Oz

There are many things I love about my roommate, but what I admire most is her menschness. She is far more feminine than me-she enjoys pedicures, wears mini skirts and make up- but she also opens beer bottles on counter tops without ever breaking the glass. When she burps it registers on the Richter scale. She will clean clumps wet hair out of the shower drain without flinching, while I gag at the mere thought. And, when she gets doused with burning hot tikki lamp oil, she doesn't scream. In fact, when I turn around, she is merely holding her bare arm out in front of her and quietly stating, "It burns."

I put my complimentary cocktail-filled coconut back on the table and stand helplessly beside her while the hotel staff round up wet towels and ice cubes. They offer to serve us dinner in our room but that seems to be as far as they'll go by way of compensation. Stacy though, is a mensch and wants to eat the compulsory New Year's Eve dinner with the rest of the hotel guests, so, Adik and I bring her a plate with everything from the buffet which consists of steak, lobster, chicken, potatoes, salads, rice and fruit.

We have to pay for wine and Adik begins her protest, "Please, don't drink tonight." Having already explained that bule New Year's Eve involves alcohol I ignore her. The food is delicious and, while the entertainment is mediocre and somewhat off key, the fireworks shot up every second on every street corner are fantastic.

After dinner the "sexy dancers" show up. They pivot and bump and grind their way to the table next to us where they proceed to give a ten year old boy a lap dance. We take that as our cue to leave before I have to poke out my eyes.

At the front desk we try and procure some gauze and tape. If we're going out, Stacy needs to ditch the towels, but the staff don't seem to know what we mean by medical gauze. They tell us we will have to go to the pharmacy but, just as we're about to leave, a first aid kit is produced so we go up to the room where Adik wraps Stacy's arm like a mummy. Not the most auspicious way to celebrate a New Year but, as Stacy optimistically points out, "At least it happened at the end of the old year and not first thing in the new."

We stumble out into the street to join the throngs of celebrant tourists blowing noise makers and carefully avoiding the firecrackers being lit in every door and alleyway. "Please," Adik begs again, "don't drink tonight. Please."

"Adik," I say evenly, "It's New Year's Eve. With the exception of one year when I was ridiculously sick, I have never not drank on New Year's Eve. Why are you trying to ruin the tradition?"

"Because I will be alone," she wails.

"Um, Adik. I think it will be pretty hard to be alone tonight."

And it is. We find a bar with a decent cover band and pull up a seat to watch the audacity of the dance floor.

"I love New Year's Eve," I say. "It's a carnival."

And it is. We watch people in masks bumping and gyrating under the heaving lights. People wearing blinking devil's horns raising toasts and slamming down empty glasses. Half naked people making out in darkened corners and seniors slipping on the rain soaked dance floor.

An hour before midnight the band takes a break and a bar tender comes out to put on a show a la Tom Cruise circa "Cocktail." The bottles fly and seem to suspend in the air as he juggles glasses and pours a line of drinks. By the time he starts lighting things on fire for the finale the enthusiastic crowd is drowning out the thumping bass that's shaking the floor.

After we toast in the New Year Stacy wants to go next door to visit her bartender friend but when we get there the place is dark and deserted save for a few drag queens and midgets grinding on the stage. I head back to where the drinks are flowing and the people are lively.

I make friends with some middle aged Australians who make up a drinking game involving me naming an Australian band for every Canadian band they name. I am not very good at this game. By the time Adik and Stacy return to tell me they're going to the beach to light fireworks, I am drunk.

"I think," I slur, "I'm going to stay here."

But, shortly after they leave, the Australians decide we should all go to Kuta beach.

Kuta, on New Year's Eve, is probably the closest I will ever get to Mardi Gras. The crowd are not people but a pulsating wall of human flesh. I am possibly the only person there wearing clothes. Inside the club, the stage is crowded with naked strangers undulating under strobe lights, grasping and holding on to each other knowing if they let go they will drown in the sea of bodies below them.

