actually, have sex again for the rest of my life, ever. He says, "So you gave in, huh?"
"Yudhi," I replied, "let me tell you a story. Last summer, right before I left the States, I
went to visit my grandparents in upstate New York. My grandfather's wife--his second
wife--is this really nice lady named Gale, in her eighties now. She hauled out this old
photo album and showed me pictures from the 1930s, when she was eighteen years old
and went on a trip to Europe for a year with her two best friends and a guardian. She's
flipping through these pages, showing me these amazing old photographs of Italy, and
suddenly we get to this picture of this really cute young Italian guy, in Venice. I go,
'Gale--who's the hottie?' She goes, 'That's the son of the people who owned the hotel
where we stayed in Venice. He was my boyfriend.' I go, 'Your boyfriend ?' And my
grandfather's sweet wife looks at me all sly and her eyes get all sexy like Bette Davis, and
she goes, 'I was tired of looking at churches, Liz.' "
Yudhi gives me a high five. "Rock on, dude."
We set off for our fake American road trip across Bali, me and this cool young
Indonesian musical genius in exile, the back of our car filled with guitars and beer and
the Balinese equivalent of American road trip food--fried rice crackers and dreadfully
flavored indigenous candies. The details of our journey are a bit blurry to me now,
smudged over my distracting thoughts of Felipe and by the weird haziness that always
accompanies a road trip in any country of the world. What I do remember is that Yudhi
and I speak American the entire time--a language I hadn't spoken in so long. I'd been
speaking English a lot during this year, of course, but not American, and definitely not
the sort of hip-hop American Yudhi likes. So we just indulge it, turning ourselves into
MTV-watching adolescents as we drive along, razzing each other like teenagers in
Hoboken, calling each other dude and man and sometimes--with great tenderness-- homo.
A lot of our dialogue revolves around affectionate insults to each other's mothers.
"Dude, what'd you do with the map?"
"Why don't you ask your mother what I did with the map?"
"I would, man, but she's too fat."
And so forth.
We don't even penetrate the interior of Bali; we just drive along the coast, and it's beaches,
beaches, beaches for a whole week. Sometimes we take a little fishing boat out to an
island, see what's going on out there. There are so many kinds of beaches in Bali. We
hang out one day along the long southern California-style groovy white sand surf of Kuta,
then head up to the sinister black rocky beauty of the west coast, then we pass that
invisible Balinese dividing line over which regular tourists never seem to go, up to the
wild beaches of the north coast where only the surfers dare to tread (and only the crazyones, at that). We sit on the beach and watch the dangerous waves, watch the lean brown
and white Indonesian and Western surf-cats slice across the water like zippers ripping
open the backs of the ocean's blue party dress. We watch the surfers wipe out with
bone-breaking hubris against the coral and rocks, only to go back out again to surf
another wave, and we gasp and say, "Dude, that is totally MESSED UP."
Just as intended, we forget for long hours (purely for Yudhi's benefit) that we are in
Indonesia at all as we tool around in this rented car, eating junk food and singing
American songs, having pizza everywhere we can find it. When we are overcome by
evidence of the Bali-ness of our surroundings, we try to ignore it and pretend we're back
in America. I'll ask, "What's the best route to get past this volcano?" and Yudhi will say,
"I think we should take I-95," and I'll counter, "But that'll take us right through Boston in
the middle of rush-hour traffic . . ." It's just a game, but it sort of works.
Sometimes we discover calm stretches of blue ocean and we swim all day, permitting
each other to start drinking beer at 10:00 AM ("Dude--it's medicinal"). We make friends
with everyone we encounter. Yudhi is the kind of guy who--when he's walking down the
beach and he sees a man building a boat--will stop and say, "Wow! Are you building a
boat?" And his curiosity is so perfectly winning that the next thing you know we've been
invited to come live with the boat-builder's family for a year.
Weird things happen in the evenings. We stumble on mysterious temple rituals in the
middle of nowhere, let ourselves get hypnotized by the chorus of voices, drums and
gamelan. We find one small seaside town where all the locals have gathered in a
darkened street for a birthday ceremony; Yudhi and I are both pulled out of the crowd
(honored strangers) and invited to dance with the prettiest girl in the village. (She's
enveloped in gold and jewels and incense and Egyptian-looking makeup; she's probably
thirteen years old but moves her hips with the soft, sensual faith of a creature who knows
she could seduce any god she wanted.) The next day we find a strange family restaurant
in the same village where the Balinese proprietor announces that he's a great chef of Thai
food, which he decidedly is not, but we spend the whole day there anyhow, drinking icy
Cokes and eating greasy pad thai and playing Milton Bradley board games with the
owner's elegantly effeminate teenage son. (It occurs to us only later that this pretty
teenage boy could well have been the beautiful female dancer from the night before; the
Balinese are masters of ritual transvestism.)
Every day I call Felipe from whatever outback phone I can find, and he asks, "How many
more sleeps until you come back to me?" He tells me, "I'm enjoying falling in love with
you, darling. It feels so natural, like it's something I experience every second week, but
actually I haven't felt this way about anyone in nearly thirty years."
Not there yet, not yet to that place of a free fall into love, I make hesitant noises, little
reminders that I am leaving in a few months. Felipe is unconcerned. He says, "Maybe this
is just some stupid romantic South American idea, but I need you to understand--darling,
for you, I am even willing to suffer. Whatever pain happens to us in the future, I accept it
already, just for the pleasure of being with you now. Let's enjoy this time. It's
marvelous."
I tell him, "You know--it's funny, but I'd been seriously thinking before I met you that I
might be alone and celibate forever. I was thinking maybe I would live the life of a
spiritual contemplative."
