Ne Me Quitte Pas

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a quick note about the photos - they do not follow chronologically with the story. The story below recounts events and travels from April til June. If you scroll down to the last part titled 'Weekends with Irwan' places depicted in photographs are in bold print. All travel accounts and photos were taken in East Java: Lawang, Tretes, Trawas, Malang, Tuban, Gresik, Jember and Kalibaru.

Prologue

It is a Friday morning, clear sky, a band entertains a contented crowd at Gubeng Station. Irwan and I jocky about the platform searching the first car business class. Though he's local, he never asks directions. And though I'm the foreigner, I often take the lead. We board the 730 Sancaka Siang bound for Jogja. This is our last weekend together. I've booked us into a posh hotel inside the grounds of Borobodur. Despite wishes to share a memorably romantic weekend together, my mind - and my heart - are elsewhere. Irwan has been feeling sad this past week. It has sunk in that I'm soon returning to Canada. 'I will be lonely when you leave,' he says. 'Me too,' my reply is soft voiced hurdling a lump in my throat. I am his first boyfriend, his first many things. I've never used the word love with him. He's astute, he understands, but it doesn't stop him from being his naturally inclined sweet and tender self.

Leading a somewhat nomadic lifestyle, I've left a trail of broken hearts. I'm moving back to Canada and full of concern for the months ahead; housing arrangements, classes, tuition, loans and grants, old friends and family, and relocating to Ottawa and dreading my first real Canadian winter. Irwan will remain in Surabaya where for a while he'll suffer my bitter sweet ghost. Eddy has reassured me, "Chris and i will keep in touch with Irwan. We'll hang out on the weekends, go riding together. My sister likes Irwan too. He's a really good guy, Kev." The train pulls away from the concrete and sweat of the city, stretches out across familiar fields of sugarcane. Wide brimmed conical hats steer the farmers gaze away from a hazy and oppressive sky to the day's labour before them.

A Foreign God of Thunder and Lightning or The Toilet Paper Conspiracy

Two months earlier. A Wednesday evening. I've just returned exhausted from work though my motorbike has been left parked inside the office. My right wrist wrapped in a tensor bandage, has swelled up making for a very difficult day of teaching compounded by unseasonal power outages. Luckily, Hedy, a very kind housewife and pre-intermediate English student has offered me a lift home. I unlock the front door and enter a living room stuffy with cigarette smoke. The doors and windows are all closed and the fan is off. My flatemate's bedroom door is open revealing his overweight figure hunched at his desk light by the glow of his laptop's screen, chain smoking.

"Don, the whole house stinks like an ashtray! Can I close the door, please?"
"Where's the clamp for the helmet vizor?" he ignores my question and throws one of his own.
"I don't know. When I borrowed your helmet it was already missing."
"When I used it on Sunday it was fine."
"Well, when I used it on tuesday it was missing." He looks incredulously at me. "Why would I lie or try to keep it a secret, Don?" the conversation volleys the same contradicting testimonies until he surmises,
"Well if it wasn't you it must've been the helmet fairies."
"-Yyeah, must've bin'. Can I close your door, please?"
"No."
"I'm closing your door."

A helmet like the one I borrowed costs less than 10$ new. A vizor costs around 1.50$. A plastic clamp costs less than 50 cents. The mind boggles. Is the clamp the real issue? I was never asked to replace the clamp. In fact, Don never spoke to me again after the incident. I inquired at work as to where i might find said clamp for sale but when I next approached the room mate, his guard was still up and there was no sharing dialogue with the helmet fairies' conspirator.

