by Xiaolu Guo
“To see my friend Jack, in Devon.”
“Who is Jack? I never heard you talk about him.”
“Well, I have lots of friends.”
“I come with you.” I starting open wardrobe to take some clothes out.
“No. You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“No, I’m going on my own.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t think it’s the right time for you to come.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I have my own life…”
I don’t understand you mean: “But we go together. We lovers!”
I upset. Your decision destroying image of perfectness.
“Come next time,” you say.
I stop. Don’t know what do.
“How many days away? I will feel lonely.”
“Just three or four.”
I can’t say anything. But what I am do without you here in house? I even don’t knowing where electricity box, and how answer telephone in proper way.
“You know, you’ve got to go out and make some friends,” you say, “so you’re not always dependent on me. What about those girls from your language school?”
“Don’t need another friends. I don’t want. I only want be with you.”
You pack some your stuffs. You walk to the back room. Five seconds, you pushing blue bicycle out.
“This is for you. I bought it in Brick Lane. Look, you can wear a skirt—there’s no bar in between.”
“Try it,” you say.
I don’t care the bicycle. I walk and hug you tightly. I put my head into your old leather jacket.
Finally, you leave. White van stays outside. You take bus and then you will take train. England is small country compare China, but still, I feel you leaving me somewhere far away, somewhere unknown, somewhere I don’t involve at all.
I thought we together, we will spend time together and our lifes will never separated. I thought I don’t needing go these double-bill screenings to kill raining nights. I thought I will not scared to live in this country alone, because now I having you, and you my family, my home. But I wrong. You doesn’t promise anything solid.
So now I go out into the world on my alone…with that blue bicycle. And remind me to ride on left side at all times.
pub n. a building with a bar licensed to sell alcoholic drinks.
pub
Park my bicycle outside from Dirty Dick’s, nearby Liverpool Street Station. Dirty Dick? That normal name for English pub? Anyway, it is first time I came into building with a bar licensed to sell alcoholic drinks. I hope you will take me into pub, but you went away somewhere unknown instead.
I sit in pub alone, trying feel involving in the conversation. It seem place of middle-aged-mans culture. I smell a kind of dying, although it still struggling. While I sitting here, many singles, desperately mans coming up saying, “Hello darling.” But I not your darling. Where your darling? 7 o’clock in the evening, your darling must be cooking baked bean in orange sauce for you at home…Why not just go home spending time with your darling?
But mans here just keep buying pint of beer one after another. Some is drinking huge pint Lager, is like pee. Others buying glass of very dark liquid, looks like Chinese medicine. They watching football and shout together, without having food. In corner some tables with foods. Make me feel very hungry. See the food is biggest reason I am deciding go to pub. But everyone pretending food not there. Like is invisible or just for the good show. I take out my Concise Chinese–English Dictionary, start to study. I trying not thinking of the food too much.
In front of my table, five big mans all smoking cigarettes; this is the fog of London. After some times, mans come to my lonely table and ask something.
The way I am talking in English make everybody laugh. They must like me.
A young man buy me beer. He is the only good looking one.
I say: “I feel so delightful drinking with you. Your face and words are very noble.”
The man surprised and happy. He stops his drinking.
“Noble, eh?”
“Yes,” I say, “because when you start talk then you look very proud. I like the confidence. I don’t have.”
The man holding his big pint listens careful but not sure about what I mean.
A while, he says: “Love, you only think my words are noble because I can speak English properly”—oh properly, that word again!—“but it is my mother tongue, you know. It’s not that hard. But anyway, thank you for the compliment.”
“You deserving it,” I answer seriously.
But the man calls me “Love”! Love is cheap object in London.
My eyes looking towards delicious feast on side table. Everything ready waiting but no action.
I think the man gets hint from me, so he introduces me to English food system in pub calling Buffet, is meaning same word for “self service.”
“Why two words for same food system?” I ask him.
He laughs: “Because one is the English word and one is the French word. The French word is more noble.”
All old mans laughing.
Buffet. Now I remember this noble word.
There are some white sticky stuffs on the plate. It looks like Tofu, but smells bad.
“What is this?” I ask bar man.
“That is goat’s cheese, darling. Would you like to try some?”
In China we not have cheese. We not like drinking milk, until last ten years maybe. I feel very surprise. I thought goat is too skinny make cheese.
“No. Thanks. What that? That Blue stuff?”
“It’s another cheese. Stilton.”
“Another stinking cheese with different names?” So many different cheeses! Like our Tofu system!
“Is this made by cow?” I ask.
“That’s right, love,” the barman laughs loudly. “Handmade by Communist cows.”
“What?” I am confused.
“Sorry to tease you, sweetheart. What you’re trying to ask is ‘Is it made from cow’s milk?’ English is a bloody nightmare, isn’t it?”
