“Have I offended you, old man?” I asked, still looking up at him as he gathered his jacket to leave.
“Huh?” He looked at me in confusion. Apparently, he wasn’t used to Beijing humor.
It took some finagling, but I eventually got Lan Yu to stay awhile. The way I did it was this: First, I insisted on driving him back to his dorm. When he agreed, I asked him to come with me to my room to get my car keys. He told me he’d wait in the lobby, but I insisted, protesting that he wasn’t going to make me go traipsing around the hotel on my own. After some back and forth about it, he finally caved in and we went upstairs.
When we got to my room I wasted no time getting down to business. I followed Lan Yu inside, then locked my arms around his torso from behind, pulling him with me as I backed up against the wall of the entryway. He didn’t resist, but he didn’t exactly respond with the erotic delight I’d hoped for either. It was only when I began planting kisses across his neck that he started to get turned on.
That’s right, I thought, twirling him around to kiss his lips roughly. Quit acting so fucking naive.
I looked down at Lan Yu’s cherubic face and watched him nod off to sleep. Completely covered in sweat, even his eyelashes glistened with tiny pearls of watery moisture. His youthful cheeks flushed with warm shades of red. Waking suddenly, he smiled when he saw me, but in an instant his heavy, sleepy eyelids closed again.
“You really worked up a sweat,” I laughed softly as I ran my tongue gently along his chest. “The next time you cook you won’t need salt. Just lean over the wok and let it drip!”
Lan Yu opened his eyes and smiled weakly.
“Seriously,” I continued with a jocular tone entirely out of step with his drowsiness, “the next time you need to get some, just give me a call. Don’t wait so long! Four out of five experts agree: it’s not healthy for a young man to go so long without getting laid.”
That woke him up. His smile disappeared and he looked at me with an injured expression. “I didn’t come here to . . . get some.”
“Then what did you come here for?” I asked cavalierly. I got up from the bed under the pretense of going to take a leak. The truth was, prolonged eye contact with Lan Yu was making me a bit uncomfortable.
“Nothing,” he faltered. “It’s just that . . . I mean . . . one of the guys in my class died yesterday. He was in the bunk right below me. I just don’t want to be in the dorm right now.”
“Oh man!” I exclaimed, poking my head out of the bathroom. “How did he die?”
“He broke his spine doing a roll in gym class,” he replied, pointing to his neck. “The top part, up here. He was the only guy in our class from the countryside. They hardly have any PE classes in their schools, so he never learned how. He was afraid he wasn’t going to pass the tumbling exercise, so he asked me to go with him to practice. His parents came this morning. I heard his mom was crying so hard at the hospital that she passed out. He was an only child. Just last week he was saying he didn’t know how he was going to survive all this time away from home.” Lan Yu looked up at me. “He shouldn’t have said he wasn’t going to survive. It’s bad luck to say something like that.”
“Oh well,” I said bitterly as I returned from the bathroom. “Dying is nothing. It’s the living I feel sorry for.” Lan Yu became quiet at this, and I suddenly felt guilty for making such a flippant comment.
“Hey,” I said tenderly, sitting next to him and placing my hand on his arm. “Don’t think about it too much.” I stood up again, grabbing his arm so I could pull him with me. “Why don’t we get cleaned up and go to the nightclub downstairs?”
Lan Yu raised his arms over his head in a disinterested stretch, then paused as if remembering something. “Didn’t you say you had to leave at three?” he asked. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was five.
“I decided not to go,” I said, returning to the bathroom to take a shower. “Anyway, it wasn’t that important.”
We sat at a small corner table in the nightclub, watching the other patrons as they reveled on the dance floor. When I asked him if he was having a good time, Lan Yu said it was the wildest nightlife he had ever seen. I ordered him a drink—a martini—which he said was okay but a little too bitter. Then I got us a private karaoke room. After carefully inspecting the song list, Lan Yu said there wasn’t a single number he knew. So we ended up singing “I Love Beijing Tian’anmen.” Everyone knows that song.
It was past midnight when Lan Yu finally insisted on going back to campus. He also insisted that I not drive him. “I’m not a girl,” he said, putting down his drink and standing up to leave. Somehow that impressed me, but I was also annoyed that he was leaving so early. Whatever. The whole night had been a waste of time.
