Kuta Beach

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Photo: Tracey Tomtene

Along the beach, surf­boards spring up like bunches of trop­i­cal flow­ers; they lean against wooden posts, their tails planted in the sand. Tanned mer­chants scam­per to and from the ocean, fill­ing plas­tic buck­ets with salty water, then they rinse the surf­boards clean and run their wrin­kled fin­gers down the smooth sur­faces. The faded colours are left to blos­som in the sun.

Men with dark sun­glasses and raspy black beards wheel their painted food carts onto the sand and unfold them near the crum­bling stone bar­rier that divides the beach from the street. They flick their cig­a­rettes with their lips and place beer, pop, pack­ages of rice crack­ers and greasy fried pota­toes on display.

Groups of women crouch in the shade of palm trees, talk­ing in low mur­murs and prepar­ing bas­kets of pineap­ples, man­goes, papayas and water­melons to carry on their heads. They wrap par­ing knives in the folds of their sarongs, ready at any time to peel and slice the soft, ripened fruit.

A woman with long, slanted eyes and sag­ging cheeks strug­gles with a pen and a piece of paper, try­ing to write some­thing down. I clear my throat and she steps back. It is early morn­ing and the tide is low. The sun sits on top of the waves, rolling lazily to shore.

The woman shoves the pen and paper to the side and makes a wel­com­ing ges­ture with her hand. “Yes,” she smiles. “Something for you?”

Love Songs

His nick­name is So Much — what peo­ple always say when they thank him. On the day I met him, he invited me to a “bot­tle cer­e­mony.” He later explained that he was host­ing a pot-smoking party at his apart­ment with a small group of friends.

Signs hang at every street cor­ner— cau­tion­ary mes­sages in bright, bold let­ters, trans­lated into sev­eral lan­guages, warn­ing tourists that any­one caught pur­chas­ing or con­sum­ing drugs will be heav­ily fined; they could even be sen­tenced to death.

“Don’t worry,” he said, pat­ting my shoul­der. “This is my country.”

He is twenty-four years old and he works as a mer­chant on Kuta Beach, six days a week from dawn to dusk, rent­ing surf­boards and teach­ing tourists how to surf. “The trick is,” he told me, “you find some­one, look­ing lost.” That’s how he found me, I guess.

He led me into the ocean, held my surf­board steady and gave it a push when a wave approached. “Paddle, pad­dle!” he called after me. “Now stand up! Up!”

The next morn­ing he emerged from the water, dark and glis­ten­ing in the sun, and sat down next to me. “What do you do at night?” he asked me, “Do you go danc­ing?” He shook his head, flung his wet hair from side to side, brought his fin­ger to his ear. “I don’t like house music,” he said. “I like love songs.” He told me he had a girl­friend from Holland, almost ten years older than he was; he dated her for nearly two years. “Yeah, she comes here, you know,” he shrugged, “stay here with me. It was nice.

“She was old,” he said, “But I like Western. Much bet­ter way of think­ing. Balinese girls,” he shiv­ered, “too jeal­ous.” He put his arms behind his head. “How long you here for?”

“Two weeks.”

“Long time.” He looked at me. “You come here, every day. Talking with me. Make friends.”

Surfer

A beau­ti­ful surfer boy came and sat by the edge of the sea. He rested his surf­board against his legs, and the waves rolled at his feet.

A group of tourists asked if they could have their pic­ture taken with him. I could tell they were tourists by their pasty skin, long pant legs rolled up to their knees, and sweaters tied around their necks. In other words, they looked like I did a few weeks ago.

The beau­ti­ful surfer boy stood up, knock­ing the sand from his shorts. He hov­ered over the tourists and flashed their cam­era a thumbs-up. Then he lay back down on the sand. He drew his surf­board under his head and used it as a pil­low. He lay par­al­lel to the sea and gazed up at the sun.

He did not move for a very long time. I know because I was watch­ing him from far­ther up the beach. I was sit­ting beside the French professor.

“He moved,” the pro­fes­sor said.

“I know,” I said.

“His arm,” the pro­fes­sor said.

“It means he’s alive.” I brought my hand to my eyes and shielded them from the sun. “It’s a good sign.”

The pro­fes­sor got up and cir­cled the beau­ti­ful surfer boy. From time to time, he knelt down and made like he was pick­ing some­thing up. He was pre­tend­ing to col­lect shells.

I laughed out loud. The beau­ti­ful surfer boy drummed his fin­gers against the sand.

“He looks young,” the pro­fes­sor said upon his return. He put a sil­ver piece of shell beside me.

“How do you say ‘young’?” I asked.

“Jeune.”

“Jeune?”

“Oui.”

“J’aime les jeunes garçons.”

“Your French is improv­ing,” the pro­fes­sor said. He stretched out on his blan­ket and closed his eyes.

The sun was sink­ing. Clouds were streaks of pink in the hazy sky.

I looked for him again, but the beau­ti­ful surfer boy was gone.

“Je pluie,” I said.

“Je pleure,” the pro­fes­sor cor­rected me.

