Jakarta Suckers!
Mar 22nd, 2010, in Opinion, by Ross
Ross McKay’s latest novel ‘Jakarta Suckers!’, bule-prostitute romance blossoms on Jl Falatehan.
Having only recently begun following the thread about ‘Dating Indonesian Girls‘, I was intrigued by the variety of wounded westerners/bules littering its back-roads, intrigued and mildly miffed that I hadn’t time to revise my latest work of fiction to include more of their experiences.
But JAKARTA SUCKERS! (out now, from Morfiny Books, 85000 rupiah, available from morfinybooks@yahoo.ca or PM me – free delivery in Jabotabek) is still a useful read for anybody who hangs out after dark in the dives of the Big Durian.
My first experiment in writing in the first person, it centres on a guy named Barrie (who, once you read the book, you’ll know is not me!) and his dalliance with a slapper named Losari. Having gotten into her, he finds it hard to disentangle himself, because he thinks she’s “different!”
Some cynics say you can always tell if a bar-girl is lying, because you can see her lips move. I don’t agree – just ask her what she wants to drink and she’s guaranteed to tell the truth!
But cewek2 licik and bule2 gila will continue to interact, because they’re made for each other. And it is mutually advantageous, as the former get richer and the latter get wiser.
I have frequented Jaksa and Falatehan for a decade or more and listened to many a forlorn fellow lamenting how he was taken for a ride by these delightful demimondes, so it seemed timely to fictionalise their down-falls.
But to make it more fun I applied my colourful imagination to embed the morality tale in an adventure yarn, which I hope only emphasises the point. Mendacity begets misfortune. The story also gives hints on how to detect prevarication, with anecdotal evidence as ‘awful warnings’ to new kids on the block.
I enjoyed writing it so much that I’m already started on my next.
Excerpts from ‘Jakarta Suckers!’
(Why a Prostitute?)
Again, sage old bules will ask you why you’d expect a hooker here in Jakarta, or in Bangkok, to be good settling-down material. If you want a soul-mate in Michigan, or Manitoba, or Manchester, you’d not go rushing down to the red-light district, would you? And nor would I. Having commuted through King’s Cross Station in London at all hours of day or night for several years, and seen how frightful the hookers there are, it would seem an act of madness to go prospecting for a partner in that sort of locale.
But the girls here are not the same as prostitutes in the West, who have alternatives, not least to do what so many young women do there and sponge off the welfare state. There are millions of poor people here with no prospect of real jobs and not a trace of any serious welfare system to tide them over until an economic miracle arrives. They include large numbers of young, and not so young, women, who often have elderly parents who depend on them, or babies to feed, or, sadly, shiftless husbands or live-in lovers who whack ‘em around if they don’t go out and bring home sustenance.
So what do they do? They are not, many of them, stupid, and they are, most of them, attractive. Indonesian women are magnificent specimens of their sex, and we bules, by our reactions, remind them of this daily.
(Why a Bule?)
So the girls go out for bules, not because we have big dicks, though they tell us that, nor because we are handsome or consummate raconteurs, though they give us to believe those things too (lies, remember?) but because we have money, in amounts they can only dream about. English teachers are on the lowest rung of expat salary levels, and their pay is equivalent, so I’m told, to about the same as a judge’s or a middle-ranking police officer’s. (though those fine fellows have ways of supplementing incomes not open to the teachers)
The girls in the bars see it as their mission in life to detach us from our cash. Or more precisely, detach the cash from us, because they don’t want us, they want the nice green stuff.
To this end, guided by the imperatives of survival, and advancement – which means buying plots of land back in their kampungs, building a house on it, and boosting their bank account to a level whereby their ‘post-sell-by’ date in bar-life will be comfortable – they will tell you whatever you want to hear, or whatever they think will motivate those dollar bills and pound notes to flit from your pockets to their purses.
This goes far beyond haggling over bed-fees. It encompasses gulling the dumbest into financing courses in hair-dressing or typing or anything the poor sod will believe is a stepping stone to ‘liberation’ from a life of sin!
Big Yuli, not the scrawny little Yuli from Tebet who got a few hundred out of me to pay her dad’s debts, but the gal with enormous assets who did the ‘Johnny Andrean’ on me, yes, the full monty hair-dressing course, never actually convinced me she wanted a new career, but I was so fixated on her chest at the time that I happily handed over the money.
