denpasar, bali, indonesia
it’s spring, 2012. time for a new adventure.
i get off the plane in denpasar, bali… looking for da wife at the island’s only international airport. she’s gonna pick me up and bring me to the hindu-bali hotel in kuta beach. she did the same thing 12 years ago, when i returned to bali 6 months after meeting her just 1 night in kuta in june, 2000, absolutely by coincidence in front of the BCA bank’s ATM. with 31 years between us and 13,000 miles of geographic and personal differences, amazingly she’s still my wife 12 years later in LA, after marrying me on valentine’s day, 2003. it’s been a constantly evolving, 12 year challenge of age, language, culture, patience, personality, and perseverance, but we’re still together, and… like i say, we’re ready for another adventure. we’re calling it “act 3”.
“act 3”, you know, of a play. it follows its 2 predecessors: act one, which brilliantly sets up what’s at stake for the protagonist. followed by act two, in which the play develops with tension & suspense as it builds in “rising” action, when finally, you have, “act 3”, the climax and resolution of the play. if it’s a good/happy ending, the play is called a comedy; if it’s a not so good, bummer of an ending, the play is called a tragedy. in either case, act 3, the “falling” action and… the end of the play.
now being a college theater professor for the last 26 years, i naturally see my life as a… play. act one: being born upside down and backwards, as only a clown should be, in sub-oiban, jewish new yawk, battling instinctively for 22 years against parental expectation and control. act 2: taking the road less travelled after not attending college graduation, becoming a dancer-clown-artiste and continuing the battle for the next 42 years against poverty, privilege, and ambition; taking an unexpected turn towards a very late marriage to an indonesian princess while surviving cancer, self-doubt, and insecurity along the way… down the long & twisting road of life.
but now what? act 3: approaching 65 years young, what road do i choose to make my way through my forest filled with memory, success, failure, joy, regret, opportunities taken, others left behind? should i just stay on the same path as long as possible? limp my way to the finish line, going through the same routines and habits that act 2 has so deeply ingrained into the crevices of my life? should i just keep teaching at my comfortable, creative university job, changing the world 1 student at a time, until i slowly peter out in the so-called, professorial saddle? do i just stay in my rented, paradisiacal home in the old hollywood hills until somebody else (the owner) decides my lease is up? do i stay married? childless? the last of the trules?
or…. do i write a new… act 3? in magical bali? where i met my wife by accident and incident? act 3… with a new, more challenging ending? maybe buy and develop some property to bring my friends from around the world to? maybe a 2nd home in a new paradise, on my indonesian wife’s side of the planet? do i become a father at 70 years young, like chaplin, and other artist-clowns, throwing in the towel of daily routine to become a stay-at-home, john lennon-esque dad? do i? do i…? knowing only too well, that all plays, no matter how well they are written… that all lives, all third acts… finally do end… the same unavoidably, cruel and beautiful way?
back to bali. the denpasar airport, spring, 2012.
i don’t see her. da wife. she’s flown from LA to medan, sumatra, her home town, 3 weeks earlier to visit her family, and she’s brought her sister from medan to bali for the first time a week ago. i’ve flown from LA to bali today, a 22 hour flight with the taipei re-fueling stop, and da wife’s supposed to meet me here at the airport. but i don’t see her. i walk up and back the length of the passenger arrival greeting area, and… no wife. i wait. half an hour. still no… wife. then suddenly – there’s her youngest sister, ana. “are you trrrules?” i recognize her from her facebook pictures. “yes, i am. where’s your sister?” “she’s in hos-pi-tal.” “what?” “yes, hos-pi-tal, with dengue fever.” “what?” no. can’t be! dengue fever! that’s the worst mosquito-borne virus in asia. it has no preventative inoculation or pill, and it’s untreatable once you get it. “bone crusher’s disease”… fatal in young children and old folks like me. and sometimes in …
“when did she go to the hospital?” “today. 12 o’clock.” damn. damn. damn. it’s 4 pm now, and i just arrived in bali with da wife’s LA latina friend, patrizia, and here’s my wife’s sister and sumatran cousin telling me da wife has dengue fever. i remember, i almost didn’t even go to asia the 1st time because of the dengue plague, and now my wife has gone to sibolga, to visit her batak family in the rural village without mosquito repellant and she been eaten alive by dengue-bearing sibolgan mosquitoes!