Two weeks of awkward silence ensued. We both seemed to manage an effort to be out of each other's way as much as possible. I left the cable bill by the fridge with my portion attached to it. It lay there more than a week until the due date passed.
"Don, could I please have your share for the cable bill?"
"No."
"Excuse me?"
"Come on, Kevin, I paid the bill for four months and you didn't pay a thing."
"I didn't watch any TV then. I'd told you and Nick and Kelly I wasn't going to watch TV."
"You watched TV, Kevin."
"No - I didn't. I watched dvds."
"No, you watched TV."
"No, I didn't"
I'm on my feet approaching Don who's retreating into his room.
"For four months your girlfriend lived here against company policy. You never bothered to check things with me. You never bothered even to tell your house mate, 'yeah, my girlfriend's gonna move in, I hope that's okay with everyone."
"For six months you never bothered to buy toilet paper!" (audience gasps)
"I'm sorry. There was always tp on the shelf. I thought it was something the maid took care of."

This exchange of accusations accomplished nothing. That day at work I called up head office and demanded they find me another house. Another day together would be intolerable. I’m sure it was his intention. Nobody can be so thick headed, or can they? I’m confused how somebody his age living with roommates would not think to tidy up after himself, take a half minute to return his dirty dishes to the sink, need merely rinse them and leave for the maid to finish. Instead the dishes were left as livingroom sculptures where tour groups of ants made pilgrimage. The man couldn’t even be bothered to brush away his unsightly signature in the toilet bowl. Yuck! I let too many things go unsaid until finally I couldn’t take another day of his inconsiderate, slobby nature, or his cigarette smoke wafting through my bedroom window. His voice, rather high pitched, his dopy thug like appearance, a pinkish complexion, a cancerous scar covering half his face, his bulbous nose, his unblinking eyes, his ponch belly hanging over his shorts, it became unbearable even to look at him, let alone hear him repeat the same story a third time. He has five stories: one, about Boracai, the most beautiful beach in the world; two, about his travels in Indonesia more than a decade ago when he’d had long red hair and the local children thought he was a devil-and here I couldn’t help but note a striking similarity with Japanese illustrations of Raijin, the god of thunder and lightning; three, about his parents, Masons, who like to travel and meet with other members of this international organisation; four, a short telling of his Uncle who though very successful and rich, maintains a simple life and whom through his generosity came to inherit a priceless intricately carved Qing dynasty banquet table; and five, less a story and moreso a real estate plug for Brisbane, its parks, its climate, its music and restaurants, etc.

Let's consider though that perhaps I was the a**hole in this predicament. My roomates get along well with each other. They are both Australians, both enjoy watching footy and having a few beers at the end of the day and several more each weekend. Twice a month I could expect Kim to turn up at the gate around two in the morning completely s**t-faced, yelling my name, rousing me from sleep, calling me to let her in. She’d be too drunk to find the key in her purse. On two occasions during her first month in town I’d joined my housemates and several other teachers at the bar. The other roommate has a habit of drinking too quickly and becoming aggressive and abbrasive. Another patron approached me and told me to get my friend off his wife or he’d have my friend kicked out. Kim had grabbed the woman’s shisha and was puffing away. I recall returning one night soon after She had come home, to discover her passed out on her bed, her lamp illuminating a murder scene from a thriller. There was blood everywhere, on the curtains, all over the sheets, the tiled floor, through the hall and in the bath. Apparently, she’d spilt a glass of water, slipt on the wet tiles and smashed her head. Apart from her drinking problem as yet unacknowledged, Kim is an alright house mate. She’s tidy, courteous, friendly, often a good laugh and she respects my space.

I called up management on a Thursday morning, my blood still steaming after more of Don's BS. “I need to move out asap. I do not feel comfortable living there any longer.” Next day I was told a house had come available but it was located the far side of the city. “Fine.” My commute to work increased from 4 to over 40kms. I spend far more on gas but I’ve a house all to myself, a room with air conditioning and I’ve bought a DVD player so I can enjoy watching films in bed! My co-workers, when they ask where I’ve moved to, comment ‘it’s lucky the rainy season’s over, Jl. Muyen Sunkono, the main thoroughfare, floods easily.’ On a Tuesday morning I watch the clouds gather, then the palms begin to sway and I know I’m too late. Half way to work I’m caught in a downpour. Rain hits from all directions, from deep puddles, and unconcerned motorists. My sandal snaps and I’m riding barefoot.