144 Comments on “Jakarta Suckers!”
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deta says:
Bit Xenophobic don’t you think?
No, it’s not xenophobic, dear Oigal, how can I have xenophobia when in fact I spent a few years of my life in your country and enjoyed being in the middle of ‘foreigner’ friends that come from various races and countries? (I had an awesome home stay family in Brisbane, a nice family with three children, before I decided to move to a flat so I could stand on my own).
I wouldn’t have been there if I had xenophobia, don’t you think? -
Prostitution is always going to be there…so the state either tolerates it and lets it be controlled by criminal gangs, with no rules; or it steps in and regulates it, protects sex workers and forces those within it to abide by certain, disease and violence containing rules.
So true. They can’t pretend that they ‘have solved’ the prostitution problem by chasing the prostitutes away from the prostitution areas or destroying the buildings while they can’t provide a better alternative source of income for these poor women.
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Oigal says:
I dunno Deta, Perhaps I misunderstood but seemed to me you point was that Foreigners tend to bring in more and various kinds of diseases than nationals.
Although it is not an uncommon point of view..
As with all phobias, a xenophobic person has to genuinely think or believe at some level that the target is in fact a foreigner. This arguably separates xenophobia from racism
No contact anywhere with an illegal alien!” conservative talk show host Michael Savage advised his U.S. listeners this week on how to avoid the swine flu. “And that starts in the restaurants” where he said, you “don’t know if they wipe their behinds with their hands!”
And Thursday, Boston talk radio host Jay Severin was suspended after calling Mexican immigrants “criminalians” during a discussion of swine flu and saying that emergency rooms had become “essentially condos for Mexicans.”
That’s tepid compared to some of the xenophobic reactions spreading like an emerging virus across the Internet.Fearmongering and blame are almost a natural part of infectious disease epidemics, experts say.
“This is a pattern we see again and again,” said Amy Fairchild, chair of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. “It’s ‘the other,’ the group not seen as part of the nation, the one who threatens it in some way that gets blamed for the disease.
Not sure that I would want my views to compared to the above tho.
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The point I am making that suggesting things like foreigners, or Africans, Papuans or Javanese (pick one stranger of your choice) are the cause of disease is essentially nonsense and whilst it generates a few outrageous headlines for the nasties in the world such claims only distract from the main issue.
The reality is in this day and age people and materials are mobile as are human diseases. Sex for favours will always exist as will STDs (and bird flu and…) the only defence against such things is a concerted effort in health education including such things as safe sex, the use of condoms etc.
Of course in alternate reality world, you could stop international and inter region travel. Additionally, no one would ever visit a prostitute, chickens don’t catch cold and no girl would ever offer sex for reward. Unfortunately, except in the minds of the clinically deluded, last I heard that portal was closed for renovations which is kind of sad, the yellow sky looked kinda cool.
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I dunno Deta, Perhaps I misunderstood but seemed to me you point was that Foreigners tend to bring in more and various kinds of diseases than nationals.
No, you didn’t misunderstand. It was just my emotional response to your statement about ‘being in foreigner market as the top of a hooking career’. Can’t help being racist toward a statement with racist tone, I guess.
But, well, as you said it is not an uncommon point of view, and Indonesia is not quite a xenophobic country on that matter, still thinking twice to apply a travel ban due to economical reasons, compared to western countries. Eee… why can’t I stop being racist?
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ET says:
still thinking twice to apply a travel ban due to economical reasons, compared to western countries.
This is getting nasty. When Western counties issue travel bans or warnings because of terrorist attacks and/or threats, they are considered racist or xenophobic.
Amazing how the Indonesian mind supposes everyone else should take all what goes on here for granted.
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Geez, ET, you have been a very sensitive fella lately. What I was trying to say is Indonesia probably just as xenophobic and as racist as other countries, but because it depends heavily on the developed countries in terms of its economy, it is not that easy for this country to apply a travel ban that will have a direct impact on the well-being of the people economically.
You really need a nice weekend.
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🙂 Well someone is over sensitive thats for sure, the example used was some loons USA (generally considered western nation) being “disease” xenophobic. It emotive nonsense with no basis or logic in fact no matter who says or does it.