all 4 of us, me, patrizia, ana, and nirma, da wife’s 17 year old sumatran cousin, jump into a taxi and crawl our way through the suffocating kuta traffic to the hindu-bali hotel where da wife’s been staying. we throw our bags helter skelter into 3 rooms and immediately take another taxi back to kasih ibu (loving mother) hospital in denpasar. it’s sweltering in the streets, and the hospital’s 1st floor isn’t any cooler. no air con. how can anyone recover in this sweltering humidity? it feels like a british colonial hospital circa 1904, tanned wood, the smell of quinine, people dying of malaria. we get up to room 335 and there she is, da wife… lying in bed with a brown hospital gown next to her brown skin surrounded by white walls & wood brown furniture. she’s on an intravenous drip and… she’s seriously sick with dengue fever.
over the next 7 days, she falls in and out of night sweats, painful fevers, bone-crushing headaches, recurring nausea, and a little vomiting thrown in for color. i watch her go through it, sleeping on a 4 foot vinyl visitor’s couch every night, and some nights we don’t think she’s going to make it. but dr. aman is one of the 2 specialists on infectious disease in all of bali, and he assures us, the dengue is running its course. “just waaaiit,” he chirps at us every day. “her thrombocyte very low, 26; must back to 100 before we release her.” i immediately google “thrombocyte”… platelets… about 150-200 being normal. the dengue-bearing mosquitoes have fucked with da wife’s vascular system, eliminating her blood’s ability to clot, risking brain bleeding, or only blindness if it’s behind the eyes. oy!
finally….. after 5 days… the fever breaks…., and after 2 more days on thrombocyte watch, da wife’s count rises to 115. hallelujah! she can go, “but take it easy. some patient full re-cover right away, some, 2 months. take it easy.”
thanks, doc. we’re out. another of our 18 collective lives left on the hospital floor.
as per doc aman‘s advice, we lounge around agung‘s bungalows and pool for the next 2 days. i even stretch my shylock, and splurge for agung‘s priciest bungalow. it’s nice… a real hindu-bali garden retreat nestled back behind the crush of legian street and the entire decibel-pounding strip that has become kuta-legian-seminyak. hey, da wife deserves the luxury.
but cholo patrizia, who has never been out of america, has been holed up for the whole dengue week with indo-nirma, who barely speaks a word of english, and both are getting severe cases of cabin fever. still, the nirma-patrizia connection seems an odd couple match made in heaven, and da wife and i are grateful for it. but now out of the big house for 2 days, da wife feels obliged to show both girls the bali she promised. so… she convinces me to pack up for a gentle road trip to ubud (the art capital of the island in central bali), and then to head for the east coast to take a boat to lombok, the backpackers’ party island where they sell “the ticket to the moon”, a gnarly-looking, fresh magic mushroom wrapped in a conical banana leaf. not that that’s why we’re going….
but we do. head north to ubud. we hire a driver for 20 bucks instead of bumping the local bus for 4 bucks each. it’s a practical way to travel the 3rd world, hiring a driver for the day, or for transport from city to city. i’ve never done it before, but if not now at my age, when? besides, i realize da wife and i have just dodged another cat life bullet, so i shylock up again and spend the dough.
i’d been to ubud back in 2000, just days before meeting da wife, so i’m familiar with its exotic mysteries, its kechak monkey chant ceremonies, its friendly macaque monkey forest, its legong-barong ballets with nubile, indo-adolescent girls seductively darting their eyes skyward and artfully separating their fingers in impossible ways; its every hotel buried in lush hindu-bali gardens with cement gray statues of coupling pigs or of fierce-looking balinese gods & goddesses playing amongst themselves, arjuna, krishna, hanuman, the monkey king, the whole pantheon of the hindu ramayana.
da wife and i send the dynamic duo to an evening barong dance while we have dinner with an avid, young american import-exporter. we try to tap his brain to find out about exporting downtown LA fashion to da wife’s native medan, and my importing gorgeous pearls from lombok to LA. a delicious mix of business and pleasure over banana lassees and frozen mocha cheesecake.
i’m surprised though when all 3 girls want to leave ubud after only 1 night. pero no problema. because i’ve sussed out this east coast paradisiacal hideaway in amed called “good karma”, the cozy haven of beachfront bungalows run by the infamous indo-proprietor happily named “babba”. buddha-bellied, babba’s the closest equivalent i’ve ever met to northern baja’s equally infamous, bald host with the most, the ever-exuberant and effervescent dmitri, baja cal-ee-fornia’s crazy greek proprietor who was guaranteed to bring you into his dung-smelling, seaside office for a little taste of his “pancho villa special”, the affectionate nickname for his funky barrel of home-brewed, me-hee-can mescal.
babba’s good karma doesn’t disappoint. we get the “townhouse”, a 2 floor “luxury” hut with the 2 single beds above and the king size “double” down below. of course, babba has warned us to “take look first because my bungalow vedy primitive.” so we do… and what can i say? decide for yourself:
thatched bamboo walls & roof. 3 mosquito nets hand-hung immediately upon arrival over each bed (even better, no mosquitoes). a “cold water” shower running out of the rear, plant-bestrewn bathroom’s wall like an in-house personal water fall (of course, it’s not at all cold because the lombok straight’s sea temperature is about 98.6 degrees!).
