clean-shaven. Satiya stays out most nights and refuses to answer to anyone when he comes home in the mornings. He eats and then goes off to work, his eyes sullen and drooping from lack of sleep. He did not like school and cannot speak a word of English, whereas I still have the certificates that I won in high school for best English student two years in a row – the year my father died and the next year. After that I came back home, to Jakarta, as there wasn’t any money to keep me there.
Night is the best time for Jakarta. Our houses are small and hot, so we hang out in the street or down by the river, where there are a few scraggly trees and a warung that sells tea. We also buy snacks there, and sometimes a little vodka, and other things if the right person is buying. There are piles of rubbish along the street and clouds of insects rising from the river, and a straight stretch of road that is good for racing. Our motorbikes roar like stallions, kicking up dust over the oily moon. There are no women here – all wives, mothers and sisters are in the homes that they are constantly spinning for us, like spiders. When we return at dawn, wives will be sulky and silent, mothers will scold.
Everyone who has a bike comes down here to try to earn a little extra money by racing and betting at the balap1. We do this every Friday and Saturday night – unless the police come. Then they take whatever they can get out of us and send us home. Sometimes there is very big money to be won at the balap, and then the police will allow it, for a share of the prize money. If you want to win big, though, you have to put up top money. This is why you must be very careful about lending money to your friends. They will sometimes borrow from many friends on the same day, in order to do this racing. When they lose, they will have no way to pay anyone back.
One night I won three races, all of them against the second brother of my street enemy, who had cost me both my girlfriend and my job. My friend Budi was there, and he told me:
Take this bastard, Fajar, and show him who is the winner and who will be the winner, always, in the end.
We had put two hundred thousand rupiah on the first race. They called the start and from the beginning I felt the bike rush out fast and straight and I beat him easily. His face was blank as he called for another race. We always double the money if another race is called for. I told him he would be very sorry to lose four hundred thousand more. I could still feel the magic coming from my jeans and the warm seat of my bike, so I agreed and again, I beat him easily. This time he was sweating and showing his teeth after the finish.
He slowly walked over to where his friends were standing and talked for a minute and then returned. He wanted to race for eight. I had already won six and Budi was telling me to stop, but I was looking at the sweat forming on his forehead and I knew I would beat him again. Give me two hundred thousand, I told Budi – I knew that he had some money, although he had lost his job at the same time as me. This time he wanted to double the distance but Budi said:
No. He will run off the end if he loses.
Leave my eight here, my opponent said, and nobody runs anywhere.
So we raced with two men from each side at the finish line and I beat him again. I was happy to take his money, although we never usually race for this amount and I surely knew he would have to borrow to live and would struggle to pay back his friends for a long time.
The next night he wanted to race me again, but I refused.
You are three times the loser. I won’t waste my time racing such a rider.
His body stiffened and he glared at me for a moment but said nothing, and after a few seconds he got on his bike and drove away into the night.
My blessings to your brother, I called after him.
I was relieved to see him go. In truth, I couldn’t feel the magic in my body that night and I was sure he would have beaten me.
In the daytime and some nights I had been working as a security guard at KFC. I had a uniform and was earning one million rupiah per month. There is a trick to that job that not everyone knows: you can take your free meal, which you are given every day, and sell it outside for half price. You take the back lane, or the car park, and there is always someone who will buy it. If you can find a way to get two meals out, and nobody notices, it is even better. In this way you can increase your salary and that is how I could get a deposit for my motorbike.
Aryanti was my girlfriend at that time. I had told her that as soon as I paid the bike we would be married, but soon after that I became impatient and did not want to wait. Aryanti’s mother was the one who refused.
He can wait and pay the bike first, she told her. Have an umbrella ready before the rain.
My own mother was not in agreement because she did not want me to follow in Satiya’s footsteps. I was already twenty-four and she was anxious not to have a second son in his thirties with no wife, but she told me to respect the wishes of Aryanti’s mother without argument.
It was some time later that I lost the job. Remi, the brother of the man I later beat on the bike began telling stories about me and Budi. First he told them that we were smoking ganja when working, but he could not show any proof. We were called into the office, where Mr Iskandar, the boss man, looked into our eyes for signs of drugs. This was the same man who had squeezed our testicles at our job interview, in order to check that we were virgins. I had shaved all the hairs from around my penis and testes, as I had seen done in many porn movies, and he was very surprised to see this.
What is this for?! he demanded.
I was standing with my pants around my ankles with everybody looking at my poor exposed bird.
Do you have the crabs? Or are you some kind of perverted infidel?
I wanted to tell him that he was the perverted one to lay his hands on my private parts, but instead I told him about my terrible heat rash, from riding the motorbike and wearing jeans. I quickly showed him the bribe money and he told me to do up my trousers.
There had been three of us on that day and we all got a job, but the third man died soon afterwards in a traffic accident. He was run over on his motorbike on the way to work, and somehow never replaced. I wondered if Iskandar had continued to take his pay, because we had to cover three floors between two people, when it should have been one floor each. Budi and I had worked together like this for two years, when the same boss again called us in to the office. This time he looked into our eyes, instead of other places, to see if we showed any signs of smoking drugs. I could see that he had not gotten over his earlier dislike of me. He let Budi stand to one side and tried for some minutes to get a confession from me, but I held firm and he did not fire us.
The next day we brought cigarettes to his office, with Budi leading the way.
Please accept this small gift from my father.
Iskandar gestured for him to put the carton down on the desk and then turned his eyes on me as I produced an identical package.
Do not let me hear any more tales about either of you, he scowled.
We closed the door and immediately began mocking him as we walked away.
Please accept this gift from my father and please kiss my biji.2
Does this man’s mother have a penis?
No, his wife does; may she smoke him while he smokes our
