by Mian Mian
What Xiao’er said made sense to me, and I started racking my brains trying to think of ways to get Bug out of the country, but how could we do it without money? We couldn’t even afford to buy new CDs, so how were we going to go overseas? It occurred to me that maybe I should do something with the stories I’d written. I’d never thought about making a lot of money off my writing, but the time had come to start thinking about it. I’d gone over all kinds of possibilities, and the most you could make from a story was a thousand yuan, and after a book came out, it was only good for a few thousand more because it would soon be pirated. In my entire life, I’d written only a dozen or so stories, and I couldn’t possibly write a dozen more in a short time just to cure Bug. I couldn’t crank them out like that. In short, we couldn’t afford to go overseas.
We didn’t have money now, and we never had any money. I bought all my lingerie on Huating Road, where you could buy cheap but pretty things and counterfeit designer clothes. I bought thongs and bikinis two for ten yuan, but on me they looked like fifty yuan. I had a knack for it.
It was these thoughts that emboldened me. A friend of mine once said that people who don’t have shoes aren’t afraid of the well-heeled, and I saw a lot of wisdom in this. We’d grown up on movies from the Soviet Union and North Korea, but now we listened to music from England and sat in our kitchens eating instant noodles, wondering if we had AIDS. We smoked marijuana from Xinjiang, popped three-yuan-a-bottle pills, and once we got high, we could listen to punk rock and tell ourselves it was a rave. What did we care? We were so sick of waiting. Sometimes if we waited around long enough there would be some E for us, and you couldn’t waste free drugs. After eating E, I felt euphoric, and it reminded me of a line from “Howl.” But that doesn’t mean that Allen Ginsberg and I have anything in common, much less that I understand him.
Never forget who you are (even if you end up having a lot of money someday). This is very important. We’re poor, so at least we can’t stand around in record stores, chewing gum and picking out whatever records we want. A lot of those records would drive us crazy, anyway. Remember this: always stand in a poor man’s shoes, because if you do, you’ll always be yourself. And keep those bourgeois like Saining and Xiaohua far away from us! We’re not like them at all!
Of course, I still have to go to Saining to borrow money, although I’ve never actually returned any of the money I’ve “borrowed” from him. This time, I’m going to need more than usual. I have to go to the limit for Bug’s AIDS.
I’m also afraid of hepatitis. I think I can stand the thought of dying, but I’ve never wanted to get hepatitis. It got so that I became afraid to go to anyone’s house because I was worried that I had hepatitis.
Apple gave us the name of an AIDS specialist in Beijing. He said, You can call him directly. So I called him immediately, and, using a false name, I described Bug’s situation. Bug was squatting down next to me, and he kept his eyes fixed on me the whole time. The doctor said that from the sound of it, Bug was probably HIV-negative, but he said that Bug might have leukemia or possibly syphilis. The doctor said, If he does have AIDS, then his present symptoms suggest that he would have been infected at least five years ago.
I hastily wrote down “syphilis or leukemia” on a piece of paper, and I held it up for Bug to read. Bug’s face lit up as if he’d just had some kind of epiphany. The doctor said that he would still have to go to the hospital and be examined. I said, We’re afraid of being arrested. The doctor said, That’s ridiculous. Come to Beijing, and come to my hospital. Everyone who comes to me is an AIDS patient. They’re just like anyone else who’s ill: they have a disease. I said, Is it really safe? He said, Of course it is. You can trust me on this. Your friend won’t be arrested.
After I hung up, we collapsed on the bed. I said, Fuck! There was never any danger of your being arrested. That Xiaochun is a real piece of work. Then I said, If you have syphilis, how come you’re so healthy?
I called up Xiaochun, and I said, You’re really something! People don’t get thrown in jail for that. But you almost scared him to death; do you realize that? Xiaochun said, I saw a documentary where that happened, and if you looked at the people in our crowd, you’d realize that anyone who’s ever gotten AIDS has been hauled away. Anyone could have made the same mistake I did. But I guess this time I was wrong.