Why they offer this world class medicine at discount wholesale cialis the lowest prices. They also trigger the production of cGMP molecules that help the blood to make its route towards the penile region & rejuvenate the sessions of making overnight cialis delivery love. Best foods to increase semen load and sperm count. order cialis online Headache and nausea, loss of blue-green color vision are other adverse side effects Homeopathy offers a natural, non surgical and contra indication buy sildenafil free treatment for sexual asthenia that results in ED or impotence in men.
and of course, the mandatory made in indonesia “ticket to the moon” hammock hanging from the bamboo-thatched front porch. no tv, no internet connection, not even a cell phone signal; this is the get away’s get away. de east coast of bali, mon. fresh-squeezed tropical juices: watermelon, banana, coconut, papaya, pineapple, the “babba chocolate smoothie”; delicious banana pancakes, or cheese & vegetable jaffles for free daily breakfast, bamboo curtains between every bungalow for privacy, snorkeling equipment for 3 bucks a day, and random hindu-bali ceremonies in surrounding amed temple-gardens, erupting daily………..
after 36 hours of chillin’ and snorkeling, we, the fearsome foursome, dumbly decide to take leave of paradise and go to one such ceremony, perhaps because babba will be beating a large conga-looking drum in it. we head out, walking north along the balinese coast. “vedy short walk; impossible to miss temple.” babba’s words of wisdom, neglecting to tell us that it’s wickedly hot along the road. i forgot, why exactly are we leaving the perfect sea?
now if there’s 1 thing to know about traveling with me, it’s that i actively dislike walking uphill. not only in balmy california’s elysian park right near my home, but especially on “hikes” with my eddie bauer-patagonia, outdoorsy camper friends. and especially today, where it’s at least 32 degrees celsius (104 fahrenheit), and when after just about 100 meters, my body is doing a full on drip. i decide, despite da wife’s profuse objection, to abandon ship… to go back to good karma… and rent a motor bike.
now if there’s another thing you need to know about traveling with me, it’s that i absolutely love renting a motor bike in a third world country, and being “out in it” – along the banks of the mekong in viet nam, or amidst the s-curves of the high tea plantations of kerala in southern india, or… along the sweltering east coast of equatorial bali in amed! i mean, who wants to walk uphill into the dripping midday heat, when you can simply bareback a bike and ride the wind to your heart’s content? certainly not me!
so i shuffle my way back to good karma, my dad’s former right rubber walking shoe flapping like a clown’s with every step. but when i get there, dripping from good karma & equatorial blaze… there are… no more bikes to rent. all the bules (indonesian gringos) have rented them & lined them up like hells angels hogs in paradise. so i flap my way to the 1st warung (local 7-11) that i can find, where the sleepy owner interprets my mime and dusts off an ancient bike from her musty-smelling open air garage. it looks like it hasn’t run in years, but clearly, it’s the only horse in town. i rent it for 5 bucks for the whole day. she gives me the key, no helmet, with a few throwaway comments in indonesian, and i take off, completely confident in my seasoned 3rd world motor bike skills.
i’m “out in it” again. i turn the throttle up and i climb the same hill i just flapped my way up 20 minutes ago. i’m supposed to find the 3 princesses eating somewhere along the side of the road, although from the wife’s pejorative warning, i kind of expect they’re enjoying lunch somewhere set back off the road, with a breathtaking view of the lombok sea, entirely invisible to a passing motor bike. but hey, no problema. i gas the throttle and lean into a curve.
about 90 seconds after my first hill climb and descent, i confront my 1st fellow motor biker, a brown-skinned local dude puttering uphill with a fellow passenger on back. i’m coming down, he’s coming up, and i pull over to the right. so does he. that is, he swerves to his left, my right. what the hell? we’re heading right at each other. we simultaneously swerve to avoid one another. in the mili-seconds before impact, my life doesn’t flash before me. i think something like, “what the fuck, man… you idiot, you’re gonna run right into me. don’t you know the rules of the road? it’s your country, you boneheaded yokel, what the…?
