wait for you. It\u2019s difficult to get a taxi in this neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m serious, please go without me. I\u2019ll be fine. I\u2019ll call for a taxi,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n His face turned sour before he turned around, but I was happy to show everyone in this party that we didn\u2019t have anything to do with each other. I\u2019d heard rumors that he liked to \u2018mentor\u2019 young female writers. I heard he\u2019d even deflowered one, left her, and turned the experience into a song. Her reputation was ruined, but everyone in the literary community seemed to think it was very funny.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, Sharia-land?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah. There are a lot of restrictions, but people are really nice,\u201d said Addam. \u201cSafety-wise, I think Jakarta\u2019s streets are much more dangerous. I don\u2019t like the food so much, but my organization rents a house for its volunteers and we employ a lady to cook for us, we get to tell her what we like to eat. There\u2019s only one bar in the entire province, it\u2019s in the UN building, but there is plenty, I mean plenty<\/em>, of weed.\u201d<\/p>\n We laughed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate that the rest of the country is ignorant of what is going on there,\u201d Addam continued. \u201cIt\u2019s also frustrating that people there seem to have no interest in anything other than religion.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI want to see it for myself. Do you think you can help me find women to interview?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe. It will be difficult, though. I don\u2019t think they will open up to a stranger.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I don\u2019t want to have to put a veil over my head anyway. Maybe you should take up the assignment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t know how to begin to discuss such an intimate, but important, issue. My field is law, so\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre you a lawyer?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have a Master\u2019s degree in human rights law, but I\u2019m not a lawyer, technically speaking. I can\u2019t appear in a courtroom, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you want to be a lawyer?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI like what I\u2019m doing now, but\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you could do anything in the world, what would it be?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d like to combine human rights education with football.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember much of what Robin said, even though I suppose he was standing beside us all along.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n As the vortex was thinning out to only a handful of dancers, Addam introduced me to his posse: a Gothic human-rights activist with a witch-pale complexion and nightmare-dark hair, her tattoo-covered graphic artist Indonesian boyfriend, a bearded German activist, and his honey-haired English-teacher girlfriend. The German guy, let\u2019s call him Markus, suggested we move to a club.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you know a good place to go?\u201d asked Robin.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m as new to this city as you and more clueless,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n They decided to go to their usual place.<\/p>\n We squeezed into two taxis and headed to the said club. The cars charged confidently into the maze of Jakarta post-midnight: turning this way and that until we were out of the crammed neighborhood and then speeding through the sleepy highways, now arching, now plunging. Above us ghostly demigoddesses stared down from their dark billboards. I felt I was being ferried to a mysterious shore\u2014the covert side of the city, which I had always suspected was there but had never seen. It was the reason I went home after graduation, this desire to see that covert side. As a teenager all I wanted was to leave, I felt I didn\u2019t belong in this city, in this country. In college, after I gained the perspective that Jakarta was more diverse than my family or schools had made me believe, I decided to see if I could make room for myself in Jakarta, in Indonesia.<\/p>\n The taxis dropped us off in the back of some mall, but I kept my faith and followed my new friends through the mall\u2019s back door until we found The Cave. The place was glittering with glass shelves studded with vodka bottles and cocktail glasses. In the center of the dance floor stood a high and bright O-shaped altar, on it women were dancing, their stilettos clacking amid martini glasses filled with liquid rainbow. The music was plastic buds of desire blooming and bursting all over the room. Behind the bar on the right a bartender flamb\u00e9ed a pyramid of drinks.