“That’s what I said.”

“No,” he said, “you said, ‘I rain.’ That doesn’t make any sense.”

Number One Thing

“Write your name for me, please.” I passed him a pen.

“What?”

“Write your name.”

He flashed a toothy grin and ad­justed his base­ball cap. “Jaya,” he said, “My name is Jaya.”

“Spell it.”

“J-a-y-a.”

“What’s your last name?”

He fid­geted, made a small mark, dropped the pen. “No,” he said. “That is my only name.”

“What does it mean?”

“No, it doesn’t mean a thing.” He sat on a foam skim­board next to my towel and dug his toes in the sand. “Why don’t you have a boyfriend? Why are you always alone?”

“Boyfriends are trou­ble,” I smiled.

“Boyfriends are trou­ble,” he re­peated. He leaned over, put his hand in the air and gave me a high-five.

“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”

“I work all the time,” he said. “Balinese girls don’t like me; they don’t like dark skin.”

Jaya is from Sumatra. He said, “It is like a gar­den. Very big trees. Pot grows every­where. We use it in cook­ing. We put it in soup — you know soup?” He waved his hand in front of him. “Grows in big patches. Pot. It’s free, not like Bali.”

“Why did you move here?”

“Three years ago, I moved,” he answered. “Sumatra is full.”

“What is your favourite thing about Bali?”

He crin­kled his fore­head and drummed his hands on the skimboard.

“Your favourite thing,” I said again. “Number one thing about Bali.”

He took his hat off and hung it on his knee.

“Surfing?”

“No,” he said. “Girls.” He flashed me another toothy grin.

I leaned over, put my hand in the air and gave him a high-five.

Belgian Lover

The man in the room beside me, a doc­tor in Belgium, had a Balinese girl­friend. I’d see them walk­ing down the cob­bled streets, her del­i­cate wrist rest­ing on his hip. He’d turn pro­tec­tively toward her every time a scooter sped by.

“The Balinese don’t believe in pub­lic affec­tion,” he said, “and every­one around here, they know one another. They are actu­ally quite strict.”

“What are girls like in Belgium?” I asked.

“They’re great. Most of them have pleas­ing faces and light hair. I guess it depends on the region. I don’t care for light hair.” He glanced at his Balinese girl­friend. “But some­times girls from Belgium have red hair and red eyes.” He laughed. “Oops! I meant, green!”

He was from Belgium and spoke Dutch and French. She was from Bali and spoke Balinese and Indonesian. They both spoke a lit­tle English.

They talked with their hands a lot. His hands were pink and fleshy next to hers, tanned and ele­gant and flut­ter­ing through the air like birds. Who knew what they were talk­ing about? I think they were cre­at­ing their own language.

One night I sat out­side my room in the hot, moist air. The lamp above me was bare and dim. A small sphere of light encom­passed me. Beyond that, I could not see a thing. Pale moths flapped their tired wings. Some burned against the lamp and fell to the ground.

The doc­tor from Belgium stum­bled up the stairs. He put his hand against the wall and rested his head against his door.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He straight­ened his back. His face was red. He could have been sun­burned; he could have been drink­ing; he could have been cry­ing. He could have been any of these things. He could have been all three. I couldn’t tell. It was dark out and I was sit­ting under a dim light.

He said, “You know, Balinese fam­i­lies, they often sleep in the same bed. It is their cus­tom. They are used to it.” He sighed. “It gets so they are lonely. They are fright­ened, and they can­not sleep alone.”

So Much

So Much leaned in close and inspected the love marks on the side of my neck.

“Mosquitoes in your room last night,” he said. “Oh no! Mosquitoes in your room last night.”

He rolled around in the sand, moan­ing and laugh­ing, “Where was I? Where was I? I was work­ing! I could not pro­tect you from the mos­qui­toes in your room last night.

“What did I tell you?” He sat up and flicked his hair back. “What did I tell you? Mosquitoes in Bali are a prob­lem! Oh no, oh no!” He said, “I could not pro­tect you!”

We sat on the beach and watched the sun set. A bus­load of chil­dren ran down to the water. They played in the glit­ter­ing ocean and struck poses in the sun, cast­ing long shad­ows against the pink back­drop of the sky.

A Story

Tuesday

I was walk­ing up the beach with my surf­board tucked under my arm; the tail, drag­ging in the sand behind me, made a thin waver­ing line, a trail.

A man with a long, nar­row face, pale eyes and a friendly smile nod­ded at me. He said he had met me a cou­ple nights ago at the Ocean Beach Club, only “We were both very drunk.”

At the party at the Ocean Beach Club, there had been an open bar for an hour between ten and eleven o’clock. I had con­sumed sev­eral com­pli­men­tary cocktails.

I remem­ber the flimsy plas­tic cup filled to the rim with a blue alco­holic drink, swish­ing and spilling all over my hands; my fin­gers stuck together and left gooey fin­ger­prints on every­thing I touched. Where was I? I was on the dance floor. I was spin­ning, spin­ning, spin­ning. And every­thing was blurred in the neon lights. That’s all I could remember.

