They Only Eat Their Husbands
Page 15
I smiled flirtatiously, bowed deeply, and said, “Xie xie. Although I think I’m a little too big to fool the locals. Who would’ve thought I’d ever qualify as a giant?”
“In the Netherlands you will barely make the height requirement for the roller coasters.”
Rolf’s playfulness was an open invitation to conversation. We skipped right over the travelers’ small talk—“Where’ve you been? Where’re you going?”—questions that often start conversation but thwart communication as people exchange rote recitations of their travel resumes. Instead, I told him about my experience in the Islamic village, which tickled him.
“So, you have a dilemma,” he said. “You wish to meet new people and learn about their culture, but you also wish to hide your own culture from them.”
“No, I just want to hide my legs.”
“And naked legs are not part of your culture?”
“Maybe . . . ”
“I understand,” he said. “It can be uncomfortable, people staring at you. I think they probably stare at me more than you, because my skin and my hair are more light. At first it seemed impolite. But I’ve been traveling in Asia for many months, and now I’m used to it.”
Conscious that I had been staring at his light eyes, I looked away. He chuckled, and I wondered whether he was amused because he was used to women of any race staring at him, or just because he was high.
Rolf told me he and a few other Dutch travelers are going out tomorrow night to celebrate Chinese New Year’s Eve and he invited me to join them.
“That’d be great, thanks,” I said.
“Of course.” He grinned and took another toke on his doobie.
***
The calligraphers have been busy for days, sitting in the street markets with little bowls of gold paint and broad red ribbons, creating messages of good luck, prosperity, and happiness. The red banners hang around doorways, bringing luck to each household for the coming year. The sweet, acrid smell of incense drifts from Buddhist temples and ancestral gravesites, invoking blessings from the spirit world. Long noodles slide from bowls to chopsticks to smiling mouths, imparting long life. These are the quiet signs of the Chinese New Year.
The rest is a deafening noise. By midnight last night, the celebration reached a thundering crescendo. Flowers of flame filled the night sky, and the air grew hazy with smoke. Firecrackers exploded up and down the streets. Many of them were more like small bombs, and the sudden booms, often just a few feet away, slammed my eardrums until I thought they might bleed. Surely I lost at least as much hearing in one night as a Dead Head ever lost in a year.
We foreigners have been swept into the happy maelstrom. Last night, Rolf, several other Dutch travelers, and I went to Café de Jack’s to celebrate. At midnight, our group stood outside the café with dozens of other Westerners and blew up hundreds of yuan’s worth of fireworks. A flaming ember flew off one string of firecrackers and landed in the fleshy web between my thumb and forefinger. I let out a yelp of surprised pain and shook it off. I was unscathed, but a few minutes later another burning piece of firecracker shrapnel smacked me in the cheek. I wondered aloud whether I might lose an eye, finger, or toe before this holiday was over. Rolf overheard me and chuckled in the slow way of the stoned.
We stayed at the café until well after three a.m. I tried to get drunk, but my friends from Holland outpaced me. Rolf observed the party with detached amusement as he lit a large joint and smoked it right at the table. A young woman in our party leaned toward me and whispered that she thought smoking pot in the middle of the restaurant a rude affront to the owner since it could get him in trouble. But Café de Jack’s caters to backpackers, a group known to engage in fringe behavior, and I suspected that Jack, or whatever his real name was, wouldn’t care.
I was glad to see Rolf misbehave so boldly. It put me on my guard. I have no intention of letting myself be charmed by another addict. Rolf made it even easier: he didn’t appear at all interested in charming me.
As the hours burned to cinders, the beer-sodden party lapsed into Dutch. Rolf politely translated for me, when he thought of it. But the Dutch language has a friendly sound and I didn’t mind not knowing the meaning. Besides, I couldn’t hear a damned thing anyway.
***
When I woke around noon, my head still rang with beer and firecrackers. The screaming, hiccupping, bellowing holiday explosives had never ceased throughout the night. If possible, the celebration was even noisier today. The streets were packed with people in a festive mood.