crash! bang. head-on. i go down. he goes down.
the next thing i know, i’m on the ground next to my bike. my left groin hurts, so does my left hand. my glasses are gone… but i can see both boys are up on they’re feet. they’re yelling something at me in indonesian, and they’re pointing frenetically, fingers going everywhere at once. international sign language… i get it. the reason the dude was swerving left & me right (the same direction) is that bali, indonesia is a drive-on-the-left country. fuck me! not only was i driving on the wrong side of the road, but when i pulled over suddenly to the RIGHT, to avoid impact, it was the WRONG fucking way! simply put, the goddam friggin’ accident was completely my fucking fault!
then, before i know it, there’s a crowd of at least 30 brown-skinned locals surrounding us, all buzzing like mosquitoes around fresh meat. mamas and papas and aunties and school children. oh, man, now what? naturally, one of the brave ones approaches me in broken english. “you drive right, yes?” “yes”, i admit, while rapidly thinking, “no, asshole, don’t admit guilt. get the fuck out of dodge ASAP. call your insurance company.” and then simultaneously, “oh c’mon, it was completely your fault, schmuck. how much is this gonna cost you?”
i obstinately tell them to follow me back to good karma to discuss the matter further, but i can’t pick my strewn bike off the ground. the smart, broken english-speaking dude helps me pick up the 2 wheel carcass and we inspect it for damages. it looks… ok; i can’t see a scratch on it, but then… i walk over to the other bike. it, on the other hand is… completely mangled. the new plastic front wheel protector is split down the middle. it won’t even move forward a foot. the front wheel fender is crushed into the tire. the gear shift is jammed frozen. it looks… expensive.
i finally relent to the communal buzzing and resignedly get back on my bike, perching myself behind my english-speaking helper dude, holding on pathetically, as a passenger on my own friggin’ bike. one of the kids hands me my glasses which he’s mercifully picked up from the side of the road, and i’m driven back to good karma like the hapless clown i am.
what the fuck just happened? in less than 4 minutes, i just had a violent, head-on motorcycle collision in a 3rd world country, the same country where my wife’s father lost his life in a similar head-on-er. no helmet, no rules of the road, just my bule hubris-western arrogance, being too hot in the sweltering heat and wanting desperately to be “out in it” on my local steed. fuck me again. there’s no wife in site, nor either of the two other princesses, just me, the crowd, and the good karma receptionist.
the two bikers and their entire entourage want me to go to the local “bengkel“. sounds like “bank”, right?. they must want me to go to the nearest ATM machine and pay them millions of rupiah in damages. “no, no, no… bengkel, mister… we go me-chan-ic.” oh, i see… they want to get an estimate from the local shyster mechanic… the highest one possible… then go to the nearest ATM and pay them millions of rupiah (100,000 rupiah equals about 10 bucks U.S.) “no, no, no,” i protest. “i need to wait for my wife. she’s indonesian. she can translate for me.” they have no idea what i’m talking about. what the hell am i gonna to do?
they keep repeating, “you come bengkel, mister.” i keep thinking they want me to come to the bank. do they know i’m jewish? “no, no, no,” i insist. “i wait for wife. wife, paham?” it’s one of the 2 indonesian words i know after 10 years of marriage! “paham ?” = “understand?” “bengkel, mistuh. you come.” “no, no bengkel!” oy, what to do? “ok, ok, listen… you come here… good karma… at 5 o’clock.” i do the necessary miming: “here”, 2 fingers down several times. “5 o’clock”: 5 fingers, point to watch. fuck, at least clowning is good for something.
“good karma. 5 o’clock.” they repeat like diligent students. we agree. “ok. good karma, 5 o’clock.”
now what? why the hell did i fess up, admit guilt? i could have hit and run; i know how to do that. it’s happened to me in LA several times. unfortunately, i wasn’t the hitter or runner. i walk back to good karma’s fresh juice bar. babba’s not there; he’s banging his drum at the hindu-bali ceremony which i never made it to. fortunately, his japanese wife, ako, is there. i don’t really want to tell her what just happened, but she calmly ekes it out of me. “sit down, mistuh. don’t worry, we fix problem.”
right….. “we” go to the ATM 50 miles back to denpasar and clean out my bengkel account to pay for this wreck of a motorbike, because i know, they know, we know… it’s completely my fault. “don’t worry, mistuh. we fix.” ako leads me to a carved wooden table and gets me a bottle of cold water. i open it and take a sip. and suddenly… i get it. “just relax, man. you’re still on vacation. in bali. your wife’s survived dengue fever. you’re still married. the 3 princesses are still off somewhere, hopefully at the babba-banging ceremony. what am i gonna do? it’s only money, man. just pay it and be done with this whole fiasco. the less da wife knows about the whole affair the better.”