He says, "Contemplate this, darling . . . ," and then proceeds to detail with carefulspecificity the first, second, third, fourth and fifth things he is planning to do with my
body when he gets me alone in his bed again. I wobble away from the phone call a little
woozy in the knees, amused and bamboozled by all this new passion.
The last day of our road trip, Yudhi and I lounge on a beach someplace for hours, and--as
often happens with us--we start talking about New York City again, how great it is, how
much we love it. Yudhi misses the city, he says, almost as much as he misses his wife--as
if New York is a person, a relative, whom he has lost since he got deported. As we're
talking, Yudhi brushes off a nice clean patch of white sand between our towels and draws
a map of Manhattan. He says, "Let's try to fill in everything we can remember about the
city." We use our fingertips to draw in all the avenues, the major cross-streets, the mess
that Broadway makes as it leans crookedly across the island, the rivers, the Village,
Central Park. We choose a thin, pretty seashell to stand for the Empire State Building,
and another shell is the Chrysler Building. Out of respect, we take two sticks and put the
Twin Towers back at the base of the island, back where they belong.
We use this sandy map to show each other our favorite spots in New York. This is where
Yudhi bought the sunglasses he's wearing right now; this is where I bought the sandals
I'm wearing. This is where I first had dinner with my ex-husband; this is where Yudhi
met his wife. This is the best Vietnamese food in the city, this is the best bagel, this is the
best noodle shop ("No way, homo-- this is the best noodle shop"). I sketch out my old
Hell's Kitchen neighborhood and Yudhi says, "I know a good diner up there."
"Tick-Tock, Cheyenne or Starlight?" I ask.
"Tick-Tock, dude."
"Ever try the egg creams at Tick-Tock?"
He moans, "Oh my God, I know . . ."
I feel his longing for New York so deeply that for a moment I mistake it for my own. His
homesickness infects me so completely that I forget for an instant that I am actually free
to go back to Manhattan someday, though he is not. He fiddles a bit with the two sticks of
the Twin Towers, anchors them more solidly in the sand, then looks out at the hushed,
blue ocean and says, "I know it's beautiful here . . . but do you think I'll ever see America
again?"
What can I tell him?
We slump into silence. Then he pops out of his mouth the yucky Indonesian hard candy
he's been sucking on for the last hour and says, "Dude, this candy tastes like ass. Where'd
you get it?"
"From your mother, dude," I say. "From your mother."
99999999
When we return to Ubud, I go straight back to Felipe's house and don't leave his bedroom
for approximately another month. This is only the faintest of exaggerations. I have neverbeen loved and adored like this before by anyone, never with such pleasure and
single-minded concentration. Never have I been so unpeeled, revealed, unfurled and
hurled through the event of lovemaking.
One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern
the sexual experience of two people, and that these laws cannot be budged any more than
gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body
is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or
talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind
the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with
heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a
patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all
comes down to one simple question: "Do you want your belly pressed against this
person's belly forever--or not?"
Felipe and I, as we discover to our delight, are a perfectly matched, genetically
engineered belly-to-belly success story. There are no parts of our bodies which are in any
way allergic to any parts of the other's body. Nothing is dangerous, nothing is difficult,
nothing is refused. Everything in our sensual universe is--simply and
thoroughly--complemented. And, also . . . complimented.
"Look at you," Felipe says, taking me to the mirror after we've made love again, showing
me my nude body and my hair that looks like I just came through a NASA space-training
centrifuge. He says, "Look how beautiful you are . . . every line of you is a curve . . . you
look like sand dunes . . ."
(Indeed, I do not think my body has looked or felt this relaxed in its life, not since I was
maybe six months old and my mother took snapshots of me all blissed-out on a towel on
the kitchen counter after a nice bath in the kitchen sink.)
And then he leads me back to the bed, saying, in Portuguese, "Vem, gostosa."
Come here, my delicious one.
Felipe is also the endearment master. In bed he slips into adoring me in Portuguese, so I
have graduated from being his "lovely little darling" to being his queridinha. (Literal
translation: "lovely little darling.") I've been too lazy here in Bali to try to learn
Indonesian or Balinese, but suddenly Portuguese is coming easily to me. Of course I'm
only learning the pillow talk, but that's a fine use of Portuguese. He says, "Darling, you're
going to get sick of it. You're going to get bored of how much I touch you, and how many
times a day I tell you how beautiful you are."
Try me, mister.
I'm losing days here, disappearing under his sheets, under his hands. I like the feeling of
not knowing what the date is. My nice organized schedule has been blown away by the
breeze. I finally do stop by to see my medicine man one afternoon after a long hiatus of
no visiting. Ketut sees the truth on my face before I say a word.
"You found boyfriend in Bali," he says.
"Yes, Ketut."
"Good. Be careful not get pregnant."
"I will."
"He good man?"
"You tell me, Ketut," I said. "You read his palm. You promised that he was a good man.
You said it about seven times.""I did? When?"
"Back in June. I brought him here. He was the Brazilian man, older than me. You told me
you liked him."
"Never did," he insisted, and there was nothing I could do to convince him otherwise.
Sometimes Ketut loses things from his recollection, as you would, too, if you were
somewhere between sixty-five and a hundred and twelve years old. Most of the time he's
keen and sharp, but other times I feel like I've disturbed him out of some other plane of
consciousness, out of some other universe. (A few weeks ago he said to me, completely
out of nowhere, "You good friend to me, Liss. Loyal friend. Loving friend." Then he
sighed, stared off into space and added mournfully, "Not like Sharon." Who the hell is
Sharon? What did she do to him? When I tried asking him about it, he would give me no
answer. Acted suddenly like he didn't know who I was even referring to. As if I were the
one who'd brought up that thieving hussy Sharon in the first place.)
