Gaysia (6 page)

Nonetheless, the next morning, Steve sauntered into the hotel breakfast area, a young Indonesian man on each arm, completely without shame. Only twenty-four hours earlier, he was heartbroken and bereft; now he was in a foreign country having fucked two perfectly lovely young men in one evening. He felt radiant. His fellow hotel guests were appalled. Children at the breakfast tables giggled quietly, silently appealing to their parents for answers while mums and dads shook their heads at each other, absolutely disgusted. As Steve took a seat with his straight friends, the owner of the hotel came to tell him that he was very sorry, but they'd unfortunately made a double booking for his room and he would now have to vacate the premises.

One of Steve's friends leaned over and said, ‘You dirty old bastard. Bringing
two
of them over? If you had only
one
of them, you might've gotten away with it.'

Steve wasn't concerned. He had heard about a gay-friendly hotel in Legian that had just opened up, so the threesome stayed there for a week, fucking each other senseless at every opportunity. Steve was generous with the boys, paying for their taxi rides and shouting them meals at the expensive Jimboran seafood restaurant where they both demanded to be taken every night. He was still getting used to the currency, but everything seemed cheap enough. Just before Steve left, he gave them each an extra 300 dollars before happily waving them goodbye, leaving them to revel in their modest new fortunes.

The way Steve told the story made it seem happy and idyllic, but I still had my reservations, and the image of this old man with two young boys on each arm burned in my mind.
Was this okay?
I wondered.

‘Everyone's got to make money somehow,' Steve said, as if reading my mind. ‘No one here judges the moneyboys.'

Plus, he added, they made for the most beautiful, loyal boyfriends. And despite anyone's preconceptions or judgements about sleaze or sordidness, once the locals hooked up with you, Steve said, they were fiercely loyal. Steve's boyfriend Imam had been a moneyboy when they met, he said. Steve had been walking along the shoreline at dusk when he heard someone call out, ‘Hello, hello.' In the half-light, Steve couldn't see anyone, but could discern Imam's smile: Cheshire-cat teeth glowing white. The young man was deeply tanned from walking up and down the beach all day in the full sun, looking for customers. Steve liked the look of him.

‘He stayed with me that night,' Steve said. ‘I woke up in the
morning and he was still there, and I thought, Wow, okay: he didn't steal my money.'

‘Your organs hadn't been removed,' I joked.

‘No!' Steve raised his eyebrows and chuckled. ‘Well,
almost
…'

I nearly spat out my drink. Steve roared with laughter.

Steve and Imam had been together ever since, in a devoted and happily non-monogamous relationship. It was a recurring story with
bulé
–Indonesian gay couples: many started out with a frisky money-fuelled session of jiggy-jiggy, but often these relationships developed into something far deeper and unexpectedly solid: romances, friendships, partnerships and even business arrangements between equals. Gary, who had started Spartacvs, was another example. The young Indonesian man he had met online years ago was now a business partner in Spartacvs. While they were no longer lovers, Gary's relationship with him had laid the basis for his future. Often the dynamics of male sex work in Bali were more complicated than basic exploitation. For some moneyboys, it was a quick and creative way out of poverty, if you played your cards right.

By the end of my time in Bali, I caved. I embraced who I was and became a shameless, bona fide tourist. For years, I had avoided travelling to Bali because of the clichés of what it meant to be a foreigner there: the drunk Australians with braided mullets; the Europeans buying shitty souvenirs and pirated Viagra; the sunstroked Brits sporting second-degree sunburn; the vomiting; the hooting.

But it was only when you embraced Bali that the island embraced you back. I had surfing lessons at Kuta that were
almost spiritual, experiencing the natural high of standing on a wave, and the agony of fibreglass chafing that nearly eroded the nipples from my chest. I rode my bike to organic restaurants in the middle of nowhere and experienced the specific yet nameless guilt that comes from cycling past Kerobokan Prison to get a luxuriously long twenty-dollar massage at a nearby spa. There were dinners on timber decks overlooking the ocean by night, and afternoon bike rides where I'd get stupidly lost before finding myself watching the sunset in the middle of endless rice paddies, built like the tiered green seating of some natural amphitheatre. If this island wasn't paradise, it was getting close.

From Spartacvs, I roamed from nudist gay villa to nudist gay villa. One was a giant old Dutch house that had been turned into a gay clothing-optional homestay. It was secluded and homely, and often played host to married businessmen who liked to fuck men on the side. These guests would check into five-star hotels so their wife and kids had a place to leave phone messages, but in reality they were staying here, having affairs with the foreign and local men who stayed at this place. With everyone under a single roof, it had the feel of a hostel crossed with a colonial-era homosexual harem.

It was sort of gross.

‘I think you'll have a lot of fun here,' the manager told me when I arrived. The communal living environment was designed to be conducive to sex, and it wasn't long before I opened my dorm room one night to find two portly Malaysian men making out and taking off each other's shirts enthusiastically.

‘Oh shit, sorry!' I said.

Neither of them paid attention to me and they kept making out, grabbing each other's bulky chests and licking each other's nipples. It was a long time before I went back to the room to
sleep that night. Because the one communal shower was almost constantly in use, I'd just take my showers in the open by the pool.

