“I THINK YOUR BUCKS PARTY IS TAKING A PICTURE WITHOUT YOU.”
Emma and I are yell-chatting with two Aussie boys over a blaring disco saxophone at a Single Fin Sunday Session. Emma’s guy looks like the lead singer of Savage Garden, mine, a more attractive version of the dude from Scooby Doo, who ironically looks like the other guy in Savage Garden. Wikipedia confirms the band is Australian….?
The pair crane their necks to the horror of ages behind them; their bachelor party group photo being taken of “the bucks,” without … these bucks.
It’s the scene you’ve seen a thousand times. Twelve boys in a VIP lounge, taking up as much space as their bodies allow. Arms at wingspan, legs spread eagle, one or both feet suspended in the air. Some are hooting like baboons, others with their tongues out and eyes rolled back in ecstasy. Four of them on ecstasy. There is the one guy stretched out like a prize marlin in the front, another, propped up like a scarecrow. A dead drop of sheared 200 feet of cliffside to Uluwatu Beach plummets just behind them.
Shaggy is panicked and tries calling out, but he can’t pierce the decibel level. I encourage both boys to run, we are only two booths over, to go catch it. But in the hesitated seconds of deliberation, the camera flashes, and the moment is lost. The bottle service maiden relinquishes a phone to the incubus of testosterone.
Things quickly become uncomfortable because, as I find out, this guy is the groom's brother. The male species can be so cold and so cruel. I try my hand at consoling him, suggesting “They can just photoshop you in….?” but my half-considered recommendation only fuels the fire. He redirects the spite for me back to the appropriate target, hurling pejoratives at the crew who can conveniently hear him now. They turn defensive and hostile, retaliating with some more Australian words I’ve never heard before. Then, a moment of clarity presents itself amongst the rage life cycle in the form of *inspiration.*
Like any bachelor party boy worth his salt, he rotates to face me and pitch the following brilliance:
“WE SHOULD MAKE OUT.”
“???????....WHY”
“TO MAKE THEM JEALOUS OF ME, AND SORRY THAT I WASN’T IN THE PICTURE.”
“...I DON'T THINK THAT’S HOW IT WORKS.”
“THEY SEE US SITTING TOGETHER NOW. IT’LL MAKE ME LOOK COOL. WE'RE GONNA DO IT AFTER MY COUNTDOWN.”
(I’m making the “I don’t think so” Trump face)
"…..THREE……..TWO………..ONE."
It’s mushy and horrible and not sweet like a chica cherry cola. When I break free, I look up, fixating on something on the second story of the club. I see the two Portuguese guys Emma and I invited to come meet us here. They definitely see me.
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International territory has decidedly been, as a pair, agreeable for Emma and I. We’ve done quite well for ourselves in the far corners of the earth; questioning, exploring, crying publicly. She plans, I go. She shoots, I write. She carries the drugs , I carry the cash. ("Taylor, please clarify Ambien. I want to run for office someday.") We have vastly different taste in men.
When Emma and I last traveled overseas, we were in Kenya for two weeks, organized, by Emma. In two weeks. She planned every detail, I just bought a plane ticket and showed up. I received the gift of living in the most present state of mind, unbothered by plans or the concept of time, of the future or of time management. I lived like a princess in constant surprise and delight. For all the people who typically coast and let their partner plan trips so they can just show up - I get it.
For Bali, we flipped the script. I had been out there for a month learning the ropes, so it made complete sense for me to own the schedule. It was the perfect opportunity for me to repay Emma for her generosity and thoughtfulness on all past trips. I was more than happy to do it.
But with this new sense of power, came the inevitable genesis of budding corruption. I summon a memory where Emma used to monitor my dating apps (...social anxiety), the two of us catfishing good, honest men under the guise of me seeking true love. They would gravitate to her sweetness, intellect, and use of emojis, and instead get me quoting “A Goofy Movie” for the entirety of a first date. There were many times of me asking “...have we not talked about this already?” with these fine young men, unsure if I had inadvertently mixed up the transcripts Emma would send me beforehand.