It was too good to be true. Leukemia was scary, but at least Bug would be spared the extra psychological torment. We decided to go get Bug tested straightaway and made an appointment with a specialist in STDs at Huashan Hospital.
That evening, when I was going to the bathroom, some liquid splashed up onto my vulva. I figured that it was probably full of deadly bacteria, so I decided to disinfect myself with Dettol. It worked on cuts, so I figured it would be good enough. I pulled up my pants and started hunting for the Dettol, cursing all the while: You and your stupid Mr. Syphilis, look what you’ve done to me. AIDS, hepatitis, syphilis! Bug said, What are you doing in there? I said, I’m looking for the Dettol so that I can disinfect my private parts where the water from the toilet got me all filthy. Bug said, For God’s sake, don’t use Dettol on yourself! If you use that stuff, you’re gonna have the face of an eighteen-year-old and the genitals of an eighty-year-old! It’ll turn them black. It has the same effect on women and men. He said he learned this from a hooker, whom he referred to as a chicken. I said, What? You fuck prostitutes? He said, What’s wrong with that? They’re a lot more genuine than you writers! I said, Fuck you! What’s wrong with writers? He said, Don’t go getting angry at me. I was just giving you an honest opinion, but I could be wrong.
The next morning, I helped Bug find some sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I told him, Put these on, and we’ll get a hat to hide your hair. Don’t worry; I’ll talk to the doctors for you. You don’t have to say a word.
We arrived at Huashan Hospital. The Department of Venereal Diseases was full of zigzagging corridors. The large rooms had been divided into lots of smaller rooms, and the little rooms in turn defined a network of twisting and turning passageways. Bug and I got dizzy from going around so many corners, and we lost track of each other and had to call out each other’s names. The more I called, the more hopeless I felt. We’d finally made it to the place where Bug could get tested for AIDS, only to lose each other.
At last the two of us found the room where AIDS testing took place. I saw several girls there getting their blood drawn, and a nurse asked me, Is your friend a man or a woman? I said, A man. She asked me who I was, and I told her I was his sister. I said, He’s been overseas, and he’s been careless. I thought he should come in and get checked out. I forced myself to speak loudly in an effort to conceal my panic.
The doctor said, What do you want him to get tested for? I said, He has diarrhea and a fever. The doctor said, I see. You want him checked for HIV, right? I said, Can you test him for syphilis too? The doctor glanced at Bug, who sat facing him with an idiotic grin on his face. The doctor gave me the bill, and while I was going to pay, I couldn’t stop worrying that I didn’t have enough money. Even though I’d borrowed a thick wad of bills, I was still afraid it wasn’t going to be enough. That’s how it is when you’re poor. I said to myself, We’re here; we’ve finally made it. Please, please don’t let me get caught short. In the end, the total bill came to only seventy-two yuan, and I wondered why it had cost eighty in the rehab clinic.
Before they drew his blood, Bug had to fill out a form with detailed personal information. The nurse said, Don’t worry; the form is just to help with the diagnosis. There was a question on the form that Bug didn’t know how to answer: What kinds of sexual acts have you engaged in? Bug looked at me and said, How am I supposed to answer that? Don’t ask me, I said. He said, Then I’ll just write that I haven’t. I said, What do you mean, you haven’t? Are you a virgin? You can’t be that stupid! I was talking too loudly, and everyone in the room turned to look at me and then at Bug. He lowered his head as if he was giving the question some considerat
ion, and then he wrote: “Heterosexual, never used a condom.”
The future hung in the balance, a mystery we could never touch. We waited for the report, and I held Bug’s hand, saying, Don’t worry. If something is wrong, you’re so young and so beautiful that it wouldn’t be so bad to die now. We can all learn from you. Bug said, If there really is something wrong with me, please promise me one thing. I said, What? He said, I want to tell you the story of my life, from childhood to adulthood. I want to tell you about my experiences and my impressions, and I want you to write it all down and turn it into a book. And give any money from the book to my mom, OK? Because I don’t have anything to give her. Don’t feel sad for me. At least I can die in my own country. I wouldn’t want to leave China.
