Where's Jason?

Five straight days of Indonesia were tucked safely under our belts and into our cameras; it had been a hell of a trip. Seeing as Friday was our last night in Bali we agreed that it should be dominated on all fronts with undeniable style.

We were gonna party our asses off.

Scott was on a collision course with a few bars down the street that would have too many men in attendance for my liking. Apparently, our hotel was right next to the epicenter of that part of town. Maggie said she would be joining the illustrious Scott to observe him on his crusade for sweaty, gin fueled man-on-man adventures.

Jason and I, surprisingly, agreed to find our own entertainment. We jumped into a cab to check out a local club called Double Six. The grapevine had informed us that it was a good place for a couple of blokes on vacation to find some dancing and probably a girl. Maybe two. We planned to try our luck.

A bottle of Bintang passed between us as we recounted some of the more memorable moments of the week. The air conditioner in the aging taxi labored to bring the temperature to a more tolerable level. Then the taxi driver struck up a conversation with us. It began as all the others do with Where are you from? How long have you been in Bali? Where are you staying?, things like that. But then:

"Are you guys interested in getting a massage?"

Jason looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

"A massage?" I asked.

The driver looked at me in his rear-view mirror.

"A complete massage," he said. "Hotel included."

Ah, a complete massage, I thought. Pretty ballsy offer to two complete strangers; but somehow I didn't think this was the first occasion he had tried to peddle such...services. I politely declined and said I was just looking to go have a few drinks. Jason, however, was brimming with curiosity.

"I don't want the massage, man, but how much would it cost if I did?" was his question.

"Five hundred thousand rupiah," was the answer.

Fifty bucks. It sounded like a deal, but I'm not one to take shady deals with a head full of beer from Friday night cab drivers in foreign lands. We arrived at the club before we had a chance to change our minds.

Double Six is one of 4 night clubs on a dead end street across from an immense beach. We paid the driver and watched him trundle back down the dusty street to find other, more adventurous passengers. A stone wall to my left sat at the border of pavement and sand. Palm trees waved invitingly in the breeze. Waves rolled and broke in the shadows a quarter mile distant. This scene would have been rather peaceful if not for the dance music that was exploding out into the night.

I was immediately approached by one of the doormen. His face was deeply tanned and heavily creased. His hair was oiled and a cigarette was clamped firmly between his teeth. I got the impression he had seem some shit in his time.

"Hey boss, how're doin'?" he asked.

I was unsure what to make of him at first. In a neighborhood like that I assumed that open friendliness had ulterior motives, as I had seen in the cab. As I was about to see again.

"Is this Double Six?" I asked.

"Yes, yes," he said. "Out for a good time?"

I grinned. "That's the plan."

He smiled and stepped closer to me, reached into his pocket and produced a crumpled, plastic baggy. "What do you want?" he asked me. "Marijuana? Ecstasy? I have it all."

My eyes flickered to from the baggy, to Jason, to the doorman, and back to the baggy.

"Ah, no thanks," I said. "I'll stick to beer I think."He shrugged as if to say "Your loss, pal."

The signs at the airport threatening death for drug smugglers flashed through my mind.

I asked him, "Isn't that a dangerous job here? Selling that kind of...stuff?"

His answer was an emphatic no. He seemed genuinely surprised at my query.

Jason and I sat down with the beach at our backs and the night in our faces. I grabbed the beer and took a pull. We hadn't even gone into the club yet and already we'd slugged 4 bottles between us, been offered a small galaxy of drugs, and invited to check out some prostitutes. Which, as the night unfolded, wouldn't be our first encounter with working girls.

As it turned out, Double Six was closed wouldn't open back up until nearly midnight, so we had an hour or two the kill. However, the club next door was pumping dance music at a considerable volume and looked busy enough.

We had been joined by a very polite Frenchman whom I will call, Pierre. Pierre was maybe five foot six, twenty two but looked more like thirty five, and chain smoked Marlboro Reds. The three of us strode into Syndicate like we owned the place and arrowed straight for the bar. This was not as easy task as a private party of sorts was just beginning to wind down and the dance floor was mobbed with revelers.

The place reeked of cigarettes, booze, and sex. We slammed rum and cokes and tore through a few smokes before some girls did a live, walking, fashion show on the bar. It took me a few minutes to pick my jaw up from off the floor and mop the saliva from my face.

A serious buzz was climbing over my brain like a rabid baboon, but it was hard to slow down. Once that fire started in my veins it was tough to quench. I watched Jason moonwalk across the empyting dance floor. Pierre was trying to make conversation with a local bombshell in a tight red dress. She had a plastic tag hanging around her neck that said she did PR for the club. She was convincing Pierre to bring his friends (us), and his money next door to Double Six.

She didn't have to try very hard.

Yet, strange vibes were all around. There was an odd brand of energy going around the room that was starting to make my hackles rise. And Jason was completely fucked. His eyes looked glassy and his grin was perpetual and impish. Uh oh, I thought.

