Gaysia (4 page)

Just as I was about to walk down the road for a taxi, the Indonesian guy who had just visited the Dutch couple appeared next to me. He had mischievous eyes, big puffer-fish cheeks and wore his hair in a heavy-fringed boy-band cut. His cotton shirt was unbuttoned right down to his navel. Big wooden beads framed his torso suggestively, giving him the look of someone who'd been cast as a seaside monk in a gay porno.

‘You need a taxi?' I said. ‘I'm about to catch one if you want to share.'

‘No, I have one of these,' he said, mounting one of the scooters parked outside. ‘Where are you going?'

‘Dhyana Pura Street,' I said.

He gave me a look. ‘I
live
at Dhyana Pura,' he said.

‘Shut
up
.'

He backed his scooter onto the dirt road and cocked his head at me in a way that told me to get on. As I straddled the bike behind him, he grabbed my thigh and pulled me close into him.

‘Closer,' he said. ‘Like this.'

My groin was right up against his butt.

‘Comfortable?' he said.

‘Uh –'

Before I could answer, we were speeding off down the road.

The dirt road leading out of Spartacvs took us past a narrow creek that snaked its way between other newly built villas and luxury homes. It was perfumed with a hundred smells, none of them good. When I later walked past it in the daytime, I discovered that it looked exactly like it smelled: choked and strangled with hastily disposed-of chemicals and garbage. It was a place where things came to die. Every street around here was a construction site, with the foundations of homes emerging from mounds of stone, rubble and crap, and the detritus of the sites seeping right back into nature.

On the ride, I learned my new friend's name was Bumi. Bumi was twenty-two years old and worked at Club Cosmo, one of the more expensive and exclusive gay clubs. He usually served drinks but sometimes worked as the guy who stood at the front of the club, flirting with male tourists, kissing them on the cheek and dragging them in by the hand.

Like most guys who worked Seminyak's gay circuit, Bumi wasn't Balinese himself. He came from Jakarta and a rich Muslim family. He was one of ten children, each of whom had grown up with their own room in a giant house in the country's most expensive city.

As Bumi and I settled in at a pasta restaurant, he bemoaned conditions in Jakarta.

‘So boring!' he said. ‘Jakarta is much better for work, but so
expensive
for life. If you have skills, if you have good speak-English, it's easy for find job in Bali. And Bali is much better for gay life.'

Bumi didn't believe in true love, which suited him fine. In Bali, he explained, it was all about sex, and sex came with a price tag he was happy to charge.

‘If you come to Bali for sex, if you want to fuck us, you must
pay!' he said.

‘Does that mean the ultimate goal is to find a rich sugar daddy?' I asked.

Bumi looked angry and offended. ‘Not true!' he said. ‘I don't want to find!'

Horrified, I started to apologise.

Bumi laughed. ‘I don't want to
find
sugar daddy,' he explained. ‘I want him to come to
me
, because I'm younger. Hahahaha!'

Bumi was only interested in white Western guys: Italian or Swiss especially. Roughly half the sex Bumi had ever had in his life – and there had been a lot – had involved a monetary transaction. He didn't consider himself a moneyboy or a prostitute and definitely wasn't desperate for cash. Bumi already had a job that paid the bills. He just didn't see the point in giving away his assets for free. A couple of months ago, for instance, Bumi had had sex with a Japanese guy he wasn't particularly attracted to, so he had charged him 10,000 yen – about 120 US dollars – and all parties came away happy. On his Gay Romeo and Scruff internet profiles, Bumi had even set up a Western Union account, so that if a horny
bulé
wanted to see naked photos of him, they could easily transfer 100 euro to Bumi for quick access. In a way, I admired Bumi's entrepreneurial spirit.

‘And what do you get to see for 100 euro?' I asked.

‘Cock-cock, naked-naked,' he said.

Bumi hadn't actually gotten any money from the Western Union set-up yet – too many guys were showing off their naked bodies for free, he said with contempt – but he was still proud of coming up with the idea himself. And because of his online profiles, there was one American
bulé
who wanted to fly Bumi to Texas for the sole purpose of having Bumi fuck him really hard in the arse, which I said sounded like a lovely trip. Bumi
hadn't yet set a price for that particular arrangement, so the emails had stopped for now. I joked to Bumi that if he ever became a proper moneyboy, he wouldn't be a very efficient one. He fluttered his eyelashes at me and shrugged innocently.

Later, over drinks at Club Cosmo, Bumi got out his Samsung phone and showed me the photos he charged foreigners 100 euro to see. There was one spectacular shot of Bumi getting out of a pool naked, perfectly capturing the arse I had seen only hours ago at Spartacvs, thrusting at the Dutch men. I thanked Bumi for not charging me 100 euro to see the photo and he laughed so loudly that everyone around us could hear, then locked his phone. As I paid for our drinks, Bumi kept on tapping his phone, checking his Facebook and Scruff accounts and showing me all the men who were interested in him.

‘So is this the kind of thing you were doing at Spartacvs tonight?' I asked.

Bumi covered his mouth and let out a scandalised shriek, followed by a jackhammer laugh. How did I know about that?

‘Um,' I said.

Bumi explained that he had met the younger Dutch guy via Scruff, and when Bumi found out he was staying at Spartacvs, they had arranged to meet. But tonight, Bumi had been surprised – no, shocked;
shocked
was the word – to discover the Dutch guy had a boyfriend there with him already! And an
old
boyfriend, no less. Gross, yuck, ugh. Bumi didn't know they were looking for a threesome.