Weekends with Irwan

After several attempts to 'belong', theme parties, beers after work, a saturday night at a club, I have chosen not to seek company among the expat teacher community. I feel I’ve done the right thing, to make friends and lovers among the on-line gay community, though it has been lonely and frustrating. I met Lambang, then Eddy and I’ve persevered and found Irwan. And though for the life of me I cannot teach him to kiss much better than a junior high school boy, bless him, he is sweet and trusting. (I’ve never knowingly kissed a junior high school student.)

We met on Valentine’s Day. We sat in the back courtyard of my house. I asked him about his work as a pharmacology researcher and he asked me why I’d come to Surabaya. His English was slow, disjointed, unpracticed. Several months later he speaks in longer phrases but all tenses remain reported in the present. This is often a source of miscommunication. It has however given me opportunity to practice my Indonesian. We had sex our first date for several hours, the sun set outside the bedroom window’s bars, the kaki limas passed on the street singing ‘tahu’ or ‘sate’. The muezzin called the faithful to prayer and Irwan got up from the bed, washed, spread his sarong on the tiles and knelt towards Mecca. The sex was good -the sex is good- but often i feel it’s all we have or more correctly, that it's all I'm willing to afford.

Like most single young men in Surabaya, Irwan lives in a kost, a room, 3m X 3m, with a tiny slit of sunlight. A mattress covers one third of the floor space. Stacks of books, mostly pharmacology, line the wall. A few plastic squeaky animal toys balance on his library. He has a wardrobe in which he keeps his clothes and he irons even his t-shirts before dressing. A small fan hung on the wall struggles to cut the air. A large calendar is left neglected, September 2008 peers from behind a coat hung on the same peg. Downstairs parked in the small courtyard his father’s old suzuki motorbike gets Irwan to and from work, a lab a short ride away where he tests prescription drugs before they are introduced to the public. He no longer has a laptop. He had to sell it for 400$ to help pay for his brother’s college tuition. His younger brother is studying at AirLanga, one of the city’s more prestegious universities, to become a dental engineer, ie. maker of false teeth.

Irwan must work Saturdays so we seldom have opportunity to escape the heat, the pollution and the crowds of Surabaya. The ocassional holiday weekend allows us - and thousands others - opportunity to explore the hilltowns of east Java. Irwan’s watch is set to Indonesian time, between a half hour and one hour behind. Such custom I’ve come to understand reminds us there’s no rush. He’s never ready on time and usually needs much prompting. It doesn’t seem to matter the route or time of day we choose to exit Surabaya, traffic is inevitable.

Mawlid, this year's ninth of March, marking the birth date of the Prophet Muhammed, may peace be upon him, fell on a Monday. My new lover and I join the swell of exhaust along Jalan Achmed Yani, and the truck route east via Krian where a road less taken reaches the lush hill town of Trawas perched the other end of a rising countryside below the perfect peaks of Penanggungan and Arjuna. Climbing the hills, the temperatures cool immediately, the view broadens encompassing fantastic designs of steep rice terraces and the cost of real estate jumps dramatically. Only the very wealthy of Surabaya can afford the villas in Trawas. A few dangerous curves further brings us to Tretes, enjoying the same fragrant pine air but a more distant view of Penanggungan usually obstructed by a neighbour’s wall, laundry or satelite dish. Affordable motels cling to the slopes and greet visitors with typical billboards advertised garrishly along the snaking high street. At the advice of co-workers we hunted down Kali Mas and splurged on an executive suite. The rain keeps us indoors undressed and snuggling. Evening we stroll the quiet streets and find a kaki-lima selling teranbulan, a delicious nutty cake.