To make my point, Emma would request things in conversation with my matches like “ice skating” or “long hugs” that she loved and I did not, that I would have no choice but to show up for anyway. In the name of romance. So, I decided, Emma would have to now show up for things that I like, like “working out,” “going to beach clubs” and seeing the “sun.”
Dragging her to Bali Training Center to see the famed bodies of Uluwatu would be our first stop in my Bingin Beach tour. “I don’t care about that sort of thing.” She’ll come. It’s a Butts and Guts class so mostly girl patrons which foils my whole plan, but there are dogs that roam the open floors that do more for us than any male physique ever could. At the end of class the Dutch Capoeira instructor declares a burnout round, shouting for everyone to clear spaces in the few remaining seconds of the break. Any semblance of world order in the classroom implodes on itself, with buffed Carbon38 clad girls running amuck like the thatched roof is aflame. Anything to accommodate burning those precious remaining 55 calories. Amidst the havoc, I make eye contact with a deranged classroom mutt, petrified and frozen in place. In one fell swoop, he is scooped up by his hog body and lobbed to the side of the classroom. While airborne, our eyes remain locked, his expression accusatory. “How could you let this happen?” He manages the landing. I am disappointed in myself for not helping him but also laughing and unable to complete the set.
55 calories heavier than I should be, we lounge at Cashew Tree over breakfast desserts and coconut lattes.
It’s Emma’s idea to take boards out and I love her for it. It’s Sunday and slow, so we rent a couple blue tops from some guys in a treehouse. Emma abandons her kikoy wrap for sun protection on a piece of driftwood and accepts her crisped fate. She is a real life version of Snow White, and the 80 spf that I’ve applied intimately to her entire body via deodorant stick will serve her only for so long.
The scene on the water is easy. It’s gentle today, the world knowing it's a Sunday. We are in our cute little beat up cloth baseball caps on our cute little boards and there are cute little waves rolling in towards us. When we paddle out and get situated, one of them starts to take me away and I guess I kind of somehow got the hang of this.
When I return from sittin' on top of the world on my monster 2 footer, I can hear Emma asking, “So where are you guys from?” She’s perched on her board like it's a small pony, facing the wrong direction, talking to two nice enough boys. They’re surfers from Portugal and give us advice between sets. By the end of this the four of us are in the water hanging on our boards Titanic-style, too hot to do anything else except decide to grab a bite to eat together. I am becoming who I observed out here, at this exact beach, a month ago, and life is so strange to me.
They are darling, but when we get out of the ocean, they look as alarmed as I am because I am a full head taller than both of them. Stacked on each other like Little Rascals. Just kidding. Is this a thing that happens when you meet people surfing? I accept the fact that their height is in their torsos, as I’m sure they have, and that’s fine. In an interaction with our food server, I realize that they tote the bravado of Southern European men, so once again, God is fair.
We head together to a beach bar with an open grill in the sand, still salty and sticky and each a little burned from the sun in our own sweet way. Settling on an open-air table on the second story, we relegate ourselves to being generally wiped, avoiding any cerebral contributions over the course of the meal. We mostly spend our time pointing to people around us who are ordering lobsters. The boys head down a ladder to talk to the fisherman at the firepit, and return with a butterflied yellowfin tuna, frizzling and crisped, topped with rosettes of grilled limes. We feast on plates of steamed greens and fresh rice mounds, squirting table sauces from feet above, shoveling everything in with our hands when we feel like it. Frosty Bintangs and glass bottles of Coca Colas abound. I realize I’m at lunch in just a bikini and I can’t tell you what a weird day this is. We wrap up the lazed meal and agree to take respective naps and meet up later at Single Fin.
“Pitcher of daiquiris - our treat!” are their parting words to us. Oh, my God, they really mean it. The damned confidence. I think, somewhere deep down, Emma and I know “tonight” will likely not be a “thing.”
