Brazilian feast consisting of massive piles of pork and black beans. There will be
Brazilian cocktails, as well. Lots of interesting expatriates from all over the world who
live here in Bali. Would I care to come? They might all go out dancing later, too. She
doesn't know if I like parties, but . . .
Cocktails? Dancing? Piles of pork?Of course I'll come.
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I can't remember the last time I got dressed up, but this evening I dug out my one fancy
spaghetti-strap dress from the bottom of my backpack and slithered it on. I even wore
lipstick. I can't remember the last time I wore lipstick, but I know it wasn't anywhere near
India. I stopped at Armenia's house on the way over to the party, and she draped me in
some of her fancy jewelry, let me borrow her fancy perfume, let me store my bicycle in
her backyard so I could arrive at the party in her fancy car, like a proper adult woman.
The dinner with the expatriates was great fun, and I felt myself revisiting all these
long-dormant aspects of my personality. I even got a little bit drunk, which was notable
after all the purity of my last few months of praying at the Ashram and sipping tea in my
Balinese flower garden. And I was flirting! I hadn't flirted in ages. I'd only been hanging
around with monks and medicine men lately, but suddenly I was dusting off the old
sexuality again. Though I couldn't really tell who I was flirting with. I was kind of
spreading it around everywhere. Was I attracted to the witty Australian former journalist
sitting next to me? ("We're all drunks here," he quipped. "We write references for other
drunks.") Or was it the quiet intellectual German down the table? (He promised to lend
me novels from his personal library.) Or was it the handsome older Brazilian man who
had cooked this giant feast for all of us in the first place? (I liked his kind brown eyes and
his accent. And his cooking, of course. I said something very provocative to him, out of
nowhere. He was making a joke at his own expense, saying, "I'm a full catastrophe of a
Brazilian man--I can't dance, I can't play soccer and I can't play any musical instruments."
For some reason I replied, "Maybe so. But I have a feeling you could play a very good
Casanova." Time stopped solid for a long, long moment, then, as we looked at each other
frankly, like, That was an interesting idea to lay on this table. The boldness of my
statement hovered in the air around us like a fragrance. He didn't deny it. I looked away
first, feeling myself blush.)
His feijoada was amazing, anyway. Decadent, spicy and rich--everything you can't
normally get in Balinese food. I ate plate after plate of the pork and decided that it was
official: I can never be a vegetarian, not with food like this in the world. And then we
went out dancing at this local nightclub, if you can call it a nightclub. It was more like a
groovy beach shack, only without the beach. There was a live band of Balinese kids
playing good reggae music, and the place was mixed up with revelers of all ages and
nationalities, expats and tourists and locals and gorgeous Balinese boys and girls, all
dancing freely, unself-consciously. Armenia hadn't come along, claiming she had to work
the next day, but the handsome older Brazilian man was my host. He wasn't such a bad
dancer as he claimed. Probably he can play soccer, too. I liked having him nearby,
opening doors for me, complimenting me, calling me "darling." Then again, I noticed thathe called everyone "darling"--even the hairy male bartender. Still, the attention was
nice . . .
It had been so long since I'd been in a bar. Even in Italy I didn't go to bars, and I hadn't
been out much during the David years, either. I think the last time I'd gone dancing was
back when I was married . . . back when I was happily married, come to think of it. Dear
God, it had been ages. Out on the dance floor I ran into my friend Stefania, a lively young
Italian girl I'd met recently in a meditation class in Ubud, and we danced together, hair
flying everywhere, blond and dark, spinning merrily around. Sometime after midnight,
the band stopped playing and people mingled.
That's when I met the guy named Ian. Oh, I really liked this guy. Right away I really
liked him. He was very good-looking, in a kind of
Sting-meets-Ralph-Fiennes's-younger-brother sort of way. He was Welsh, so he had that
lovely voice. He was articulate, smart, asked questions, spoke to my friend Stefania in the
same baby Italian that I speak. It turned out that he was the drummer in this reggae band,
that he played bongos. So I made a joke that he was a "bonga-leer," like those guys in
Venice, but with percussion instead of boats, and somehow we hit it off, started laughing
and talking.
