CONFESSIONS OF AN AGED TOMBOY

I love sports. I loathe watching sports on tv because it reminds me that I’m not currently playing a sport but I love watching people I care about play sports. It’s something about the abandon with which you must be committed in order to complete the task at hand that just makes them rock. I love that intensity.

Today (10/20) was “Sports Day.” There were no classes held today. All the students did was compete in sports. As there are no official sports teams that compete against other schools, they occasionally compete against each other within their school in track and field sports. However, I was unaware of any of this so, I showed up at my usual time of 9am (the games began at 8) to an empty primary school. I wandered around to the back of the school to find everyone sitting around the track and field watching some of the students compete in various races. It was very official (read: Chinese) in that there was a starter gun, flags waved to signal various levels of preparation, tape to break at the finish line, announcements of times and bulletin boards with times listen. It was very unofficial (read: Chinese) in that everyone was in a variety of dress; some girls were in sweet little dresses and tights with Mary Janes and some of the competing male teachers were in suits while most of the women teachers wore heels. I think the thing I love the most about the Chinese (in this moment) is their incredible capacity for stringent preparation and then staggering flexibility during the event. They prepare quite seriously for eons in advance and then, once the event has begun, what matters most is that everyone is there and having a good time. It doesn’t matter how you get there, what condition you’re in or what has been sacrificed to be there; all that matters is that you’re there and are willing to be bent towards a good mood.

The English teachers had been given the assignment of timing either the individual student competing or the individual groups competing against each other. Times and victories were constantly being announced over the loud speaker and it fell upon my department to keep them abreast of said times and victories. Consequently, I spent the day hanging out with my colleagues, timing my little angles and cheering them on. It was really fun. It was also really fun that Alpha Hottie spent the day looking for excuses to be near me. (I know this will come a great surprise but the “hot guy” has never taken an overt interest in me before. I expected it to be more awkward for me but it was surprisingly comfortable. It felt entirely natural to be standing so close to him that I could feel the heat coming off him and knowing that it was his active choice to be there made it all the more comforting.)

The morning started out lovely and cool. It was perfect weather and as I walked across the compound to the primary school, I was listening to U2’s “All I Want Is You.” There’s just something about a cool, sweater-weather, overcast fall day that puts me in a good mood. Couple that with the dull ache of Bono’s lovelorn voice and I’m positively euphoric. I guess I just really like the solitude of “melancholy.” Or I’m entirely too in touch with my Irish roots. Whatever.

So, I get into school and I find my lady colleagues. They were all sitting out in the field encircled (or en-ovaled, as it were) by the 200-meter track and I joined them. As we sit together, all the students in the school took turns full-body hollering to me, “Hello teacher,” and “Hello Tina!” (“Tina” is what they are able to discern from “Christina” as it enunciates a bit like “teacher” in lieu of the English, guttural mutterings of “Chris” which they have a hard time discerning at all much less from “Pris”; English sounds a lot like the teacher in “Peanuts” “wahwah wahwahwahwah” to the non-English speaker) Each class bordering the outside of the track would take turns erupting into explosions of “Hello” punctuated with “Tina” or “Teacher!” “Lao she” is any Chinese teacher, “Teacher” is the Westerner. I did my best to say hello to each and every single one of them. How could a gal possibly turn away such affection? The window for full-bodied, fully committed childhood affection can be so fleeting; I think it should be seized at every opportunity. I once heard someone explain a profound childhood memory and how it was “just a Tuesday” for the adult it but it was psyche cementing for the child. I try to remember that every morning before I go see my babies.

As the students all lined up for the various races, each one came up to me for a “Good luck.” I would make fists of strength to pump the kids up who were on the track, readying themselves for the run. My presence really seemed to peak the moment for them and even the teachers seemed really excited to have me there.
Alpha Hottie, who is, methinks, the head of primary school PE department was hanging out with us English teachers. I like to fantasize that he hung around us because he has a reciprocal crush but, while not out of the realm of possibility (he is within the realm of being matched… sort of, is my height and could easily take me in a fight making me a borderline acceptable female match), it’s more likely he’s just curious and is finally growing comfortable with the notion of me. Hell, he’s seen me make an ass out of myself with my little monkey and every time I’ve ever seen him pass by one of my classrooms, I’ve got some little one in my arms giggling away at some crazy something I’ve said or done or I’m in the midst of said crazy something that will make them giggle. (Though, I must brag; most of my students now have “Up” and “Down” down pat because I pick them up with they say “Up” and they know they’re getting put down when I say “Down.”) At one point my fantasies of him having a crush on me went into overdrive. The male teachers all got into a match with the high jump bar as the students chanted their names. Every time Alpha Hottie leapt over the bar (he is by far the best athlete the school’s got) he would get up from the mat and look directly at me. It’s nice to think a boy is showing off for your attention and it was one of the few ways I can think of that a man could compete physically with other men for the attention of a woman where no one ends up with stitches. For my part, I applauded and showed exactly how impressed I am with a dude who can clear a bar level with the shoulders on his six-foot-plus frame using merely the power of his own legs. I need a nap after a particularly fevered bought of gum chewing.