Try not to confuse racist with xenophobic they are different terms and nothing racist about
“being in foreigner market as the top of a hooking career
Firstly pretty sure I made a presumption or observation rather than statement, secondly the term “foreigner” tends to mean anyone who travels to Indonesia which includes all races as far as I am aware. I guess if you were really looking for offence insecure, you could assume that the statement meant every other race is ok but racist against Indonesians…except besides being a bit scary and insecure..further qaulified the statement (although it shouldn’t need it) by saying higher income (or something like that) earners.
Indonesia is not quite a xenophobic country on that matter,
Laugh, what do we call Malaysians, Singaporeans, Chinese again and what evil do they do?
it is not that easy for this country to apply a travel ban that will have a direct impact on the well-being of the people economically.
Ok let me get this right, if was not for the money, you are saying Indonesia should think about a travel ban on Foreigners due to desease transmission? Would it include Papuans who have one of the highest rates of STD’s and Aids in SE Asia per capita.
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Geez, ET, you have been a very sensitive fella lately
No need to become personal. I suppose there is an almost Babylonic linguistic confusion going on here. Do you mean travel bans to other counties for health reasons like bird or swine flu, or even HIV? If you had a responsible government they would certainly issue such bans or warnings instead of putting its head in the sand and jeopardize public health in favor of an economy that benefits a few and leaves most of the rakyat in the cold (or choking heat in this case).
I was referring to the times people here made a lot of noise because some western countries had the ‘impertinence’ to issue travel warnings for terror threats or impose restrictive measures because of airline safety.You really need a nice weekend.
I’ll take a note.
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Ross says:
This is getting quite interesting.
Certainly excluding all foreigners indefinitely because a disease outbreak has occurred in their country would be unreasonable, but if, for example, Belgium, suddenly succumbed to a plague of unknown ferocity, would it not be sensible to exclude Belgians for the time being?
And what about stopping those with a ghastly disease entering one’s country?
That would seem entirely sensible, but Obama has apparently said the ban on immigration of AIDS carriers is to end. This would seem akin to insanity, except in the context of his paying election debts to a certain group! -
Deta, the trouble with the word ‘xenophobia,’ which means fear of foreigners (or strangers) is that it has become a political slogan in some Western countries, used to whack people concerned about destabilisation of their own land’s culture, or cultures.
You obviously had a nice time in a foreign land and got on with the folks you found there, as do I.(I mean I like Indonesians, most of them, and in fact most of the nationalities whose countries i have visited.)
But if you complain about imposed multicult in Canada, Britain, or America, or Aussie, or much of the West, in fact, you are instantly accused of xenophobia, and I think the EU (SSR) has declared it a crime, or that it should be a crime.
I could talk about the EU’s double standards on which countries it inveighs against (eg agianst the junta in Myanmar/Burma but not against the totalitarian regimes in Vietnam or Laos) but that is just selective nidignation, which one expects from multicult enthusiasts!
I realise I’m going way off topic, but if anyone is entitled to do so on this thread, it should be me!
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Ross I think I found Barrie and Losari last night:
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Odinius says:
Um…travelers ad sojourners DO take diseases from place A to place B. It just doesn’t always go from place A to place B. Sometimes it goes from place B to place A. Or from place C to places D, E, F, and G. Or from place G, to place A, B, and C.
You all get my point, surely.
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venna says:
It is not easy for not being a little bit emotional when we touch grey area like this, I agree with Deta. Like me, for the first time I felt offended when reading Ross’s excerpt and if I didn’t see that it’s as just a portrait of a tiny bit different segment in prostitution business and not represent the whooolee… population, it’s easy to fall into scapegoat game again. Oigal’s presumption on “being in foreigner market as the top of hooking career” was a little bit stinging too and I almost burst my complaint, but for different reason. But it’s okay now, since Oigal made it clear.
Oh, by the way, I searched the history of hiv/aids last night, and I almost fell from my chair because I laughed so hard. I found that the conspiracy theory DOES mentioned! that the virus is man-made and distributed worldwide by secret agents (you know who they are…*grin*… CIA, Jews, westerners) to wipe out black people and gay men. I thought it was a joke. It isn’t! The other theories are like hunting-killing monkeys, unsterilized needles, and direct contact and others bla bla bla….
