Sex and Taipei City

by Yu-Han Chao

  “My five-year-old daughter has nothing important to say. Never. When you’re five years old, trust me, you have nothing important to say. I just tell her to zip it.”

  Lena felt disturbed by the man’s dismissiveness.

  “And people, if you have a choice, have boys. Boys just break a few things, no big deal. Girls—girls are a whole other matter. Girls are evil. They are manipulative, devious, and they will worm their way inside your head and drive you crazy. My five-year-old daughter, God bless her soul, is the devil incarnate.”

  Lena could not believe that Jon, sitting beside her, was chuckling at this gender-stereotyping, sexist joke. She was wide awake now.

  “Not only are girls and boys different, men and women are different. A woman can stop having sex or lose interest in it any time. She’s distracted by something, and she kicks you out of bed. A guy, however, needs to finish. He can’t just stop and push the ‘off’ button on sex. He has no control. If I was having sex with a hot young woman, and she turned around and bashed my mom’s head in, I would think, that’s messed up, but I would continue fucking her—”

  Lena wondered if the comedian’s mother was watching this.

  “My wife and I don’t have sex anymore. But I still enjoy looking at her, even if she hates being looked at now. She is beautiful, a real woman. You know those twenty-two-year-old girls who walk around with lollipops and high heels and ponytails and talk like, like this, you know, like, yeah? Those are not women. Those are girls. Girls have tits. Women, real women like my wife, have dangly breasts and long, chewed-up nipples. Now that’s a woman. A girl does not become a woman until she’s had some people come out of her vagina, ruin her body, and trample every single last one of her dreams.”

  Jon laughed uproariously. Lena sat up.

  “You actually think that is funny?” she asked, fuming.

  Jon looked surprised. “Well, yes, I mean it’s exaggerated, but there’s an element of truth in it that makes it funny.” Jon shrugged.

  “You think a woman’s body being ruined and her dreams trampled over because of getting married and having kids is funny? Chewed-up nipples are funny?” Lena asked.

  “In the context, it was funny, but of course I wouldn’t actually laugh at a woman’s body in real life.”

  “Then why would you laugh at the joke? There’s nothing funny about it. It’s completely disrespectful and insulting toward women. His wife had kids for him, fed their kids from her breasts, and now he’s laughing at her body.”

  “It’s just a joke.”

  “Do you think it would be a joke if I got stretch marks and messed-up breasts and had my dreams shattered by our future children? Would you laugh at me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What about the stuff he said about kids, not listening to what kids say just because they are five? What if the child was hurt or molested? If we have a kid, will you not listen to her either? Because you thought that joke was funny, too,” Lena said. “And do you also think that little girls are evil and conniving?”

  “No,” Jon said, stiffening. “That’s not fair.”

  “Because if you are even a little bit like that comedian, then I don’t want to have a child with you,” Lena said, pulling her bathrobe tighter around her waist beneath the covers.

  “Don’t you think that you’re overreacting?” Jon let out a dismissive little laugh. “Are you seriously saying that you don’t want to have kids with me just because I laughed at a stupid joke? Doesn’t that seem excessive?”

  “It depends on the joke. Something small like that can be an indication of who you are and what kind of parent and husband you will be, and how you will treat your child and your wife in the future. As a woman, I already have enough trouble worrying that, if we one day have kids, when they are teenagers and I am middle-aged you might run away with a hot little twenty-two-year-old. Now I also have to worry about you laughing at my body, and also how you might treat our daughter if we have one?”

  Lena’s tears spilled down her cheeks. A spark of lightning lit up the skies outside, visible through the glass doors separating the hot tub from their room.

  “I already said that I would never laugh at your body,” Jon muttered.

  Lena continued to sob, clawing blindly through her tears at a Kleenex box on the nightstand.

  “In fact, if anything, I feel offended that you think I would be like that. You should have more faith and trust in me. I am your husband and you should know me better than that.”