I am quickly separated from my drinking buddies, and with sweaty bodies pressing against me from all sides I feel acutely alone. Two more Australians swoop in to fill the void and I decide, at this point, I haven't much choice. I smile, lift my drink and shout out a toast before giving myself over to the vibrating night.

Long Goodbyes

"But rainbows are for skies
And hesitation is for sad regretful eyes"
  -Lowest of the Low

In the morning I realize I don't have enough money left to pay the hotel bill so I set out to walk to the only ATM on the other side of town. As I cross the street I spot Nathan and assume he's heading to his dive but when I get closer I can see something's wrong.

"After we left the Corner I went back to my boat but the engine wouldn't start so I had no way of getting back to the yacht."

Some locals had stopped to help him and offered him a place to sleep but still he looks worn out. Watching his face as he speaks I have to consciously resist the urge to reach up and try to smooth out the wrinkles around his eyes and tell him to reconsider his dive today as I'm having visions of him making a fatal error in his fatigued state; I would sound like someone's mother and besides he, like me, wouldn't listen anyway. Instead I say simply, "Take care," and give him one last hug before I turn to go, already late for our flight.

"Hey," he calls after me, "don't behave yourself."

The two smarmy men are sitting outside our hotel room again.

"Are you leaving today?" Asks the muscled one, with slicked down hair and mirror shades. His friend, with bad skin and oversized head, is Japanese and doesn't speak English.

I nod.

"Where are you going?"

"Bali."

"Oh yeah? Us too. Where are you staying in Bali?"

"I'm not sure," I answer vaguely, "I think Legian. We're meeting our friend there. She booked the hotel."

He nods but I can tell he knows I'm prevaricating.

"Well, why don't we meet tonight? We'll take you out, celebrate the New Year."

"Thanks but we're going to another friend's party."

He nods, waiting for an invite but I don't offer him one.

Adik comes outside then and he turns his attention to her. She falls into a too easy conversation with them and I am amazed again at how poor her judgement is. Is she really that naive? That innocent? I know she's not. She's wily. She lies, she cheats, she steals. Even to, and from, me. I stay close but I realize all too late that she's telling him everything he wants to know about her, about us, about where we are staying, including the address of our hotel.

"Hey," she says to me in English, "they're on our plane. Do you want to share a taxi? It's free!"

Dear, sweet Adik. Nothing, in a man's world, is free.

But I nod.

In the cab, Smarmy asks if I have a boyfriend. When I say "Yes" Adik looks at me wide-eyed at the unhesitating lie, but I don't flinch.

"Is he Javanese?"

"Australian," I say, staring out the window. Australia is so convenient.

Our flight is scheduled to leave at 8:00 am but by 10 there's still no sign of it.

The precocious boy from Rinca is there though. "The head's the heaviest part of the human body, you know, that's why I'm vigorously exercising my neck." he says strapping a loaded duffle bag to the top of his head. "I'm reading a book about Artemis and Apollo. She liked to hunt. Do you like to hunt?" By the time he announces "Wow, that bathroom stinks like butt waste" I am convinced I am in a Kids in the Hall  sketch with Gavin.

I go outside and stare forlornly at the mountains beyond the landing strip. We're on the homestretch and I am not sure I have the fortitude to return to Batam.

Adik materializes beside me, wide eyed and frightened.

"Do you know, that man asked me to go with him tonight."

I shrug. "And?"

"And I said no but he wants me to sleep with him tonight."

I sigh. "Well, that's going to happen to you. You're a beautiful girl. Men are going to try and get you to sleep with them."

"He said no sex. He said he is a good man, a police man. I said my brother is also a police man but he is not good."

I don't know what to tell her. She's already given him all the information he needs to find her, and me for that matter.

"When we get to the hotel I will talk to the front desk and tell them if anyone comes looking for us they should say we never checked in. This is why, Adik, you should never tell anyone where you are staying when you travel."

When the flight finally arrives at noon, Adik and I choose separate seats. She spent most of her time in Labuan Bajo at the internet cafe, or locked up in our hotel room. We no longer give high fives and utter the blessing "bismillah" before starting a new leg of our journey like we did when we set out. We barely even look at each other.