Of course, the conspiracy theory is tend to be highly inaccurate. I cannot imagine some guys from the west created a lethal virus and spread it to monkeys in Africa when at 1880s they were busy to fight numbers of epidemic diseases like flu, cholera, smallpox in their own countries (some sources said that the virus existed since around 1880s). Or that a bunch of Jews visited Africa looongg… time ago just for having sex with monkeys and therefore they got infected? Come on! They must be really crazy dudes!
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Conspiracy theories are, generally speaking, not worth taking seriously. They are fun to laugh at, though.
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Yeah, and maybe pretty fun too to use it to scare kids at camps.
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venna said
Oigal’s presumption on “being in foreigner market as the top of hooking career” was a little bit stinging too and I almost burst my complaint, but for different reason.
Well, as a foreigner in any market here it must be the top of anyone’s career judging from the prices the foreigner gets charged compared to the locals.
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@ET:
It could be. But it’s not always their favorite meal, I think, as Ross mentioned it in his story about Kalijodo. So maybe they charge foreigners more, but not always making them as main target.
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@ venna
I didn’t mean specifically the ‘meat’ market but any market where goods and services are sold to foreigners and locals alike. Ask any expat who does his shopping himself. Or let me put it another way, ask any saleswoman in Ubud’s market to change places with, say, Bangli and look at her expression. I don’t think she will consider it a positive career move.
Plain and simple, foreigners pay more and are therefore top notch on the ladder.
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Grrh! I was hoping you’re not saying that. Now I have less room to debate Oigal’s point! because if most of markets doing that, it could be the same too for meat market.
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Interesting this thing about conspiracy theories.
Used to be the MIAs in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia were dismissed as a big conspiracy theory, then last year, was it, Red China owned up to having one, captured in Korea and never freed, who died in captivity, sadly.
The guy put in charge of the overall enquiry resigned in disgust at what was being done to lost servicemen. Then Senator Kerry told the investigators who threatened to open the Vietnam MIA issue up that they’d wish they’d ‘never been born’ if they let people know about Washington’s betrayals. Once I learned about that, I reckoned almost any deception and cover-up is possible.
When you sell out your own sons and brothers, there is no conscience involved, and no depth the in-crowd won’t sink to. -
adinda says:
no, i have no emphaty or whatsoever for the street hookers.
once, i went to bali to accompany friends, and, jeez, the street girls mostly looked at me jealously.
haloooo, i am indonesian, went around in my own country! none treated me like before and never at the place where i am now here and certainly, all my male-counterpart physicists do respect me.
somehow i wonder here, how all of you guys, find time after time to always write and give comments here… ck ck ck… 🙂
anyway, have a nice weekend..
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Ross said:
Then Senator Kerry told the investigators who threatened to open the Vietnam MIA issue up that they’d wish they’d ‘never been born’ if they let people know about Washington’s betrayals.
See, this is why conspiracy theories are retarded. This is in no way,shape or form true.
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And blank denials of what occurred don’t suffice, Odinius.
if any of you are interested, spend a few hours scanning the MIA info on the internet.
The reports are startling, and the indifference of the authorities appalling. Not Amkerican myself, I never got into it deeply until that report from China…it makes you think…if you are open to doing so.
Here’s a brief extract from the American Spectator, which elucidates Odinius’ reliance on Kerry’s denials.:
——————————————————————————–
The American Spectator April, 1994 / May, 1994 (pg 154-155)
Quote:
snip~~
That left them with 929 first-hand live-sighting reports, all involving two or more men allegedly seen in conditions indicating they were prisoners. They plotted the 929 sightings on a map of Southeast Asia, using pins to mark each one. Cambodia drew no pins; Laos and some areas of Vietnam drew only a few. Other areas of Vietnam, however, drew pins in clumps or clusters. In every place where there was a cluster, there was also a Vietnamese prison. The committee investigators, who, for technical reasons, were using live-sighting reports that extended only through 1989, drew an obvious conclusion: “that American prisoners of war have been held continuously after Operation Homecoming and remain[ed] in captivity in Vietnam and Laos as late as 1989.”I wrote that Senator Kerry was unhappy with the investigators’ report, and that he told one of the investigators that if the report ever leaked out, “you’ll wish you’d never been born” (not “they would wish they had never been born”). My source for this stands by his story. Actually, it is an inconsequential point. I also wrote that Frances Zwenig, the committee’s staff director, ordered that all copies of the investigators’ report be destroyed, and that their computer
files be purged.Senator Kerry rejects my account of this, and then purports to tell the “truth” of what really happened. He says that “a small number of investigators for the committee minority presented their personal opinions,” and that they relied on “so-called cluster mapping.” He also says that the senators themselves examined the intelligence data on which the investigators based their finding, and found the data faulty. To prevent scurrilous leaks,” he insists, the committee then “secured” all copies of the investigators’ report.
