See, a night in Boheme is not always a blast, but if I have Alan with me, it usually will go fun.
The thing is Alan is a good dancer. Going to Boheme, which is the only place where you can get good variety of latin, indian, and international music and crowd in Ames, you need to have a good dancer to go with. Or else, you will be stuck with your drink and cigarette and a lengthy conversation with your friends (of course, your hip and head are aching for the dance floor then). Going with Alan will at least guarantee that I will have at least one dance when he's hitting on girls. If he's not into girls, we can dance into the merengue or salsa. He's rough in dancing and it's not always comfortable because he's 2 meter tall and I'm petite to American standard. But it's alright, I still got my dance.
Now here is the different between US and Indonesian bars/cafes. In Indonesian, bars is identical to bad things, evilish things. Or they are a place for dancing, having fun, be crazy, listening to cool bands. In short, a place to be different from your daily life appearance of who you are. A place where you can have fun with your friends in a wild way. In here, bars are a place to meet your friends for a talk and a drink, so usually the place has no dance floor, the music is soft (so you can talk with your friends) and going to bars is like a regular thing you do every weekend or so. For dancing, you go to clubs or discotheques where the dance floor is wide and the music is loud (thus impossible to talk). Clubs and discotheques are big city stuffs, where you go to clubs being crazy. So here in Ames, most of the hangout places you find will be small bars where the standard equipments involve bar, pool table, pinball machine, juke box, and of course quiet soft music atmosphere.
So being an Indonesian in Ames, US, Boheme is just perfect. When you want to talk with friends (which I did at least a couple of times with my classmates), I go to Boheme on weekdays. Or when I feel a bit poetic, I go on Tuesdays, where they have an open mic night with poetry slam (an open mic is when you can go perform; poetry slam is an event of the English dept poetry club where you can go cite your poems). When I need to groove into the dance, I go on Fridays (when they have Indian night) or Saturdays (when they have latin night). Of course, all of those will require a drink to go with. I don't say that I'm an alcoholic or something, I know my limit (which is three glasses of rum coke), and I stick to my limit and not get tipsy. Enough quantity to give me a good night rest after a long painstaking day of assignments and classes. And it's not that I'm going every weekend. As far as I remember, I only went like two or three times over a semester, just when there was an occasion, or when friends asked me out.
Another thing of being an Indonesian in Ames, which is a small town by US standard, is that the majority of Indonesians here don't go to bars. As they probably still hold the idea that going to a bar is a sin, I can sort of know the why-s. Often I got the surprised and disgusted look when I told them that I was heading to the bar. They probably think that I'm a bad girl for going to bars (and the fact that I smoke, drink occasionally and dance with other people than my husband). But, make no mistake, I know my limit. When I smoke or drink and dance, I know where the line stands. Going to bars for me is like socializing with friends and winding down from my everyday busy-ness. Not for other reasons, like getting wild, getting wasted, or other getting (you know what I'm saying).
Now one more thing with Alan, why I like going out with him is that, he's so outspoken and so blunt. Guys will usually go nice and soft-spoken with girls, but not Alan. He's very blunt, even to the degree that he's so mean and sarcastic. But I sort of like it. He's not playing nice or whatsoever and I feel like hanging out with a brother, who's not afraid of telling me on the face of what's in his mind. And he knows that I'm tough, not easily offended, I know him too well that he's not worried that I will get mad at him because I know he's joking and that's just the way he is with his close friends. I'm not saying that his way of being sarcastic and mean is good (especially in relation to other people) and he got into trouble at least twice that I know, but I have no objection when it comes to me. I feel that people that can get under your skin is the closest to you. So, I can say that he's one of those people around me. And the fact that Jana, his older sister, is my bestfriend, I am a kind of his older sister whom he misses dearly...
