by Mian Mian
I am someone who sees herself as a problem. For me, writing is a method of transforming corruption and decay into something wonderful and miraculous. I used to be the sort of person who was always on the lookout for excitement and novelty, but now I’ve somehow come to sense that if any marvels are going to appear in my life, they will undoubtedly spring from the act of writing. Actually, the prospect of marvels doesn’t really excite me anymore. I feel that writing is the only thing that has meaning for me (lately I’ve been playing that depressing game of “What is the meaning of my life?” yet again).
I’m still spending my parents’ money, and I don’t know when I’ll get a job, but I do know that I am in the midst of a process of getting better and better, and I am gradually recovering my will to live.
11.
This weekend, Kiwi and I went to a moon-cake party, where most of the guests were gay men. It wasn’t the Mid-Autumn Festival, but somehow our host had happened on a large supply of moon cakes. Apple didn’t want to go; he said that they were certain to show some movie about Old Shanghai, since nowadays everyone wanted to bask in the reflected glory of Old Shanghai, for reasons unfathomable to me.
There were parties every day, but an evening spent in an old house with gardens, where people in black velvet evening gowns danced the tango—that was something different. The living room was filled with every oil painting that our host had ever painted of the lakes and rivers of the lower Yangtze, and they seemed to cover every square inch of wall space like slate-colored bricks. Kiwi and I danced and our feet flew by the slaty walls, and the scratchy and soft language of Old Shanghai was playing on an old vinyl LP, hinting that Old Shanghai, modern and disappointed, was irretrievably lost to the past. With a dignified and graceful bearing, Kiwi held my waist and whirled me around the dance floor, I saw my neck, arched to the limit like a swan’s, and when I rolled my eyes, I had the illusion that I looked like a swan spreading her wings and taking flight from the marshes.
We didn’t know the first thing about how to dance this dance; we were faking it. I imagined that Kiwi’s shoulders and skull were the lights leading me through the darkness, the three lights of Buddhism, and I felt happy. He was always like a breath of fresh air, and that night he kept on telling me how beautiful I was. He said, You can’t understand beauty until you’ve really loved.
We went from the party to DD’s. They hadn’t been in business for long, and they’d taken their name from a dance hall in Old Shanghai. DD’s was on Happiness Road, and it was the first club that played vinyl records and put Shanghai in sync with the international scene and got everybody dancing.
DD’s was the sort of place where Western guys could pick up Shanghai girls. These Shanghai girls came to hang out, and they spoke English, most of them with heavy American accents, though some had Italian accents or Australian accents, and a few of them spoke with the accent of Chinese college students. But none of them spoke with an English accent. Of the foreign men in Shanghai who could speak Chinese, most of them talked like Shanghainese girls speaking Mandarin, in a kind of flirtatious baby talk, which sounded stupid and funny at the same time. Most of the foreign men in Shanghai had high salaries and nice apartments. This made them feel very comfortable and content to be here. And most of them, when they weren’t busy making money here, were busily fucking Shanghainese girls. Most of these guys wouldn’t have admitted that they had Shanghainese girlfriends, and they liked to say things like, Whatever you do, please don’t fall in love with me; let’s just be friends. What they wanted was that bit of skin, like silky yellow satin, and the helpless-looking face of their China doll. How can friends sleep together? A lot of Shanghai girls couldn’t even grasp this idea, or maybe it was just that they couldn’t accept it. Most Shanghai girls liked men they could control; they coveted a man who would fall in love with them, and they used sex as a weapon. To them, Western men were the latest fad, a window that offered a glimpse of a new life.
Some Shanghai girls actually fell in love with foreigners, but these affairs didn’t usually end well. They blamed the foreign men for being selfish, and simpleminded to boot. Sometimes, foreign men fell in love with Shanghai girls, and these affairs usually ended badly too, and they said that it was because Shanghai girls never told you how they really felt, and they were domineering besides.
