by Linda Jaivin
We arrive at the entrance to a giant maze. The emperors always had the best toys. The gray stone walls of the maze are topped with at least a foot of snow, and it’s another popular spot with the kiddies. Mengzhong locks his bike and buys us entry tickets. Before I know what’s happening, he dashes into the maze and disappears. I bolt after him. I keep hitting dead ends but finally I collide with him rather suddenly as I round a corner, skidding on ice. He catches me, taking my mittened hands in his. He is a very naughty boy. I see this in his eyes. I’m a naughty girl, too, and I stand on tiptoes to kiss him and this time I slip the tongue in. He’s not, shall we say, averse. He says something in Chinese. I look at him blankly and laugh, and he laughs and shakes his head, and I say Meng-joong and he says Jyu-Li-Ya, and now it’s me running off through the labyrinth and him chasing after me. When I find myself in a dead end, I quickly scoop up some of the snow and make it into a snowball, which I pelt him with. I try to make a getaway, but he tackles me and we both fall to the ground. We’re just about to kiss again when some schoolchildren in lurid red-and-pink outfits pour round the corner and, pointing at us, jump up and down and yell something I guess meant something like “Snogging, snogging, we caught you snogging.” Needless to say, we scramble to our feet and get out of there as fast as we can, giggling like mad.
When we finally reach the end of the maze, we find a gateway that leads to a path up a small hill. We climb up, hand in hand, our feet scrunching through the snow. I look down and I think I see Mr. Fu starting through the maze. But I can’t be sure. He’s dressed like so many others in padded blue jackets, with caps and glasses. It’s started to snow heavily again. We get to the top of the hill and we’re panting and our breath is coming out in clouds. We move closer to the little copse of trees at the top of the hill, and soon we are embracing and kissing furiously, tasting the duck in each other’s mouths, trying to grope through eight hundred layers of clothing. It is insane. Although we are among the trees, it is hardly a private spot. The trees are small and bare, and not that densely planted either. We can hear the laughing and whooping and shouting of people enjoying themselves on all sides. Mad, mad, mad! I barely know the guy and can’t communicate with him to save my life and it’s freezing cold and snowing and we’re in a public park in China, in the middle of the day, for Christ’s sake, and Mr. Fu is probably looking for me and I’m supposed to be representing my country, sort of, and here I am with a street-performer a circus acrobat a snake-swallower a fire-eater a sword-juggler with a Peking opera laugh, and isn’t this the most thrilling tryst I’ve ever had?
He is deftly penetrating my layers with his hand, which, undoing buttons and zips and pulling fabric this way and that, finally reaches my breasts. The shock of the cold air already has my nipples on full alert, and he pulls and pinches them while we continue our game of tonsil hockey. I sling one arm around his neck, my hand weaving into that lustrous mane of his. With the other, I reach into his coat and stroke his crotch. Even through the layers of trousers and long Johns, I feel his cock standing up to say ni hao! When I pull my hand away, he picks me up and presses my back against a tree. With both my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, we dry-hump like teenagers by the back door. I am feeling cold and hot and nervous and bold all at once. He puts me down and digs through other layers now and finds me all juicy and pulsating. His fingers are surprisingly warm. With visions of Mr. Fu and security police and guard dogs and yes, how can you not, even Tiananmen in my head, I pull away from his kiss and look all around. Miraculously, though there is still that babble of Chinese voices from every direction, we are alone.
When I look back, I see that Mengzhong has somehow managed to extricate his dick from his trousers and long Johns and daks. Amazingly, despite the snow, despite the cold, it is very hard. Impulsively, I kneel down in the snow and swallow the sword of the sword-swallower, charm the snake of the snake-charmer. And he is charmed. I can tell. At one point I’m sure I hear Mr. Fu calling my name, and I panic and lift my head and look around but Mengzhong uses his hands to put my head back onto his cock. I’m very nervous and very turned on. What would happen if we were caught? This is a communist country after all. Bamboo slivers under the fingernails? Thumbscrews? Deportation for me, labor camp for him? The almost unbearable tension and paranoia are, I’m almost ashamed to admit, only adding to the excitement. He draws me up to my feet and kisses me while loosening my belt and tugging my trousers down my thighs. I’m trembling so badly my knees are knocking, but I can’t tell whether it’s with cold, fear, or desire. By now half my brain’s between my legs along with his long, hyperactive fingers, and the other, weaker half is envisioning men in uniform, the shocked faces of little Chinese children, and a horrified Mr. Fu. I am also thinking about my toes, which despite my boots are so cold they are burning, if that makes any sense.
