Duncan frowned, rubbed at his temple. “I’ve tried mate, I promise, and I’m not the only one. I like the girl as well. A few of us got together the other night and we put it to him … we told Mick he should do something, but he just doesn’t care.”
I didn’t buy it, Tracy was a long way from home and her ex-boyfriend and her closest mates had abandoned her. Nobody seemed to give much of a shit, especially Mick. As far I was concerned the English crew had made it easy for him to wipe his hands of the situation.
Tracy had then gone out on a limb and asked an acquaintance for help and I’d also ignored her. I felt ashamed of myself. “What if I talk to Mick?” I asked.
Duncan sat back in his chair crossed his arms. “I don’t see it. A whole bunch of us were on him the other night. He doesn’t want anything to do with her. No offence, but I don’t see him listening to you if he wouldn’t listen to us.”
I shrugged, “Yeah well maybe I should give it a try. Tracy has always done the right thing by me.”
I picked up my beer and swallowed it down. “Do you know where he is?” I asked.
Duncan stood up from the table, “Yeah, he’s in the restaurant. I’ll take you if you want.”
I called for my bill. “I’d appreciate that,” I said. I thought I might need the back up.
I fixed my bill, paid for Duncan’s Coke, then jumped on the back of his bike and we took the short ride to Mick’s place.
Mick was behind the counter when we arrived, the restaurant was not overly crowded. Mick greeted us suspiciously. Duncan and I were not great friends and I’m sure he sensed that something was up.
I walked over to the counter. “Mick, can we have a word in private?”
Mick was normally easy going and accessible. “I’m busy. I’ll talk to you later,” he said.
He carried on with his work, ignoring me and I stood at the counter feeling foolish. “Mick,” I said, “it’s pretty important that I speak with you, if can you just give me a moment. I don’t mind waiting until things quieten down.” I looked around the small restaurant, there were three or four customers—it wasn’t exactly flat out.
Mick didn’t bother to reply.
I wasn’t about to back away because he couldn’t be bothered. “Mick, if you won’t talk with me in private, I’ll say what I have to say here.”
Mick slammed whatever he was holding down. “Go ahead,” he shot, and then walked over to his stove and turned his back on me. “I don’t give a shit, say what you want then fuck off.”
This surprised me. I had seen Mick deal with drunks and trouble-makers and I had never seen him loose his temper. I’d asked him to have a chat and he’d blown up. “Hey, mate, I’m not a big fan of your tone,” I said. “I just wanted to have a talk and I offered to do it in private.”
“Fuck,” Mick screamed, he threw the spoon he was cooking with towards the sink.“What the fuck do you want to say?”
I turned around. The punters in the restaurant stared at me and I decided I wouldn’t go easy on Mick’s privacy. “I want to talk to you about Tracy. She’s a mess and she’s in danger of getting herself in trouble.”
Mick turned and charged the counter. He leaned towards me shoving his face inches from mine. “Tell someone who gives a shit,” he screamed, then pointed outside. “And get the fuck out of my restaurant!”
I lost my temper. I hadn’t expected to be thrown out and I stood my ground. “Do something about it, you fucking coward!” I screamed back.
Mick didn’t move. He tried to stare me down.
I looked into his eyes. “If you ever tell me to fuck off again, you and I will finish it in the street,” I whispered.
Mick climbed further up the counter that separated us, our faces were close enough to touch. “What the fuck has this got to do with you anyway?” he yelled into my face.
I didn’t like the way Mick was acting and I can be a hothead. “I’ll tell what the fuck it’s got to do with me. Your fucking ex-girlfriend is banging on my door at three in the morning.”
I could see this affected Mick. I saw his mind click as he wondered why Tracy would knock on my door at that time of night.
Mick backed off. “She knocked on your door?” He climbed down from his counter. “Why was she knocking on your door?”
“You tell me,” I shouted at full volume. “I didn’t ask to be involved in your shit but she has involved me. You tell me why she is knocking on my door.” I levelled a finger at him, “I never had sex with the girl.”
