by Tash Aw
With Phoebe, it is different. He can tell by the simple words she uses that she is just like him, unlikely to have stayed in school beyond the age of fifteen or sixteen. The fact that she has succeeded in such important positions at such a young age means that she must be sophisticated and intelligent in ways traditional education cannot measure. He likes her occasional awkwardness, for it makes him feel less embarrassed about his own shortcomings, his own lack of articulate responses. If he asks her a difficult question or one she does not want to answer, or if they speak about something emotional, she sometimes responds by simply saying, En. And he understands what she means by this. Just a simple barely uttered word is enough for them—they do not need fancy words and complicated sentences.
The questions she asked were basic, but they made him think about parts of his life that he’d believed were so dull that they were beyond analysis, so ephemeral that they would not be fixed in memory.
What can you remember about your mother?
Not much. She loved music.
En.
Don’t forget, I was only eleven when she died.
En.
She used to sing when I couldn’t sleep.
What kind of songs?
Love songs. In Minnan hua, which was her dialect. Qian wo de shou, that sort of thing. I understood the words, but I didn’t know what love was.
But now you know?
—
Hello? Handsome brother, you still there?
Yes. I was just thinking …
What?
Maybe one day I will sing those songs for you.
Ha-ha!
I’m serious.
En.
There were other questions, too, more difficult to answer:
What kind of girl do you like?
Don’t know. Nice ones. Difficult to say.
Ha? You are kidding. Are you … gay?? I don’t mind if you are. It’s just …
He took his time to answer, staring at the screen for some time. The questions did not shock him. In fact, he has asked himself the same questions several times. What kind of girls do I like? Am I gay?
There was a time when the press was full of rumors about his sexuality. The fact that he had never had a proper girlfriend was often cited as proof of his gayness. He once had to endure a press conference called specifically to refute rumors that he had become the high-class catamite of a (male) CEO of a well-known pharmaceuticals company. Shortly afterward, the gutter press was full of pictures of a look-alike actor taken from a Japanese gay porn film, and Gary once again had to appear in public to assure his fans that the photos were not of him, even though the impostor bore only a passing resemblance to him. It was so demeaning. Really, the newspapers have no shame these days.
The Internet raged with speculation of his proclivities, with teenagers filling the blog sites with evidence for or against his homosexuality. At the time he thought, These people have nothing better to do with their time. He felt disgusted by how much interest people took in his private life. But, above all, he wished he could have come out and said, for certain, Yes, I am gay, or, No, I am not gay. Because the truth was, he did not know the answer himself.
He tried, on a couple of occasions, to put his sexuality to the test. Never having wanted a girlfriend, he thought maybe he should experiment with boys. In his line of work, because of who he is, it has never been difficult for him to find willing participants in such tests. His first attempt took place when he was about twenty and just beginning to be aware that he was the only person he knew who had never experienced any form of physical intimacy, not even holding hands, cuddling, or kissing. An older producer—a man of about forty, who had always joked about getting Gary into bed—finally maneuvered him into the studio late at night. They were in the closing stages of putting together an album, those frantic days and nights when everyone was rushing to make the final changes to each song, when paranoia reigned and long evenings in the studio were the norm. Gary and the producer sat in the studio, fine-tuning a love song, listening to it on their headphones: a song of great quiet and stillness, Gary’s voice low and breathy over a simple piano arrangement. He knew that the man was going to touch him—the situation lent itself perfectly to the act—and he thought, This time, I will let it happen; I want to see how it feels. He could feel the heat of the man’s body impress itself on the bare skin on his arm as the man moved closer; then he felt a hand on his thigh. He closed his eyes. He felt fingers on his neck; the hand on his thigh moved further up toward his groin. He waited to feel a frisson, a thrill of danger—but nothing came. His mind and body felt blank, empty. He sensed the man’s breath, quick and shallow, and smelled the sourness of his mouth, as if he had just eaten kimchi. In his ears he heard his own voice soaring to great heights, rich with sadness. He tried to concentrate on the sensations of the music but could not fight the rising sense of revulsion: the closeness of the man’s breath, the heat of his body, the insistent poking of his fingers. Gary stood up and reached for the volume control, pulling away as he did so. When he sat down in his chair again, the man had moved away, and they both understood that nothing like that would ever happen between them again.
