I keep losing lovers to Jakarta. I don’t know why I fell for these women, but I think their nonchalance had something to do with it. They arrive in a cloudy haze: a drink, a smile, a long conversation in the same bourgeois café where I’d met the previous fling. They come with their flirty grins, full of promise and life, and they leave with their frowns.

First came Hitomi. She strolled into the coffeeshop wearing a long, faux fur coat; she was an Asian Sally Bowles. I was nervous. What version of me would impress her? She kept me at bay, over texts and in person. No doubt she was sizing me up, analyzing my every move. When she finally let me into her bed, it was not awkward, it even seemed natural, as if we had planned it for months. We flung our bodies together in the dark. The condom fell out of her with a ‘plop’ and off to the pharmacy I went. Fuck, all the Plan B’s are gone. Damn those state school kids. I bought a generic morning after and met her the next evening. She lit up a dull orange under the Northampton lights.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Um, sure. Sorry.” We chuckled and parted ways, terrified.

Over the next few months, we talked deeply and fucked competently. One night, she looked me in the eyes, took me out of her, and pulled the condom off, as if to say, ‘no more barriers between us.’ Another night, she wept after sex. Tomi covered my chest with tears, shed over her dead sister. I loved her. The whole routine was so banal. Drive through the snow, share cheap wine, talk about books, spend the night, go to breakfast. Repeat, repeat.

One day, we slept in, and she was late to work. She taught high school English and was passionate about her class and her students. I wouldn’t quite understand until the next year when I taught my own class. I watched her denim skirt shake from side to side as she ran frantically out of my run-down blue Ford. I pictured us back in bed, the glimmer of a diamond ring on her hand, and the sound of a crying baby in the room next door. The honks from the Xanax-dosed parents in the cars behind me shook me out of it. Then she was gone through the front doors of the school.

There was less than a week of bliss left. One night, after dinner, the Ford died in the snow banks behind a ramen joint. The all-white patrons watched us from the window. We sat in the car, willing it to live, as it sputtered pathetically and died.

“Shit,” I said.

“Hm, in Spanish, that’s mierda,” she replied. “And in Indonesian, kotoran.”

“Can you stop for a second? Fuck, I think we’re stuck.”

The engine howled and the lights flashed but no roar came from behind the dashboard. The tension built in my shoulders and made my head boil in the cold. I grabbed a wrench from below my seat and fumbled for the 10mm head somewhere in the center console.

“Don’t stress out so much,” she said. “We can always walk home. I wore my nice boots today, see?”

I smiled and looked down at the nubuck caramel boots she wore on her dainty feet. I wiggled my toes inside the sneakers I inexplicably decided to wear on this slippery Massachusetts night. Fuck, after I just spent my entire paycheck on those goddamn LL Bean boots. I spent all my time, energy, and sparse money trying to fit in with the preppy white kids at school. They all got their Bean boots for Christmas, probably.

I climbed out of the Ford slowly and deliberately, as if the cops were ordering me out, careful not to slip on the icy asphalt or hit my head on the car’s frame. Hitomi did the same. I could hardly see her on the other side of the car - like she had disappeared – maybe she took off running. I wished she had, rather than see my red-hot embarrassment as I popped the hood of the decade old, rusting car, all I could afford with no credit and no cosigner. Instead, she reappeared beside me, her frame dwarfed by the open hood.

“Anything I can do to help?” she said.

“Nah, just sit in the car before you get frostbite.”

“Okay, Mr. Big Man.” Her smirk lingered in my brain long after she closed the car door. I cleaned the battery connections and tightened them. My knuckles were red from the cold. The car started and I drove her home. That night, we fucked for the last time and afterward, she wept. When the tears dried, she told me about the Fulbright.

“It’s in Jakarta! I got my second choice!” I was glad for her, and I knew she’d drift away now. I was an expendable lump, trying to find a place for myself in her life. I asked her to date me, and she refused. It was my turn to weep – a pathetic, guttural moan that carried through the thin walls of her haunted Northeastern townhome.

“Was there a dying cat in your room last night?” Tomi’s roommate asked in the morning.

“No, just a boy,” she laughed.

Now she doesn’t want me.

“Platonically,” she said. “Sorry.”

I could’ve sworn she’d glanced back as she disappeared from my life.

***

Next was Larissa. She was 18 and I was 22. Was it immoral? Seducing a teenager? I taught teenagers. I watched her push into the café, with beaming eyes that scanned the room wildly. She sat down and grinned.

“I was born in Indonesia, where are you from?” I told her the disparate jumble of places I call home. Rissa and I talked like old, rekindled lovers. She sang for me on the condition that I come to her a cappella show.

“This Saturday on campus, just follow the signs, we’re called The Poofies,” she said. “Shut up, stop laughing!”

I dreamt about her hair that night. I was lost in the black, thick forest of her bushy hair. On the next date, we made pad thai in my shared, damp kitchen. The Walmart wok held the sticky, colorful stir fry nicely. The peanuts crunched satisfyingly under the thick, German knife blade. Outside, the snow powdered the backyard and covered the shitty grass. I scanned the corners of the kitchen and prayed last week’s mouse wouldn’t have an encore. I watched Rissa stir the noodles lovingly; she inhaled deep.

 “Holy shit, this smells like God,” she said.

I carried her halfway up the stairs. A valiant effort, we declared. I kissed her neck and pressed my hands into the small of her back. Over the speaker, I played a terrible playlist. We fell on the floor laughing when ‘Let’s Get It On’ came on. I poked my head up from under her skirt.

“Boys in Indo don’t do that,” she said.

A few weeks passed. We took road trips to the trucker diners scattered throughout the Pioneer Valley. As we drove, the idyllic Northeast roads shined against amber backdrops as they climbed up into the stratosphere and dove down in winding spiral labyrinths. Our heads swam in bliss for a while. 

In May, I drove her to Port Authority. We sang show tunes the whole ride there. I pulled over on 40th and 8th, blocking pissed-off cabbies in the taxi lane. They honked and hollered; I didn’t give a shit. As I hoisted her suitcase down to the sidewalk, she wrapped her arms around me. Rissa turned her gaze on me and kissed me quickly.

“I love you,” she said.

Her face turned red. I didn’t respond. She turned and rushed into the bus terminal. That baby blue dress with the orange floral pattern is how she lives in my mind. Over the next few months, we talked sparingly. The shaky internet connection in her Indonesian hometown cursed us. Over Skype, I saw the blurry outline of her Jakartan home. I met her brother and mother, clumps of pixels and smiles on my overheating MacBook screen.

“Kotoran!” I said. In broken English, they replied kindly.

Through those summer months, the dread of teaching for another year made my palms sweat and my head burn. The messages from Larissa peppered the days and gradually faded. One day, she showed up stateside and I took her to a gaudy Asian fusion joint. She ordered pad thai and we made awkward talk. We chortled like strangers. On the ride home, I asked for the cigarette she puffed out the window of the Ford.

“Huh, didn’t know you smoked,” she said.

In her dorm, she sat across the room from me. Over a joint, I realized she had no interest in me. She’d cast me aside. I grew cold; hurt and enraged. I knew what was coming and I didn’t give her the chance.

“Platonically?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I gotta go.”

“Just like that? We’ll never hang out again?”

I desperately wanted to tell the truth. I wanted to try again, to plead that I loved her. Instead, I left and never saw her again. Some days, the smoky horizon of her non-existence looms over me and I dream I’ll find her, waiting for me in Indonesia.