Mick edged back. He calmed down a little and I could sense he was afraid that I would do something. “I didn’t know,” he said weakly, “what did she say?”
I was still angry despite Mick’s retreat. I felt he needed a kick up the arse if he was ever going to help Tracy. I punched the counter hard enough to make him jump. “She asked me for help. Do something about your fucking mess, Mick. You made it, clean it the fuck up!”
I started to walk out of the restaurant but stopped at the door and turned and pointed at Mick. “Put Tracy on a plane and send her home or I will get further involved.” I left the threat hanging, smashing the door with the palm of my hand as I walked out.
Mick is not a big guy and later I was not proud of how I’d threatened him but I do believe the end justified the means.
I didn’t see Mick for a while and when I did run into him in a restaurant he came up to me. He didn’t mince his words. “I brought Tracy a ticket and sent her back to England,” he said and walked away.
Mick and I would associate after the incident but it was never mentioned. He is not a bad person but it was a bad situation. Bali breaks people and it broke Tracy. She needed to get out and she needed help to do it.
To give Mick his due, he is the same restaurant owner who later gave a sixty-year-old guy a job after his life savings were stolen.
A Soft Touch
When my mates come to Bali on holiday it’s generally to drink copious amounts of alcohol and pick up working girls. For the most part they know where to get drunk; the hookers, on the other hand, are considered my domain.
I work and have to get up in the morning so generally I take these guys out, show them how to approach a girl then split. I’m shy with women but this is business so I find these transactions easy. I then leave my friends to their own devices.
On one occasion I took this a little further and I took a girl to the airport to meet a mate off his plane. I’d already paid her and asked her to act as if my friend was her long-lost lover returning to Bali. I wanted her to put on a show and embarrass my friend. It was a bit of a laugh and my friend was most appreciative.
Travis is an old mate and good friend, he came to Bali to say hello and get up to as much mischief as possible. He also let me know that he wanted to meet a girl. It was Travis’ first time in Bali, so I was happy to help.
By coincidence, Travis’ brother, Vic, was also in Bali. The night they arrived, Travis, Vic and I decided to hit Kuta.
In Bali it is possible to purchase ephedrine—this is a medication that is often broken down to be turned into methamphetamine, or speed. With effects similar to speed, a lot of young tourists gobble ephedrine like candy. Personally I don’t like it and I steer clear of the stuff, but it is easy to get and as far as I know it’s legal.
Travis asked me if I knew where he could get some—he wanted his first night in Bali to be one to remember.
I knew of a small chemist that sold just about anything, a Rugby player from Australia had told me about the place. He would make monthly trips to Bali to purchase steroids then take them home and flog them to his mates. I figured the chemist would sell something as simple as ephedrine. I jumped on my motorbike and rode to the chemist, it wasn’t far and the lady behind the counter didn’t blink an eyelid when I asked for the drug.
I organised two cylinders of about ten tablets each for Travis and his brother.
When I gave the boys the pills I told them that three tablets would be enough to get
them going. I said they shouldn’t take more as I was uncertain of the effects. I also told them to be discrete as I wasn’t 100% sure of the drug’s legality.
Travis has never been one for half measures, he gets caught up in the moment and becomes greedy, so within half an hour of being out in Kuta he had finished his cylinder and he wanted to head back to the store for more. I pointed him in the right direction, organised to catch up with him later and left him to find his own amusement.
I was aware that he would feel sick the next morning but I knew better than to try and stop him. I did however forget about the other side effect of ephedrine.
When Travis returned we had a couple of drinks at the Espresso Bar. The Espresso has a live band that allows patrons to jam with them and Travis is an ex-lead singer who can really belt out a tune. He got up on stage and enjoyed reliving his youth.
Working girls are everywhere in Bali if you know where to look, and there are one or two bars they congregate in when it’s early … and getting them early is sometimes a good idea as these girls have a high turnover rate. Take a working girl home late at night and there is a high chance you’ll be traipsing along recently explored tracks.