There were also foreign men and Shanghai women who got along smoothly, because foreigners are expert at oral sex, Shanghai women have tiny asses, and so forth.
There were also some who fell in love with each other, but they rarely hung out together in public places.
And then there was that handful of lonely foreign men and lonely Shanghai girls. They didn’t love anyone; they just got drunk and went home alone.
Whenever I went to DD’s, I always sat in a high spot so I’d have a good view, and I watched the foreign men and the Shanghai girls, and there were also a lot of nice-looking Japanese exchange students. Everyone was pressed together and dancing. People who were tense about their jobs and people who were slackers all came here, and they all had empty, expressionless eyes, but the scent of semen was in the air. I rarely danced, since I had no feel for the music here. I liked underground music better—it could open up my body. The truth is that the Chinese acquire an underground sensibility while they’re still in the womb, only nowadays everybody thinks they’re white-collar workers.
Everywhere you look you see mirrors and red velvet. That night, Kiwi sat with me the whole time, watching. There were too many people, the air was terrible, and Kiwi kept on fanning me with a fan.
When it was time to go home, Kiwi said, Let’s go to your place tonight!
We walked down the street, and Kiwi said, This town is too silly. At any hour of the day you can find all kinds of people in the street just doing their thing. I said, The Bund is nice, but there are so many homeless people hiding out there that it makes me feel funny.
I didn’t have the kind of mirror he needed at my apartment, so we didn’t make love. We just lay together, arms wrapped around each other, talking.
I said, You know, sweetie, you’re like a novel, with all your plot twists, always leading me down some new path.
He said, That makes me feel good.
12.
Kiwi said that under most circumstances, when he’s with a man who genuinely likes him, he can’t think of anything but holding him in his arms. He said that if he could take Apple in his arms, the moment Apple smiled at him would definitely be the most wonderful moment.
Kiwi wanted something to happen between him and Apple. It even seemed to me that he couldn’t let go of any of the old high school friends he was apt to run into. He’d changed.
The second time the three of us met was at my place. I was feeling low that night, and a little jealous, and I brewed pot after pot of coffee, popped batch after batch of popcorn. I couldn’t get a word in, the two of them talked nonstop, and every word they said was sexually charged. I wondered what they would talk about if I weren’t there. Would they sleep together? Women are soft, and men are hard, and Kiwi said that there was really no contradiction between these two pleasant sensations. When men got it on, it was definitely more like animals wrestling with each other. Men had to have a better idea of what felt good to other men.
I couldn’t stop staring at Apple’s hands. He was diminutive in every respect, except for his hands, which were rather large, with long, slender, pale fingers. I was entranced by those two massive hands, which had opened up in me a new lyrical world. At one time, all of my fantasies about men had been projected onto those hands. I was so young then. Many years later, Apple said to me, Do you know what makes us so beautiful? The fact that we’ve both been hurt very deeply, and neither of us trusts men. Both of us love men too much. We drift rootlessly like duckweed. But the most important thing we share in common is that we’ve both come back to life after being as good as dead. Life has been hard on us.
But now here he was, sitting in front of us and telling u
s precisely what kind of man he needed. He had to look piratical, with a pipe dangling from his lips, but God forbid Apple should ever smell tobacco on his breath. He should be extremely rational but have a good sense of humor, and he should be an older man, and so on. There was no mistaking the fact that the person Apple was describing had nothing in common with the mushily sentimental Kiwi. Apple explained to us that the kind of romance and madness he related to was bone dry.
Once again, Apple reminded us that we had to consider the legal issues that might affect our video project. He said, What I mean is, this is a problem we ought to be thinking about.
13.
Apple said that they had seen each other between our first and second meetings. They had embraced. Apple had been filled with excited anticipation, but much to his surprise, he’d felt calm the moment he put his arms around Kiwi. Everything suddenly felt very distant. Apple said to me, If I could ever be freed from my burdens, I know I’d finally be at peace!
