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Sky's Not Listening

by LARA MILLS

Three years ago Indonesia erupted in scandal when police arrested the country’s biggest rock star, the hunky singer Ariel of the band Peterpan. Someone in Ariel’s camp stole his computer, and that guy’s cousin leaked several short sex tapes featuring Ariel and his equally famous model girlfriends, Luna Maya and Cut Tari, to the internet, unluckily after the Indonesian government started promoting its new anti-pornography laws. Ariel was sentenced to over three years in prison for distributing pornography, and the social media-obsessed Indonesians lost no time rebranding their favorite son: Peterporn.

I arrived in Indonesia while Ariel was still in jail and, probably like you, had no idea who he was or what his band sounded like or how a celebrity sex tape could be such a big deal as to warrant arrest. I started picking up on his story because people love to gossip here, if not conspire, but there’s no TMZ so people read pieces on the internet or on twitter, or recount what their cousin's wife's little brother who's a security guard in the hotel where Ariel's agent lives says, and it all gets put together in different ways depending on where you are.

I love gossiping about Ariel. I first heard his story over dinner two years ago with a 5’1”, 40-something unusually chatty Javanese woman wearing a jilbab. Since I had yet to understand the nuances of practiced Islam in Indonesia, her head covering made her next words a little surprising: "Celebrity sex ring!" She explained that Ariel took the fall for Luna to protect her, but that actually the two of them were part of this group of Indonesian superstar celebrities who were all having sex with each other, and in the end Ariel suffered for them all. What a stud.

Over time I started name-dropping Ariel in Indonesian social settings because everyone tells his story differently. A parking attendant in Yogyakarta told me while I was waiting for a ride that Ariel had been prostituting himself for money after his band’s finances were shaken by two members quitting. A Jakartan I met climbing Krakatoa added that Ariel had gotten a fan pregnant and, since she was of Arabian descent, was forced to marry her and now needed money to support a family (they have already divorced). I finally met someone who knew Ariel from their high school baseball league in Bandung (there are 240 million people in Indonesia yet this was inevitable), and he told me that Ariel’s laptop had broken and his computer repairman stole the tapes, and it was the repairman’s cousin who leaked them to the internet.

Then one night in Jakarta, as beer became wine and wine became whiskey, a Wednesday-night, Peterpan-soundtracked Glenlivet session prompted a high-class Indonesian business executive to tell me the most sensationalistic version yet: a gathering of obscenely rich Jakartan housewives used sleeping with Ariel as a prize for their monthly collective (“arisan”). The winning woman’s husband was infuriated after finding out and threatened Ariel, plus every girl he had slept with, that he would release all of Ariel’s sex tapes unless each girl paid him $25,000. He released the Luna Maya tape first to prove his sincerity, and Cut Tari didn’t pay because she didn’t care; her husband is gay and everyone knows she sleeps around. Not even whiskey could convince me that any of this was true, but my business executive friend told me something else I hadn’t heard: everything and everyone in Indonesia can be bought for a price.

What is true is that two original band members quit Peterpan in 2010 and took the band’s name with them, so even before the sex scandal, Peterpan wasn't allowed to be Peterpan anymore. In retrospect that's a godsend because the nickname “Peterporn” is here to stay. Now the band is called NOAH, and they haven’t said why, apparently they just like the name.

Ariel was released from prison in July 2012 and Peterpan immediately released a new album as NOAH. Its first single, Separuh Aku ("Half of me"… is you), is playing in every single one of Java's thousands of convenience stores at every minute of every day. It plays in department stores, in the background of Indo soaps on TV, on the sound system hanging off the back of a guy's motorbike transporting chickens from the village. I have been in the forested mountains of East Java and come across scratched up guitar-playing Indonesian kids strumming along to Separuh Aku. Ariel's jail sentence did not diminish his appeal, if anything he's now the survivor of a government people feel uneasy about anyway, and even cooler because he used to be fucking Luna Maya.

I saw NOAH in concert in Yogyakarta in February and it was transcendent. Superficially Ariel's not that cute compared to cute Indonesian guys, he actually looks a little lopsided, but he knows how to work a crowd better than anyone I have ever seen. He has a voice and temper that will melt any girl into a puddle of puppy love. I guess that's only if you can understand what he's saying, which now I can, so I'm screwed. Sadly he was so tired at the concert that he ended up lying on the ground with his microphone, begging the jubilant crowd to start feeling tired so everybody could just go home.

You’re not tired yet…? Why are you not tired?? – Ariel

Ariel is always brooding about the meaning of life and heaven and the fact that we can ask questions to the stars but they’re never gonna answer back. Learning Peterpan songs has given me a valuable Indonesian vocabulary for expressing love, angst and excruciating existential torment. Most recently I have relied on this vocabulary in imagined conversations with my Javanese ex-boyfriend following our sudden and unresolved breakup a year ago. I never saw my ex-boyfriend while I was home in Yogyakarta last time because he's a national soccer star with no sense of his own schedule. He tried to fit me in for lunch between his Friday prayers and afternoon practice the day before his big game against Aceh. It started raining and I declined, but luckily I could turn to Ariel for the exact words I needed: Biar hujan menghapus jejakmu, "let this rain erase your trace!"

Why did I ever date an Indonesian national soccer star in the first place? I should ask Ariel. Does Ariel have anything to say about navigating the confusing doublespeak of Indonesian text messages? No, because luckily his lyrics are much more straightforward: I hope the rain comes and gets rid of you! Agreed, Ariel. The rainy season here lasts from October till March, so I sure hope my next one’s a Christmas breakup or else I’m gonna be out of luck.

Lara Mills is a contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Jakarta. You can find her website here. This is her first appearance in these pages.

"A Sunny Day For A Lonely Soul" - Peterpan (mp3)

"Menghapus Jejakmu" - Peterpan (mp3)

"Cobalah Mengerti" - Peterpan (mp3)