He's Not a Man

I forgot to include this little snippet from my conversation with Ipu Marlena yesterday which was quite comical.

So we had finished with my treatment and I was feeling quite battered, after the scraping the sauna and all of that. I was enjoying my delicious cup of tea while she sat across from me drinking water and chatting.

She likes to talk, and she is very sweet. She is quite a character and I think anyone who comes to Bali and gets to meet her, is in for a real treat.

And so she was telling me stories about herself, like her butcher shop and all of that. But she also told me that she teaches many foreigners. They come to learn from her. This, I believe, was like many of my conversations with Balinese, an invitation for me to consider an offer to spend more money on her - i.e., come back and take classes with her.

I don't know what the classes entail. I guess she would talk a lot about herself.

She told me she had one student, a Canadian guy, who was very smart. He sat for five hours and took notes. Wow, five hours of her talking? What was she talking about?

And then she said, in a slightly more subdued voice, "But I don't think he was a man."

I just kind of raised my eyebrows questioning what she meant by that.

"I mean, not a real man. He was a gay."

I tried not to take offense at her assertion that gay men were not real men because I'm sure she did not mean it the way it came out.

Then she said, "He really liked to wear accessories - bracelets and necklaces and things", and she kind of made a face, suggesting she didn't approve.

But, she said, you couldn't tell, because he seemed normal, only at times he seemed a little feminine.

She concluded by saying again what a good student he was and because she thought he was gay, she felt comfortable spending so much time with him. They would have class in the morning, and then have lunch together and then rest and then have more class in the afternoon. No other student could handle the amount of time he could.