Apple had definitely had a childish crush on Kiwi. He liked staring at Kiwi’s shoulders, and for the longest time he hadn’t wanted to get out of the bed where Kiwi was lying, and he’d placed Kiwi’s undershorts beside his mouth. He’d felt that the moment Kiwi left him, the dark night would descend on him like a shroud.
They had gone to the Bund together that day, and Apple had brought along a bag full of kumquats, and the seventeen-year-old Kiwi was wearing a pair of coffee-colored shoes. Kiwi had said to him, Friends are one of the most important things in life, and you’re one of my four closest friends. These words made Apple very happy.
The afternoon before Kiwi left for America, he casually dropped by to say good-bye to Apple, and for Apple the summer day seemed suddenly dark. As Kiwi descended the stairs, Apple felt an urge to be dramatic, and he stood by the window, watching Kiwi’s receding form as if he were in a movie. And he willed a melancholy expression into his eyes, a look that was at once longing, distressed, faintly disappointed, and lost. And as if touched by telepathy, Kiwi did turn and look back at him. This proved to Apple that this was his first love. All of these years, Apple had never stopped thinking about Kiwi.
Kiwi said he didn’t remember any of the things that had happened in the past. He only remembered that he and Apple had played a kind of game. He said, I felt as if we were acting like we were in love. He said, It was all a big joke. But now when he saw Apple, he felt excited.
This is basically what the two of them told me on the phone after our second meeting.
After I got off the phone with Kiwi, I went over to his place. In a flash we were caressing each other, but I started to feel bored because there was always something missing from the pleasure I got from sex.
I asked Kiwi, What is a climax?
Kiwi said, A climax is the climax you’ve never experienced.
14.
After his long separation and final reunion with Apple, Kiwi started calling me every night in the middle of the night and asking me to come over. So every night I found myself traversing those few broad midnight avenues to get to his apartment. I wanted to see how far, and how long, the two of us could walk together.
Kiwi liked to read magazines and drink endless cups of coffee. Every sculpture he made was spontaneous, a moment’s inspiration. He didn’t care about women’s souls. When he made a woman’s body, he created a perfect soul and a perfect life. I was mesmerized by the intensely focused expression in his eyes when he worked. He would always wear a little makeup, just to please himself, because although he was satisfied that he was quite handsome, he felt he needed just a few touches of the brush to make himself perfect. He was always making me up in new and different ways too, using every color trick of the makeup artist’s trade. He burst into my life and became completely wrapped up in it. I was his Cinderella, and he was my glass slipper.
He seemed to need me more and more. He treated me with tenderness and sensitivity. I loved it, but it also worried me. I was afraid to bring up the subject of Apple, but at the same time I wished I could steal a glimpse of one of their assignations.
Ultimately I learned that Kiwi frequented certain discos and gay bars, although he sometimes went out of town to pick up a pretty boy, whom he would bring back with him. He would either pay the boy up front or else buy him things.
I felt as if I’d plunged into the ocean; I felt in constant danger. I started going to the supermarket to buy scotch, and I knew what I was doing was very risky, but I’d lost the desire to control myself. I spent the hours between midnight and four-thirty in the morning slowly drinking, and I was often touchy. I knew that what I was doing was extremely bad for me, but I had to answer some questions for myself, and this was the only way I could think to do it.
It became increasingly clear to me that Kiwi was much more interested in men than he was in women. There was nothing I could do about it; there was no way I could even begin to compete with those pretty boys with their tight little asses. But I can’t describe the gay world with any authority. I said to myself, It’s over; you’re finished. The problem with you is that you’re a woman.
Unlimited quantities of alcohol and chocolate put my blood sugar on a roller coaster, I got infections in my eyes and my tonsils, and my asthma came back to haunt me yet again. That’s how things work: if you don’t behave, you have to pay the price. I knew that another vicious circle had begun.