Lunchtime was wrapping up when I walked into town for breakfast. I was just sitting down at an outdoor restaurant when a small lion pranced down the street. It was made up of two men festooned in yellow tassels: one man hidden beneath the red and gold lion’s head, the other beneath the lion’s yellow-draped rear. Together, they moved like a crazed cartoon character, gyrating to the drums, cymbals, and bells played by the colorfully dressed women behind them.
Unexpectedly, the golden lion frolicked right up to my table, and the guy in the rear stepped out and gestured to me to take his place. I smiled and gestured back: Who, me? He gestured again: Yes, please, by all means. I glanced uncertainly at the crowd of Europeans standing around the restaurant. “Go for it!” two people called out.
I grabbed the costume’s rear flap, dove underneath, and rushed up the street, capering and dodging, hunched over, unable to see anything but the feet of the guy in front of me. I had to struggle to keep up with my quick and agile partner. I couldn’t stop giggling, which made me all the more breathless. I danced halfway up the street before the other man took over again.
For the first time in China, I was more than just the observer, or the observed. Someone had invited me, if only for a moment, to play a part, even if that part was the butt of a beast.
Yangshuo, China
I can’t stop wheezing and coughing, and every breath I take is an agony. I’m not all that surprised to be sick, after three weeks of leaded gas fumes, factory smoke, cigarette smoke, filthy bathrooms, body-invading crowds, meals at which several of us dip our chopsticks into the same platters, and the universal Chinese practice of spitting into the street—everyone hawks loogies, I mean everyone, even well-to-do women in makeup and heels. The loogies alone are enough to explain why so many flu pandemics start in China.
I keep telling myself I’ll be fine so long as I take my vitamins, drink water, and stay positive. After my communication problem in Yuantong Temple, I’m not about to set foot in a doctor’s office. I’m liable to wake up in a hospital bed with hepatitis, or minus a lung. I’m a foreigner; would anybody care if I died? If I’m still sick by Thailand, I’ll visit a doctor there.
Even as sick as I am, and as chilly and damp as the weather is, I couldn’t stand the thought of staying cooped up in my dorm today. So I walked to the marketplace.
The town of Yangshuo was hunkered down like a criminal, concealed within low gray clouds and cold gloomy rain. The roads were pounded dirt turned to mud, lined with sorrowful wood buildings: dark little shops, cafés, and houses. The guesthouses have names like Micky Mao’s and Hotel California. A fog-cloaked gang of rock formations surrounds the tattered edges of town; the mottled green karst limestone peaks rise abruptly, their tops unknowable portents swallowed by the mist. It’s as if Yangshuo is the only place in the universe, and the rest of the world a hallucination based on memories of a life I’ve entirely imagined.
When I reached the market, I stopped at a butcher’s table to stare at a dead dog. It was skinned, head intact, body and legs stretched out as if Rover had been killed while chasing a rabbit. Then, in a dark corner on the dusty ground, I spotted a woman selling unexpected sparkling treasure: sugar. I bought about half a cup, to go with the instant coffee and tea bags I carry in my pack—many guesthouses provide hot water in the mornings, but little else. Reluctant to sell me such a trifling amount, the woman
grumbled as she poured the raw brown crystals into a cheap plastic bag, weighed it on her scale, and thrust the purchase at me with irritation.
After that, I stopped by an Internet café where I eagerly opened an email from Sean. His dad’s doctor had confronted the family with a horror that I still associate with cheesy TV dramas and dark comedies. They were discussing whether or not to “pull the plug.” His father had been on a breathing machine long enough to make his recovery appear unlikely. Sean wrote:
Next time you’re at one of those temples, maybe you could light a candle for my dad. I don’t know what we’re going to do. It’s not like he’s a vegetable. I told him that I love him, and he squeezed my hand. Even though he couldn’t talk, his eyes were open and he was looking right at me. I knew he wanted to tell me he loved me, too. I didn’t know what else to say. I wish I could talk to you, you always know the right words to make me feel better. I hope you’re safe, wherever you are.