The second occasion, a couple of years ago, occurred in his suite at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, after the last of his sold-out concerts there. They had had a big, drunken party, which lasted into the early hours of the morning. When Gary woke up, everyone had left, apart from a young dancer from the backup troupe, who was stretched out across the sofa. An engaging, outrageous, slightly effeminate character who was liked by many, this boy was also known to be promiscuous, for he was always boasting of his exploits in the G-bars across East Asia, always picking up strangers in cities where they performed. He spoke in strange, provocative slang that no one could understand: He had spent the night with a “bear” and a “little monkey” and had a great time even though he didn’t consider himself a “baboon,” but maybe that’s because he is neither gonggong or gongshou—that sort of thing. He often flirted harmlessly with Gary, saying how beautiful he was. Now he lay asleep on the sofa, his fashionable ripped T-shirt exposing half his chest, revealing his fine, taut muscles and flawless skin. Gary sat down next to him, sinking into the plush cushions, and ran his fingertips across the dancer’s collarbone; his flesh was like cool stone. It was dawn, and the day was just beginning to lighten with dusky amber hues. Gary looked out across the harbor, motionless at that hour. The first rays of sun were coloring the skyscrapers across the water, making it glint. He lifted the boy’s T-shirt and looked at his stomach, the smooth incised shapes of the abdominal muscles rising and falling gently. He laid his head flat on the exposed stretch of skin, hoping to feel some jolt of excitement, the warmth of intimacy. He waited, but still nothing came. The boy opened his eyes; they were bloodshot but narrowed with pleasure. He stretched his body, raising his arms above his head and spreading his legs—an invitation for Gary to go further (it was clear even to Gary what this meant). Gary watched him for a moment, then, still not feeling the slightest charge of passion, stood up, went to the bedroom, and shut the door before falling asleep.
Now, when his newfound friend Phoebe asks him, Are you gay? he tells her about these encounters, changing the scenarios to more banal settings in order to disguise his identity but maintain the authenticity of the situation (the first one, for example, he says took place in an office where I worked; the second, in a hotel with a colleague).
I think you are closed to the world, she replies. You cannot let yourself be close to anyone. Therefore gay or straight is an irrelevant question. In order to fall in love, first you have to love yourself.
En.
He thinks about Phoebe all the time—not the romantic thoughts that he imagines other men having about women, but something more meaningful. He has so many things to tell her about himself, and though for the moment he keeps his life hidden from her, he realizes that the reason he is so excited about his relationship with her is that it offe
rs him a chance to do the most exciting thing of all: to reveal his true identity to her. He keeps thinking about how and when he will do this—how he will tell her absolutely everything about himself, from childhood to the present, and because she understands him so well, she will be moved by his honesty and love him even more. When he thinks about this, a huge rush of pleasure courses through him and makes him feel strong.
There is rarely a moment when he does not think about how wonderful it will be to tell her about himself; even now, as he steps onto the stage in this suburban shopping mall, he is imagining the sheer relief of sharing his life with someone, imagining the liberation and clarity and warmth.
