My first visit to Bali was with him,
the man I met years before,
each married to different people,
living different lives.
Weeks after our first date at Spring Moon,
the night I stayed and never left,
we ate and drank champagne
on a Cathay flight out of Hong Kong.
The cutlery ice cold like the butter on my plate.
By the time we got to Bali,
I took him around town with me
to spend Chinese New Year with him and my relatives.
Days later I hid him in a hotel room in Canberra
to spare my parents and friends the embarrassment
of being seen with another man,
less than a year after my first wedding.
First at the InterCon at Jimbaran.
We fucked on the king bed upstairs,
room service downstairs.
Massages on the daybed
in the elevated pavilion by the beach.
After the masseuse left,
my body soft and silky smooth,
his hand covered by my robe,
I let his fingers inside my pussy flowing
We napped there.
We napped there.
Then we walked the streets of Ubud,
sharing satay and krupuk beside the rice fields.
At the hotel in Ubud,
we soaked in a bathtub large enough for us both.
I gave him my body fully.
Every passage.
I posed naked for his camera,
and swam topless in the pool.
We ate late.
Creamy mushroom pasta for me.
Commentary on what I eat,
my shape,
my weight,
for him.
By the next time we returned to Bali,
I was full and pregnant with our second daughter.
It was just me and him and her.
We made love with me holding her between us.
In Bali, my body stretched
to hold her,
to receive him.
By the next time we were in Bali, I had booked a private villa for
me.
Him.
Our nanny.
Two girls, fourteen months apart.
A loud, alive, splashing, running cackle of girls.
My father, their Gung Gung, and my stepmother, their Abu.
Different years.
Different villas.
Different family constellations from Hong Kong and Australia marked the years of my cackle getting taller, louder, smarter.
Bikini bottoms turned to swimsuits.
Pizza turned to sushi.
Adult dinners out with the girls staying with their nanny disappeared.
But ice cream remained constant.
We returned to Bali,
for family,
for work,
for fundraising,
for rest, flat whites and Aussie breakfasts at KuDeTa.
When it was just him, me, and the kids,
we’d have breakfast and leave the girls at the Trans Resort,
run by an old friend, Alex.
I’ve known him since my wedding at Hong Kong Disneyland,
when he made the longest, most generous, rambling speech
at lunch the day before.
He and my husband go back much longer.
Alex would arrange the kids’ club
for Petra and Padme,
for art and swimming,
for micro braids finished with seashells,
to give me and my husband time off.
Time for lunch at KuDeTa.
Time for art galleries in Ubud.
Time to fuck and try for another.
The last time I was in Bali,
I travelled alone from Porto to Canberra and back,
to say goodbye to my father.
He died two years ago,
from a fall after losing his way to dementia.
In one year he wilted,
from Gung Gung, full of mischief,
to infant.
I ate across the street from the hotel,
Chinese food with wok heat,
like my father’s cooking,
like Chinatown in San Francisco.
By the next time I’m at KuDeTa alone, having a drink,
a young ripped man is inviting me,
for drinks,
for dancing,
for sex.
Remembering I had my tubes tied some years before, I said,
“I’m married with children. I could be your mother. Why me?”
“You’re hot,” he says.