Whatever I leave unsaid in this life, there will always be just one thing left to say: I love you.
—Sean
With a sigh, I replied:
Dear Sean,
I’m sorry you and your family are suffering. Of course I’ll light a candle for your dad. I’ll tell you more about my journey next email. For now I can’t think of anything else to say except . . . I love you, too.
—Cara
After that, I came here to the Countryside Café to sit alone, cradling my hot milk-tea, raping the blank pages of my journal with an angry black pen, listening to the shuffling footsteps of the rain. I feel exquisitely sad, and tonight the emotion feels as sublime as a work of art, full of orgasmic pain and rage, tender longing and loneliness. I wanted to travel alone and unencumbered, to leave my past behind and find some peace. But peace is nowhere to be found.
They Only Eat Their Husbands
thirty-five years old—phuket town, thailand
Late last night, alone in my room in Phuket Town, I gave myself the first orgasm I’ve ever achieved on my own. It wasn’t easy. Until now, I’ve always found masturbation to be an act of frustration, a way of reminding myself, “There’s no one here to do this for you. You’re all alone, so there, and there, and there!” I didn’t expect it to work, and the climax came as a shock. Satisfaction lasted for one immeasurable moment, before time snapped back into its usual shape and I again felt my distance from the life I knew, and will never know again.
This morning when I went for a walk, the swollen Phuket sky released a sudden flood that filled every crevice of day with water. I saw no distinguishable raindrops, just one dense heaving mass of wet.
I rushed for cover in the Ranong Road Market, a hive of colorful, dirty, smelly, energetic life. The deluge threw itself against the motley collection of corrugated tin roofs and tarps, echoing throughout the market. Waterfalls gushed through breaks between the roofs, and shopkeepers caught the water in buckets to use later. The smell of the market was overpowering, heavy with the reek of fish bypassing their expiration date in sopping, 100-degree humidity. My stomach lurched, and I tried to breathe shallowly through my nose.
I peered through the curtain of water streaming off the roof and saw a silhouette against the sparkling rain: a black man raising a coconut overhead, tilting his head back to catch the clear juice in his mouth. He lowered the rough brown fruit and smiled my way. “Would you like to try some?” he asked, holding the coconut toward me. “It’s wonderful.”
“No, thank you,” I said, smiling back. Then I moved on through the shadows under the thundering roof, happy to be alone.
When the rain ceased I walked out of the market to a sun still glistening, as if it, too, had been caught in the storm. As I strolled down the sidewalk, the stench of steaming human waste wafted up from the sewer. The smell was nothing compared to my joy at having this moment to myself. I may be lonely, but it’s my loneliness, to share with whom I choose and no other.
A few days ago, I received an email from Sean, with answers to two questions I’d emailed him from Hong Kong: 1) although his father isn’t out of danger, he’s off the ventilator and still among the living (I’ll never think of the whole “pull the plug” dilemma the same way again); 2) Sean is taking two weeks off work to join me, sometime in May, June, or July. That will put us together in Greece, Italy, or Spain.
He wrote: I hope you don’t meet the man of your dreams before I get there.
I replied: I met the man of my dreams seven years ago, although I didn’t realize it then. Italy sounds almost sinfully romantic, don’t you think?
The Last Frontier
thirty-three years old
The day after Chance dumped me and called me a “Fatal Attraction psycho bitch from hell,” I called in psycho at work. Sick, that is. It wasn’t a lie; I did feel nauseous.
Realizing I was in love with a man who despised me, I doubted the entire course of my life. Not that I thought his cruelty was my fault. I didn’t have low self-esteem in the usual sense. I considered myself worthy of a good man. I knew I was an intelligent, attractive, loving woman with a sense of humor. I simply had no faith anyone besides me would ever see that. I believed that my compulsion to say out loud every thought in my head would drive most guys away.