<\/p>\n I was right, places like this existed in my city. When I saw scenes like this in movies, I\u2019d always felt that this was what my life would look like once I gained the courage to live.<\/p>\n As we elbowed our way to the bar, girls tickled Addam\u2019s chin with their cherry-glazed fingernails, stroke his shield-like chest, pushed a girlfriend towards him. He shook his head at each offer. He bought me a bottle of Bintang, the house\u2019s cheapest beer. Since he had mentioned earlier how little he was making on his volunteer\u2019s stipend, I offered to pay him back. He said it was OK. I didn\u2019t really like beer, but I was happy, so I drank it.<\/p>\n We danced near the altar. The music was cajoling us to drop all cares and Just Fly Away<\/em>. Every time Addam lifted his arm the Playboy bunny on the band of his briefs peeped out. Just Fly Away<\/em>. I was desperate to separate us from the posse, only one-on-one could I feel at ease. Just Fly Away<\/em>. I stepped up onto an ottoman to whisper in his ears. Just Fly Away<\/em>. He bought me another beer, but he never tried to hold my hand or kiss me. Just Fly Away<\/em>. Two by two the group thinned out. Just Fly Away<\/em>. A sofa at the back of the cave emptied, and we sat down\u2014Robin, Addam, and me. Just Fly Away<\/em>. Before leaving, Robin asked for my number, he said he would like to keep in touch with editors. Just Fly Away<\/em>. Addam and I were alone.<\/p>\n \u201cHow old are you?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cGuess.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTwenty-five?\u201d<\/p>\n I made a two and a four with my fingers. \u201cYou?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTwenty-eight. What\u2019s your religion?\u201d<\/p>\n I sensed he was interviewing me for a position\u2014or several\u2014but I wanted the position(s). \u201cI\u2019m an agnostic.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHell, I\u2019m an atheist.\u201d<\/p>\n We bumped our bottles and talked some more, but he stayed frustratingly an arm\u2019s length away from me. When I looked into his eyes, he smiled, launching sweet tributaries from the corners of his eyes, which I attributed to his smoking habit. I wondered if he thought Jakarta was not much different from Aceh where Sharia police would jump up from behind the sofas and arrest him the moment he tried to kiss me.<\/p>\n At 4 a.m. the club closed. In the taxi I told the driver to head to Kuningan.<\/p>\n \u201cWait,\u201d said Addam, \u201cwould you like to come home with me?\u201d<\/p>\n I gaped.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to if you don\u2019t want to. Of course, you know that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI do. OK, let\u2019s go to your place.\u201d Right away I wondered if I shouldn\u2019t have appeared at least a little hesitating.<\/p>\n \u201cYou really don\u2019t have to.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, but it can be dangerous going home alone this time of night,\u201d I said. I was going to add: \u2018After all, it\u2019s my first time being out this late in Jakarta,\u2019 but didn\u2019t. I didn\u2019t want him to think that it was my first-time going home with a man.<\/p>\n \u201cOK then. I\u2019m staying in Pasar Minggu.\u201d He redirected the driver.<\/p>\n Along the way the driver kept staring at us from the rearview mirror\u2014aching to confirm all his suspicions about bules <\/em>and their \u2018local\u2019 dates? If we were alone in the car, would Addam have done something to soften the punch? Put his arm around me, or kiss me, before inviting me to go home with him? He sat near the door to the left and I sat near the door to the right, as if we were bracing ourselves to jump out of the car the moment something went wrong. Then again, maybe he liked straightforward women, I told myself, those who were truthful to their desires. He sounded like someone who would grant radical equality of the sexes, and in my mind I made him up to be just that.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mom wanted me to become a Porsche-driving lawyer in London,\u201d Addam broke the silence, \u201cbut after I\u2019d graduated uni I went travelling for three years, teaching English in South Korea, New Guinea, and finally India. I volunteered at a hospital, and what I saw inspired me. I went back to the UK, got a master\u2019s degree, and gained a placement with an organization here. After I\u2019ve learned about Indonesia and the amount of work that could be done, I decided that I should stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n Was he trying to impress me? \u201cWhy Indonesia?