Emma is fried and I am not far behind. She goes down for her nap and prays for healing. Too excited about life and my own expert planning and how well it's going, I forego the nap, opting to lounge on our covered patio instead and watch the ocean. Five minutes into doing nothing, I double take, seeing Karly billy goating up the side of Bingin's cliffside. What is she doing here? Fish Bone Local opening in Uluwatu. Karly surfs longboard. She has freckles across her nose, and dimples that remind me of my little sister. Karly is always down, and always counts the cash. She loosely offers me a job over the happy hour margaritas I join her for next, which I consider taking before the world collapses.
With “fitness class” and “sun” out of the way, it’s time for the “beach club” portion of the evening.
Emma and I spend the afternoon getting ready to Hawaiian reggae music, feeling like single girls do in Bali. It’s essential in materializing what will happen this evening.
Single Finn is a lot to see. We decide we are not ready to settle into the pre-sunset chaos up top, opting to first explore the rickety bar scene lurking beneath Single Fin. To get to this, you must follow some steep steps down and be willing to sacrifice your own front teeth. We find monkeys intermingling with people and surfers getting walked on in resting areas for three dollar thai massages. Etched out of the limestone cliff, these bootleg bars are cash-only and serve primarily beer and Smirnoff Ice. Locals splash in the sunset water below.
Navigating this suspect underground scene brings us to the ethereal light that is Eimear, who does not belong here. She is from Ireland, and absolutely looks it with her auburn hair and connected freckles. She is traveling alone. Over the next few hours she weaves a captivating tale of her solo travels, fraught with love, danger, and a dance with death. Not personally interested in the low ABV scene, Emma and I convince her to join us for the trek up to Morodor to enjoy a cocktail at Single Fin.
Eimear is a riot. Her Irish accent and delivery make everything sound like a riddle, and she nails two bits right off the bat. First, she pretends she doesn’t know what Instagram is. It is VERY reminiscent of Wally Bell circa 2009, who once made me explain what Pandora was to him for 10 minutes, and waited until I was deep into algorithm territory to whisper, “Hey. I know what Pandora is.”
When the topic of Instagram inevitably surfaces (were we talking about Russians? Bali correspondence? Corona travel memes?), she responds with a very quiet “...Insta-what.?....” In the next split second I have to decide if it’s a simple misunderstanding or total blind ignorance, aka if I am going to be mean or nice about this. I don’t know this girl! She could be like the Educated Lady. AND EIMEAR KNOWS THAT. She’s leveraging the cross cultural angle, the complete stranger angle and the general air of mystery that’s granted automatically because she’s traveling alone. When she sees a true panic in my eyes, she relents.
Her second offense is when Emma tells her about a friend who also happens to be from Ireland, who happens to be the “hamsters” creator. If I know Emma, its because she’s recalling this one time she met a friend of Harriet’s in the city, just by finding out he was from Australian, dropping Harriet’s name, who lives in Australia, and this guy knew her. Do you know how big Australia is? It’s as big as the United States, size wise. What are the chances? And what are the chances of that, TWICE? To Emma, they are high. Eimear asks for his name, Emma relinquishes. Eimear looks stunned.
“Emma ... that’s my brother.”
We sit for a second and a half, looking at each other with our mouths agape, having learned nothing from the Insta-what situation three and a half minutes ago. Then, Eimear points at us like two idiots. She is a comedy angel descended from the heavens spreading the gospel that WE NEED TO BE PLAYING MORE HARMLESS PRANKS ON EACH OTHER.
Okay, the story. We haven’t even arrived at her story, which is a four part series I’m gonna blow through or Eimear is gonna get so freaked out at how much of this I remember. The first part: earlier that day, Eimear was released from the hospital for a near fatal case of Bali belly. Most people get it and recover, myself being a decorated 3 time survivor, each bout clawing me closer to my goal birth weight of 10 pounds.
Eimear's fear of travel insurance brought her to the brink of death before seeking medical treatment, following three days alone in her villa telling herself it would get better. A Bali Belly Bender, if you will. When we met with her, she had not eaten anything yet, still, but was sipping a famed shack bar Smirnoff Ice, which was “doing the trick.” Back to the day.