My favorite part of the day, however, came after lunch. Three of my little girl students came up to me and started talking about how nervous they were about running. As only the teachers were given chairs, I left my chair and we all sat together on the inner field to talk. They spoke to me in English about how slowly they run and how much they don’t want to run because they are embarrassed to run so slowly. One was terrified of the starter gun, so I held her as we talked while the starter gun went off in the background. I explained that I was embarrassed to run in front of everyone else too because I run very, very slowly. They seemed to like that and so we then talked about clothing because that’s the vocabulary they’ve got and they seem to like clothes. Frankly, there is nothing like knowing that little ones who don’t come from your language are so comfortable in confiding in you that they’ll muddle through your language to share themselves with you. All the shit aside, you’ve got be doing something right for that blessing. At least some part of my life has been a success, you know?

As my little triumvirate of nervousness lined up to run their laps, Alpha Hottie’s attention kicked into overdrive. He actually spoke to me of his own volition, which, of course, struck me dumb in the traditionally “mute” sense as well as the current “idiot” sense.

Alpha Hottie had been doing the proximity-thing for most of the late morning and afternoon. He would only sit when the chair next to me was available. For some reason, he always needed to help or speak with the student who was with me. No matter where I stood on the grass, I was precisely where he needed to pass by to keep an eye on the students who were running. At first I thought I was in the way (as is usually the case) but eventually, I got the hint (as I am usually in the way, I am unusually talented with figuring out how to get the hell out of the way). No matter where I stood, there was always a reason he needed to be right near me. He eventually got really blatant and just stood by me for no particular reason other than to stand there. For my part, I hated every second. Dear god, a whole day with the hottest man on the planet consistently choosing to be close enough to smell? Who would want that?

As my girls were doing their laps and were on their third, he looked up at me and spoke. “San… ma?” he asked. (“San” being “3” and “ma” being “this is a question” in the same way that we raise our voice at the end of a sentence to turn it into a question; the Chinese don’t inflect like that because that raising of the voice is, in fact, the 3rd of the four tones of Chinese and to inflect on “San” like it’s a question would change “3” to “umbrella”)

He’s often looking at me (as is everyone) but he doesn’t speak to me unless I speak to him and then it’s merely to say hello as we pass. In fact, he had spent most of the day looking at me and he’s stopped sitting at his usual lunch table this past week in lieu of taken one that directly faces me. Considering that the Chinese are creatures of staggering habit and all his usual tablemates have followed him (implying no argument has occurred) he’s quite possibly been trying to work up the nerve to engage me in some way. However, all this attention has simply acclimated me to his unwavering gaze from behind the impenetrable wall of the language barrier. In many ways, I simply do not exist once Chinese is the language being spoken; I become a bit like the prize family pet. It sucks but I have become accustomed to it; just so long as I don’t piddle on the rug or gnaw on the furniture, I’m free to think, look and do as I choose. Consequently, I have spent the week watching him watch me as he speaks to someone else. It’s a bit like watching a movie where the actors gaze directly into the camera; unsettling at first but the actors will never actually engage you and you’re safely isolated in your cube of space. I use the time as practice for my oral Chinese comprehension as I am free to study his mouth (key to me getting a language and it doesn’t hurt that he’s got quite a lovely mouth) and I have varying degrees of comprehending his dialogue. So today, when his mouth moved, his throat procured a sound and his eyes were on me today, it was just as it has been all week… except I was excited that I finally understood everything he said. It did not occur to me that a chaperone-free male would be so brazen as to treat me like a human being and speak to me. I had yet to meet a man with balls big enough to engage me directly without first being introduced by a mutual friend or obligated by profession to assist my helpless self. Even in those situations, his peers were not only profoundly nervous and fidgety but they always brought a friend for moral support. This man was speaking comfortably, casually and intimately to a friend all by himself. There was no way in hell it was aimed at me, “The Foreign, White Woman.”

After a moment, he shifted his gaze from “observation” as it had been all week to “expectation” and it occurred to me there was no one else around us. The only person who could have possibly heard him was I. He raised three fingers into my sightline. “3?” was aimed at me.

