Gaysia (3 page)

On this day, there were only a couple of men trading themselves. One moneyboy was less ‘boy' and more ‘tank'. He was rugged, with tightly coiled muscles covered in barbed tattoos. Another moneyboy was clean-cut in preppy white shorts, looking like a Tommy Hilfiger advertisement, with his hair cut short back and sides. They were the only clothed men around the pool besides me. Because they weren't allowed to talk, they ogled and seduced with their eyes, zoning in on the naked
bulé
Spartacvs guests with silent intense stares.

As I ate my sandwich, I watched one of the
bulés
approach the moneyboys. He was an Australian man in his fifties with a kind face and a soft belly who wore black speedos with an opal pattern on the hip. The tattooed guy grinned and made staggered
small-talk with the
bulé
, before the pair silently headed back to a private room, drawing the black satin curtains shut. Everyone else around the pool casually pretended that nothing was happening. I stared and chewed on my lunch, cow-like, unable to turn away.

This place is amazing
, I thought.

Another Australian man – white and in his late thirties – now approached the pool completely naked. He was one of the younger
bulés
here, tall and toned. It was hard not to notice his penis: an enormous, semi-erect thing that hovered in mid-air like a fairground ride threatening to go higher. Behind him, his short, cute Indonesian boyfriend – or maybe he was a moneyboy too, it was hard to tell – approached the pool in high-cut running shorts that made him appear practically naked from the side. Giggling, they dived in the pool together. As they surfaced for air, the naked Australian guy swam over to his boyfriend and wrapped his legs around him, making out with him hungrily, like a large animal trying to eat some smaller creature's face.

It felt as if I'd stumbled across some wonderful sex matinée. It was riveting. This was the closest I'd ever come to watching another couple have sex right in front of me, and the realisation was both exciting and depressing.

Though he was in the water, it was clear the Australian guy had a full erection now and was enthusiastically humping his Indonesian boyfriend through his wet shorts. After making sloppy kissing noises that sounded like a draining sink, the Indonesian guy climbed onto his boyfriend's back, and they swam across the pool like the scene in
Whale Rider
where Keisha Castle-Hughes rides a humpback.

‘You two are so cute!' I wanted to call out to them, but realised this might send the wrong message.

When they got out of the pool and towelled each other off, the height difference between them was stark. From behind, the tall
bulé
reminded me of a parent drying off his young son after swimming lessons. The two of them then disappeared into their room, drew the curtains and shut the door.

The entire pool was now silent, except for the PA system that was playing the Joe Dolce 1980 hit novelty song ‘Shaddap You Face'. I had finished my lunch. I felt both full of food and moderately aroused, which wasn't a great combination. I stared at the empty water, wondering whether I could bring myself to swim in it, considering what I'd just seen.

People said Bali's gay scene had only taken off in the past decade, but the island had actually been quietly hosting foreign homosexuals for close to a century. In 1925, the German artist and writer Walter Spies landed in Bali after travelling through Java and Jogjakarta, and was instantly smitten by the island's glassy blue water, lush rainforest and chirpy, handsome locals. He started an artists' colony first, then built a house in Karangasem that became his famous mountain hut boasting unending views of lakes, rice paddies and mountains. It was here that Spies hosted guests such as Charlie Chaplin, Noël Coward and the anthropologist Margaret Mead during the day, before making love to his handsome Balinese lovers at night. Spies romanticised Bali in his dreamy art and writing, casting the island in heady myth with a homoerotic undercurrent. The artists came, the gays came, then everyone else followed.

From the late 1960s onwards, large groups of gay and lesbian travellers would fly to Bali on cheap flights bound for Denpasar
airport, making it their holiday hide-out. At the time, the airport was little more than landing strips cut into thickets of coconut trees. Even then, it wasn't hard for gay visitors to find masseurs who were willing to be extra-accommodating with their massages, or poolside boys who said they would be your special friend for your entire stay.

By the '90s, Bali had Hulu Café, its first proper gay bar. It was a basic set-up over two wooden floors, where muscled men would perform scantily clad dances with giant pythons suggestively wrapped around shoulders and between legs as homo erotic homages to the Balinese snake gods. Hulu had since fittingly gone down in flames, but the island's appetite for the pink dollar had only grown and grown. Now there was Club Cosmo for the rich kids, Mixwell's for the tourists, Face Bar for the ladyboys, Bali Joe for the moneyboys and the seedy Bottoms Up for those who were either lost or too drunk to know where they were. Gay villas were everywhere. Tourist guides told me they couldn't keep up with the new ones being built.

Local attitudes towards gay travellers ranged from happily oblivious to outright welcoming. Everyone now knew there was a buck to be earned, especially from commission.

‘You travel in Bali one person?' local taxi drivers would ask me.

‘I'm by myself, yeah,' I'd say.

‘No wife? No girlfriend?' they'd say.

‘No,' I'd say. Sometimes I'd add, ‘But I have a boyfriend.'