Felipe came over then--that was the Brazilian's name, Felipe. He invited us all to go out
to this funky local restaurant owned by European expatriates, a wildly permissive place
that never closes, he promised, where beer and bullshit are served at all hours. I found
myself looking to Ian ( did he want to go?) and when he said yes, I said yes, also. So we
all went to the restaurant and I sat with Ian and we talked and joked all night, and, oh, I
really liked this guy. He was the first man I'd met in a long while who I really liked in
that way, as they say. He was a few years older than me, had led a most interesting life
with all the good resume points (liked The Simpsons, traveled all over the world, lived in
an Ashram once, mentioned Tolstoy, seemed to be employed, etc.). He'd started his
career in the British Army in Northern Ireland as a bomb squad expert, then became an
international mine-field detonation guy. Built refugee camps in Bosnia, was now taking a
break in Bali to work on music . . . all very alluring stuff.
I could not believe I was still up at 3:30 AM, and not to meditate, either! I was up in the
middle of the night and wearing a dress and talking to an attractive man. How terribly
radical. At the end of the evening, Ian and I admitted to each other how nice it had been
to meet. He asked if I had a phone number and I told him I didn't, but that I did have
e-mail, and he said, "Yeah, but e-mail just feels so . . . ech . . ." So at the end of the night
we didn't exchange anything but a hug. He said, "We'll see each other again when
they"--pointing to the gods up in the sky--"say so."
Just before dawn, Felipe the handsome older Brazilian man offered me a ride home. As
we rode up the twisting back roads he said, "Darling, you've been talking to the biggest
bullshitter in Ubud all night long."
My heart sank.
"Is Ian really a bullshitter?" I asked. "Tell me the truth now and save me the trouble
later."
"Ian?" said Felipe. He laughed. "No, darling! Ian is a serious guy. He's a good man. I
meant myself. I'm the biggest bullshitter in Ubud."
We rode along in silence for a while.
"And I'm just teasing, anyway," he added.Then another long silence and he asked, "You like Ian, don't you?"
"I don't know," I said. My head wasn't clear. I'd been drinking too many Brazilian
cocktails. "He's attractive, intelligent. It's been a long time since I thought about liking
anybody."
"You're going to have a wonderful few months here in Bali. You wait and see."
"But I don't know how much more socializing I can do, Felipe. I only have the one dress.
People will start to notice that I'm wearing the same thing all the time."
"You're young and beautiful, darling. You only need the one dress."
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Am I young and beautiful?
I thought I was old and divorced.
I can barely sleep at all this night, so unaccustomed to these odd hours, the dance music
still thrumming in my head, my hair smelling of cigarettes, my stomach protesting the
alcohol. I doze a bit, then wake as the sun comes up, just as I am accustomed to. Only
this morning I am not rested and I am not at peace and I'm in no condition whatsoever for
meditation. Why am I so agitated? I had a nice night, didn't I? I got to meet some
interesting people, got to dress up and dance around, had flirted with some men . . .
MEN.
The agitation gets more jagged at the thought of that word, turning into a minor panic
assailment. I don't know how to do this anymore. I used to be the biggest and boldest and
most shameless of flirts when I was in my teens and twenties. I seem to remember that it
was once fun, meeting some guy, spooling him in toward me, spooning out the veiled
invitations and the provocations, casting all caution aside and letting the consequences
spill how they will.