Suddenly, I felt remarkably naked. I was not only no longer cloaked in the safety of the language barrier but I was clearly with a man unencumbered by his culture’s fears. All the times we had been staring at each other no longer were no longer dismissible. I had been without thought of self when I watched him; a sort of nudity only afforded me here where there are no ramifications for long-term staring and certainly no incentive to play hard to get.

His gaze- without the language barrier- is brazen and it burned through me. I have consistently been the broad-winged, exotic butterfly pinned to the corkboard beneath a thick pane of glass to be studied by organisms clear that we are not of the same species. At best, I am a museum piece but not in this moment. This was common space where he could engage me and I could engage him. In fact, he was asking for help in his own specialty that has nothing to do with mine; something no one here has done because it implies equality or even momentary dependence. Right here and now, it’s just him and me, as we are. There was no translation needed. He needed no chaperone and my cowardice had no excuse for one. There would be no comic pantomime, no excuse of being “lost in translation” and no cultural boundaries. It is our space: the place between me and a beautiful man who makes no small issue of liking to look at me. Granted, it’s a small space but it’s the sensation of putting on your first spaghetti strap sundress after putting away your winter turtlenecks. It’s not scandalous or revolutionary but it certainly feels it.

It then occurred to me, he was officiating the race. He knew better than I did which lap the girls were on. I glanced at the track and then at him, slightly furrowing my brow with playful suspicion that he was inventing a reason to speak to me. He looked away and laughed a little to himself at having been caught. He returned his gaze to me and anticipated the answer.

He got that this was a space we could share with no chaperone and he wanted in. I was reminded of all the conversations I’ve had with Western women about how Chinese men “just get it.” Chinese men are allowed sensitivity, romanticism and sensuality in a way that most Western men are not. I watch it in the high school every day; boys stand back to front with their arms wrapped around each other just talking, just holding hands or rubbing each others’ backs. Chinese men are allowed access to that “phenomenon” where “Women are from Venus” without the fear that the sensitivity to comprehend subtlety might emasculate them. Ultimately, sensuality is not something you learn by reading in a book; you must experience it regularly to be properly calibrated for it. In the West we berate our boys for not being manly and then berate our men for not understanding sensuality. Gender identity is secure and free from sexual identity in China in a way that it is not in America, consequently freeing the genders up to be more aware of the other instead of having to spend their free time having to use one notion to fight or embrace archaic stereotypes about another notion.

I nodded and smiled again. “Yo.” (“Yo” being “have got” or “yes” for quantities)
The only thing that rivals the shoulders (a nice set of shoulders on a man being roughly equivalent, methinks, to a nice rack on a woman) on that man is the way his eyes light up when he smile in earnest. He smiled broadly. I think my toes may have curled as I flushed from chest plate to ear tips. It was the first time I felt really, truly self-conscious under his gaze.

After our brief exchange, the games adjourned to the other side of the track but I hung back with one of the teachers. Alpha Hottie came over and just sat with us. I wanted to talk with him but my colleague paid him no mind and I don’t know the rules about women initiating conversation much less his comfort with English (to reveal a man under 50 lacks a capacity for English is to emasculate him; men may touch each other in what the West considers “feminine” ways but if they lack the tools to provide a comfortable life for their women they are considered less-than). Frankly, I don’t want to have to deal with the gossip that would ensue if the Westerner Woman took to chatting up the Chinese man. (And, for the record, my “boyfriend” and I have “broken up,” so I am officially a free player.) And, dear god, there is nothing less appealing than the idea of a chaperoned/translated conversation with a man you’re trying to flirt with.

So, I must leave our conversing for another day, if ever. My colleague and I then went over to where all the teachers were convening for the “Teacher Game.” Apparently, Alpha Hottie had created a game called “Cross the Pond” (Alpha Hottie was in charge of creating the relay race games and he did a really good job of keeping them fun). “Cross the Pond” involves teams split evenly into two groups standing on opposite sides of a field. One side is given two hula-hoops. With both feet inside one hula-hoop, the other hoop must be tossed ahead of the standing hoop. Then, the person must hop from one hoop to the other. Once in the second hoop, the person must reach back (without stepping outside of the hoop) and grab the first hoop to place it in front of the second hoop. Each team member must cross the pond once. As we began the game, the school exploded in cheering for various teachers. As I came up to bat (or pond, as it were) the whole school started cheering “Come on, Come on,” in unison. It was surreal to have hundreds of students and countless teachers and administrators cheering for just me.