Mengzhong embraces me more tightly now, tenderly kissing the snowflakes off my eyelashes. How do you say “Maybe under the circumstances, darling, we should make this a quickie, besides, I’m freezing my tits off and I’m sure that’s an icicle hanging off your balls” in Mandarin? I decide to express, in the universal language, the more readily comprehensible message of “Take me right now.” But it suddenly occurs to me that we have a bit of a logistics problem. I mean, my pants (and my long Johns, and my panties) are down around my knees, but I can’t actually take even one pants leg off without removing my laced-up boots and socks. There’s no way I’m going to do that given the fact that we might be sprung at any moment. I think I should be prepared to sprint at the first sign of billy clubs; and besides, I can’t just lie in the snow or I’ll literally freeze my buns off. Mengzhong’s obviously thought this through. He mumbles something in Chinese. (I bet you say that to all the foreign girls.) He turns me around and with one hand on my waist, he gently pushes down on my back until I am bent over in the position that is known in yoga (appropriately, in this case anyway) as the dog posture.
I am grasping the base of the trunk of a slim tree for support, and he wraps himself around me like a pancake around duck and slides smoothly inside, a shallot, no, a giant leek, gliding into the plum sauce. He reaches for my tits with one hand, and my clit with the other, and as he fills me up, my mind dances incongruously with images of snakes and policemen and snowflakes and Mr. Fu and crispy duck skin, and steadying myself with one hand on the ground, I reach back with the other to grasp his hard muscled calf. It is definitely the leg of an athlete, an acrobat. I’m absolutely buzzing with the thrill of it all, and he feels so good inside me. But I’m not sure I’m going to be able to come, not before all those people I am convinced are besieging the hill from all sides now reach our little love spot. Yet I’m sure that Mengzhong is holding back until I come. So I decide to fake it.
I don’t want to moan or scream or anything that might really bring on the revolutionary masses so I just grip his legs as hard as I can and arch my back as best I can in this damn position, which doesn’t really allow for that, and shake my head from side to side and start to unbalance, and grip him even harder. This seems to convince him because he now starts to slam it into me and finally, with a little groan, slumps over my body. We get our clothes back on pretty quickly, and I lend him my brush and he brushes my hair and I brush his. He takes me in his arms again just as that same group of schoolchildren comes shrieking up the path toward us. We pull apart, but their teacher gives us a sharp look of disapproval anyway—imagine what sort of look it would’ve been if they’d come along just fifteen minutes earlier. And I’d mentally compared Jake to the Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe! Ha! Jake’s just a slacker with a reasonably flexible body and even more flexible morals. No, I shouldn’t be so hard on him. That’s unfair. Oh, Jake, I do miss you!
Anyway, we bike back to the parking lot where Mr. Fu and Xiao Wang are waiting with the snakes, and Mengzhong gives me a very big smile and reaches out to shake my hand. This, of course, is all we can do under the circumstances, so I clasp it and say xiexie ( “than
k you” ); and he laughs and says xiexie back and takes his bag of snakes and opens it up to check on them and gives a little sign like, I’m a bit worried about them, shrugs, hops on his bicycle, and takes off; and Mr. Fu scolds me for talking to strangers rarara, and I put on a contrite expression and pretend to take in what he is saying while concentrating on all the sensations still zipping over my skin and through my body. On the way to the airport, I ask Mr. Fu whether Mengzhong means anything. “In Your Dreams,” he replies. “In my dreams.” In my dreams indeed. Breakfast? Uh, yes, thanks. Yeah, no I suppose I did sleep a bit. And you? Look at me, with my legs crossed and clamped together and creaming myself. You’re such a slut, Julia.
Yes, it was really nice to meet you too, Mike. . . . Oh sorry. Mick. Oh please let my baggage come out nice and early. I wonder if Jake will be there.
(Half an hour later.) Nothing to declare. . . . Thank you.