“Hello, everyone!” he shouts as he skips across the stage. “Are you happy? I am so happy to see you!” The microphone has not been tuned properly, and his first words are swallowed up in a mangled squeal of screeching static from the speakers, which makes everyone cover their ears. Some of the teenagers are smiling and swaying to the music, but he can tell that something is not right: They do not recognize him. In the past, as soon as he appeared in public, even when walking swiftly through a restaurant toward a private dining room, he could feel the quick flush of excitement rippling through the crowd as they spotted him. But now a few people turn to one another, and he can tell that they are discussing who he is—whether he is the real Gary or just an impersonator. As he begins to sing, he notices a group of schoolgirls huddled in discussion. One of them laughs, shakes her head, then they all walk away. There are so many copycats these days, bad singers who make a living by touring cheap bars pretending to be a celebrity. Everyone knows they are imitators, but no one cares, for they can sing along to the songs and they appreciate the kitsch appeal of someone who looks like Aaron Kwok or Jacky Cheung or Selina from S.H.E.
China is the land of copycat power, people say. There are even Mao Zedong copycats, so a Gary copycat is nothing special.
He got the call from his agent three days prior to this appearance—a quick, breathless voice message left at 2:31 A.M., when she was obviously standing at the entrance to a nightclub, the heavy thumping of the bass notes tapping out a rhythm in the background. “Found you a job—a small thing, but better than nothing. You need to start rebuilding your brand, get close to the ordinary people again. You need … sympathy. Don’t fix your hair or wear any special outfits, just dress in jeans, a T-shirt, and some clean sports shoes. Simplicity and innocence, okay? Like before, when you were starting out. I will arrange the music and dancers. You just turn up and do your thing.”
Dressed in his simplest clothes, his hair washed but unstyled, he had been driven along expressways lined with perfectly symmetrical apartment blocks, colorless in the haze of pollution. The boulevards that led out of town were lined with boxy hotels for businessmen and low squat office blocks with opaque windows of blue mirrored glass. He could tell by the names of the factories that they were moving farther away from Shanghai—Nanxiang Apollo Everbright Electrical Co.; Jiading Apollo Cement Factory; Lontang No. 1 Friendly Light Industrial Machinery—until they reached their destination, the newly opened Taicang Greenleaf commercial center, whose inauguration was being marked by “a special performance by a mystery guest.”
“Is this still Shanghai?” he asked the driver.
“Actually, we are in Jiangsu province.”
As Gary walked in to the mall, he had to dodge the construction workers who were putting the finishing touches on the not-quite-completed building; the drilling and hammering and sanding blotted out the music inside. He tried not to remember that only last year he had played to fifteen thousand people at the Taipei Arena.
As the first verse climbs to a crescendo, Gary knows that the dancers will appear at any moment, as they usually do at this point in the song. He worries that the troupe will not fit onto the stage—in Wuhan, during his last concert, he had a troupe of twenty-four, which, even halved, would not fit on this flimsy platform. He closes his eyes and lets his voice soar for the first notes of the chorus, and as he does so he feels footsteps behind him. He smiles and turns around to applaud the dancers. There are just two of them—two girls dressed in matching outfits of spangly red blouses over black trousers, with what look like feathers attached to their arms—twirling awkwardly in the narrow space behind him.
He turns to face the audience once more. The air is rich with the smell of varnish, paint thinner, and glue, and above the thumping of the bass line, Gary can hear electric saws slicing into plywood, stop-start drilling and the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of hammers. Across the atrium he sees a vast restaurant. RED ROOSTER HOT POT SPICY … DO YOU DARE??? Their emblem, printed on posters everywhere, is a rooster straddling three red chilies. In the forecourt of the restaurant, there is a children’s play area with a bouncy castle and plastic seesaws. Some of the staff has come to the front of the restaurant to watch the show and listen to Gary. Their uniforms are red and black—the same as his backup dancers. He turns around once more, sweeping his arms together in exaggerated applause of his dancers; behind them is a big sign that says: RED ROOSTER WELCOMES YOU TO TAICANG GREENLEAF CENTER.
He doesn’t know why he had not noticed it before.