Four
Not long after we started dating, Hao Mei began to pester me to let her introduce me to Yang Youfu, some distant cousin who wanted to get in on a business deal with me. When I asked her what kind of kickback she would be getting for the introduction, she spat out a loud humph and stuck her nose in the air. “That,” she replied righteously, “is a private affair. You would do well not to ask.”
“Oh, really?” I teased, impressed by her witty comeback. “Well, maybe you don’t want to tell me because you’re hoping he’ll pay you with rolls of fat. I bet you love that short, stubby body and big fat stomach!”
“Eeeeeeew!” she squealed, pouncing on me as if to devour me whole.
I planted a perfunctory kiss on her nose, then sighed. I was becoming less and less interested in this girl. She was just another transplant from the provinces.
Like Hao Mei, Yang Youfu hadn’t been knocking around the capital for long. He was only a bit over thirty but looked older than his age—Probably, I thought, because of all the fat piled up in his face. The first few times I met him, I wrote him off as a pathetic and impotent ass-kisser. Each time I saw him, he would scuttle up to me, a fawning grin glued to his face, and holler, “Hey, Brother Chen!” Still, when he asked me to help him make some connections, I did what I could—it was no skin off my ass. I introduced him to a couple of reporters who gave him ad space in their newspapers, thereby allowing him to put the word out for some horseshit product that didn’t even exist yet. I thought he was a tool.
After getting to know Yang Youfu better, though, I grew to like him. He had the forthright character of a northeasterner. There was no bullshit about him, no pretense. He was generous and had a big heart. If he had one of something, he’d find a way to give you five. If there were ten, he’d make it twenty.
Yang Youfu had a high tolerance for alcohol—so high, in fact, that in all the time I knew him I never saw him hit his ceiling. One Saturday afternoon I went with him and Wei Guo to Ming Palace, a huge, multistoried spa where men sat around in fleecy white robes watching TV, chain-smoking, and doing nothing. Almost as soon as we walked through the door, Yang Youfu put back a few drinks. Before long he was wasted.
“Whatever you want, Brother Chen! Just let me know and I can hook you up. You want to try a luxury delicacy from the Northeast? Manchurian tiger? Very rare, very valuable. Don’t worry, Brother Chen, I can get it for you!” When he was drunk Yang Youfu would tell you anything. Who knew if it was true or not?
“Fuck, I don’t need that!” I replied, slapping my knee. “Get me the Emperor’s youngest daughter—a virgin—wait, make it two virgins, one girl, one boy. Get me that and we’ll start talking!”
“Fuck!” he shouted, slamming his shot glass on the table. “I thought you wanted something hard to get! How old do you want ’em?” Yang Youfu looked at me intently, and for a moment it almost seemed like a serious question.
“Ha!” I exclaimed, pouring him another drink, but getting more alcohol on the table than into his glass. “What do you think I am—some kind of monster? You want to be a child rapist? Go ahead, but sooner or later you’ll pay with your life!” Ha ha ha ha! We laughed in unison.
The Ming was one of the many distractions ushered in by
the so-called age of reform, the era of primitive accumulation that had promised to transform China from an impoverished nation into a powerful one. The Cultural Revolution had died with Mao, but lack of order was just as much a defining feature of the new era as it had been of the old. In principle, even those without powerful family backgrounds could jockey for successes never before thought possible. All you needed was some guts and determination, and entry into the get-rich-quick class was yours for the taking. A little luck didn’t hurt either. Yang Youfu was the epitome of those who had managed to make it big overnight. I don’t know if luck had anything to do with it, but he definitely had balls.
That night at the Ming, I gambled, drank, and played pool with Yang Youfu and Wei Guo late into the night, stopping only at three in the morning when the three of us got a room on the second floor and crashed for a while. We had barely closed our eyes, though, when the deafening sound of construction outside woke us up. By the time we finished breakfast and rolled out of there, it was ten in the morning and we’d been at the Ming for nearly twenty hours. I said goodbye to the guys and stepped into the street.