The rainy season hangs grey across the middle of next day's sky and heavy downpours last for several hours. In a nearby park, a lush forest path leading to Air Terjun Kakek Bodo, 'Stupid Grandpa waterfall', Irwan and I duck inside a long shack painted pale blue selling hot bowls of bakso. I order a kopi pahit. We sit quietly watching the ferns and flowers bathe, the puddles grow and young couples dashing under cover. Remember this, how simple is life when stripped of its layers of extravagance, and laid bear in the rainy hours between.

Easter. I've booked Irwan and I into a simple accomodation at Kebun Teh Wonosari, a vast tea plantation spread across the lower eastern slopes of Arjuna above the town of Lawang. At daybreak I walk among the dewy shrubs enchanted by dozens of wee yellow butterflies and hypnotic buzzing flies. I'm reminded of sesame street's insect puppets. Irwan and I spend a quiet morning exploring the far reaches of what appears an endless sea of tea shrubs. Afternoon, we follow a back road to the village of Singosari and locate the old Hindu temple standing on a small property in a typical looking neighbourhood. The dynasty of Singosari (1222 - 1292AD) was established by an ambitious young ruler who defeated the King of Kediri. The short-lived kingdom, contemporary with and a tributary vassal of the Monghul expansion in China and elsewhere in mainland Asia, was later honoured with a handful of temples around present day Malang, each decorated with beautiful stone carvings or Vishnu, Brahma, Durga, Ganesh, Nandi, the goddess Parvati, and Rakshasa guardians, the finer examples of which have long since been relocated by the Dutch to their university in Leiden. A short ride into the lower slopes of Arjuna, and not the most clearly signposted, Candi Sumberawan dates from the mid fourteenth century. All that remains is a simple reconstructed Buddhist Stupa set in a lush garden deep inside a quiet glen of rice fields and water reserves.

A Saturday afternoon in May, the maid's day off, the house accumulates my house mate's slovenly appearance and thick stench of tobacco smoke, Irwan rescues me with a promised trip to his hometown, a small village, Prupuh, in Gresik regency, two hours from Surabaya. Our first stop is Pantai Dalegan, an overcrowded strip of beach with questionably swimmable water, nonetheless it is the closest 'swimmable' beach to Surabaya and every inch of shade is claimed by groups of young people out for a weekend ride. That evening I'm introduced to Irwan's father and mother and grandmother and a couple neighbours. Irwan's childhood home is small and simple. Only two frames hang on the livingroom wall, one a poster of the clerics who brought Islam to Java, another a flower arrangement done in oils. In the kitchen blocking a back wall stands a stack of rice bags towering over two metres. Irwan's folks own a small plot of land an hour's walk down hill where they grow rice and a few papaya trees and raise three cows. Irwan's father bought the cows after he sold his goats. The goats were rather noisy. The house is kept immaculate. Irwan's mother arrives late evening and though Irwan and I have already fetched our own supper she ladels us each a bowl of rawon a beef broth of sorts and some salt fish. Irwan sleeps on the hard floor in the livingroom. I sleep alone in his little bed where by morning I discover the mosquitoes have learnt to bypass the netting. The bedroom is simple, furniture that wouldn't be considered fit even for charity back in Canada. A frame sits on a wee bureau, Irwan and his highschool chums so many years ago. When Irwan is chatting with his folks, I sit on a tattered old rattan seat out front the house. All through the evening and the next morning, the old woman in the facing bamboo house sits on the earthen floor just inside the door, pulling apart leaves or branches, just out of view. It's a quiet lane wide enough for a motorbike, shared by five or six homes, families who've always lived here. One day Irwan hopes to return and live in his village.