The results came back quickly. Bug didn’t have syphilis, and he didn’t have AIDS. I couldn’t believe it. I said, Can you run these tests again? The doctor said, If he didn’t do anything bad, why are you so frantic? We use a rapid test, but if there had been anything there, we would have picked it up. This is one of the best hospitals in the country, and if you don’t trust our results, there’s nothing I can do for you. I said, I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t believe you; it’s just that I’m still worried. Do you think he’s healthy? I asked. Can you examine him some more, run some more tests? The doctor said, All right! Come with me. As I followed Bug and the doctor into a small room, the nurse shouted out behind me, Where do you think you’re going? I said, I’m his sister. She said, Even his sister can’t go in there with him. He’s being examined for STDs.
The doctor and Bug came out soon after, and the doctor said, He’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with him.
I still couldn’t believe it. Bug and I stood there staring at the VCR, watching information programs about all kinds of STDs. We saw red genitals, yellow genitals, and black genitals, and I found myself thinking that even if I didn’t care about this stuff right now, it was still worth my while to look at it. Looking didn’t hurt.
We asked the doctor, So, what do you think is causing his symptoms? The doctor said, He’ll have to see an internist. We can run some more tests on the blood we drew, and we can let you know in three weeks if anything turned up.
We went to Internal Medicine, and they drew some more blood. The doctor there said, There’s nothing wrong with him.
We walked out of the hospital in a daze. We felt as if we were floating between heaven and earth, but I was still wondering: Did we still need to disinfect our apartment?
As soon as we got home, we phoned the specialist in Beijing, who told us that we could absolutely trust the results of tests from Huashan Hospital. He said that there are instruments that are used to get quick lab results. He said, China takes AIDS very seriously. We don’t fool around with things like that. I thought, Seriously, my ass! We had to go all over the place before we could find a hospital where he could even get tested.
The next day, Bug’s swollen lymph glands suddenly went down, and his temperature was back to normal. I thought the whole thing was too hysterical.
But the cause of Bug’s illness remained a mystery to us.
Then Xiaochun asked pointedly, Has it ever occurred to you that it might have something to do with those three-yuan-a-bottle pills? There might be something wrong with Bug’s nervous system, or maybe he’s just extremely sensitive to certain chemicals.
We dropped everything and rushed over to the pharmacy to buy some of those pills. Bug, I said, take a few of these. Let’s see what happens.
Sure enough, all of his symptoms came right back.
We’d finally got to the bottom of it. Why hadn’t we thought of that sooner?
Xiaochun said, God was testing your friendship. It was a warning from God. That’s the only possible explanation.
I said, It’s like some kind of sick joke. How could we have been so blind? We had such one-track minds. I can’t believe we were so fixated on AIDS!
I thought about all the days I’d had to put ice packs on my eyes because they were so swollen from crying. We’d gone through such torture, spending every hour of the day trying to figure out how to borrow money from everyone we knew.
Xiaochun said, It was God’s way of waking us up.
This particular AIDS scare was over, but the nightmare of AIDS hadn’t been banished from our lives. Far from it.
Xiao’er had been petrified and he’d told a good friend of his. He said he’d just wanted to get all of his fears out in the open, but this good friend had told everyone in town. Everyone knew about it, but nobody bothered to ask us about it or to express any kind of genuine concern for Bug. Instead, the story kept making the rounds, and the more it circulated, the more outlandish it became.
I had a strong desire to take copies of Bug’s lab report and plaster them all over town.
But in the end, Bug decided to tack the report up by his bed, as a reminder to himself to be more careful.
Whenever anyone asked me how Bug was doing lately, I would always answer, Why do you ask? Have you heard something?
Xiaohua still didn’t trust Chinese hospitals, and she said she still wanted to pay our way to Hong Kong so that Bug could get tested there. She never stopped offering, and every time I ran into her, she would always say the same thing.
Bug had changed. He pasted up slogans like this on the wall of his room: “Treat your friends as gently as the spring, and treat your enemies with the harshness of winter—Lei Feng.”