  Lena crumpled a wet Kleenex and tossed it in the direction of a wicker wastebasket, where it joined a small mound of Kleenex snowballs that had missed their mark.

  “Regardless,” she sniffed, “of all the shows in the world, you happen to watch this stupid, misogynistic stand-up comedy, right before we were planning to have unprotected sex for the first time? What are the odds of that? We watch TV together all the time, and nothing like this has ever happened before. I think this means something.”

  “Well, if it’s not this, it’s some other thing. I don’t think you really want to have kids. You are looking for an excuse,” Jon said, getting out of bed.

  “I was totally willing to try to get pregnant, you know that,” Lena protested. “I’m not on birth control anymore, and I brought the lingerie—”

  “Willing to? I want you to want a child, not just say you are willing to, like I’m forcing you. Do you want a child or do you not? If you never want a child, then I think we should go our separate ways and not waste any more of each other’s time.”

  “Are you threatening to divorce me if I don’t have a kid with you?” Lena’s voice was inflected and incredulous. “Are you living in biblical times, classical China or something? Get rid of your wife because she doesn’t give you kids? I thought we loved each other. You can’t really love me that much if you want a divorce just because I’m not giving you a kid after one year of marriage! Do you realize how horrible and crazy you sound?”

  “You’re the one who suddenly doesn’t want a kid because of a stand-up comic’s joke on television.”

  “We’ve only been married for one year! If anybody else was married for one year and her husband was pressuring her to have kids, I would tell her that’s really fast, probably too soon. I’m trying my best to be a good sport, and I came here with the full intention of trying to have a baby because you were so eager. But now, maybe not. Especially if you’re threatening divorce. Why would I commit to you or to having a child with you if you so easily demand a breakup?” Lena, hysterical with tears, practically huffed the moist balls of Kleenex she held up to her face.

  “I thought we were in love,” she continued. “I have never thought about divorce, ever, and I can’t believe you are saying things like this.”

  Jon shook his head as if he thought his wife was insane and sat back down on the bed. Lena threw back the covers and moved toward the glass doors.

  “You’re overreacting,” Jon said. “Come back to bed. Look, the resort provides free condoms. We can use a condom if you want.”

  Lena ignored him and opened the glass door to the patio. She walked into the rain, which landed like frozen needles on her bare hands and face. She put one foot into the hot tub, then another, and slowly removed her bathrobe, letting it fall into the water. She stood naked in the rain, in the steam rising from the water’s surface. She breathed in the mineral scent of sulfur, which brought to her mind the image of golden mountains and cliffs, the source of the spring water. Something clicked inside her, and with that vision, just like that, she knew she could let go. She did not need Jon anymore, nor did she want him. She wanted the mountains, not this prison on earth.

  Jon watched her through the glass door. Lena looked away from him and sat down, submerging her body in the water. The heat soothed her legs, back, and shoulders. All her worries—Jon’s desire for a baby, the prospect of her juggling her one and a half jobs and a pregnancy and baby— dissolved.

  She had thought tha
t a child was her next step in life. Now she saw what the real step had to be: leaving. The house and mortgage were under his name, so she would not be burdened. She had her job, she had a decent body not yet “ruined” by childbirth, nipples perfectly tiny and pink, and she intended to keep them that way until she found a man who was worthy.

  Passport Baby

  WHEN MY HUGELY pregnant balloon of a wife and I got on a plane to the United States, we had one goal: to have an American baby. The timing was impeccably planned to fit into the visit allowed by our costly three-month tourist visas. Our prize: Seng Seng, my nervous, large-headed son; the bruise marks that my wife, in labor, squeezed onto my wrist; and special front row seats on the airplane behind the galleys so we could use a bassinet attached to the wall. Blonde stewardesses cooed at our baby all the way from San Francisco to Taipei. And the final reward: when Seng Seng turns twenty-one, he will apply to his government to bring us all to America.

  At least that’s the plan. My wife’s plan, mostly.

  Here’s another new plan of hers: hiring help at home.

