“I am Yoshiko.”

Pretty much as soon as we arrived at her place in Lovina, Bali, Kimi started talking about her friend from Japan who was coming to visit her soon.

Kimi is herself Japanese, and has been living in Bali for the last 13 years. She came to Bali when she was about 59 and decided to stay when she became close with Kadek (whose name is traditional in Balinese culture and means the second child, which is to say that most second children have this name—the other second children are called Made) and her husband (whose name I still don’t remember, but he’s the guy who looks after Kimi’s place). Kimi has a 20-year lease on Kadek and her husband’s land, where she built her paradise.

Kimi is clearly quite a character. And I can understand her excitement about having her Japanese friend visit: Kimi loves having someone to talk to. Actually, scratch that. Kimi loves having women to talk to. Because she’d sit and chew Gina’s ear off by the pool for an hour, but if I joined them she’d excuse herself pretty much right away. And I wasn’t the only one who experienced this: We confirmed this with our neighbors, George and Aiswarya. Kimi spoke to Aiswarya way more than she did to George. I don’t think this has anything to do with her not liking men, by the way. I suspect it’s a cultural thing where maybe Kimi learned that it’s impolite to talk to another woman’s husband. Maybe. But if it is a cultural thing, it’s clear that Yoshiko didn’t learn this or take it seriously. Which I enjoy about her.

Women talking together makes me a little paranoid, if I’m honest.* Particularly when the women are my wife who still loves me and an older woman in Southeast Asia who’s seen enough to know the score. So when on Day One Kimi took Gina aside for a little private conversation in her villa, I was all like, “Oh, come on! Not again.” Because every time this happens it turns out that the woman is warning Gina about how I’m a premium American male who the young women in country will use all of the wiles at their disposal to tempt away into a marriage that will make the whole visa situation a lot easier for me—and so this isn’t a bad idea at all, come to think of it, plus young and nubile and glistening Southeast Asian women makes it sort of a no-brainer—except that I love and am committed to my wife. But this explanation does nothing for me at all and the woman assures me in no uncertain terms with scissor-cutting gestures that she will snip-snip if I step out of line, which is scary. And this sort of thing happens a lot.

So when Yoshiko comes and talks with Gina and me and doesn’t make any snip-snip gestures at all, I’m pretty stoked. Plus, plus, we finally got to meet Silvio, the tall and tattooed and improbably-named German who we thought was maybe moody but it turns out he’s just quiet and is a pretty interesting guy once you get him going.

Silvio’s 26 years old and had been living at Kimi’s place for two months when we arrived. He’d seen enough of post-industrial life in Germany to know that this is no way to live and decided to pack it in and check out other parts of the world in search of a more reasonable living situation. He went to Bali first, found Kimi’s place, and sort of just stayed. I imagine he has a little money saved that he’s living on while he works on getting his e-commerce business going. While Silvio’s pretty clearly an atypical German, he’s definitely typically German in that his major moral problem with the e-commerce business is selling goods that maybe aren’t up to standards. Which the standards for goods in Germany are high, indeed.

Silvio, Gina, and I left the day after we all hung out on our stoop with Yoshiko, drinking and talking and becoming friends. This left Yoshiko in the lurch drinking buddy-wise because Kimi doesn’t drink and she goes to bed a lot earlier than Yoshiko. We’re trying to remedy this situation by luring Yoshiko to Thailand where she can stay with us in our little apartment in Kanchanaburi where the living situation might become a little uncomfortable when it turns out that I’m relegated to sleeping on the futon while Yoshiko and Gina sleep in the bed. Because futons aren’t the most comfortable for sleeping, although this is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.**

On the night that the photo above was taken, Yoshiko and Kimi and Silvio and Kadek went to dinner together after watching Helena’s stunning performance of the traditional Balinese welcome dance, the one that seems to say, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” Gina and I weren’t invited to dinner because Kimi hadn’t really spoken to me the entire time we were there and so didn’t know what an engaging, riveting even, conversationalist I am.