There were few cars outside, just the familiar sea of bicycles everywhere you turned. It was nearly December and the snow fell in thick, heavy flakes as I drove my car through the narrow alleyways, competing with bicycles and pedestrians for tiny spaces while making my way back to the main road. Through my tinted windshield I watched a cyclist as he sped up and squeezed the brakes just in time to prevent himself from crashing into a pedestrian.
Inside the cold, dark interior of my BMW, I felt suffocated. I needed some mental purification after the thick, dense smoke of the Ming, but had no idea where I was going to get it.
I drove aimlessly, listening to music on the tape deck and observing with wonder the endless stream of bicycles in the streets around me. The entire nation, it seemed, was trying to get somewhere. Where were they going? A family rolled past the front of my car. A little girl sat in a basket attached to the front of the bicycle, which was being ridden by her father; unable to fit completely inside, her legs hung out the front of the basket and dangled there. Mom sat on a small makeshift seat behind the father, hovering precariously above the back tire; her hands were planted firmly on her husband’s waist. They were perilously close to slipping and falling into the snow, but to me it seemed a vision of perfect happiness: the happiness of a life enjoyed together. Other people would still be in bed at this hour, sleeping late with the sun on their faces and their arm stretched out lazily across someone’s ass. They were enjoying their happiness. Liu Zheng would be with his family, enjoying his happiness. Where was my happiness?
I considered visiting my parents, but that wasn’t happiness. That was being a good son. I thought about Hao Mei, but being with her would have been even less gratifying. Then I thought of Lan Yu.
The last time I had seen him he had given me a phone number for what he said was his dormitory. But what was the point of calling? To begin with, he was probably lying and wasn’t in school at all. But even if he was, I knew from experience that university dorm receptionists were grumpy old men who didn’t even bother notifying students that they had phone calls. And how did I know the number was even real?
It didn’t matter anyway. The slip of paper Lan Yu had written the number on had probably been swept away by the maids at Country Brothers. Besides, until that moment I hadn’t given serious thought to calling him anyway. Sooner or later, I figured, he would contact me through Liu Zheng.
And yet, he hadn’t contacted me through Liu Zheng and as a consequence I hadn’t seen him since the night he quietly drank his martini in the hotel disco before standing up to leave. On his own. Because he wasn’t a girl.
Just thinking about sex with him made my palms sweat.
On and on I drove, determined to find a distraction, but not knowing what it would be. I considered calling a girl I knew who was in business school and had said with a wink that she wanted to “study business” with me. Or perhaps I’d go hang out with some of the guys I knew in the gay circle. Maybe a new face had shown up, someone I could get to know. I felt frustrated knowing I had no way of getting in touch with Lan Yu.
Then it crossed my mind: Maybe Liu Zheng has his number.
I picked up the Big Boss on the passenger seat next to me and dialed Liu Zheng’s home number. Big Boss was China’s first cell phone and I, of course, was among the first to have one. A primitive piece of technology, it was as big and clunky as it was expensive. I balanced the phone against my ear with one hand while steering with the other.
“Liu Zheng!” I hollered. “That kid—you know, Lan Yu. Do you have his number?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “You gave it to me to hold on to, remember?” A surge of relief rushed through me.
“Call him and ask him if he can meet me at Country Brothers in twenty minutes.”
A few minutes later Liu Zheng called back. Lan Yu wanted to know if I’d be available at seven.
“That’s too late!” I shouted. “If he wants to see me, fine, but he has to come to Country Brothers right now.” If I was going to get gratification, it had to be instant.
“Okay, okay, I’ll tell him,” Liu Zheng replied, sounding somewhat thrown off by the unreasonable rancor in my voice.
The instant I hung up I regretted what I had said. The idea of seeing Lan Yu was so much more appealing than the alternatives. Waiting half the day until seven o’clock would have been more than worth it.
I didn’t have to regret my brash impatience for long. A few minutes later Liu Zheng called back to say Lan Yu would be able to make it by six. “Will that work?” he asked. The answer was yes.