The Snake Hunter

Back in town I head to the Corner to see if Nathan has any sound advice on dealing with my waterlogged camera but he isn't there. Adik takes me to a Javanese restaurant she's been eating at while we've been in Labuan Bajo.

"It's so cheap!" she says, very pleased.

I spend my meal picking chicken innards and cartilage out of my soto and bite my tongue to keep from saying, cheap or not, bad food is never a good deal.

I go back to the Corner, with my notebook this time, to drink and write, but as much as I need them to, the words won't come and when Nathan shows up late from a dive I am grateful for the company.

He tells me stories, we talk about genetics and psychology. He tells me he doesn't date, that when he asks girls out it's to go snake hunting. I remember him saying he was going snake hunting when we got back from Rinca and I wonder if he was going out with Hat Girl, but I don't ask. I tell him instead, from the studies done on the psychology of love, this is a very good strategy.

"Girls are easily seduced when they're scared out of their minds."

He shrugs. "I just figure, that's where I'm in my element."

At the end of the evening one of his diving friends comes over to introduce himself.

"There's a party tomorrow night if you and your 'friend?' want to come," he says extending his hand.

I shake it, tell him my name and Nathan answers, "She, is going to Bali for New Years."

The lights go off and we are the last one's to leave.

"Well," he says as we walk down the stairs, "I guess that's it. It's over."

I guess so. I tell him I'll miss him, he tells me to take care, gives me a hug, then a kiss on the cheek and finally a punch on the arm and I walk back to the hotel alone.

There are two skeevy men sitting outside the room next to ours and as I walk past one of them says, "You are a very beautiful woman."

I slide the key into the lock and say, "I don't know about that. I make babies cry," before closing the door behind me.

Please Forgive Me, I Know Not What I Do

When we finally drag ourselves out of the mountain jungle our guide insists we go back to his house for coconut milk. My ojek driver also insists on driving me there even though it's 60 meters away. That's 60 meters of cavernous ruts and potholes and, even though he's mostly walking the bike, Flintstone style, I'm nearly thrown off the bike.

"Hati, hati," I admonish, laughing.

He responds by gesturing wildly and yelling something that I think would loosely translate as, "What do you expect me to do, princess? Have you seen this road? Sorry it's not paved in gold for you, you uppity bule" and, when we stop and dismount, he stalks off angrily towards the house.

Within minutes of taking our seats inside the dark, musty, hut the whole village has gathered outside the house, taking turns poking their heads inside to gawk. Three girls sit on the dirt floor across the room from me whispering to each other and giggling, their wide brown eyes carefully analyzing my every move. Our guide's father, whose bright, laughing eyes and toothless grin contrast the hard life mapped out in the lines that crease his face, interviews me.

After I have answered the requisite questions about my religion and the whereabouts of my husband, I am largely ignored, a curiosity to watch while they drink their afternoon coffee and discuss the rice crops. My ojek driver pulls out his hand phone and puts it on speaker. We listen to an entire Best of Brian Adams album while we sip tea and coffee.

Outside, the men produce machetes, skillfully split the coconuts and carve spoons from the trimmed shells so we can scoop out the coconut meat. The coconuts are so heavy that, when mine is set on the coffee table, I have to use both my hands to lift it up. Adik can't lift hers even with both hands so glasses are produced and the milk is poured out for us.

My glass is still half full when the baby wakes up. He doesn't notice me at first and toddles happily back and forth between his grandparents on either side of the room. He points to the coconuts and says, "Enuk", clapping one hand excitedly as though trying to grab it. He sees the puppy outside and heads towards the door to chase it, but I am sitting by the door and when he finally notices me he stops so suddenly, he wobbles from the sudden inertia and falls to the floor. He stares for a moment, his eyes growing wide so I flash him a big grin and say a sing-song, "Hello," but before I get out the last syllable he screams and bursts into tears.