I said, That Lei Feng was pretty amazing. There’s a lot of truth in that.
Even Bug’s guitar playing seemed to have taken on a new tone. He said, Being a good person is a complicated thing. I’ve finally come to understand this, but I wish I didn’t. I’ve been trying to avoid people as best I can, so I go out as little as possible.
We returned our Hong Kong plane tickets, but I was still broke.
Since he’d thought he was going to die soon, that bastard Bug had made a ton of overseas phone calls to his lover in the Netherlands. He’d run up a six-thousand-yuan phone bill, and he promised to pay me back, now that he understood the importance of money.
I told him sternly, I understand what you were going through. The trouble that you brought on yourself with chemicals, and the panic that consumed you because of sex, all revealed that people who call themselves friends don’t always feel that close to you. But we aren’t friends; we’re family, you and I. You mustn’t forget any of what happened. And remember the mistakes you made.
I had faith that he was going to repay me the money he owed me, but what was I going to do in the meantime? My dad had given me that money to live on. In the past week alone, three pairs of my pants had fallen apart. The crotch tore on one pair, the zipper got stuck open on a second pair, and a third pair was ruined when I was disinfecting my bathroom and splashed disinfectant on them, which destroyed the color. Whenever I was broke, my thoughts turned to my teeth. Three of my teeth were missing, and I was afraid that if I didn’t get them replaced all of my teeth would become loose. I’d run out of cleansing cream for my face, and my electricity bill had come. It was for six months’ worth of electricity, and if I didn’t pay it on time, I was going to end up like Mozart, writing by candlelight.
I sat on my bed, wishing I could just grow old now! If I were old, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about my teeth, or new pants, or cleansing cream anymore.
As luck would have it, Saining came back. Saining and I were both nearly thirty years old, but we were still living off other people’s money, just as we always had. It was a scary thought.
Saining said he could cover all of the bills, and he also offered to buy me some new pants and cleansing cream. Thank God, he’d rescued me again. Saining said, You have to tell Bug to get himself tested regularly, like me. I get myself checked twice a year. We should all do that. You too.
I said, You’re absolutely right. But what’s this about your getting tested twice a year—is there something you haven’t told me?
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br /> 1.
Every weekend is the same to me. The locations change, but it’s still the same old bullshit. Shanghai nightlife is hopeless. But we go out on weekends anyway. Weekend nights are like a stage, and we’re the performers, only we’ve started to forget our lines. We wander down South Maoming Road, thinking we’ll go barhopping. Groove is gone, permanently shut down, and in its place there’s a teahouse. YY’s is empty, and with no one there, we don’t want to be there either. We’re hopelessly boring, ourselves. DD’s has moved, and it’s completely changed. DKD is still pretty good. But could a little place run by purists really survive in Shanghai? There’s always DKD, but it’s too dark inside, and we’re reluctant to spend a long time in a place that’s so dark. Maybe a fantastic new club owner is about to be born. But for now, all we have is the phoniness of South Maoming Road. There is one other kind of club—the places where “head-rockers” go. Green CUs, yellow CKs, red Ps, green Ps, pink JJs, white Mitsubishis, green butterflies, oblong CCs, those scary K-holes. Drugs are like vacations. Sometimes they’re good, and sometimes they’re bad. Some people remember the good times, but I always remember the bad times.
2.
She walks beside me in a red overcoat, something unfocused about her expression. When the cold descended, all of our combined umbrellas, gloves, and scarves couldn’t bring us enough warmth, so we went out looking for whatever little bit of fun might materialize. I imagined how, when that little bit of joy slowly began to spread, the space between my feet would grow wider. And there would be a passage leading me to this place and lending me an absolute balance. But certainty is always found south of the South. It’s already time for counting sheep as we walk along this street. We can buy some scotch to drink at home, but she says, If we do that, we’ll turn into a couple of drunks again. I say, We can’t be drunks anymore. But she said, Oh yes, we can. Which is why when we feel like drinking, we need to go out.