Back home I write list my new learnings for Mrs. Margaret: made by, made from.
drifter n. 1. a person who moves aimlessly from place to place or job to job; 2. a fishing boat equipped with drift nets.
drifter
Third day you are away. Feels like you are gone for a month. Before, I never be alone living in this house. Now, I realise this your house. Everything yours, and everything in this place made by you. Very little to do with me. But this place completely take over my life. I am a little alone teacup belonging to your cupboard.
I wandering in your house, silently, lonely, like cat without master.
On your dusty books shelf, I take out photo album.
There is picture of you, arms around big tree, like lover. You naked in the picture. Very young and with a brown skin. You smiling at the person with camera. Must be your lover.
Another picture, you on boat. Is old black and white photo, so sea looks totally brown. You only wear shorts, and your muscles are strong. You smile to camera, holding the boat’s paddle.
Who with you on that boat? Which sea it is?
Another old picture, you are with a man, a young man. You both are naked, standing on rock by the sea. The waves coming up on your legs. Man beside you is handsome. Who is person taking this photo? Man or woman? You must be three very intimate, very close friend, if you both naked in front the camera.
Putting back photo album, I am jealous, and I feel the pain from my jealousy.
I open one of your old boxes on top the books shelf. Some letters inside. I think they are love letters. Letters you wrote and being returned from somebody in a one big package. You said in one letter:
Of course I am committed to you, and I always will be. But I can never see myself in a couple. Yes, you are my lover, but you are also my friend, and we will always feel special together. Friendship always endures longer than romance.<
br />
Romance not to be found in my Concise Chinese–English Dictionary.
Some your old diaries in box too, from 1970s and 1980s. A long time ago. When I was really little. This is the man really older than me twenty years. Twenty years of extra life. You from such a different world.
Something is very important about this word drifter. I meet it in your letters, or the letters somebody wrote to you, or in diary with broken pages; I meet it everywhere in your long-ago past, but I never understand what it mean.
I have to learning this word first, then to learning something about you.
Open your old Roget’s Thesaurus on your shelf (Thesaurus! More strange word! In Chinese, we not having a second word to replace “dictionary”!) On the cover: first published 1852. 1852! That an old dictionary. In China there is very old Character Dictionary from 1700s Kang Xi era but I only know not half of the characters.
Thesaurus only make me more confusing. Drifter like fishing boat? Drifter goes fishing on a fishing boat? Or situation of a fishing boat swing in the sea is like situation of drifter?
I think of that picture you are on the boat wearing the shorts, holding the paddle, smiling the camera. Behind you is brown colour sea. You a drifter, I believe.
In your diary, you describing your father a drifter. He is bus driver, and he doesn’t like stay at home. Don’t know why. One day he leave you and mother and sisters and never came back. You say you learned your father travels anywhere hot and anywhere can have sex. I can’t believe what I read. Your mother decide buy piece of farm in Cornwall. Farm has a name called Lower End Farm. She live with sheep and goats and cows. Without any mans around.
You grow up, feeling cold from your family. You feel womans so dull and womans not interesting. You wanting something exciting and something desirable. So you decide leave find a place far away from that cold farm, a place cannot reach your mother and your tough sisters. You love the sea and you want see the world.
When nineteen you go to long voyage with man from your hometown. From your diary, I think he called John. Boat belonging to John’s. You young and you write diary because you think that is your historic time in life.
The first page of your sailing diary:
February 6th, 1978
We are all looking forward to sailing but at the moment we’re blinded by the work and preparation needed before we can set out. I think it’s going to be a really exciting trip during which much will be learnt by everyone.
At the end of that day, underneath the page, you wrote a line in capital:
“ROMANTIC IRELAND’S DEAD AND GONE”—W. B. YEATS
Another page, words is soaked by water. Difficult read:
Sunday 11th February
We have eventually left amidst cheers from our friends on the quayside…
We were all pleased to get away from what was beginning to become a stale atmosphere where no one could do anything without consulting someone else. At first I felt pure excitement, but later when the open sea was below us, I started feeling sick. Our watch began
The writing start becoming very messy and un-readable.
I open last page on diary and find out you spend nine months on boat all together. From February 1978 to 4 November 1978. How a person can do for so long without his feet stand on soil? I imagine you must be suffered from storms. Sometimes you must be burning by sun. Were you ill on boat in all nine months? Did you wish you be anywhere but not on boat?
You saying in your journey sometimes you feel life exciting because you are on enormous sea, sailing and sailing for ever, but sometime you really bored in every single minute because you are always on boundless sea, sailing and sailing for ever. I try imagine to watch sea every single minute but can’t. I never even been close sea. Only watched from plane.
7th June, 1978
Breakfast: tuna. Supper: tuna, I try to eat as much green veg as I can, but the fridge is well guarded (a tomato went missing yesterday)
Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala. These are the central American countries which we have passed, although some we have not seen because the boat has been too far out to sea.
Next page, you arrive San Diego and San Francisco.
You not really write about love. Was love not in your nineteen-year-old life? Is really only blue sea in your brown eyes at that time? What about your dreams?
