All Up in Dat (Conservative Indonesian) Club

Let me begin with this- I’m not a club person.

Don’t get me wrong, I like dancing just as much as the next bloke. I’ve got nothing against it. In fact, there are times when nothing fits the mood better when you want to take a night to blow off some steam with friends. However, I’ve always been more of a pub guy, the ones that are a little hazy, leather upholstery, and some live band playing classic rock in the background. I blame the old man who lives inside of me. However, this didn’t stop me from recently patronizing the local discotheque. Part of me went for the reason stated above, to let off steam, but mainly I just wanted to know what a club in city like mine- predominantly Muslim and highly conservative- was like.

When me and my site mate Mitch arrived, we were informed by a baby-faced fellow behind a booth stocking kretek cigarettes that it didn’t open for another hour, so we asked if we could have a look around. No problem, he said. We opened the giant double doors into a dim corridor, illuminated by nothing but a pair of glowing red floor lights reminiscent of the Starship Enterprise. As we prepared to go where no two white men had gone before, I opened the second pair of double doors into an expanse so large and cavernous that we both just started laughing.

How to explain this place- it was huge. Like 1,000+ sweaty, smoking (we’ll get to that) people huge. Along the wall were large, room-like booths, and inside that was a swarm of tables and chairs hammered out of what looked to be cast iron. The place felt lukewarm and had the odor of generations of cigarettes (again, we’ll get to that) being crushed on the floor night after night. And it was dark. Cleaners lounged around the place, some sweeping the floor while others were splayed out on booth couches, taking what appeared to be pre-opening power naps. At the center was the dance floor. I’m not exactly sure why, but as we walked around, an image came into my mind from Pinocchio of the sinister carnival all the naughty boys go to and get turned into animals. Kind of a dark film, if you think about it.

Since it didn’t start for at least another hour, we stepped into a nearby café to get a drink until the action started. As the minutes ticked closer to the appointed hour, something happened. The once-barren parking lot began to swarm with twenty-something Indonesians guys and some girls, all dressed in what I assume was their “cool sexy” outfits. We made our way back up, and paid the entrance fee of 65,000R (roughly 5 bucks). Along with our ticket, a complimentary packet of kretek cigarettes was offered us, which we declined. We re-entered via the Enterprise corridor, opened the doors and- pitch black. Doormen armed with flashlights helped lead us deeper into the belly of the beast. After I got my bearings and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see how dramatically the once barren space had transformed into a place packed wall to wall with sweating people.

At first it look as though a horde of angry red fireflies were swarming around the room until I realized that is was from the hundreds of embers burning off from all of those free complimentary cigarettes. It was as though that in every hand in which I expected to see a drink of some sort, there were clove cigarettes. The air was so thick and sickly-sweet from them that our eyes started burning. People were wasting no time to get through their packets. The music was- how do I put this- the kind played by overenthusiastic outdoor aerobics classes: incredibly fast, no pacing, and kind of ridiculous. And the tempo never changed.

Finally, we made our way to the dance floor and gradually a few things started to happen. A band of young guys started form closely around us, which isn’t usually what I like to happen in places like this. They tried to be nonchalant about it but after a lot of eye-catching it was clear: we had inadvertently obtained male groupies. Drifting away from them, an attractive girl in a tight red dress came up to me and said in a soft voice, “Hello mister.” Not sure where this was going, I tried to ignore her as politely as I could. Again, she came up to me and said, “Hellow MISTER!” with added emphasis. She clearly meant business. Eventually, she moved away and started to talk to some other guy. “I think she was a prostitute,” I yelled at wingman Mitch. “Yeah, I think so too,” he yelled back.

Something else started to happen. I began noticing empty spaces forming in the middle of the crowded dance floor. When I looked down I realized why: packs of young guys, probably tired, were jonkoking right there on the floor! Jonkok is a traditional way of squatting on your heels, a position I’d seen many Indonesians take in a house or on the side of a road but never thought to see in the middle of a dance hall.

Eventually, Mitch’s burning eyes got the best of him (personally, I think dancing just makes him emotional) and we made a getaway before our male groupies noticed. As we traveled home, it occurred to me that despite the differences, there were actually a lot of similarities between that place and the clubs I’m familiar with back home. Both serve the same purpose: a venue for young people to interact in a way that is free from the cultural norms and stigmatizations of the society in which they are encompassed, though this translates very differently in Indonesia from the United States. For a time, even for an evening, such cultural expectations as the wearing of jilbabs (Muslim headscarf for females), curfews are set aside in order that individuals are able to experience a certain level of freedom they aren’t generally allowed.

Personally though, I think that was a level of conservative Indonesian freedom I only needed to experience once.