When they returned from dinner, Gina and I were sitting on our stoop having a little red wine we picked up from Hatten Winery on the north coast of Bali about a forty-minute drive west from Lovina. Here’s a pro-tip: If you’re ever in Bali, don’t bother with imported wines. The Hatten wines are delicious. All of them. So anyway we’re enjoying the post-bat-hour evening when the ladies and Silvio—who’s clearly all man—returned from a dinner that was, as Yoshiko reported, just okay. Gina and I had the outstanding seared tuna and baby bok choy with honey, lime, and soy sauce dressing that’s so delicious we made it almost every night we were in Lovina. Yum.

Yoshiko’d brought us a couple beers to share, which it was clear wasn’t gonna get it done sitting on the stoop and bonding-wise, but she knew this and explained that she only had $30. I took this to mean that she was on a $30-a-day budget, but it turns out this was totally wrong. She just hadn’t hit up an ATM yet. The good news is that we had a few Singha Radlers in the fridge plus some Port-style dessert wine from Hatten and a little Balinese whiskey. We were in good shape.

Yoshiko is, frankly, a wildly attractive woman. So I start chatting her up, obviously. Kimi soon excuses herself because she’s tired and is going to bed, but I suspect she’s going to sharpen her scissors. Kadek’s already gone home. So it’s just me and Gina and Silvio and Yoshiko. And it’s good. The conversation is good and easy and fun and it’s pretty clear that we all get on pretty well together. It’s also pretty clear that Silvio and Yoshiko are maybe gonna get it on together later on when she goes to “help him pack.” “Getting it on together” is totally different from “getting on together” because pronouns, in this case “it,” really do matter.

“So,” I ask Yoshiko, “what do you do with your life?”

Yoshiko didn’t really know how to answer this question, and she is forgiven for taking it to mean, “What do you do for work?” Because this is a typical conversation starter for a lot of people. She didn’t know how to answer because Yoshiko has never worked. Not really.

I clarified: “Oh, that’s not what I meant. I simply meant, how do you spend your time? Me, for example, I travel and enjoy all sorts of foods and drinks and go unwillingly to look at cultural heritage stuff with my wife who still loves me and chat up beautiful women and routinely get threatened with castration. That’s all I meant.”

It turns out that Yoshiko had been traveling pretty much all her life, beginning with backpacking in her twenties and, well, she’s still sort of backpacking and seeing the world and tempting young and tall and tattooed and quiet until you get to know them German men and generally having a good time. Once she understood my question—”What do you do with your life?”—it turned out her answer was easy:

“I am Yoshiko.”

I’m not exaggerating when I say how this seemingly-simple statement affected me. “I am Yoshiko.” I was all like, “I want to be Yoshiko too.” But I cannot. There is only one.

We’d heard that Yoshiko was married to an American man who I just assumed was pretty premium. When I asked Yoshiko about this, she laughed: “Who told you this?”

“Everybody.”

Yoshiko had been married, and she had two children. The children pretty much satisfied any expectations Yoshiko’s mom had for her, and so Yoshiko is free to do what she likes. And what Yoshiko likes is traveling and drinking and smoking and chatting people up. So you can see how much we have in common, except I don’t smoke and she doesn’t get threatened with scissors. But, otherwise, it’s clear that we are life-enjoyment soulmates.

It turns out, by the way, that Yoshiko’s American husband was a little like the dinner they’d had that night: just okay. I find this shocking. I highly doubt she’s interested in ever marrying again, but if she does, I hope she marries Silvio and Gina and me. Because Yoshiko is totally enchanting.

This next bit is going to sound like a cliche, and that’s cuz it is. But cliches, when taken seriously, often tend to be deeply true. So here goes: For me, the most enchanting thing about Yoshiko isn’t the easy conversation and friendship—which I felt was pretty immediate—it’s the way you can sit with her and simply look out at the night, at the light at the top of the mountain that always draws my eye, and say nothing and just be Yoshiko together. This is what makes a life.

*This is one of those times when you’re meant to understand that this is humor writing and some of these statements are meant to be funny in an ironic sort of way.

**This is another of those times when you’re definitely meant to take this as humorous and to understand that I in no way am intrigued or at all aroused by the thought of Yoshiko and Gina sharing a bed and maybe getting up to some late-night girl talk in a fort that they’ve constructed out of pillows and sheets and comforter while I’m just a few feet away pretending to sleep on the futon. This does not excite me at all.