  The new maid, Lin Lin, could be anywhere between nineteen and twenty-six—you can’t tell with the baby-faced ones. She’s pretty enough, I guess, with soft Southeast Asian features similar to many Taiwanese women, but with paler, porcelain-like skin. When she wears her hair in a ponytail, I almost mistake her for my wife sometimes, except for her slim figure in contrast with my wife’s generous, post-pregnant form.

  I don’t think about either of them in a lustful way. At this point women are a tiring presence in my life: three of them, all under my roof. The scariest one of them all? My mother-in-law.

  “Why don’t you let me buy you a new suit, you’re always dressed so shabbily. You’re a businessman. Appearances are important,” my mother-in-law says, not even looking at me but checking her professionally manicured nails.

  “This suit was very expensive,” I say. It’s true.

  “But it’s old! An expensive old suit is much worse than a cheap suit. It’s shabby to wear old clothes. At least put on one of those new shirts I got you.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “You think nothing is necessary. Just put one on, they weren’t expensive, two for a thousand NT, marked down at the department store sale.”

  “I tried one on a few days ago, remember? It made me itch.” It’s an allergy I inherited from my mother’s side of the family. Synthetic fabric leads to my breaking out in hives every time.

  “You’re just neurotic, imagining things. You’re not a real man. My daughter married a fake.”

  In addition to having an unreasonable personality, my mother-in-law also has diabetes. No doubt her kidneys will worsen and require dialysis every three weeks, emptying our bank accounts while her bitterness eats up our souls.

  One night, I was reading the evening paper in the living room, minding my own business, and in she walked wearing her favorite green nightgown. She gave me the full-frontal view of her sagging, scary body veiled in the color of moldy, spotted olives. I don’t even remember the question she asked me, so stunned and scarred was my mind. She had the longest nipples I had ever seen, long, droopy ones like a stack of one-NT coins with dark areoles at the base of each sag, so dark one could see their shadows through an entire layer of fabric.

  Her daughter’s nipples aren’t especially small or short either. I’m glad she keeps her bra on most of the time. It’s too much, really, the sight of bare breasts, so real with swollen, uneven, goose-bumpy areolae, especially after the baby when the veins showed like tree branches and the orbs were engorged with fresh human milk, nipples inflated into balls. Luckily, my loving wife finds the fact that I like her underwear to be kinky. She imagines I have a brassiere fetish. She does not know what horror I feel every time she pops a breast out of her convenience bra, ripe melon from a sack, to feed Seng Seng.

  My wife is attractive enough. Just not to me, not in that way anymore.

  Something happened to my overgrown schoolgirl. Once she was adorable, the smile on her peach-like face or a glimpse of a smooth limb always stirring something I thought was happiness in my heart. Even the way she bit into a steamed bun I used to find moving.

  Now, watching her eat just frightens me.

  When we were dating, she only let me hold her and touch her through a bra and panties or one-piece swimming suit. The transition point was our wedding night: after the ceremony with its toasts and drinks and clothes-changing and bowing, she climbed on top of me and rather forcefully claimed me as her husband. Perhaps it was the stress of the wedding, the champagne, shock, or fear in response to her aggressiveness, but I could barely get it up for my bride.

  Now, she won’t leave me alone. Sometimes she reaches for me in front of her mother; it’s indecent, all those ideas the Chinese version of Cosmopolitan must be putting in her head. She buys imported lace nighties from France and Italy, and a ridiculous assortment of candles and massage oils with dirty-sounding names. Half the time, I want to run away. The rest of the time, I just want to watch television or sleep.

  I don’t want to be like one of those tormented men on TV who are always being nagged by insatiable wives. I’ve considered stocking up on the little blue pills that one can buy whispering, leaning over the counter, from most Taiwanese drugstores. Not that I’ve ever done it. I’m only thirty-one; I’d have to be at least thirty-five to stoop that low.