After a moment's realisation they'd say, ‘Ah, boyfriend! Maybe you look for Balinese boyfriend too? I can take you!' They'd whisper, ‘You know, beautiful, beautiful boys in Bali …'

If you were an entrepreneur, it made sense to start your venture in Bali. Before long, tourism would account for 10 per cent
of Indonesia's GDP and nearly half of all foreign visitors to the country would make their way through Bali's international airport. Occupying only 5632 square kilometres, Bali had become a crucial economic hub, and the island's standard of living far outstripped the rest of the archipelago's. If you had a vision and a dream, you came to Bali to build your empire. And if you were building a gay empire, you were almost guaranteed a good return.

Josh was one businessman who knew this well. Ethnically Chinese, he had grown up in Bali and did most of his business there. He was in his late forties, but looked alarmingly young in his white t-shirt with its fashionably small pocket, and pants cut in a fabric you could tell was expensive just by looking. At all hours, he was hooked to his Samsung Galaxy Tab, checking emails and taking calls.

Josh was the owner of Bali's Antique brand, which encompassed a luxury spa, villa and restaurant. Although he had studied business in Australia, most of his projects – including the hotel he was currently building – were based in Bali. No regulations, lower costs: it was just far easier to build here. Even when Josh was growing up in Bali as a kid, the local tourism industry had been robust.

‘In some ways, it was much better,' he said. ‘It wasn't commercial, really more cultural. Before the development, it was more about family holidays. It was more …'

He looked up, searching for the right word.

‘Wholesome?' I said.

He laughed and pointed at me. ‘Right. Everyone used to come to Bali for the culture. Now, having a good time is more important. It's more about singles. And all those gay bars there are actually quite new. Nothing was basically a gay place
until I opened the Antique restaurant, then that whole area started to become very specific. Gay bars, gay restaurants, gay villas.'

Not that Josh minded. If anything, it was working to his benefit. On Dhyana Pura Street, between Mixwell's and Bali Joe, Josh was building a new upmarket gay club called the Bird-cage that was scheduled to open in a few months. There was also his upcoming hotel – the nearly completed Grey Hotel – that was perched between Legian and Seminyak and would aggressively target the gay market. It wouldn't be a gay-exclusive place like Spartacvs (Josh didn't think it was nice to discriminate against straight people), but zoning in on the gay market was crucial to its success. For instance, at Josh's Antique day spa, over 70 per cent of the spa clients were gay, so Josh ensured most of his massage therapists were handsome men.

‘I'm
always
thinking about that,' he said. ‘If you want to make something, you have to ask the gay people. They
know
. They're always setting the trend. Where the gays go, the straight people go. They spend money and they have no kids, nothing. They know how to live in style. They spend and they want to have a good time. So Bali is like Bangkok now, except we don't have go-go boys to pick up at the bar.'

‘Really?' I said. ‘But I've noticed heaps.'

‘There are moneyboys, but they're more discreet,' Josh said. ‘We have a border – a social, cultural border – because we're a mix of Hindus and Muslims here.'

Josh thought about how to phrase it properly, how to best draw the distinction between his island home and a seedy city like Bangkok. ‘There is a line,' he finally said. ‘There is a line.'

On my first night at Spartacvs, a Dutch couple checked into the room next to me. I only found this out when one of them started spying on me through my blinds. I was working on my laptop wearing nothing but Y-fronts (it was hot), before looking up to see a white-haired Gianni Versace lookalike in his fifties locking eyes with me. I nearly screamed.

To defuse the situation, I leaped up to open the door with the giddy, sexless enthusiasm of an American housewife welcoming a new neighbour to town. ‘Hello!' I said, opening the door to shake his hand enthusiastically. ‘My name is Benjamin! I am from
Australia
! And where are you from?! Did you just arrive?!'

Perhaps he thought I was brain-damaged. But with all the lights on and the volume of my voice turned up high, every potential trace of sexual tension between us quickly evaporated. Unimpressed, the Dutchman cleared his throat and introduced himself and his boyfriend, who was unpacking in the room next door. His boyfriend was a few years younger – balding, with a handsome, equine face – and merrily said hello. After standing at the doorway awkwardly for a while, we made our excuses and the older Dutch guy grumpily crept back into his room with his partner.

Some time later, a twenty-something Indonesian swaggered past my room. I didn't see his face, but heard murmurs between him and the Dutch guys at their door. The Indonesian guy went inside and everything went quiet. Outside on our shared balcony, they had left half their curtains open, almost like an invitation. All the lights were still on, which meant that anyone could easily make out something weird was happening on the bed: a single organism made of three torsos and twelve limbs; a six-armed beast thrusting into itself; a tanned butt nestled into a mound of
pale Dutch flesh. Seeing them made me feel simultaneously perverted and curious, like a kid who'd caught his parents screwing on top of the washing machine and couldn't stop watching.

Quietly, I went back inside my room, closed the door, showered and prepared to head out. At Spartacvs's reception, the guys at the front desk told me to go to Dhyana Pura Street. Not only was it the gayest street in Bali – full of drag queens and
bulés
and moneyboys and muscly-butted go-go dancers – but it also had decent places to eat.