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the placement I got. After this year is up I can move to another country, but then I\u2019d have to start from the beginning again\u2014learn the language, volunteer, climb the ladder from the bottom again. I\u2019d rather commit. I\u2019d do as meaningful work here as I would anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n We were passing the purple neon signs of Izzi Pizza, across the road from the soaring bow-shaped pedestal of the great Hanoman statue, and I thought I loved the way Addam lived his life, his commitment to my country, and I even started loving that silly, stubborn extra d in his name. There, under Hanoman\u2019s ass, I was falling for this man.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about you? Why did you choose to return?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know. I just want to see what it\u2019s like living in Jakarta on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you like it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI do now,\u201d I said. \u201cI had a full scholarship in college. I thought I should mention it so you wouldn\u2019t think I was a spoiled princess or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t thinking that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGood.\u201d<\/p>\n Addam finally told the driver to pull over by a small street blocked by a steel bar. He paid the fare and told me we had to walk a block. The moment I opened the car door I heard a mosque calling for dawn prayer.<\/p>\n \u201cOh no, I promised myself I wouldn\u2019t come home after dawn again.\u201d Addam swung his legs over the bar. I walked around it.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry this is awkward,\u201d he said, \u201cand to make things even more awkward, I don\u2019t have a key.\u201d He had to phone Markus, who came all red-eyed to the gate, acknowledging me with a sly nod. The three of us walked painfully upstairs.<\/p>\n Addam led me into a room with a large bed under a cone of mosquito net and an en suite bathroom. The owner of the room was away climbing mountains in Papua or somewhere, Addam told me. As he was very audibly brushing his teeth, I observed pictures of the puffy blond owner of the room, which were tacked to the walls forming a band around the room: him in clubs, him with both arms around four Indonesian-looking girls, him on mountaintops and trails.<\/p>\n Addam returned and asked if I wanted a T-shirt.<\/p>\n \u201cUm, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n He opened a drawer and tossed me a grey T-shirt with his organization\u2019s logo.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just gonna\u2026\u201d I retreated backwards to the bathroom, \u201c\u2026put this on.\u201d I closed the door, got out of my blouse and skirt, and slipped into the oversized T-shirt. After some hesitation I took off my bra as well.<\/p>\n Back in the bedroom I found him already lying in bed with only a white undershirt and his Playboy briefs. After finding the opening of the mosquito net, I lay down beside him. For a while we simply lay side-by-side regarding the lacy pattern of the eye of the cone, and then he turned towards me. \u201cListen, my second name is L\u2014, my last name is R\u2014. I was born and raised in the working-class B\u2014 district. I have one sibling, his name is G\u2014. He works as a ticket-ripper on trains, but he\u2019s getting his license as a train-driver. He\u2019s thirty-one and married with one daughter, L\u2014-A\u2014. He\u2019s actually expecting another child, a son, he\u2019ll arrive in a couple of months. I myself can\u2019t imagine being thirty-one and having two kids, but I suppose I can be the cool uncle who brings them gifts from all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n This move alarmed me. My mind combatted the thought that the reason he was telling me his life story\u2014when I was already lying next to him in bed in this darkened room, naked but for a thin layer of cotton and having consented to go home with him\u2014was that he actually liked me. Whatever grasp I felt I had on the situation slipped away. I had not set out to like somebody as much as I liked him. My confusion and alarm soon turned to fear. I felt with every cell on my skin my disadvantaged situation: I was the woman and he was the man, I was Asian and he was white, I was just another local girl and he was the dashing coveted foreigner, I was younger, less experienced, less beautiful, and I probably liked him much more than he liked me. I was afraid if I let myself believe that he also liked me, if I let down my guard and let slip that I really liked him by, for example, telling him my life story in return, I would be doubly vulnerable. I would be at real risk of getting hurt. I decided to regard his move as an attempt to relax me before bedding me.<\/p>\n The decision calmed me. Emboldened me.<\/p>\n He went on talking about the district where he grew up, and all the while I watched his lips open and close, and the moment they came to rest, I kissed him, I straddled him, we tossed away all pretense of modesty, and as soon as the condom came on I took him inside me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n