He will not be comforted. He shrieks and wails for the remainder of our visit. On the one hand I am grateful to him for drowning out the sound of Brian Adams singing "Please forgive me, I can't stop loving you," on the other hand I am more than a bit distressed to discover that the mere sight of me can make babies cry.

After about twenty minutes of this, our guide apologizes, "He's not used to bule skin," and suggests we leave.

I stand beside the motorbike, waiting for my driver to mount it but instead he says, "Kamu" and gestures, haughtily, that I should get on and I should drive.

"Me?" I laugh, "No, no you drive."

But he takes out his keys and thrusts them at me. He's still angry about my back seat driving. If I think I can do better I should prove it.

Still laughing I get on the back of the seat saying, "Fine, fine, I'll keep my mouth shut, just drive already."

Driving back on the highway, it occurs to me that tomorrow is New Year's Eve. I think about where I was this time last year, how impossible everything seemed then. I think about the year I've had, how the world opened up with opportunities and how many great adventures I've had, people I've met and the people I've helped and who have helped me, along the way. I think about the year to come, I start to make wishes, I start to make plans but I realize I have no idea where on this earth I will be this time next year, and I like it that way.

I tap my driver on the shoulder, lean in and ask him to drive faster. He's still sulking but he lets out the throttle and the scenery blurs to a blue and green smudge leaving only the open road ahead.

Soft Landings

My driver swerves to avoid the oncoming truck and squeezes the ojek between it and a minivan. We barely fit, but instead of being terrified I just feel free. Around every bend there's excited children calling out in the only English they know, "Hey mister!" while we follow an overloaded bus, the people riding on top with the luggage waving at me, up the winding mountain road. The air is fresh and cool, the scenery verdant and lush and god it feels good just to be alive.

We drive all the way to the top but the man stationed there to guard the power generators says we've gone to far. The driver idles the engine on our way back down the mountain and we weave in and out of traffic as we coast. Eventually he turns down a dirt road that turns into a muddy path that, at times, he navigates by propelling the bike with his feet.

The path opens up into a field and we stop at a gate where we are greeted by a man who tells us we must have a guide. I look at Adik skeptically, but she shrugs and says, "That's the rule."

As we hike the jungle path, through the rice fields, than back down more jungle paths I'm glad we hired him. The path ends at the river and without him, while I can hear the water running in the distance, I'm not sure we'd have made it. Still, I am annoyed that my ojek driver has insisted on accompanying us, and worse insists on trying to help me. This is not the sort of terrain that's easily negotiated while someone tries holding your hand. We scramble across razor sharp stones, clinging to to tree trunks and branches along the river's edge to keep from falling in but when we finally reach the flat stones we stand in awe of the giant waterfall before us.

Clear, blue water rushes in a pounding cascade over black rocks, while kupukupu in vivid shades of green and blue flit and flutter around us. I pull out my camera to try and take their portraits but my camera falls into the river.

The boys cross the river in their underwear, which is more than Adik or I really wanted to know of them. When we reach the other side we climb the rocky cliff and our guide, doffing his shirt now too, throws himself over the edge.

"Now you," he urges from the river below.

I laugh and tell him he's gila but even as I say it, with fear churning my stomach, I know I'm going to do it. I look around for a place to change into my bathing suit but resign myself to one of two options; jump in fully clothed or strip down to my underwear.

Pulling my shirt over my head I tell myself it's no worse than wearing a bikini, which I'd never do either, but it's been two years since any man's seen me without clothes on and I really had imagined, if such a thing were going to happen again, there'd be softer lighting and a bit more affection involved, rather than these two jokers, particularly the ojek driver who has taken out his cell phone and started snapping pictures. I grab it from him and threaten to throw it in the water.

"Ok, ok" he says angrily, as though he's the one wronged.

Still, now that I'm standing in my underwear on the edge of the cliff, staring down at the water three stories below, I am not, as I'd hoped I'd be, any more keen to jump.

"Fuck's sakes Eris, just jump," says a distant memory.

You are sitting on the dock, watching me stare into the abyss of the cold black lake.