I would suggest to anyone who takes home a working girl that they offer them a shower at the hotel before proceedings begin. The girl won’t mind and she will appreciate the opportunity to shower with hot water—a lot of girls live in cheap rooms that have no water heaters. The girl would appreciate it more if the man showered as well; my experience of Indonesian girls is that they are very clean and they expect their sexual partners to practise the same level of cleanliness.
Condoms are also a must and it is smart to carry your own supply. Working girls will sometimes buy cheap to save money and these tend to break halfway through the encounter. It is worth noting that, depending on which official report you read, the HIV infection rate among sex workers in Bali is estimated to be somewhere between 25 and 50%.
Travis, Vic and I went to Paddies on Legian Street. To my mind, this is the easiest place to pick up a girl. One side of the bar is for tourists, the other is for men who are looking. If a punter wanders in and leans against the bar, sooner or later a girl will saunter up and ask if he would like to spend some time with her.
A little trick is to never set a price in the bar. Too often, guys blurt out, “I’ll give you a million for a short time.” That’s stupid. Whatever you say the girl will hold you to. A better way is to be nice to the girl. If she is working, and interested, she will prompt the encounter—then talk price in the room. It is far more civilised and you have also cut out the competition.
When we entered Paddies, Travis asked me to organise a girl for Vic and him. I didn’t mind helping, a lot of guys are shy their first time. It also allowed me to pick girls that I didn’t think would cause problems. I organised a girl for Travis and his brother, and I may have organised one for myself but I’m not entirely sure. The three of us left Paddies and went to our respective hotels. I didn’t see the boys until the next morning but at the time they seemed pleased with my choices.
The next day when I caught up with Vic he raved about how beautiful his girl was and how great the sex was. When Travis turned up, Vic and I had just ordered breakfast and we were stuffing our faces, but we could tell right away he wasn’t happy. I was concerned that the girl I had chosen had done something wrong and I enquired about Travis’ night. “How did you go?” I asked.
Travis sat down at our table. “Fucked,” he said, and ordered a beer. It was nine in the morning so I knew his night probably hadn’t gone as planned.
I looked at my watch. “It’s pretty early mate you sure you don’t want some breakfast first?”
Travis grabbed his stomach. “Na,” he said. “Those fucking pills. I couldn’t eat anything.”
I smiled. I knew what an ephedrine hangover was like and was glad I hadn’t got involved. I shoved a load of scrambled eggs in my mouth. “What happened? Was there something wrong with the girl?”
Travis shook his head, “Na, she was alright. I just couldn’t get it up. I tried everything, she sucked it, rubbed it, nothing … waste of money.”
This was in the days before Viagra and Cialis had hit the streets of Bali. Nowadays it’s everywhere and the old guys utilise the stuff like you wouldn’t believe. I feel sorry for the poor working girls, in a matter of months Viagra increased their workload tenfold.
I felt bad for Travis. His first night in Bali had turned into a fizzler so I tried to cheer him up.
“Must have been the ephedrine,” I said. “I wouldn’t worry, there are plenty of girls out there. I’ll take you out again and set something up.”
Travis looked depressed. That probably also had something to do with the ephedrine—the hangover can be lethal. “Na, it’s bad,” he told us. “I couldn’t get it up with that girl, so I took her back and got two more girls. I took them home and still couldn’t get it up. I had them naked in my bed and everything. Fucking ephedrine shit, you should have warned me.”
“How many did you take?”
Travis thought for a moment, then dismissed the idea of using his brain so early. He rubbed at his temple to ease the exertion. “Fuck, I don’t know, fifteen or something.”
I had told him to take three. “Fuck off Travis, you fucking idiot. I’m not responsible for your greediness.”
He nodded his head and held up a hand to concede my point. “Yeah, I know, but it gets worse,” he said. “When I couldn’t get it up with those two, I took them back. Then went to a different place and I got four more.”