But now I am feeling only panic and uncertainty. I start blowing the whole evening up
into something much huger than it was, imagining myself getting involved with this
Welsh guy who hadn't even given me an e-mail address. I can see all the way into our
future already, including the arguments over his smoking habit. I wonder if giving myself
to a man again will ruin my journey/writing/life, etc. On the other hand--some romance
would be nice. It's been a long, dry time. (I remember Richard from Texas advising me at
one point, vis-a-vis my love life, "You need a droughtbreaker, baby. Gotta go find yo'self
a rainmaker.") Then I imagine Ian zooming over on his motorbike with his handsome
bomb-squad torso to make love to me in my garden, and how nice that would be. This
not-entirely-unpleasant thought somehow screeches me, however, into a horrible skid
about how I just don't want to go through any heartache again. Then I start to miss David
more than I have in months, thinking, Maybe I should call him and see if he wants to try
getting together again . . . (Then I receive a very accurate channeling of my old friend
Richard, saying, Oh, that's genius, Groceries--didja get a lobotomy last night, in additionto gettin' a little tipsy?) It's never a far leap from ruminating about David to obsessing
about the circumstances of my divorce, and so soon I start brooding (just like old times)
about my ex-husband, my divorce . . .
I thought we were done with this topic, Groceries.
And then I start thinking about Felipe, for some reason--that handsome older Brazilian
man. He's nice. Felipe. He says I am young and beautiful and that I will have a wonderful
time here time in Bali. He's right, right? I should relax and have some fun, right? But this
morning it doesn't feel fun.
I don't know how to do this anymore.
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"What is this life? Do you understand? I don't."
This was Wayan talking.
I was back in her restaurant, eating her delicious and nutritious multivitamin lunch
special, hoping it would help ease my hangover and my anxiety. Armenia the Brazilian
woman was there, too, looking, as always, like she'd just stopped by the beauty parlor on
her way home from a weekend at a spa. Little Tutti was sitting on the floor, drawing
pictures of houses, as usual.
Wayan had just learned that the lease on her shop was going to come up for renewal at
the end of August--only three months from now--and that her rent would be raised. She
would probably have to move again because she couldn't afford to stay here. Except that
she only had about fifty dollars in the bank, and no idea where to go. Moving would take
Tutti out of school again. They needed a home--a real home. This is no way for a
Balinese person to live.
"Why does suffering never end?" Wayan asked. She wasn't crying, merely posing a
simple, unanswerable and weary question. "Why must everything be repeat and repeat,
never finish, never resting? You work so hard one day, but the next day, you must only
work again. You eat, but the next day, you are already hungry. You find love, then love
go away. You are born with nothing--no watch, no T-shirt. You work hard, then you die
with nothing--no watch, no T-shirt. You are young, then you are old. No matter how hard
you work, you cannot stop getting old."
"Not Armenia," I joked. "She doesn't get old, apparently."
Wayan said, "But this is because Armenia is Brazilian," catching on now to how the
world works. We all laughed, but it was a fair breed of gallows humor, because there's
nothing funny about Wayan's situation in the world right now. Here are the facts: Single
mom, precocious child, hand-to-mouth business, imminent poverty, virtual homelessness.
Where will she go? Can't live with the ex-husband's family, obviously. Wayan's own
family are rice farmers way out in the countryside and poor. If she goes and lives with
them, it's the end of her business as a healer in town because her patients won't be able toreach her and you can pretty much forget about Tutti ever getting enough education to go
someday to Animal Doctor College.
Other factors have emerged over time. Those two shy girls I noticed on the first day,
hiding in the back of the kitchen? It turns out that these are a pair of orphans Wayan has
adopted. They are both named Ketut (just to further confuse this book) and we call them
Big Ketut and Little Ketut. Wayan found the Ketuts starving and begging in the
marketplace a few months ago. They were abandoned there by a Dickensian character of
a woman--possibly a relative--who acts as a sort of begging child pimp, depositing
parentless children in various marketplaces across Bali to beg for money, then picking the
kids up every night in a van, collecting their proceeds and giving them a shack
somewhere in which to sleep. When Wayan first found Big and Little Ketut, they hadn't
eaten for days, had lice and parasites, the works. She thinks the younger one is maybe ten
and the older one might be thirteen, but they don't know their own ages or even their last
names. (Little Ketut knows only that she was born the same year as "the big pig" in her
village; this hasn't helped the rest of us establish a timeline.) Wayan has taken them in