But then, I felt reasonably certain that most male-female relationships were destined to disappoint, not just mine. So I’d always tried to make it work with whichever guy I was with—which was now nobody. In my opinion, this wasn’t anyone’s fault, just a fact of life. Yet this fact left me feeling copeless.
I spent that morning praying for catatonia. It would be so much easier to lose my mind. But I couldn’t seem to lose consciousness of my own volition. So I decided that what I really needed was to smother myself in the sickeningly sweet syrup of self-pity. This required avoiding any efforts at bathing or grooming, and leaving the apartment just long enough to purchase a romantic novel and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. I put on my sweats, pulled a ball cap over my stringy hair, and drove to the bookstore.
As I walked through the arctic entry of the store, I almost barreled straight into him. No, not Chance. Sean, from aikido. I hadn’t seen him since I’d stopped going to the dojo more than a year before, back when Chance used to be jealous of any time I spent without him.
Sean looked great. So did the tall blond woman with him. And here I was in my purple sweats, oh my God, with the . . . yes, with the food stain on the front! I stood there, wide-eyed, conducting an instant mental inventory: ball cap, greasy hair, unwashed face, tear-swollen eyes. A complete skank. And still no catatonia to save me.
But he’d always been friendly, and he was friendly now. His shockingly blue eyes flew wide and lit up with genuine delight.
“Cara!”
“Sean!”
I gave him a bear hug, as I’d always done. Once you’ve rolled around on a mat with someone in an aikido dojo, physical contact feels as natural as water flowing downhill. Yet when he put his arms around me, I felt my cheeks flush, reminded of the instant attraction I always felt for him. My other feeling caught me off guard: relief. It was the kind of relief I suspect a soldier might feel upon running into a close comrade after two years of combat.
“Wow, it’s so good to see you!” he said.
“It’s great to see you, too. Although it’s kind of embarrassing to be seen. You’ve caught me playing hooky.”
“Really?” he said, laughing. “I won’t tell.”
“I suddenly felt like I had to have a book. Well, that’s dumb . . . I mean, you probably guessed that. This is a bookstore, after all. Anyway . . . how are you?”
“Great, and you?”
“I’ve been worse . . . It’s so good to see you!” I said again.
“You, too. We miss you on the mat.”
Looking as if he’d lapsed on her presence, he turned to the woman next to him and introduced her. Her name breeze
d past me, and I greeted her distractedly. Feeling awkward and unattractive, and surprised to find myself near tears, I said, “Well, I should let you go. But it was really nice to see you.” (Yes, Cara, I think he heard you the first two times.) He gave me another hug and left.
I went inside and bought two Jane Austen novels. Then I stopped at 7-Eleven to buy a pint of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. For the rest of the day I flopped on my couch, disappeared into Sense and Sensibility and the comforting distance of the eighteenth century, and tried to forget about twentieth century men.
***
The next day, I returned to work. At lunchtime, I stopped at my favorite granola-head restaurant, The Middle Way Café. And there he was again. With the blonde.
I walked up to their table, grinning. “Stop following me,” I said.
“We will if you will,” Sean replied.
I turned to his friend. “I swear, until yesterday, I hadn’t seen this guy in over a year. And now to run into him twice . . . This is so weird.”
“She says that every time,” he said.
Someone at the counter called out Sean’s sandwich order. As he walked away to pick up his food, he turned to me and said, “Don’t go away just yet.”
While he was gone, the blonde explained that she was one of Sean’s old high school friends, visiting from out of town; she overemphasized the word “friends.” When he returned, we exchanged pleasantries. Not wanting to be a third wheel, I soon excused myself, saying I should get back to work. I was about to leave when his friend said, “This is too big a coincidence. You two should get together on purpose next time.”
“We should,” he said, and stared into my eyes for that second longer than you’re supposed to, that extra second everyone recognizes but hardly anyone ever believes to be what they think it is.