Young Love

My morning ritual held enormous importance for Wayan. I must walk down the cliffs of Bening to a small set of rustic huts perched below on the water’s edge and find the object of Wayans affection, hut manager Ketut, so she might reveal to me the colour of the shirt she was wearing that day. If it happened her choice of colour matched Wayans, it was seen as a sign that this young lady was somehow in tune with the young man and their obvious interest in each other was somehow predetermined or preordained by gods unseen.

We were firm friends, Wayan and I. From the first time I met him two years prior while staying at his aunty Sunnies two bedroom losmen on Dreamland beach, we shared a very rewarding relationship. Every morning together we would clean the family's alotted piece of beachfront of the flotsam and jetsam, then errect the ten sun beds and umbrellas in two rows and await the day tourists from Kuta. After we had served the day trippers and they had gone we returned the sunbeds to their store.At the end of the day Wayan and I would swim in the surf and talk of girls, family, dreams and girls again. At night we would sit looking out into the seaside night and talk of more things, all the time Wayan smoking my cigarettes whilst warning me of the accompanying dangers. This rhythmic cycle lasting four weeks.

With Tommy Suharto's new development at Dreamland the family had built new lodgings on the steep slopes of Bening, a short distance up the coast toward Illuwatu, and this is where I now found myself attending to my morning duty of clambering down these cliffs in search of Ketut in the hope of giving confirmation to Wayan that, yes, she was indeed paired in a similar shirt. I found Ketut in the kitchen wearing the same coloured top as Wayan. I asked for a packet of cigarettes and wondered if Ketut thought my smoking excessive, knowing Wayan would smoke most of them.

Fittingly for Wayan, Ketut was as beautiful as a young woman could be, with large sumptuous eyes, shimmering long black hair, a radiant smile that I'm sure would have made the darkest day bright, We engaged in social pleasantries for a little while before I couldn't resist trying to push these young people a bit closer.

"Ketut", I said. "I’ve known Wayan a long time, and I think he is a good man. Works hard, doesn’t drink, loves his family. Why doesn’t he have a girlfriend"?

Ketut looked to the floor starting to play with her fingers and was silent for some time before saying with slow shy beauty."Maybe he not try. Maybe he can have girlfriend if he want"

On hearing Ketut’s comments, coupled with agreeable textile signs, I headed back up the cliffs, stopping only briefly to deny Wayan one of my cigarettes,to my room and Wayan, and gave him the good news.

"OK, I do it now, Hammockman." he said. And with that he began to pace up and down like so many young men had done since time immemorial, anxious at the thought of rejection. I tried to reassure Wayan with the story of my own unfounded fears when asking out Julie Morris at the age of sixteen and this seemed to imbue him with enough confidence to thrust his hands deep into his pockets, set his trembling jaw and head off down the cliff to Ketut.

I didn't see Wayan until much later that evening and hoped all had gone well for him as I would have felt enormously guilty had Ketut denied his request. I need not have worried,for later that night Wayan came bounding up my stairs beaming
.
"Today best day, Hammockman. I have girlfriend."

After being filled in on the details I asked Wayan if I had to walk down the cliffs tomorrow to see what Ketut was wearing. He said no I didn't, they had both decided to allocate specific days to their shirts so they would always be in sinc from now on.

I did have to walk down the cliffs the next day, as Wayan had smoked all my cigarettes.