Will he won’t he will he won’t he will he won’t he? Stop obsessing, you dag! Here we go. Look beautiful. Jake Jake Jake. No Jake? No, definitely no Jake. Never mind. Oh my god, there’s Philippa! What a hero. Wonder what moved her to come pick me up? I mean, she doesn’t even have a car. Philippa! Thanks for coming, mate! Yeah, it was great. I’ll tell you all about it. But what have you been up to? . . . Not much? Oh, well. At least your book is coming along. Yeah, I really hope I can go back soon. I had the most fabulous time.
Chapter Nine –
Fireworks
“So, Julia, tell us all about it.” Helen was helping Chantal set the table. “Every detail.”
Chantal, glancing every so often at a copy of Vogue Entertaining she’d left open on the sideboard, shadowed Helen, rearranging, fiddling, calibrating spaces between silverware and plates.
“No worries,” replied Julia. “But I want to hear what you’ve all been up to as well.” Chantal noticed Philippa flinch. Odd, that. What had Philippa been doing anyway?
Julia handed round summer cocktails of raspberry purée, lemon juice, Cointreau, and sparkling white wine. “Happy Australia Day, by the way.”
“Ta. Happy Australia Day,” Helen responded. “May it soon be changed to a more ideologically acceptable date than January twenty-six, the anniversary of white settlement.”
“Cheers.” Philippa took her drink and plonked herself down in the zebra chair.
Helen returned to her task of setting the table. As she placed the final few pieces of cutlery on the table, she watched out of the corner of her eye as Chantal discreetly repositioned them. Helen was not resentful; she was looking for tips. She had resolved to become more stylish in every aspect of her life. Last Saturday, Chantal had given her an afternoon of retail therapy, helping her alleviate her wardrobe stress by picking out some new clothes and shoes. In the end, of course, it turned out to be more of an update than a makeover. Helen still balked at short skirts and didn’t care that stiletto heels were coming back in a big way—there were some principles on which she would not compromise. And she thought that the thumb ring Chantal had urged her to buy made her chubby fingers look even pudgier. (Well, she thought she had chubby fingers. Chantal had just laughed and shook her head. Then again, Chantal, who was an elongated whippet of a thing, could laugh.) Helen had, however, taken Chantal’s suggestion about applying a touch of makeup, even if mascara always made her feel like a drag queen and sometimes left greasy stripes on her glasses.
For her part, Chantal had purchased the colorful new plates in the shape of hearts and diamonds that Helen was putting on the table. Reviewing the place settings with satisfaction, Chantal sipped at her cocktail. “This is yummy, Jules,” she said, her gimlet eye on Philippa.
Philippa rose suddenly from her perch, as though sensing that she had come under scrutiny. “I’d better get started on my soup.”
“Want a hand?” Helen volunteered.
“Uh, maybe,” said Philippa. “I do need some grapes peeled.”
“I thought you got stunning young men to do that for you.”
“How many times do I have to tell you girls that I write erotic stories, I don’t live them.”
“Right, Phippa, anything you say.” Helen chuckled, following her into the kitchen. She hadn’t forgotten that lipstick smudge on Philippa’s neck the day they’d met at the post office.
The phone rang. Chantal patted her sleek brown hair—she’d become a brunette two days earlier—and waited for three rings to pass. “Never pays to let people think you’re sitting by the phone,” she explained, picking it up on the fourth. “Hello? Uh, yes, yes, she is. Hold on a tic.” Chantal called out, “For you, Phips.”
“That’s funny.” Philippa emerged from the kitchen, frowning. “I didn’t tell anyone I was going to be here. Hello? How did you . . . look, can we talk about this later? It’s really not conven—What do you mean, gold medal in the Olympic kissing marathon . . .” Philippa took the phone and, with an apologetic grimace, carried it into the hallway. Helen joined the other two in the living room; they exchanged glances. If they concentrated, they could just hear Philippa’s voice above the Portishead CD on the player. “What were you doing at Nielsen Park? Who says it was me? Lots of girls wear black jeans and studded leather belts. How would I know whose boot fell in the sea. . . . Really. . . . Can I talk to you later. . . . Don’t . . . don’t be like that, please. . . .”