After that long voyage, you longing for something you can do with your hands. Twenty years old, you go art school. You studying sculptures there by making your hands dirty. A photo between the pages. I guess was that the sculpture you made. Enormous naked man, lying down and taking over whole floor of big studio. A giant, but naked giant. That the main subject of your sculptures. Then you writing you have sex with several boys in that art school.
First I think I reading wrong and you mean girls not boys, but then I look again. Matt, Dan, Peter. These are boys names.
“I don’t feel any real love in my heart,” you write.
When you move London, you go squat in old houses and meet mans in street every night. You talk to the strangers in the park and you go to home together. You say you feel warm by touching other’s body, by having sex with mans. You think you a homosexual, you call it Gay. But you even can’t remember faces and names the second day.
Then there is another diary. Is some years later. You feel empty that kind of hunting-boy-life, so you become campaigner, a demon-strator. You for campaign against the capitalism, against the McDonald developing, and you go India stopping mining companies doing developmenting there. You go with young demon-strater group to everywhere, Delhi, Calcutta, Mexico, Los Angeles…Always drifting around. But I thinking maybe you not know what want to do in your life. Or why you travel so much? In those squatter’s days, the sculpture you made are all destroyed. Nothing left. You don’t have a woman lover being with you (or maybe you never want to?), and you don’t have a man lover being with you either. Only thing you had, you wrote, is “sex and seduction.”
You wrote about days you work as youth worker. I didn’t understand what this job about. You wrote about holiday trips with children. There photos between pages: you with teenagers laughing in front of camera. You love those teenage boys. You work that for ten years. But how come you stop a job which you really like? I don’t understand. Maybe because your gay life? Maybe kind of scandal as homosexual teacher. I never know…Anyway you left your job, and what happening next?
My eyes becoming sore. I am tired of reading, all these words, my brain is just too full by your past. Everywhere is you, and you are everywhere, every sentence, every page.
I put back all these old diaries, old letters. My hand covered by dust. I wash my hand, under cold tap water. I thinking probably you never read these things for long time. Maybe I am first person opening these boxes in last twenty years.
Night is long. Quiet outside. Cars passing sometimes. I sit on your chair. I feel bit heavy. I feel bit difficult to breathe.
I sleep on your bed alone, which we slept every night together since I move in. Actually is single bed supposed be for one person. I realise this again. I am awake. I trying draw map of you, map of your past. But is difficult. I see the morning lights outside through the garden, through fruit tree without flowers. Is fourth day you away and is the day you will be return. You said you be here in the morning, about half past ten.
Nine o’clock now. I get up, and I brush my teeth, and I make some tea. I put my cold hand on teapot to get warm. I wait for you to return. But now I scared about you to return. You will drift with your Chinese woman, in boat on the ocean. No seashore in distance. She floating away and passing in your life like piece of wood on the sea.
One hour going by, and waiting is painful. I try study singular and plural from textbook which Mrs. Margaret give to us.
child—children
mouse—mice
tooth—teeth
goose—geese
wolf—wolves
ox—oxen
fairy—fairies
thief—thieves
foot—feet
larva—larvae
I don’t like plural, because they not stable. I don’t like nouns too, as they change all the time like verbs. I like only adjectives, and adverbs. They don’t change. If I can, I will only speak adjectives and adverbs.
A quarter past eleven, you come back with a cold wind through door. You put down dusty bag on floor then you kiss me, you hug me. You are pleased to see me. I ask how is your friend, you say everything is fine. You smile and you are excited and you want make love. Like nothing happened. You say you miss me. But how I can miss someone easy coming easy going?
“Did you have a nice time?” you ask.
“No.”
“Why not? Did you go out to see people and make friends?”
“No. I don’t want make friends.”
“So what did you do?”
What to say? I feel the sea inside me too big, too never-ending to speak.
bisexual adj. sexually attracted to both men and women.
bisexual
I am a woman and you are a bisexual. Both love beautiful mans so much. But beautiful young mans is always living in our imagination. He is daily life’s fantasy. The reality about him so fragile that is easy to be broken, like delicate Chinese vase.
You have so many books to do with naked mans. On your shelf: The Nude Male, Gay Writings from India, The Penguin Book of International Gay Writing, Fully Exposed: The Male Nude in Photography…How I know you not going to go with the beautiful gay man again and ruin my life? How I trust you stay with me? Maybe I ruin rest of my life to be with you.
Is there lots of free love in gay’s world because they not produce children? No children then no serious weight. They not need considering responsibilities of next generation, and they not need worry about the pregnancy/abortion. But how that work if far-east foreign woman fall in love with West gay man?
When we see beautiful mans in street, or when we talk to beautiful mans in pub, we have very different view. You always wondering how he will look like when naked, just like you look at good painting carefully with magnifying glass. But my first question to that man more practical: will he possible become my husband? If so, will he having stable incomes and be able buy house for his family?