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‘Scurrilous leaks,’ being what Kerry didn’t want known.
Given the above, you can either swallow whole the establishment version, or read more and decide for yourself.
This thread is going off in all directions, but the difference between silly theories, like Jews poisoning Africans with AIDS viruses, and well-documented cover-ups, like the MIA issue, is not to be shuffled out of sight by bland dismissive asides from Odinius. -
Ross, the MIA crowd were alleging that Vietnam had hundreds or thousands of POWs in camps. The committee investigating the issue in 1993–which included Senators John McCain and Bob Smith, in addition to John Kerry–found no evidence that this was true. After normalization in 1995, it was demonstrated to be absolutely, 100% false. The whole damned country is open, and swarming with Americans, French and others. And the POWs? Still living, but in the fantasies of conspiracy theorists who can’t face the grim reality that it was always, well, a fantasy.
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Yes, that’s what they said about those captured in Korea, until Beijing admitted to holding one, decades later. America had been fed a crock and done nothing.
How come you are so eager to write these guys off? Vietnam is ‘open’ for foreign investment, but there are large areas which remain far off the beaten track, though by now the MIAs probably are dead. It’s been 35 years since the country was enslaved, after all.
The evidence of prisoners is disturbingly strong, and rather than reprint it all here, those of you readers who have not closed their mids to cover-ups can pursue it yourselves, or read my last book, fiction indeed, but which has plenty of notes on the subject. (A VERY MAD JAKSA MAN)
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It’s nothing like North Korea. First, North Korea is a closed society: very, very few people have access to it, physically or in terms of information. Vietnam, while still authoritarian, is very much an open place, and there is almost no sq. meter of the country you can’t physically go and stand in. Considering this fact, it’s notable that in the 15 years since normalization, exactly zero evidence of any POWs has turned up.
Second, there’s never been a comprehensive investigation of POWs in North Korea, and there’s always been ample evidence that they did hold people against their will…not only soldiers, but also civilians they kidnapped from Japan and South Korea. So it’s not a good comparison.
The fact is, the POW/MIA conspiracy theory was kept alive during the years when Vietnam was more closed than it is, because there were some POWs initially–let’s not forget John McCain was one of them–and because the government of Vietnam’s refusal to address the issue directly (related to the US’ refusal to have diiplomatic relations with its former adversary). This grain of truth, lack of access and communication allowed people to imagine scenarios in which many of those whose bodies likely rotted in unmarked graves or in the jungles were actually alive in secret camps. The conspiracy theory still lives because the activists have too much invested in the topic to let it go, even when the opacity of Vietnam lifted and it became clear to most others that it simply never was true on the scale the activists and conspiracy theoriests imagined it to be.
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You’re missing the point, Odinius, or for some obscure reason refusing to look at it. The abundant evidence that MIAs were out there.
If you go through the information picked up, not least the signs observed from the air which actually spelt out the names or call-signs of missing Americans, evidence passed up the chain by operatives convinced of its validity, and the constantly dilatory response of the people who should have been pursuing the leads, it points to a wish to close down the search.
Kerry and Clinton were intent on re-opening relations with the dictatorship and did not want this fouled up by a few hundred servicemen who as I said above would probably die off in captivity and who are now, as you put it, ‘rotting in unmarked graves.’
Totalitarian regimes are quite capable of keeping things wrapped up. As, alas, are Western Governments eager to do business with the former.