“A boy?” Julia queried Chantal in a whisper.
“A girl,” Chantal answered under her breath.
“I thought so,” nodded Helen, smugly.
“What? Do tell,” Julia demanded, tugging on Helen’s sleeve. Her silver bracelets jangled.
Chantal shushed them both with an impatient gesture. “Darlings, I’m trying to eavesdrop.”
“I’ll talk to you later. I’ll call you tomorrow. . . . Yeah, I promise. . . . Tomorrow. . . . I dunno, ten-ish? . . . C’mon, don’t worry, okay? . . . I’ll talk to you then. . . . Yeah. . . . Yeah. . . . Really. . . . Me too. Bye.”
They heard the click as Philippa hung up. Julia dipped into the kitchen to whip up some more cocktails. Philippa emerged a minute or two later, looking flushed and bothered; but she walked the gauntlet of their frankly curious stares without explanation. “I’d better get back to that soup,” she murmured before anyone had a chance to ask any questions.
“Darling, it sounds like you’ve got more than soup on the boil,” observed Chantal.
“Actually, the soup’s not on the boil; it’s served cold.”
“C’mon Phips, fill us in.”
“On what?” Philippa asked innocently.
“What’s this about kissing marathons?” Julia smirked, following her to the doorway of the kitchen with her blender of cocktails. “Don’t tell me that was the Olympic Committee proposing a new event for the Sydney 2000.”
“No,” replied Philippa, deadpan. “That was, uh, Richard actually. Oh, ta. Just half a glass this time . . . that’s not half. Oh, okay. But if you think you can make me talk by getting me pissed, forget it. Besides, there’s nothing to tell.” Julia returned to the living room and shrugged in the direction of the others. An incredible banging sound emanated from the kitchen. Everyone jumped. Philippa poked her head out. “Sorry. Have to crush the almonds.”
“Almonds? In soup? But wait a minute. Did you say Richard? I’m sure that was a girl’s voice.” Chantal cocked her head incredulously.
“Oh, right, of course. That’s just his latest guise. He’s writing women’s erotica.”
Helen and Julia exchanged significant looks. Helen reconsidered her previous assumption that the lipstick came from a woman. Maybe, she thought, it came from a cross-dressing man. In which case, Philippa’s sex life was even more interesting than she imagined, and she’d always imagined it was pretty interesting. But women’s erotica? Was there nothing belonging to women that men were not capable of taking over? Helen recalled the controversy over the politician who opened an envelope marked for Koori women’s eyes only. The Kooris feared that the sighting of its contents by a man
would bring a curse on their women, causing them to fall ill and possibly even die. Helen wondered why the curse shouldn’t have been directed to the man who opened the envelope.
Chantal arched one perfectly formed, pencil-enhanced eyebrow and expressed their common incredulity. “He’s writing women’s erotica? That’s a bit off, isn’t it? Besides, isn’t that elbowing into your territory?”
“Erotica is all the rage in publishing at the moment. And cross-dressing is all the rage in everything.”
“That’s true,” Julia concurred. “It’s a kind of a fin-de-siecle, end-of-millennium sort of thing. Did I tell you girls, by the way, that just before I went to China I got a commission from Image to do a photo essay on drag queens? One of my big coups on the China trip was getting a Beijing drag queen to pose for me.”
“A Beijing drag queen?” Chantal was immediately fascinated.
“Look, I wouldn’t have believed it either, but there you go. Besides, Chinese men tend to have a lot less body hair, and more slender builds than Westerners. They make excellent drag queens. Really beautiful. This guy was stunning.”
“For some reason, I never even thought there would be gays in China,” Helen admitted. “But I suppose that’s silly. Why wouldn’t there be? Do you have the pictures here?”
“I’m still developing them. But I’ll show you as soon as they’re ready. Together with other photos from the trip.”
“Come to think of it,” said Chantal, “I’ve always associated China with a kind of gay aesthetic. I remember finding this book with photographs of those, what did they call them, revolutionary operas or something? There were all these really gorgey blokes done up with rouge and lipstick and eyeliner and leaping about in stylized army uniforms. I thought, how utterly, absolutely camp. I showed the book to Alexi, and he loved it. In fact, he kept it.” Chantal held her glass out to Julia for a refill.