‘He wants to get fucked from me, but I cannot!' Bumi said, looking as though about to gag. ‘I'm not interested in his boyfriend; no, no, no!
Because he lie
. He tells me before he came to Bali he was coming alone. I love Dutch guys – and he is from Dutch – but I don't like threesomes! Oh my
god
.' Bumi shook
his head, almost morally affronted. ‘You want a threesome with me, you must pay me!'

‘And because he wouldn't pay –'

‘I don't want to sex!'

‘How much would someone have to pay?' I asked.

Bumi shrieked, scandalised.

‘Why is that so scandalous?' I said. ‘How much did you ask?'

Bumi bit his lip. ‘Um, 100 euro!' he said, breathlessly.

‘That seems reasonable,' I said. ‘And they still didn't want to pay?'

Bumi shook his head. ‘He wants to get fucked by me? He must pay me! I'm attracted to the younger guy, but I would not
touch
with the boyfriend. And I'm not interested! Because he
lie
.'

‘So,' I said delicately, ‘exactly how far
did
it go?'

Bumi sighed. ‘He wanted to see my cock … so I just showed him. I mean, as you already know: Balinese. There are many sluts in here.'

‘Oh, sluts!' I said enthusiastically.

‘Oh yeah, many.'

‘You mean the local guys?'

‘Local guys, but not just local guys. Western guys also.'

I sipped on my drink, thinking about it. ‘So what you're saying,' I said, ‘is that everyone here is a slut, then.'

Bumi put his hands together and nodded sagely.

Dhyana Pura Street was a human stew of sunburn, alcohol and breathtaking crimes against music. At night, diners were serenaded with weird cover hybrids, funk-reggae versions of Kings of Leon's ‘Sex on Fire' and Spanish guitar chillax versions of
Beyoncé's ‘Crazy in Love'. In this street, there seemed to be more Australians per square foot than in Australia itself, all of them red-faced, flushed and thrilled at their good fortune in having found themselves in a country where they could dine in the best restaurants wearing nothing more than Bintang singlets, rugby shorts and sand-crusted thongs. Snot-nosed kids ran around with newly braided hair as their mothers cooed to each other, comparing cheap pedicures and sipping on giant cocktails.

Across from Dhyana Pura's string of gay clubs was a kerbside where Bali's moneyboys gathered seven nights a week to steal your heart, take your breath away and, sometimes, pinch your wallet. Rows of them waited patiently, standing on one leg with a crooked knee planted on the wall behind them, the international pose for male hustling. No one ever said they were a moneyboy outright. Partly this was out of modesty, partly because prostitution was technically illegal in Indonesia. But many of them just didn't see themselves as hustlers. They weren't moneyboys; they were opportunity-seekers. Their attitude was the same as Bumi's:
We've got something you want and we're not giving it away for free.
In a sense, ensuring that you got paid every time you had sex – irrespective of whether you liked the guy or not – was a way of respecting your worth.

The diversity was astounding. Some looked barely out of high school and wore the kind of screen-printed, block-coloured t-shirt you find in the boys section of a suburban department store. Others weren't young at all: one guy was in his forties and slouched with a paunch that hung off him like a pregnancy. He nonchalantly smoked cigarettes as he waited for trade. Some looked poor and didn't speak English when I said hello, while others spoke English as a first language and preppily texted their friends on BlackBerries as they waited for men. One man
styled his hair in a greasy mullet and wore a shredded singlet with the words ‘PUNK'S NOT DEAD' scrawled on it; another looked vaguely homeless and was missing a couple of teeth. There was someone here for every taste and budget.

One thing unified them: they all looked crushingly bored. They were also evasive when I asked them what they were up to that night. One guy told me he actually sold mobile phones in Denpasar full-time – a well-paying job, he added – but hung outside the clubs on Friday and Saturday nights because he ‘just liked to'. Generally, none of them talked to each other. When they figured out that I wasn't in the market, they didn't talk to me either. Instead, they stared at me, baffled that I wanted to chat. Later, someone told me that because I was in my twenties and also Asian, they probably saw me as competition. Feeling a little rejected, I shuffled across the road to Dhyana Pura's bars for a drink, when a hand reached out and grabbed me.

‘Who are
you
?' a voice purred excitedly, clutching my forearm with one hand and stroking it with the other. ‘Where do you
come from
? You are
gorrrr-geous
.'

Eelga was twenty-three years old and was all mouth and coiffed hair. Along with his giant quiff, he proudly displayed teeth covered in expensive braces. His jeans were so tight that they looked painted on and he had a feather tattooed on the left side of his smooth-skinned neck. Eelga's friend Leo was an older ethnic Chinese guy with a pugdog face and a weird haircut that looked like Justin Bieber's fringe turned ninety degrees to the side. Leo strutted up to us with a supermodel's walk, sandwiching me between him and Eelga.

‘What is your name?' Leo demanded, in barking English.

‘Uh, I'm Benjamin,' I said, casually trying to release myself from Eelga's weirdly strong grip. ‘What are you guys up to
tonight?'

‘Oh, I want to hang at the gay bar,' Eelga said, ‘because I want to relax! Maybe meet someone there, becaussssse …'

‘Because?' I asked.

‘Because maybe someone
sexy
is on holiday! Maybe I'll meet someone there.'

‘You want to meet a tourist? A foreigner? A
bulé
?'

‘Exactly!' Eelga said, snapping his fingers. ‘I'm not interested in local people; I'm interested in
Western
people. I don't know why. I'm just not interested in Indonesian people! I like Westerners because they're
hot
. HOT. Especially white people.'