"If you're not going in, let's go back inside. There's no point in standing out here freezing if we're not going swimming."

"I'm going swimming," I answer, more to myself than to you, my eyes never leaving the water.

"Then, let's go already!"

"Do you have any idea how cold it's going to be? It hasn't broken 20 degrees all summer."

"Well, it's not getting any warmer while you stand here staring at it."

"I know that," I snap back. Of course I know that, but still, I cannot force my feet to leave the dock.

"That's it, I'm not waiting another ten minutes," and before I can pull my eyes from the water below you're on your feet, you've picked me up and tossed me in.

A sharp pain rockets through my body when I make contact with the water, the cold knocking the wind out of me and numbing my nerves so quickly my skin stings. When I resurface, gasping for air, you're in the water beside me, your face so twisted with fear I nearly drown from laughing. We both flounder for the dock and, when we've hauled ourselves out of the water I lie on the wooden platform convulsing in a fit of laughter.

Later, in front of the fire, you say, "You are the craziest woman I've ever met."

I start to giggle again. "You should have seen the look on your face."

"Well, I thought I was dead for sure. My own life flashed before my eyes when I watched you flying through the air and I realized what I'd done."

When we're done laughing this time I kiss you deeper than the ocean, warmer than the midday sun and longer than a leap year but when we come up for air you say, quietly, as though afraid I will hear and we'll have another fight, "That's our problem, you know. You think too much."

"Well, you're half right," I say, turning back to the fire, "half the time it's because I think too much and the other half it's because you don't think enough."

But today, my half is the only half that matters so I take a step forward and I jump. When I surface, there is a smiling, brown face beside me and when our eyes meet he lets out a victory whoop that ricochets off the rocks.

"Lagi," I say, laughing. "Lagi, lagi, lagi."

Moment of Zen

The man behind the counter tells me he does not recommend I kayak today.
"The waves are very big."
As I paddle to their peaks

and surf the swells

I think of paddling the waves


(and sharks)

and that is all.

Corners

There's a lot of things I don't understand,
why so many people lie.
It's this hurt I hide that fuels the fire inside me

-"Empty", Ray Lamontagne

On our way out of the park a knobby kneed, tow haired boy asks Nathan a million

questions about his camera. He reminds me of Kleenex Kid and I can tell Nathan is annoyed 

so when the precocious child shows me his carved komodo souvenir I smile as brightly as I can and try to 

seem interested. 

Back on the boat our fisherman friend wants another $60 to take us to Komodo Island so we head back to Labuan Bajo. I ask Adik to ask if we can stop on one of the islets for a swim and, with the exception of the precocious kid who calls out excitedly to show us where his room is as his houseboat leaves the dock alongside ours, the trip back is quiet.

I wrestle with your ghost. The last time I saw you was through the same window I had been sitting at the night we met. My friend thought you were cute but had her back to you so I'd been giving her the play by play on all the girls who were hitting on you. I thought pigtail girl was the prettiest but you were doing your best to ignore them all.

"Well, this is ridiculous," I said, slurred "he's standing out there smoking with all those cute girls ogling him and he's just staring off into space. I'm going to help him out."

"No! Don't do that! Stay out of it," my friend protested. But it was too late, I'd already knocked on the window.

"Oh god, I can't take you anywhere."

When you turned around and our eyes met, your face lit up like a fireworks and I saw what all the other girls saw that I hadn't when you were playing stony and aloof; Russell Crow with a hint of Brad Pitt in your steel eyes. I tried to tell you, through a series of poorly mimed gestures that pigtail girl liked you and you should quit being a douche and go for it. Instead you made fish lips on the window and, laughing, I fish lipped you back. You nearly knocked over the barmaid trying to get to our table.

That table. In front of that window where you were now sitting with a woman I was relieved to note was neither pretty nor plain. Seeing you sitting there, laughing, with her, I was surprised that, even after what you'd done, I could still love you.

When I got your e-mail it was only two short sentences:

"I seen you last night. You look good."