Vic and I gave each other a look. We knew Travis was greedy but he’d taken it to a different level. Erectile problems or not, four women could be considered excessive. “Four?” I asked. “What the fuck did you do with four of them?”
Travis rubbed at his temple. “Well I couldn’t get it up, could I? Fuck, I don’t know, I thought four would help. I put them all in the spa together then dived in.”
I shook my head, stunned. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Did that help?” I asked.
“It worked a little. I had them washing each other and stuff. Fuck all though, I still couldn’t have sex and there was no way I would have been able to cum.”
I bit my lip to stop myself laughing. “Fuck man,” I said, “that’s a bit sad.”
Travis put his beer down, dropped his head into his hands, then shook it. “I had four sexy women in a spa, they drank my drinks and had the time of their lives, and all I could get was a semi hard-on.”
I took the opportunity to glance at Vic. He had a hand over his mouth and was holding back his laughter. “What did the girls do?” he asked. I already knew.
Travis lifted his head from his hands. He peered at Vic and me to see if we were taking the piss, picked up his beer, drank what was left and ordered another. “That was the worst part, they thought it was funny. They spoke in Indonesian and I couldn’t understand them. It was fucked. The four girls pointed at me and made jokes. I felt about two inches tall.”
The dam burst, I couldn’t hide my amusement and erupted in laughter. Vic joined me. “You felt two inches or they felt two inches,” he said between fits.
Travis sat at the table, he slumped his shoulders, lowered his head. He looked like the saddest man on earth. He had spent the night being laughed at, and the day didn’t look like it would be much better. The jokes had already started.
Get Mad and Get Even
Plenty of Western nutters hang around Bali. I recall hearing one expat postulate that families in Australia must be shipping problem relatives to Bali to get rid of them for brief periods when they have had enough. That sounds about right. The mildly deranged ones get ripped off mercilessly but no real harm comes to them from the locals so it’s pretty safe for them to wander the streets alone. For the more psychotic bunch, it’s a different story.
There is the watch guy who loves looking at people’s phones and watches. He also loves to stare at pret
ty girls but he is relatively harmless. There is the singing guy, who dresses in army fatigues and wanders around pubs and bars breaking into loud song. He is also harmless but he is very fit and perhaps because of the fatigues he does look dangerous. There is a guy known around town as Harry Butler, who once walked along Poppies One completely naked and recently came into my office and helped himself to a shower. This guy is more of a drunk but he does seem to cause strife wherever he goes.
There is another guy who claims to be incredibly intelligent and richer than Bill Gates but he lives in the cheapest accommodation he can afford. This guy is incredibly obnoxious and he will invite himself to a table of unsuspecting victims then espouse his superior virtues. He can become violent and threatening if questioned or ignored. The Kuta rumour mill has it that he killed himself recently; this is unfortunate as he probably only needed the right medication.
There is the tall guy with long red hair who loves to scream abuse at people and who recently screamed at me for polluting the airways with Wi-Fi bugs—this because I was using a computer at an internet café.
And then there is a guy I call Mad, simply because that’s what he is.
Mad has caused me a lot of trouble over the years and recently he came close to having me thrown in jail. Mad came to Bali long before me, he is friends with Ankle and he is dangerous when he is not taking his pills—by his own admission Mad is bipolar. He is six foot one, middle aged but skinny and fit. He dyes his hair blonde and likes to walk around shirtless to show off his stupidly placed and poorly inked tattoos.
I mean no disrespect to the people that suffer from this disease; I’m sure it is dreadful and unfortunate for all involved but it is a disease and can and should be treated.
Unfortunately, someone like Mad, who is trusted to self-medicate, can cause enormous grief for undeserving people and it is perhaps a bit unfair that people who are forced to share an environment with a person experiencing bipolar have to suffer because a relative or doctor does not ensure they take prescribed medication. From the start, Mad has been a handful.
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