i go back to my room with a cold bintang (the local indo beer), climb into the hammock on the front porch and order a massage. 5 bucks. i spend a most pleasant afternoon. i’m proud of myself. “don’t worry, be happy.” i’m still in paradise…
then comes the sledgehammer news, the bill from the bengkel, delivered by my fellow bikers, about 2 hours early. mr. bengkel wants 1 million, 7 hundred and 15 thousand rupiah to fix the motor bike. the bill’s itemized. i don’t paham a fucking word.
i try to bargain. hey, it’s what’s done all over the 3rd world. my tribe does it well. “i’ll give mr. bengkel a million rupiah.” a hundred bucks. da wife’s told me that a brand new bike in sumatra costs 200 bucks. “no, no, no, mistuh. you pay dis one.” they slap the bengkel‘s bill furiously. “no, no, no… 1 million. my last price.” they confer. they seem to catch my drift. they slap the bill again and scowl. “no, mistuh, dis one.” we’re at an impasse. what to do? think, trules? what would your clown character, gino cumeezi, do? probably just tear up the bill and run down the street flapping in his size 34, fur-lined klondike boots into the horizon.
but sometimes, perhaps after a head-on motor bike collision in the 3rd world, it’s not the time for clowning. “i’m waiting for my wife. she speaks indonesian. she can go to the bengkel with me.” “you, bengkel! pay now.” they know that word, “pay”. “no, no bengkel. wife. 5 o’clock.” i do my mime act again. five fingers, pointing to my watch. i walk back to my hut, hoping i’m not clubbed from behind.
twenty minutes later, the 3 princesses show up. they’re hot and sweaty; lunch wasn’t very good. “ok, you better sit down…” and i proceed to tell them the whole death-defying tale. she doesn’t say it aloud, but if looks could kill, clearly da wife’s face is saying, “i told you so. another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, bozo.” but she actually says, “are you ok?” a little water in the desert of calamity. “yes, i’m fine. i didn’t want to tell you, but i need your help. with the bengkel.” “they want you to go to the bank?” (she didn’t actually say that, but it’s a good line, right?)
in fact, she doesn’t say anything. it’s the indonesian batak way. sit on your anger and fume. she used to be able to do it for days at a time. the absolute cold shoulder as punishment for stupidity or lucidity or… just about anything at all. now it takes just about an hour, like today, after which she says judiciously, “don’t pay the money.” “how can i not pay? it was my fault and i just about totaled his bike.” “we go to the bengkel.” “but i don’t understand 1 word on the bill.” “let me see it.” she grabs the bill belligerently although i know she won’t paham anything either. we’re going to get into a huge fight. it’ll take hours and be absolutely deadly.
“look, i changed my mind. it’ just too much of a hassle.” “how much in U.S money?” she asks, still not being able to translate her rupiah into dollars.” “less than 2 hundred U.S.” “that’s a lot of money.” “no, it’s not. i totaled his bike.” “i just don’t like them taking advantage of you just because you’re a bule.” probably completely true, but still, that’s one of the nicest things she’s ever said. da wife coming to the aid of her comically-challenged husband.
“let’s just forget about it. it’s not worth the time and aggravation.” “are you sure?” “absolutely. i can already see the steam coming out of your ears. you’re gonna get in a big fight with them and they’re gonna call the police and then there’ll be a fine and maybe jail and then we’ll have to pay them off and we’ll still have to pay for the bike.” i see her batak lioness soften for a moment… it’s knowing the truth about how fucking corrupt her entire country is… from government officials being paid for favors to the police taking bribes to postal workers opening any suspicious or inviting package and taking whatever the hell they want… “let’s just cut our losses and enjoy the rest of the day.”
she looks at me incredulously, at her tightwad jew of a husband who she knows only too well, and i use her hesitancy to make my totally uncharacteristic move. i get up and say, “i’m just gonna pay the fucking money.”
… which i do. and just like that, the entire amed motor bike fiasco in paradise… is over. i pay the bengkel 1 million, 7 hundred thousand rupiah. we argue about the last 15 thousand ($1.50), but hey, i win that battle.
i figure… i’m lucky to be alive. i’ve left yet one more of our 18 collective lives on the road… survived yet another comic coincidence with fate. along with having survived cancer and dengue fever, we’ve just dodged another metaphysical bullet. hey, i… we… must be doing something right.
let’s just call it… good karma.