I didn't bother, in my response, to try one last time to impress upon you the difference between "seen" and "saw". Instead I wrote:

"I saw you too. You looked happy. That made me glad."

And I meant every word of it. Still, I changed my e-mail address, double checked my locks and poured myself a bottle of wine.

The beach we stop at is sandy and clean and the water is surprisingly cool. I begin to feel calmer, think more clearly. I tell Adik I think we should at least try to catch our flight and her face falls though she nods in agreement.

"What, you don't want to go? What's that sad look about? Do you want to go or do you want to stay?"

She's quiet a moment before answering. "Stay!"

"Alright, but we better head back then and see if we can cancel our flight."

But back on the boat I fall asleep and have that dream, only it starts differently this time. I am at an airport but there are no planes. An old lady all alone behind a long mahogany counter tells me the planes only fly once a year and I missed them. I am stuck wherever here is. I try to leave but I'm suddenly trapped in the glass room without a door. Now everything's familiar.

When you appear in the window before me you are wearing your favourite brown, wool snowboarding sweater, and when you place your hand up to the window your thumb is threaded through the hole in the cuff of the right sleeve. When I reach my hand out to place it next to yours the glass turns to mirror. I don't know anymore which image is the you I want so badly to touch just one more time so I turn round in circles calling your name. Everyone of you looks worried, you're trying to tell me something but I panic and focus on your image instead of your voice. Too late I understand you're saying, "This is your last chance." Last chance for what? "You have to get out," is your only reply. All I want is out, but how, how do I get out? "This is your last chance." For what? "Get out!" You're screaming now, banging on the window and I'm looking everywhere for a door, a key, a clue but all I see is you in every mirror. "Now! Get out now!" Your voice is muted but I can hear the panic. How dammit? Where? But as you raise your finger to point the glass shatters and I am thrown backwards by the force, an explosion so powerful it thrusts me all the way back to the waking world.

The boat is pulling in to dock when I open my eyes, and my heart is racing miles ahead. I have to catch up with it. I tell Adik I think we should try to make our flight. She looks confused but I don't care. She wouldn't understand even if I tried to explain. "I had a dream that there were no flights out of here New Years," I offer lamely, realizing I sound utterly gila. Still, after sorting out the payment for the boat I hoist my pack onto my back and say, "We gotta run."

"Yup, run away," I hear Nathan say quietly behind me.

I freeze. What the hell is that supposed to mean? I decide I don't have time to figure it out but when we get back to the main street and he says, "Well, I guess this is goodbye then," I realize, I don't I want to say goodbye. I ask Adik to run ahead and talk to the travel agent, see if there's another flight out of here on New Year's Eve, while I give him my e-mail address.

As he gives me a hug goodbye I think, "Damn he's tall," and as I walk away he calls after me, "Geez, you're short."

The travel agent says no we won't make our flight, no there are no flights out on New Year's Eve but they will try to get us at least part of our plane ticket back. I finally leave forty-five minutes later telling Adik I need to go eat and agreeing to meet her back at the agent's when I'm done. "If you need me I'll be at the Corner, come get me."

When I get there, Nathan is finishing his lunch so I order a glass of wine and chicken curry and join him. He tells me he needs to go back to his boat because he's going snake hunting tonight, but he's just leaving when Adik arrives saying, "Where have you been. I wait at travel agent for you for three hours!"

Watching Nathan go I realize I am feeling better and think, has it been three hours already?

I look back at Adik and shrug, "Well, you knew where I was. Why didn't you come and get me?"

"I go back to travel agent by myself. They gave me refund but not you."

"Why not me?"

She shrugs and looks off in the distance, "You weren't there."

"Okay, we'll stop by there now on the way to the hotel."

She shrugs again. "No. They're closed."

"Okay, I'll go in the morning."

Her eyes grow wide. "No. Oh no. Can't. Now is too late. No more refund. Only today can get refund."

"Let me make sure I understand this: Today was the only day I could get my refund and you didn't come get me when they said we could have one."

She laughs too loudly, then looks off in the distance without saying another word.