My Indonesian Girl

[El_Caudillo]

‘Lucy’ let’s call her after ‘Lucy in the Sky’, the rooftop bar where she hung out. It was a scene for rich kids: lamborghinis out front and super-trendy types inside. Not so great for me as I’d started drinking heavily again and drinks there were expensive. Not that I always had to buy my own: Lucy had generous friends who supplied me with Chivas Regal on occasion. We didn’t always go to ‘in the Sky’; some nights Lucy picked me up in her Mum’s BMW and we drove to see a trance a trap or trance DJ, at a bar where she had yet another group of friends. She had people skills I could only dream of. I was a foot taller, around ten years older and three times less trendy than her friends. Not my scene at all, but I told myself it was my last chance to enjoy that kind of thing. In the end you had better forgive yourself for your own insanity.

She looked best to me in black jeans and a sleeveless denim jacket. My pale arms could never look as good as hers, despite mine being much more worked on. In this outfit, with her eye makeup heavy, she had almost a biker chick look. Most of the time, however, she wore the dresses and high heels popular with the Jakarta set; femininity a bit full blast for me. I marvelled that behind the wheel she could smoke, text, select music on her iPad and ask for a sip of my beer all at the same time. Not that she hadn’t had a few accidents.

I stayed at Lucy’s just once. Her house was in a surprisingly green suburb of South Jakarta; a great big place. The family only used a fraction it, because the maid had quit never to be replaced. She had to sneak me in: her Muslim parents thought her a virgin at twenty-three. I’m sure they really knew otherwise, but one had to keep up pretenses. In her bedroom she still had the Disney wallpaper of her childhood. Donald, Mickey, Goofy: anthropomorphised animals looking after non-anthropomorphised farm animals. Donald herding sheep, Mickey riding a horse and goofy milking a cow. Cool wallpaper! I said.
Yea sometimes I get blazed and talk to them and they talk back. Blazed being the kind of slang she had picked up in three years of studying and bud smoking in New Zealand.

The next day after her parents had gone to work, she saw me off at the big iron gate. She had kindly called me a taxi as I didn’t have the Indonesian to do it myself. I got the feeling that the driver was disgusted picking this thirty-something year old foreigner, who’d slept with this twenty-something year old rich princess at the South Jakarta mansion of her (connected) parents. I didn’t blame him for finding it distasteful. .

Like a lot of people new to living in Indonesia, I was keen to check out Bali, so arranged for Lucy and I to go there for a holiday.The night before we were to fly out, Lucy went out drinking. I was pissed off when she appeared at my apartment late and absolutely hammered. Certainly it wasn’t right for someone so in love with socializing to be stuck with me. Reacting to my grumpiness she shouted: Go to Bali by yourself!...brinkmanship was great when someone else had bought the aeroplane tickets.

In Bali she had a burning desire to eat pork. It was available in Jakarta, but less widely, and in Hindu Bali she felt less judged for eating it. At a restaurant in Ubud she had pork steak. The place was full of European couples, maybe there was one other Indonesian customer. Lucy told me that she overheard the owner asking a waiter if he thought she was a prostitute. No, said the waiter, I think she’s rich. The owner was then all smiles…Babi Guling, a more traditional Balinese pork dish we ate at a roadside warung. If I wasn’t mistaken the waitress with thick white makeup looked surprised to see me there: a rarity in Bali - to be a curiosity for the locals.

On our holiday I could see that my lack of interest in things sometimes annoyed poor Lucy. I didn’t make much conversation with the locals, and the Balinese dances she mentioned I never bothered to see. I learnt about them later, in my usual way - through a book. Not that she was particularly in the moment either. A lot of the time she was on her iPad playing Candy Crush. My revenge was to make her walk up hills whenever the opportunity arose, it’s something (one of the few things) you can have over the young, being fitter than they are. I enjoyed looking back on her huffing and puffing with iPad tucked under one wing. Every place in Bali I took her to she said, Oh! might have been here before! but can't really remember. Her brain was scrambled for one so young. And then she had these observations about other tourists which were pure genius like: Russians, they aren't fashionable, but kind of hot. Agreed! I knew, probably from the first time she played Candy Crush when we were alone together, that she’d lost interest in me. Last I heard she was in love with a Belgian pilot. I went back to sitting in my apartment, playing blackjack…

[Falcon]

Thanks for your interesting story.
I've been to South Jakarta before to visit some offices down there. Some areas of South Jakarta are full of rich Indonesians.

How did you meet her in the first place?

[El_Caudillo]

She worked in sales at the chain school I taught at in JKT. She was at a different branch though, she managed to date quite a few of the foreign teachers. To her credit she did want to be independent of her rich parents and I believe she now works in a hotel in the Emirates.

[livefreeordie]

Interesting account

how would you compare philippines/other countries to meeting women in jakarta?

There are some beauties there for sure, and its so damn close to Australia

[El_Caudillo]

I would say it is easy to meet local girls in Jakarta and it is also a city I had a lot of Western woman express interest in me. I was last in Jakarta at age thirty-five, wow, if I compare it to Taipei now at thirty-eight solely on how easy it is to get interest from girls! Damn, my looks must sure have gone downhill in three years hahaha.

I can't compare with the Philippines but I know a lot of guys in their twenties, thirties and forties married to middle class Indonesians and even rich Chinese-Indonesians. Also if you wanted to be a bit more casual there, as in a single guy having fun, no problem really. I'm not sure how it compares with Thailand because I haven't been there since '03. Probably the only other place I've been where girls were so interested was Chile.

[MrMan]

I used to live in Ciputat just over the border from Pondok Indah, South Jakarta.

Sounds like this girl probably didn't offer the best hope as wife material. IMO, it's better to get a girl who had to work some growing up. If she grew up with maids chasing her around the house with a spoon, she may not be the best house keeper. And then there is the 'party' aspect.