The day for the videotaping finally arrived. As Apple had wanted, we rented a hotel room. I felt that each of us knew that the filming could never actually take place, but it was as though we all felt compelled to take things to a certain point in order for it to be over.
I got there first. A little while later, the two of them arrived together.
The three of us sat on the big bed.
Kiwi upbraided me for drinking. He said, I haven’t been drinking, and I don’t particularly feel like drinking right now. But you had to go and get drunk, and now the two of us aren’t on the same wavelength.
I said, I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking you want this man to see the parts of you that you usually keep the most hidden; but that’s not a desire I can satisfy. Do what you want. You’re on your own! This video project is cancelled.
Neither of them said anything.
Who’s responsible for this unhappy mess? We’re all broken. I can’t be with you anymore. I love you, Apple, and I used to love you—I know it. And maybe you loved Kiwi once, but he was in love with Lingzi, and maybe Lingzi was in love with Kiwi too, but she died, so who really knows? And what is love, anyway? None of us knows the answer to that question. What kind of passion do you think was in her eyes? Nobody knew but her, and she’s dead. So no one will ever know. She wasn’t crazy, I’m sure of it. She died of contentment; she felt that she had the power to attract you, that she had proof that you loved her. Her period was late, and she got upset because she was overexcited. Your bouquet of flowers didn’t kill her; it was youth that killed her, it was fate that killed her, and no one else will ever be able to describe the happiness that she felt—I’m certain of this. In the end, will you ever be able to forget it, no matter how hard you try? I don’t know. She died, and because of that, you’ll always love her. You say you love me, but if I hadn’t sat beside her in school, would you still love me? Don’t answer! I don’t want to know. What really happened when you went to see her? Why is it that the reflection of my back moves you so much? I don’t know. Maybe you’re in love with him now, and maybe you don’t know. Apple knows, but he says he can’t possibly be in love with you now, so who knows? What image is it that you want him to make for you? My back in the mirror, my back! What really happened in that bathroom? I don’t know. And I don’t want to know. What would have happened if you hadn’t come out of the bathroom together? None of us knows. Apple, why did you kiss me back then? You say you don’t know? Why can’t you answer? I don’t know the answer. And Kiwi, why am I always feeling miserable over you? Why don’t I refuse you? Why are your tears so a
ttractive to me? Why are you always teasing me and tasting me? If you didn’t know how to make love to me so well, would I still be in love with you? You can’t answer that. When do the words I love you become real? None of us knows.
I said I wanted to give Apple an introduction to female anatomy!
I cried, Men and women go together, like heaven and earth; it’s heaven’s will. But now I was surrounded by homosexuality, surrounded!
I started to take off my clothes. I said, These are my breasts, this is my vulva, and there are many parts, each with its own function. This is your chance, Apple, I said. So listen carefully to what I’m telling you. The world is like a garden filled with infinite variety, and you need to understand every blade of grass, every tree. I think that, like me, you sometimes make mistakes.
I hadn’t planned any of this, but they seemed to have been expecting it. Neither of them appeared to be the least bit upset. Suddenly I felt that there was nothing to argue about. So I took a bath. When I came out of the bathroom, I said to them, We’re always complaining about how unhappy our lives are, and now I know why. It’s because what we ask of love has become increasingly technical. I’ve come to the conclusion that love is just a matter of personal preference.
We left the hotel together and went out for Hunanese food, and then we went together to that unbelievably stupid Hard Rock Cafe, where each of us ran into people we knew.
And suddenly I thought of Saining and a nightmare he’d once told me about, where he was on a bus, and everyone on the bus was wearing uniforms from McDonald’s, KFC, TGI Friday’s, or the Hard Rock Cafe.
That night, nobody got drunk. That night nobody called me. That night I fell quickly to sleep.
We are smoke, and smoke can only dissipate, but it cannot wither.
15.
When I’m feeling low, I almost always go to Tribes, this run-down club that’s the only place in Shanghai where underground bands play live.