We shuffled back outside into the night. The palm trees were still waving their hellos and Double Six had sprouted several more hard looking men in dark t-shirts and pants. A pair of women wearing several pounds of make-up sat at a folding table at the front door. I suggested to Jason that considering his current state that maybe we ought to make an exit and return to the Galaxy, our hotel. But, he was not to be persuaded, and somehow slurred and glad-handed his way past the sentries and into Double Six.

I paid for both of us at the door. The bouncer at the front looked like I could have broken rocks on his face and he would have smiled before he ripped out my spleen. He was not amused that Jason insisted on repeatedly getting highfives and babbling at him in English, which I don't think he spoke a word of.

Outside the actual club there was a wide courtyard with a rectangular pool. Above the pool was tower that had to be over a hundred feet high. Another vacationer was bobbing up and down on a bungee cord and giggling feverishly. Pierre told me the pool was to dunk your head after you jumped. Apparently they would light your head on fire before you took the plunge.

People do odd things late at night.

The darkness inside the club was cut with pulsing lasers and intermittent strobes. The music was good, really good, and my head was bobbing before I reached the bar. Jason slapped his credit card down for all of our drinks and then started dancing. But not alone.

And man, she was built. Some women's underwear is longer than her shorts were and her "shirt" covered little more than her bra. Add four inch heels and the exotic edge of an Asian woman and you have a potent combination. She was laughing quite a bit either with, or at, Jason, and Pierre and I looked on over our drinks in envy.

He was a lucky son of a gun, that Jason. Who wouldn't want to have wandering hands on a girl like that? She knew exactly what to wear to the club to get the blood moving in any man, woman, or particularly precocious monkey. She could dance, too. Bumping and grinding like a real pro.

Hold on a second.

I waited for the love birds to take a break from dancing and hit the bar. Then I threw an arm around Jason's shoulders and leaned in close.

"Dude, I think that girl you're dancing with is a hooker."

He looked at her, then at me. His brows knitted together.

"Really?"

I nodded. "Definitely. Look at her."

I reminded him that he had no cash and working girls didn't take credit cards. At least, not that I knew of.

Now, when I said she was a hooker I didn't mean she was that decrepit street prowler that just ambled through your synapses. This particular girl seemed more like the type that had the looks, and the wardrobe, to hit the clubs and mooch drinks off tourists like us. If they seemed alright maybe she would return to their hotel for a few party favors; provided she received adequate monetary compensation.

And, despite my good-natured protests to the contrary, that very situation seemed to be happening. Jason's hands got busier and busier and he bought drink after drink. Then he was ready to leave with said girl in tow. I pulled her aside and assured her that Jason's wallet was very, very empty.

She smiled, and shrugged me off. Then they left.

I watched them walk out of Double Six hand in hand. This would not end simply.

Pierre and I nursed our drinks and smoked a few more cigarettes. That rum-crazed baboon was running wild inside my head. Maybe he was dancing, it was hard to tell.

The two of us approached a pair of girls and got them onto the dance floor. I remember the one I danced with had a ruffled, red, strapless dress, and big hoop earrings. The music had me firmly in its grip, there was no denying that. I had the dance fever and my condition was terminal. She frequently had to stop to get her breath back but I refused to stop moving. I normally don't dance very well and with a head full of booze I did what I could and I had a damn good time doing it; despite how absurd I probably looked to everyone else.

And much to my chagrin, I failed to heed my own advice.

Red-dress said we should go to another party in the next town over. I checked the time and was mildly dismayed to see it was nearly five in the morning. Having already gone through the panic of ordering drinks and barely having enough money I decided it was time to leave.

"I really like you," she said. "Do you have a hotel room?"

I grinned and said yes.

"But, if I go back with you, you should give me a present."

Her gaze was a intense and it took several seconds for this statement to slog its way through my brain.

"A present?" I asked.

"You should give me some money."

"Oh," I said. "I thought you said you liked me. Why do I have to give you money?"

"Well I don't have a job," she said.

I frowned. "That's not my problem."

"Maybe I should just go home and you should go back to your hotel, then." She looked agitated.

"Yea," I told her. "Maybe you're right."

She sniffed her disappointment and then stalked off. I shook my head trying to clear some of the fumes. Did that just really happen?

As I walked away from the club she tried to give me one last chance but got interrupted. Her less attractive, more intoxicated friend was waving her arms at me. Death was in her eyes and profanity poured from her mouth like dirty water from a drain pipe. I caught Pierre's name amid the deluge. I jerked my thumb over my shoulder and told her he was still inside.

This was not the answer she was looking for her tirade continued, increasing in intensity. People were starting to stare, including the hard-faced bouncers. So, in the words of the great Hunter S. Thompson, It was time, I felt, for an agonizing re-appraisal of the whole scene.

I ran.