  From the outside, our middle-class home looks modest. My wife and her mother picked everything they wanted from various home décor catalogues and traditional furniture stores. I appreciate that nothing matches. In the living room, a sofa of crocodile skin and a floral-patterned love seat cluster around a modern, wavy-looking coffee table, the TV an enormous fifty-inch thing balanced on a small brass table with S-shaped legs. Ratty tapestries depicting mythological menageries hang side by side with framed Chinese watercolors on our light green and cream-colored walls. Curtains line every window and doorway: heavy cotton in the living room, lace in the bedrooms, translucent plastic— sticky from old grease—in the kitchen. The kitchen, unlike most Taiwanese ones, boasts a built-in oven and the two-door, ice-making refrigerator my wife said she always wanted. A row of appliances lines the marble counter: automatic can opener, four-slice toaster, ten-cup coffee maker, blender, food processor. Too bad all those wonderful chef’s aids haven’t produced as many satisfying meals as one might hope.

  I’m proud to own a house in the best neighborhood in Shing Tien while most of Taipei squats in tiny apartments. But this house has its flaws. Soundproofing was an issue I never considered before. How could I? I didn’t know my bride was going to be a screamer. And when she makes too much noise, I lose my erection. The idea of her mother hearing us might just drive me into celibacy.

  It’s a good thing that first the pregnancy, and now the baby, keeps my wife preoccupied. We must be doing something wrong, however, because my son is a fussy bundle of nerves. Any sound at all startles him horribly, and after a few such shocks he wails. A dog bark, a door slam, or a car siren going off in the neighborhood—anything can set him off.

  “You’re me, Seng Seng. You’re nervous and feel threatened by the women around you. I agree. They’re scary,” I whisper to him.

  He looks at me with large, watery eyes. He wants me to stop talking, I can tell. Shut up, useless dad. I shake my head, folding my fingers around one of his chubby feet, and sure enough, he bursts into tears.

  Aside from his mother’s sizeable nipples, Lin Lin is the only remedy to Seng Seng’s tantrums. The maid loves it when Seng Seng goes off; it gives her an excuse to drop whatever housework she is doing and run to take care of the baby. She can hold him for hours, watching television, napping with him, singing him Vietnamese songs. For all I know those songs might be a bad influence on him, but what can I do—the child likes her. She likes to grab Seng Seng and swing him around, something that makes me nervous because I think his arms will be dislocated from the rest of his body at the a
rmpits.

  My wife’s jealousy flares when she sees that the child she carried for nine months in her womb prefers Lin Lin instead. She yells at Lin Lin for trivial things such as a dirty corner in the bathroom or an unscrubbed bathtub, though her anger never lasts long. After all, the maid makes it possible for her to take naps in the middle of the day. I tried to get a raise for Lin Lin for her extra work with the baby, but my wife, who manages household finances, refused.

  “She does not deserve it. The baby is only an excuse for her to avoid housework. Besides, who changes his diapers? Who gives him baths and gets wet when he kicks or pees everywhere? Who feeds him and gets vomited all over when he’s sick? Me! And you want to give the maid more money?”

  Even when Seng Seng is being difficult and we are exhausted, neither of us approaches my mother-in-law for help because she acts like we’re abusing her or treating her like help when we ask her to do the tiniest baby-favor for us. You would think that a grandmother wouldn’t mind taking her grandson out in his stroller after dinner, but she screws up her face when we ask.

  “You think I’m old and useless and have nothing better to do than your chores? Young people these days, no sense of responsibility. Old Mrs. Jian’s children would never ask her to lift a finger to do housework for them. When are you going to begin to treat me right, huh?”

  She wasn’t a good mother; how could she suddenly become a good grandmother? her daughter mutters under her breath.

  This morning, I woke up to a disconcerting silence in the house. Something was wrong. I could feel it in my bones. We had slept too long, too well. Sitting up in bed, I spotted the empty crib at the foot of our bed. I shook my wife, who was curled up to my left, hogging the extra blanket that she had rolled into a big sausage-like thing sandwiched between her legs.

  “Where is Seng Seng?”

  “Huh?” She let go of the sausage and rubbed her eyes.