He has another chorus to go and then two more songs. That was the deal—it is not so bad, he can do it, he is a true professional. A few people in the audience are swaying to the music; a mother is holding her child by both hands and dancing in little jerky steps. Gary closes his eyes and allows his voice to do its work as usual, but his mind begins to drift, imagining all the things he is going to tell Phoebe on the Internet later this evening. He wishes he could tell her about this awkward, even humiliating experience, but he can’t. He will say, simply, that he had a difficult time at work, that he had lost face. But don’t worry, he will say brightly. I want to change jobs; I am going to change the direction of my life. I want to be more like you. I want to have a quiet life doing what I enjoy doing; a glittering career and burning ambition will not make me happy. I want to follow your example; you are so good for me.
The audience applauds, a thin smattering of claps that cannot compete with the building noise around them. He waits for the next song to start, so that his misery will end, but there is a problem with the music system. He can hear the technician behind the stage cursing as he tries to fix the problem; someone groans and says, “I hate this cheap equipment.” The dancers hold the pose in which they ended their last routine—kneeling on one knee, arms spread wide to reveal their chicken feathers, superbright smiles etched on their faces.
As Gary stands in the middle of the stage, he watches the audience drift away slowly. The waiters at Red Rooster stay for a while at the front of the restaurant, but eventually they, too, go back inside. He waits, and waits some more: Experience tells him that the sound system is broken; there will be no more music. But he is a professional; he will finish his job here. He lifts the microphone to his lips and begins to sing unaccompanied, his voice too fine, almost frail amid the sounds of the building work ringing out around him.
16.
BEWARE OF STORMS ARISING
FROM CLEAR SKIES
YINGHUI THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT WALTER HAD SAID ABOUT BANK loans amounting to respect. It seemed an odd concept to begin with, but gradually she began to see how true it was—that a person’s entire value to society could be measured by how much bankers trusted and respected them. What she actually contributed to the world was irrelevant. It had taken her more than a decade to come to this simple conclusion. Maybe her father had been right all along: She would never understand the way money worked.
As she prepared her dossier for the meetings she had arranged with the banks, she thought about how her father had spent all his life working to amass respect. Money was—it was clear now—a secondary consideration for him, despite what the newspapers had said in the aftermath of the tangled mess that followed his death. Yinghui had not been able to bear all that was said about him during that time; after the funeral, she had fled, first to Singapore,
which wasn’t far enough away, then to Hong Kong, which had been lonely, and finally to Shanghai, where she ran little risk of running into anyone from home.
Like most people who craved respect from others, her father had led a life based on caution. It was a value he had sought to inculcate in his daughter, who, as it turned out, showed little signs of prudence even at an early age. Like other poor people who had become middle-class, he was always careful; and like other people who were born middle-class, she wanted to be anything but. In the main, though, Yinghui was (more or less) dutiful, respectful, and good at school. She helped her mother prepare meals and do the shopping at the market, where her mother tried her best to teach Yinghui the value of thrift—another attribute much prized by the new middle class. Even after her father had acceded to the ministerial position in which he was to end his life, her family continued to make a virtue of thrift, as if to emphasize their disadvantaged rural origins in the face of their growing urban wealth.
Dinners were the primary showcase of their carefulness with money—elaborate spreads consisting of five or six dishes when it was just the three of them on a weekday evening, the number of dishes doubling on a Sunday when they had a couple of guests. Always, there would be discreet (and sometimes not-so-discreet) mention of how cheaply those delicious meals had been prepared—a blithe commentary on the state of food prices, even in the presence of guests: how cheap spinach was that month; how they would usually have used choy sum but didn’t because the floods had made it expensive; how the kembong fish was very inexpensive but underrated; how the judicious addition of Chinese black mushrooms could make nondescript vegetables seem luxurious; how the free-range village chicken they were serving that evening was a rare treat, seldom seen in their household. Her mother wore a gentle air of martyrdom as she smilingly produced these meals from the large but sparsely equipped kitchen; of course they did not have anyone to help, not even an Indonesian maid, as most people in the neighborhood seemed to have in those days.