A scooter taxi saw me coming and offered a ride for 10,000 rupiah. I told him five. He repeated ten.

"Five or I walk."

Leave it to me to haggle for a 3 minute scooter ride with hell's fury rattling her bracelets at my heels.

Thankfully the ride back was uneventful. I nearly kicked in the door for Maggie and Scott's room. Maggie had been sleeping and Scott was off somewhere gallivanting with shirtless men, or something. I paced back and forth in her room and drunkenly recanted the tale of Jason's disappearance. She listened to my rant and then gently suggested I get some sleep. I consented but then stood on the balcony outside our rooms and watched the sun rise.

I woke up a few hours later, in a chair on the balcony outside my room. I pounded some water and then moved inside to bed. The air conditioner rattled to life and I sank into unconsciousness. My sleep was dreamless and my waking was unpleasant. I felt like an army of cudgel wielding midgets had danced across my body and then mistaken my skull for a piñata. I was sore, thirsty, tired, and probably still drunk.

Jason's bed was empty.

Where's Jason? Jagged pieces of the night before clawed their way up through the haze. One was a vivid image of Jason and the girl leaving the club.

Shit.

I stumbled next door and found Maggie and Scott laying in bed. Maggie looked sleepy, but ok. Scott looked as though the same army of midgets had come his way, only they had been wielding bazookas.

"Where's Jason?" he asked.

I shrugged and gave him the short version of my night. He nodded weakly and agreed we could give him an hour or two before we could start to worry.

I went back to my room and packed Jason's bag, and then my own. Maggie and I had lunch in the bar, surrounded by more Aussie tourists. I could scarcely stand to look at their beers. I settled for ginger ale.

Scott paid for a few extra hours in one of the rooms we had just checked out of and slunk back upstairs to lick his wounds in the comfort of darkness and air conditioning. I watched the start of an AFL game and then started to get that nagging feeling of worry.

Maggie called Chris, who was still in Ubud an hour to the north, and asked his advice. He said give him some more time, if he wasn't back by 3pm he would drive down and help us sort it out. I drove Maggie and I back to Double Six and spent ten minutes or so grilling the barmen for any information.

No dice.

Where's Jason?

We went back to the Galaxy and checked on Scott. He was still suffering and now had the added burden of beginning to worry about our missing chum. Three o'clock came and went and Maggie phoned Chris. Scott and I collected our baggage and brought it downstairs before returning our rented bikes and then limping to the Starbucks in Kuda.

It was agreed that if Maggie and Jason didn't show up there by seven, Scott and I were to go to the airport and wait for everyone to show up for our 1am flight back to Taipei. Scott was still pretty worse for wear and spent most of those hours napping. I spent most of it grappling with worst case scenarios.

To our credit, we had avoided being consumed by the blind panic that can be birthed by situations like this. But how long would that last? This was exactly the kind of thing you read about but never think will happen to you. Even paradise can be wrought with nightmares. I tried to convince myself that he was fine, but couldn't. I imagined him face down in a rice paddy, or bleeding in an alley, or any of a dozen things that could have happened.

Where's Jason?

Scott and I waited until nearly eight-thirty. The the finality of going to the airport and admitting something horrible happened was too much for us in our current state. Then, I saw Maggie.

And walking in front of her, perfectly fine and wearing a sheepish grin, was Jason.

I walked over to him and hugged him, happy to see he was okay.

"Good to see you, you cunt," I said. And meant it.

Scott stared at him with disapproval, hugged him, and then blasted him with a clenched fist right in his solar plexus. I held his arms.

I had to ask him.

"Where the fuck were you, man?"

And he told me. He woke up with an exploding headache next to the girl from the bar, totally confused as to where he was. He remembered walking down numerous sketchy alleys with her and then taking a cab to her house. He agreed he easily could have been beaten, knifed, or otherwise maimed by a jealous boyfriend or angry older brother, and was extremely lucky to come through no worse for wear.

After the girl woke up she said Jason should pay her because maybe they did "something" the night before. He said there was no way he was paying for maybe. That was the only good decision he made that day.

But then did he simply leave? Did he mutter excuses and run out the door? Did he lock himself in the bathroom and then escape through a window? Nope.

He spent 4 hours walking around with her to different jewelry stores.

She suggested he buy her a ring of some sort and showed him quite a few that she liked. Did he make a run for it then? No, sir.

Then, as they walked past another shop, she paused.

"You could by me one of those," she said.

Jason said he looked in through the shop window and weighed his options. Finally, he saw a way out.

When Jason related this story to us we were in a cab on our way to dinner. Scott was up front and Maggie was sitting between us. I looked across the backseat at him.

"What did you buy her?"

He hesitated, and looked out the window.

"A hot plate," he said.

I blinked once. Twice.

"You paid a hooker, with a kitchen appliance?"

"Yea."

He looked at us with a mixture of disbelief and wry amusement. We couldn't help but laugh so hard we almost forgave him.

Almost.