A few weekends later I've booked Irwan and I into a posh old resort in Kalibaru, a long long ride to the southeast, almost as far as Bali. We leave late Friday night and past one in the morning check in to a hotel on the main strip in Probolinggo. Just after six the next morning we've breakfasted and are back on the road riding south, south-east, the summit of Sumeru puffing to the west, the peaks of Agropuro and Lamongan loom to the west. The sky is blue and the road free of traffic, following a long straight canal for miles and miles before reaching Jember. We stop for lunch in a colourful market long enough for Irwan to crack the vizor on my helmet. A few hours later across a low mountain pass where monkeys stand by the roadside waiting for peanuts, and rather strange, every few hundred metres a woman or two stands there too with their hand out attached to a sad expression. poverty in paradise.

Margo Utomo Resort has two locations in Kalibaru, a higher end address behind the train station and a more affordable but no less beautiful accommodation on the edge of town. Irwan and I are shown to our room. It has two small beds. 'Uuuuh,' Irwan shows no sign of shame and requests a room with a single queen size bed. The sky grows dark with an afternoon storm, and the heavy rain dances on the roof tiles as we make love - with the windows open.

Travelling by bike in the rainy season is not easy. Our 'holiday' is confined to the morning hours before the daily deluge falls. We wake early and before a buffet breakfast, Irwan takes a plunge in the pool while I wander the expansive gardens. I'm curious to tour a nearby coffee plantation for which the region, on the edge of the Dieng Plateau, is famous. With my nose for adventure, we are soon lost down a dirt track growing increasingly wet, bumpy and narrow until reaching a hilltop. Below a field of sugarcane stretches for miles towards the town of Glenmore. I've been reading a novel set in the Dominican Republic in which the author explains how sugarcane fields are the best place to kill somebody. The stalks grow close together and stand over eight feet tall. At the bottom of the road we find our way to a cocoa plantation, a rubber tree plantation and even invite ourselves inside a rubber factory where the friendly labourers oblige my curiosity. We rush back to the resort. The rain has arrived all of a sudden. We pack and wait for a lull in the downpour. It is not forthcoming and I've forgotten to pack a poncho but it's time we must return home. Pulang. The mountain pass with the patient grinning monkeys is chilly in the rain but before Jember the sky clears. A hot sun dries us before disappearing behind a third round of storm. Night descends early. Irwan drives us through the pelting rain. I wrap my arms around him to keep us warm. We are both soaked and still hours from Surabaya. We stop somewhere for a bowl of Bakso in a crowded, steamy window roadside canteen where customers are made to feel like family. A place I'd like to return to with Irwan years from now if ever we meet again. Traffic slows along the highway past Probolinggo where a roadbock diverts traffic into the back country. Pasuruan is flooded. We have to pass a few hundred metres of foot high water. Homes stand in muddy pools either side of the road. Residents try to rescue their belongings. Some stand by the roadside with buckets held out to the passing traffic. Drivers offer a small donation.

A weekday evening when Irwan has come to spend he night. Laying in bed, digesting dinner, watching a pirated dvd, his fresh shower scent tempts me. I lean over for a kiss. He laughs, ‘oh, shrimp flavour.’ We don’t always understand each other. It requires patience. Irwan speaks without verb tense. And I can seldom finish a complete phrase in Indonesian, having to splice in English. But we both try and I tell him confidently that I love his company. I no longer worry that our relationship is based purely on sex. Irwan has grown more confident speaking in English, and has grown more comfortable sharing his thoughts with me.

We're making the most of what time remains. And when there is less and less, we grow closer and I play a song whose lyrics he doesn't understand but in his body so close to mine I can feel the words. Ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas, Je ne vais plus pleurer, je ne vais plus parler.

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Photos

so many butterflies
Kebun Teh Wonosari

Gunung Semeru
seen from the east, near Lamongan

Gunung Penanggunan, from Trawas
Trawas is where all the rich folk of Surabaya own villas

Gunung Pamanggunang
afternoon

Kakek Bodo, Tretes
midday downpour in lush environs

Air Terjun Kakek Bodo
translation: 'Stupid Grandfather Waterfall'

kopi pahit
watching rain

Warung Bakso, Kakek Bodo
meatball soup served hot in a rain forest

Martabak
delicious evening savoury or sweet