He was still smil­ing at me. “You are from Canada, right? I am from Switzerland.”

I asked him his name.

“Philip,” he smiled.

“Nice to meet you, Philip,” I said. “Sorry, I don’t remem­ber the first time.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “Would you like to go for din­ner — tomor­row night?”

“Sure,” I said.

He was smil­ing. And that’s how he walked away: smiling.

Wednesday

Philip ordered a tuna salad, only he didn’t real­ize it was a real salad, with let­tuce, cucum­bers, toma­toes and every­thing. He ate the tuna off the top and pushed the plate aside. “I ordered the wrong thing,” he said.

In Switzerland, he said, he had had a girl­friend, and he had smoked a pack of cig­a­rettes a day. But he’d bro­ken up with his girl­friend, and now he was try­ing to quit smoking.

He had dark pur­plish rings under his eyes. He told me that they var­ied day to day in size and colour.

“I don’t know what they mean,” he shrugged, “I just always have them.”

I teased him and said it was because he didn’t eat his veg­eta­bles. Later, when he kissed me, I tasted the licorice from his Nicorette gum.

Thursday

I devel­oped a large bruise on the out­side of my thigh, the size of a human fist, glow­ing deep pur­ple against the dark of my tan.

Philip told me I needed to be more care­ful with my surf­board. “You can get really hurt,” he warned me. “The waves push your surf­board back on you. And the waves can get really strong.”

I couldn’t remem­ber get­ting hit by my surf­board. But then, I never re­member things like that. I only real­ize after­wards, when the pain starts to emerge.

He swam out into the ocean, waded next to me and offered me tips on how to surf. By the end of the day, his skin was puck­ered with goose­bumps and his teeth were chattering.

“Oh, what do I know?” he said, run­ning his hand through his sandy hair. “There is always some­thing else to learn.”

Friday

“I love pizza. I could eat it every day,” Philip said.

On the way to the restau­rant, he asked me, what kind of crust would I like? There are many kinds: thin crust, deep-dish — some are filled with cheese.

We were rid­ing his scooter down a crowded street, right beside the beach. On either side of us, groups of shirt­less boys and shoe­less girls wan­dered in and out between parked vehi­cles. We shot through the nar­row spaces between idling cars that were stopped in traf­fic. Rushes of air roared into my ears. “Can’t we decide later?” I shouted against the wind.

Over din­ner he told me he had once con­ducted an exper­i­ment with pizza. “People always tell me to bite more,” he explained. “They say, it is much bet­ter for your stom­ach if you bite more, between thirty and forty times. The first few times I try this, every­thing was fine. But after a while it was dis­gust­ing. It was like eat­ing pizza through a straw.

“And it was cold,” he con­cluded. “Sometimes it is bet­ter just to do things your way. Who cares what other peo­ple tell you?”

Sunday

Philip saw a kite in the sky and pointed at it. At first I didn’t see it.

“Why do you always do that?” he said. “I point that way and you look in the other direction.”

At last I saw it, a dis­tant dot of colour flut­ter­ing in the sky. I squinted against the sun. I could hardly see any­thing. Black shad­owy splotches clouded my vision.

Philip said he would like to bring a kite home with him, but what’s the point? In Switzerland, he said, there is not enough wind.

“I guess because you are not by the sea,” I said. I tried to con­jure up the map of my high school geog­ra­phy text­book. I blinked again and again. The sun-splotches were still there, dark holes punc­tur­ing every­thing I looked at. “Is Switzerland by the sea?”

“Oh yes,” he answered. “We have this lit­tle thing called the Swiss Sea— con­nects Switzerland with America. You must come: you must sail across this sea. I will be wait­ing for you on the other side.”

“That would be the quick­est way,”

I said.

“Yes,” he agreed, “and the easiest.”

Tuesday

The other night, Philip shook me awake as I fell asleep on his shoulder.

He said, “How long have we known us?” He said, “Are we going to try and see us again? Or are we dead?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m not very good at talk­ing about this sort of thing.”

Wednesday

I sat in the back of the cab, star­ing out the win­dow. It was early morn­ing, still half-dark. The local peo­ple were open­ing their shops, rins­ing the side­walks with their gar­den hoses, light­ing sticks of incense, hon­our­ing their gods.

Something rip­pled through my body, up my spine and into my throat. I held my breath. I closed my eyes and pre­tended I was under­wa­ter. I knew if I did any­thing, some­thing might come out: a black bird, a prickly fruit, a lump of sand. My thighs left sticky out­lines on the vinyl seats.

The cab dri­ver didn’t say any­thing. He drove. He kept his eyes on the road. At the air­port, he over­charged me. He put my bags on the side of the road and held his hand out. I didn’t barter. I ­didn’t argue. This is some­thing they expect you to do, but I didn’t say any­thing. I just gave him the money. He folded his hand over the bills and climbed back into the cab.

I picked up my bags and walked away. I didn’t look back. Why? I knew the cab was gone. What could I do? I just kept on walking.