Millard Peck, the colonel put in charge of the investigations, resigned in disgust at the way his task was continually thwarted by political interference in Washington. You can see what he said at –
http://www.gx2527leftinvietnam.com/resign.html -
Anyway, t get this thread back on track, I see another local chat site has had somebody describing me as ‘Jaksa’s Hunter S Thompson.’ I’ve certainly been called worse, but I’m not sure in what respect I resemble that gent. I wish my sales figures could match his, however.
Here’s another extract to stimulate debate.A small but beautifully formed nymph from a certain café in Kemang had caught his eye, and soon more than his eye. Rex had left the teaching profession years ago and thus had a decent salary. He was in a position, then, to set up Herawati, for that was her name, in a room of some quality up behind Mal Ambassador, where he would repair at every possible moment when free of his missus’ watchful hawk-like supervision. There he would bonk and bonk till he dropped. But then Herawati got greedy. She wanted it all, the comfortable home in Simprug, the shiny Kijang or two, the servants. She wanted full title to Rex. And he wasn’t having any of that.
“The hell, I love those kids and I owe Fita, and if I was bein’ forced to choose, then Hera had to go.” So he said to me, after Hera had stalked him to his office, then to his home. Mortified, he was put on the spot, but his choice was obvious to anybody who knew him. An irate Hera flew out into the street, wailing like a banshee. He learned later that all the time she’d been his kept whore, she’d been taking breaks at BATS and the Club Tiga Puluh and turning one-hundred-dollar tricks for visiting businessmen. Even so, he had a softer heart than me. Rex transferred 10 million to Hera’s account to ‘give her a fresh start,’ as he put it. Or maybe to buy peace and quiet – they don’t give up without tearing some flesh off your bones.
More flimsy, but, even so, interesting, is what allegedly befell my English pal Percy.(not the same Percy who rants at school!) He is a teller of tall tales when it comes to his own sexual prowess, but in this city anything is possible.so I shall refrain from expressing my own views on its credibility.
Percy was working in a private Catholic elementary school when he met Lianne, a buxom young Chinese. She was, he claims, attractive but from a very traditional family who didn’t give her much personal freedom. Innocent in matters of the flesh, she was desperate to remedy this condition, and offered to pay Percy if he’d provide the necessary assistance.
Percy turned this offer over in his mind for minutes and minutes before succumbing to her pleas, despite the fact that he was in a very blissful live-in situation with another Catholic Chinese lady called Theresa. Over several months, Lianne handed him a total of eleven million rupiah, which, as he gleefully confided in me half-way though the relationship, amounted to approximately Rp. 500,000 per bang. He was never the most romantic of souls.
But in the end, as these flings do, the stress of continuing deception proved too much and he withdrew from Lianne ( permanently, not just after a morning’s penetration!). These coitus sessions had taken place in her kos, up in Kota, while his home was near mine, in South Jakarta at that time. “I should have charged her for travel too,” he once joked. But she never saw the joke, and soon saw red when her investment ceased to bring interest.
She hunted him down at his favourite watering-hole and said she wanted every penny of her money back or she’d go directly to Theresa and seek the cash there. Or Percy could resume normal service as soon as possible.
Now had it been me…but Percy got his dander up, and rejected her threat in harsh language. She backed off, after several sightings near his home had given him cause for concern.
In the normal way of things, persons acquainted with Percy’s boastfulness would take his claims with a pinch of salt,. If Lianne were as pretty as he made out, no damn way would she hire his private parts for even Rp.90,000, let along 11 million. On the other hand, were she a ‘grannie grow-bag,’ as we once nick-named the land-lady of the Miller’s Arms, perhaps she might have done. Neither possible alternative burnishes Percy’s spearsman image, neither does his own admission that his client demanded a refund!
But the gist of the story is worth telling, as it illustrates the ever-present blend of jealousy and avarice in Jakarta dolly-birds that ignites the blackmail urge.
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Police and auxies alike are infamous for their abuse of women.
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Yeah, it happen a lot. Some said that they have to pay it with sex if they want to be released. They had to give free service for the security officers, the criminal gangs, and split money for them too. I visited one of ciblek’s house long time ago, and I kinda lost my words. She’s poor, her house was cold and ugly, and she had to work to help her parents to buy enough food. Imagine what kind of animals that forced her to split her money when she really need it for her family.