Shortly after the hospital release, Eimear was catching up on a bit of exploring and had her phone stolen by a monkey. She was not in monkey forest, just a regular place with an occasional monkey, and the monkey took it, removed its otter cover with its teeth, and absconded with it up a tree. A warren had to provoke the monkey with some kind of monkey stick to get it down, which it relinquished. Eimear then turns her phone to us, revealing a picture from the tree canopy. Yes. A photo the monkey took. She could easily submit this entire story and story to Nat Geo and kick off her career as a travel journalist.
A few days before the belly symptoms showed, Eimear spent the day searching for a place that did not exist on Nusa Penida. With the accounting of her ill fate, I get the idea that she got “kidnapped” by a driver who said he was with her company, took the payment from her, which was for nothing, and dropped her off at a remote location, that happened to have a couple thoughtful and understanding French girls who gave her a lift as far as their next stop. She reasons with the driver once they are dropped off, to please take her to her place, which quite frankly might have never existed in the first place. With nothing to show by 11pm, the culmination of an entire day in cars and kidnappings around the island, her cab driver, exclaims “We are here!” and drops her off at a place that is his buddy’s abandoned jungle shack. It's a cabin “of rats and bugs” with a mat on the ground where she does not sleep.
To top this off, a week before she left on her South East Asia vision quest - while at home where she’s always been - Eimear fell in love. It was a friend of a friend from a party, a local boy, under her nose, likely crossing paths on the same streets, same delis, same bars in their hometowns for their entire lives. Just waiting to find each other. I want her to go home and get married, or better yet, pull him along with her. Emma says no.
While falling a bit in love myself with Eimear and her fantastic life’s happenings, the club crowd starts to surface. She answers the call from the depths inside her to go home and freshen up, but never “Eimear-ges” again. I am unsure of how many hours passed speaking with her because it felt like three minutes, but the sun is down now and there are lots of college students around. The concept of time escapes you in a hypnosis of good storytelling. We exchange insta-whats and I keep tabs on her still to this day.
Near the tail end of our time with Eimear, where my attention has transcended time and space, there is an overlap with our next character set; the gentlemen I will refer to as the Dutch Bros. There are three of them, their energy feels 6’5 and they each look like they could be my brothers. They send over, or maybe just lose track of, a blacked out representative who has Matthew McConaughey hair and a sunburn across his nose. I’ll learn that the Dutch have a pro-sunburn saying that loosely translates to “tomato today, chocolate tomorrow” which is…. so bold??? Unhealthy? Iconic?
The boys are lovely, have been friends for their entire lives, and one of them lets it slip that they all have girlfriends. Emma and I celebrate in secrecy as we can all be FRIENDS NOW and HAVE REGULAR FUN. Michael Jackson and one of the bros who dances like him usher us into the groove portion of the night. My Stevie Nicks meets Tulum-based influencer outfit becomes weighted with sweat in the dead, outside air, but damn does my skin look GOOD. Every now and then we lose the drunk friend, not realizing it until he wanders back to us. Sacrificing her body for the good of the common man, Emma recruits him for a platonic back massage so that we may keep tabs on him for at least 5 minutes.
Famished and seeking reprieve from the heat, we settle at a communal picnic table to order famed “club pizza.” Hopefully you, the reader, realizes this is not a thing and should never be, but this place is so weird and we have to order something in order to sit down. A piping hot pizza does the trick. The Bros are too big and tall to all sit down in this fiery inferno, so one of them is draped over the oceanside ledge, one is next to Emma and visibly uncomfortable but committed to his decision, and the other one has disappeared into the ether again, before returning to meet us for the first time, for the fifth time. Fanning each other violently with wooden menus, we trade off the responsibility of labor with the rapture found in the faintest of air movement, until one of them jams my middle finger while he’s fanning like he is chopping a wood block. I go down like I’ve been shot in the chest. The human fanning portion of the evening is over.