At six o’clock I stood outside the main entrance of Country Brothers to wait. This time Lan Yu was extremely punctual. At six on the dot he showed up wearing the same white jacket he had been wearing the last time I’d seen him. If it had been cold then, it was freezing now. I couldn’t understand why he was wearing so little. I watched in distress as the snow piled up on his shoulders, eyelashes, and hair.
“You need to dress more warmly!” I said sternly. “Otherwise, you’re going to catch a cold. Here, wear this.” I took off my scarf and put it around his neck, fully aware that I was making a bigger fuss than the situation warranted.
Lan Yu smiled awkwardly and looked around nervously as I wrapped the long white scarf around his neck. Evidently he was uncomfortable with the idea of another man dressing him in public.
“So, how’s school going?” I continued, walking through the front door of Country Brothers and into the lobby.
“Oh man!” he said with sudden enthusiasm. “Everyone’s terrified of falling behind, even the people who were at the top of their class in high school. Everyone’s competing against everyone else, but no one will come out and say it.” His lips formed a smile as he spoke and two dimples danced at the corners of his mouth. He was just as beautiful as before.
“Don’t put too much pressure on yourself,” I said. “Just keep up with it and you’ll do fine.”
“That’s what I think,” he said, then paused. “You know what? I heard that one year there was a student who killed himself because he failed a midterm!”
“Wow,” I laughed. “Only a nutcase would do that! You wouldn’t do something like that, would you?”
The grave look on Lan Yu’s face made it clear he didn’t like the question. “No,” he said curtly, “I wouldn’t.” I changed the subject.
“How’s the food in the dining hall?” I asked.
Whatever my shortcomings, I’d always had one strong point: I was good at showing people my concern. This was why I had so many friends, not to mention lovers.
“Pretty good,” Lan Yu replied. “It’s all northern-style cuisine. The steamed buns are huge! The only bad part is the noodles.”
“Ha!” I laughed. “Never eat noodles at a school cafeteria. They weigh them down with a ton of water. There was this one time I ordered half a kilo of noodles
for lunch. They’d been soaked in water for so long I ended up pissing five times in a row and was still hungry two hours later! I’ve eaten at a million campuses. Nanda University is pretty good. That’s where I went to school. Huada is the worst.”
“That’s where I’m going—Huada University!” Lan Yu beamed with pride. I studied his face closely. I still wasn’t entirely convinced that he was a student, but something about the way he spoke told me it might be true. I wanted to know for sure, though, so I probed for details.
“Where did you come from just now? Did you have dinner yet?”
“No, not yet,” he said, looking somewhat embarrassed about it. “I had to work this afternoon, a tutoring session. I didn’t want to be late so I came straight here.”
I fought back a smile. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something so wonderfully unexpected about him.
We had dinner in one of the hotel restaurants. All through the meal we kept looking at each other, eager to get back to my room. If Lan Yu had been a girl, I would have caressed his neck or shoulder or held his hand while we ate. But he was a guy, so we just stared at each other, stifling our mutual desire from across the table. The moment we finished eating we rushed back to my room. I pinned him against the wall and pressed my body against his, kissing his face and running my fingers through his hair.
“Why haven’t you been in touch with me?” I asked, kissing him through the words. “I’ve thought about you every day.”
“I’ve been so busy with my classes . . . I wanted to call, but I was afraid that . . .” His hands ascended to the back of my head and his voice trembled. I buried my face in his neck, still holding him firmly against the wall.
The intensity of two men making love can never be matched by straight sex. I fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, then gave up and tore it open, revealing two broad shoulders and a narrow waist covered by a canvas of skin that seemed to glow as if on fire. I kissed him with feverish excitement, pressing my body against his and traveling the length of his back with my hands. Gripping his shoulders then his arms, I slowly lowered myself to the floor, pausing to kiss his chest, his stomach, his hands and fingers, until finally I was on my knees and his cock was in my mouth. I squeezed his ass, so firm and compact compared to Hao Mei’s, then tried to put a finger inside. He trembled slightly but didn’t stop me. When I went in a little deeper he pulled back and hunched over, holding the back of my head for balance as if he was about to fall. He gazed down at me and stroked my hair, a look of breathless expectation stretched across his face.
Beijing Comrades Page 5