At another four-bedroom villa, I had the place to myself while it was being done up. Yandi, the houseboy who lived on-site – a tall, lean and muscled guy with teeth as white as bleached paper – walked around wearing nothing but brash designer underwear in colourful patterns. He was quite forward when introducing himself.

‘I'm Yandi!' he said. ‘I like Asians! Japanese, Chinese, Singapore.
Like you
.'

‘Okay!' We stared at each other. ‘And do you live here, Yandi?'

‘Yeah, I live here, live here all alone,' he said, lowering his eyes seductively. ‘But tonight, I sleep with you.'

‘Uh …'

‘You like?' he said.

‘Yandi, I have a boyfriend.'

He barked with laughter. ‘Ah, you have boyfriend!' he shrieked. ‘I'm naughty!'

Then he lowered his eyes again and looked me up and down. ‘But you can still
call me
,' he said, rhyming, ‘if you're
horny
.'

‘You are bad, Yandi,' I said.

Yandi laughed really loudly, then looked me up and down again.

At night, when Yandi had gone to bed and I had the house to myself, I'd strip off and float in the pool, making the most of the dark and washing off the day's sweat and weird conversations. As I floated in the warm water, staring past the silhouettes of palms and into the starry night, I felt like a really small kid floating in a giant bath.

I was a little conflicted. Bali's tourism had lifted the island out of poverty, but there were other costs. The island's entire tourism model was a Catch-22: the pace of tourism steadily eroded Bali's native culture, environment, language and religion, but economically Bali couldn't live without foreigners. Tourism was the island's lifeblood. After the bombs in 2002 and 2005, visitor numbers contracted by a third and employment figures sank. People got poor quickly and non-Balinese workers returned to their home islands and awful jobs. People still spoke about that period like a recent horror they had only barely scraped through.

Meanwhile, sex work had become such an ingrained part of Bali's gay scene that nearly all young gay men in Bali – and a lot of straight ones – had scored money from sex with
bulés
at some stage. They tried it for fun, out of boredom or because they wanted an instant hit of money. It had almost become a rite of passage.

Made was thirty-two, a skinny guy who seemed to be formed entirely out of sharp-angled, crane-like limbs. He was native Balinese. For young gay Indonesians from other islands, Bali represented an amnesty zone where they could be openly queer for the first time, away from the prying eyes of their family in Sumatra or Jakarta. It was different if you were Balinese like Made. Bali was a small island, and it didn't take long for word to spread from family to family. You had to be more discreet. While other gay boys openly cruised each other and
bulés
at Dhyana Pura, Balinese boys either went online or did old-school cruising along the riverbanks or in old derelict buildings:
uma hatu
, or ghost houses.

Despite this, Made told me he still went to the bars on Dhyana Pura Street occasionally. When he was in his twenties –
when he was more foolhardy and less aware of the consequences – he'd go there nearly every night looking for action. Usually he looked for other Indonesian men, but occasionally he went out sniffing for
bulés
or they'd come and approach him. Locals were fun, Made said, but the
bulés
were potentially lucrative. Made even once scored a
motorcycle
out of one old Australian.

‘A motorcycle!' I said. ‘How did that happen?'

‘It was difficult. I didn't speak English,' Made said, grinning, ‘so I had to use the language of my body instead.'

I nodded. ‘Right.'

Made said the Australian
bulé
had been more than twice his age – in his sixties or older. Made had been only in his mid twenties. The age difference was so big that it made him a little embarrassed to think about it now.

‘Was he good-looking, though?' I asked. ‘Some older guys can still be handsome.'

Made grimaced and clarified for me: this particular dude was super-old
and
super-ugly. Made didn't say it in a callous or deliberately mean way. He was describing the
bulé
objectively, the way you'd describe someone's hair colour or the shape of their ears. This guy just happened to be ancient and had a seriously unfortunate face. But the old, ugly
bulé
also had money, so Made went through with it.

The only catch, Made said, was doing exactly what the
bulé
told him. But Made was usually passive in sex anyway, so he just lay there while the
bulé
did his thing. To Made's surprise, he managed to put on a convincing performance, and even got a boner.

‘I don't think I need someone to be handsome,' Made said. ‘I think I need someone to comfort me. I mean, at first I didn't exactly love this guy, but then slowly, slowly, I learned to like him.'

After a few months though, Made decided the
bulé
wasn't really his thing. He was young, and this guy was so old he may as well have been his grandfather, or a wizard. And there wasn't really a spark to speak of, so Made casually called the arrangement off. Furious, the Australian
bulé
took back the motorcycle he'd given Made, which made Made upset. But he knew better than to argue back. Made's problem was that he wasn't open about being gay to his family, and he didn't want the
bulé
to expose him.

Made was the sixth of seven siblings and none of his brothers or sisters knew he was gay. Neither did his parents. He
suspected
his family had their
suspicions
, but no one ever asked questions and Made never said anything. In his Hindu family, questions about his sexuality were framed by talking about how Made wasn't yet married, which was embarrassing for everyone involved.

‘The difficult is with the community and the
banjar
,' he said.
Banjars
were the traditional councils upon which Balinese society was based, discrete micro authorities on the island. Even now, male heads of most Balinese families met every fortnight to discuss matters affecting the community, including marriage. ‘I'm getting old,' Made said, ‘so everyone in my family is asking me: “When are you going to get married?” In Bali culture, a man
has
to be married, but I'm not ready to be open to the family yet.'