Next to me is a middle aged man, wearing a safari hat in the middle of the night in the middle of the club, with whom I must distract myself with conversation from the pain. This is “Poo Man” Dave.
He doesn’t reveal the Poo Man detail until half an hour into our chat, but the bottom line is, Dave is an real one. Besides donning a damned boonie hat in the CLUB, he has two daughters who he adores and are funnier than him (“like chalk and cheese”), and a hairstylist wife who he decided to marry the first minute he saw her. He refuses to join social media, because “I’ve got better things to do. Nothing.” He also owns a plumbing company that his daughters voiceover the radio ads for and are now local stars. What brings him here? Chaperoning a bucks party.
We break into his life story in ways I could have never fathomed, but I have to say - Emma and I are very much enjoying this budding Bali subculture of happily married and or committed men of the club. What a joyful way to live. In the midst of a lesson from Dave’s Poo School of Life, a blonde boy comes up and says “THAT’S OUR DAVE. NOT YOUR DAVE. OUR DAVE.” He and I will get to know each other intimately in a little over half an hour.
Around this time I look up and see Karly the Bingin billy goat cash counter, in the…. DJ booth? Why is she in the DJ booth? Is she a figment of my imagination, a cultural lighthouse of the soul, signaling to me - to all of us - it’s time to get lit? How does she surface everywhere I am? Is she showing me the way? I ramble this stream of consciousness to Dave, who couldn't give less of a shit. We soon leave the picnic tables to descend into VIP with Goddess of the Party Karly, Dave splitting to join the bucks party. It’s here where I essentially swap him out to nonconsensually smooch his stepson. And now we are back at the beginning.
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I’m still a bit shaken from who I’ve just made eye contact with, but bury the shame and decide to make it Emma’s problem later. I snap back to my reality, which is the conclusion of a pitiful excuse for a make out with no real success metric tied to its outcome. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it good because it’s bad? Something about it doesn’t sit well with me that I can’t place. It’s not the setting. It’s not his lack of agency. It’s not the fact that absolutely none of this makes sense at all. Epiphany strikes.
“ ….HOW OLD ARE YOU?”
“I’M 22.”
“HOW OLD ARE YOU?”
“I’M 30.”
We high five each other.
He follows by offering to impregnate and then marry me. And they say there are no good ones left! I don’t know if he offers because he thinks I’m running out of time (an 8 year female-to-male age discrepancy is like 56 in dog and 22 year old years), if he is just into this sort of thing, or simply deceived by my perfect, dewey skin. I cooly laugh off his proposal and then chastise his rash behavior. He’ll get it when he turns 30.
Debriefing in the car ride home I show Emma the video I snuck of the above exchange, which I do all the time even though it’s super illegal. I’ll voice record as well. I don’t care. The video is far more graphic than what I explained on here, but we must maintain some semblance of mystery in this life. Emma flashes me a text from the guy she was talking to, who was actually a CEO of a company in Brisbane. Yes, these guys represent the quality of men we are each attracting into our lives. Emma, the owner of a company. Taylor, a 22 year old who drives a bus and solves mysteries with his dog. Emma supports the debauchery, letting me have my Bali moment because it’s what best friends do.
The message she shows me from the business boy is a text he shared with the women of his company that day, thanking them for… being them. Why? Because it’s International Women’s Day. INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY! I consider what this means given the context of the evening, and you know what? I think we nailed it.
First, we were international. That's huge. Second, we learned how to be funnier from new girlfriends. Doubling down. We danced platonically with beautiful men, tricked some into massaging us, and used intellectual, heartfelt conversation to leverage a strictly physical relationship with someone’s stepson. We cast ageist societal norms to the wayside.
Emma - my girl. My WOMAN. I’ll be an international with you any day.
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Four days later, an hour north in Canggu, Emma will leave to the washroom at Luigi’s Hot Pizza and return to the table saying “I have a surprise for you, Taylor!!!!’ I turn around and know exactly who I am going to see.
The Portuguese boys.