Awful ojek drivers

I already mentioned the awful traffic of Jakarta. There are many ways of getting around town. Buses, dangerous and complicated (I was initiated to them just this last time I was there, very proud of it). The busway, brand new buses with preferential lanes. Taxis, but most people tell you to stick to one reliable company, and horror stories abound (they take you to a small alley, beat you up and rob you..). Something similar to Thai Tuk-Tuks, orange, noisy and polluting three-wheelers. And the ojeks, which are simply people with a motorcycle and nothing to do. You can get the reckless, the old and trembly, the one who doesn’t know where you want to go. It is a dangerous but very fast way of moving around, much cheaper than taxis (if you know the prices..). Recently I had two unpleasant experiences. One pretended not to understand the price I fixed and then got very angry when I refused to pay 30.000rp instead of 3.000. While he was driving I thought he was on some drug, and indeed when he understood that he couldn’t cheat me got a bit crazy, with bulging eyes and even shoved me. He was small and the last thing I wanted to do was to fight, so with a very commanding but at the same time soothing voice (is that possible?) I told him what I was prepared to give him, gave it to him and left. He didn’t wait for me outside (eheh, I was wondering). And the same night, going to the bus station, another one first accepted my price, then took another look at me and said “no, I will take you for free”, “Why?”, “Because you are beautiful”. To which, in spite of my sizeable self-esteem I couldn’t help feeling suspicious. So presently the roles reversed, and I was haggling to pay the bloody 5.000rp. Of course, being a man, I am not allowed to back out of a potentially tricky situation, so off we went. And sure enough, he started asking me, with a lamenting/eager tone, specific questions about my sexual life, preferences and physical attributes. This time I selected a worldly humorous tone, to de-dramatize by making fun of him. To which he reacted with begging, almost on the verge of tears, to let him touch my big banana (I apologize for the graphicness). So I had to recur to my commanding tone again, which worked, he took me to the bus, took the 5.000 and left. Love is a painful affair.
This of course made me think about theunfair advatage of being a man, at least when traveling alone (wars, as Mr. Eugenides points out, are a different thing..)