THANK GOD FOR MEN

Fickle, young men and lecherous old creeps aside, thank fucking god for men. They really can make your day. They can make you feel more beautiful in a single glance than all the destruction of the naysayers could ever undo.

I was feeling out of sorts this morning (10/17). My cold has shifted south from my head, resulting in a case of bronchitis and so I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in over week and a half. Nonetheless, I had four classes at 9 am with the kindergarteners jammed into an hour. So, I got shuttled back and forth, managing the wee ones for an hour and then I was released until class at 3 in the high school (they call it “middle school” here but “high school” seems to be more a year than a school). I decided to skip lunch and sleep from 10:30 until 2 in an attempt to make up for all the sleep I’m missing with coughing to say nothing of the extra sleep my sick ass should be getting.

I decided at 2 (the hour lunch is adjourned and everyone who is Chinese must return to the school building; I, being Western, am allowed to come and go as I please) that I should make more of an effort to be more of a joiner and so I went to spend an hour in the English Teacher’s Office in the high school. And I am glad I did.
My colleague of dim sum fondue was there and we got to talking. Frankly, I adore him. He’s a Chinese anomaly in that he does what works best for his family, not what society dictates. His wife is a busy gynecologist and so he takes care of their daughter. In China, it is unheard of that a man would care for a child but he is so loving with her and he is so proud of his wife’s work that you can’t imagine a more lovely man or why anyone would want to do it any other way. He told me that he pushes his daughter to develop a strong bond with her mother despite the fact that she lives an hour away and only sees them when possible. To me, that is the essence of a good man; a man strong enough in his principles and secure enough in himself to go against the grain when necessity dictates. My favorite thing is being around such men who like to be around me. My colleague enjoys my company and even confides in me about his frustrations of work.

As we were talking, he heard my cough and took me to the pharmacist’s immediately. On the walk over, we talked about everything from the Japanese (there are more delegates visiting) to his high cholesterol levels. We talked about why the Chinese are afraid to move abroad (a stronger sense of family leads to a stronger sense of loneliness and isolation when culture shock hits; in America, our sense of family is more mobile and transient and so I think our way of life is simply tinged with more loneliness than the Chinese lifestyle) and how only the Chinese who will be able to afford to move their families with them would move.

We got to the pharmacist’s and he explained my illness. I was given amoxicillin capsules OVER THE COUNTER (granted, I don’t think anyone ever destroyed their lives to get one more hit of amoxicillin but still) as well as Chinese herbal cough drops. The logic was that as a Westerner, my Western (read: significantly larger) body needs the stronger Western medicine but the cough drops should be gentler as my system will be treated harshly enough with the amoxicillin. Medicine here is really quite casual. You only need to know what to ask for. It’s impressive in a thank-god-my-parents-are-medical-pros-and-so-I-have-some-idea-of-what-is-going-on sort of way. Though, I must admit, I had a moment of panicked, “Whoa, I think something has been lost in translation,” when I saw “for treatment of acute gonorrhea” on the package as one of the ailments it treats. I relaxed when I continued reading and it mentioned something about “productive cough.”

Packages in hand, we returned to our office and I took a cough drop. I cannot suggest “Golden Throat Drops” highly enough. They are mentholated and taste like a standard herbal cough drop but they lack the bitter aftertaste of Western cough drops and they work better than any Western cough drop I’ve ever had.

Back in the office, my colleague explained the dosages to me, we talked a bit more about casual life in the West and the East and then I went to class. I taught my two classes (3pm-5pm) and returned to the office to use my colleague’s computer. (My loaner is still MIA and so I’m dependent on the kindness of my colleagues for internet access.) I used it until 6pm, when school was over and I collected my things to leave.

The main area of the High/Middle School is in the shape of a square with the middle of the square being an open courtyard. It is four stories tall and all the hallways and stairwells are open to the elements. The only inside “inside” the building are the actual rooms, be them the classrooms or the offices. All the school buildings in the compound are like this and it’s a bit intense as we’re at a rather high elevation, bordering the Gobi desert (dry air for people who spend all day talking at full volume) and with New York type weather (HOT summers and COLD winters).
My office is on the third floor of the Middle/High School. On my floor are the extraneous administrative offices (tech support for one) and the English teachers, the second floor houses the 9th and 10th grade classrooms and on the first floor are the 7th and 8th graders. (They use American floor method, not the European “Ground” and then “1st“ floor method.) By the stairs I use is the classroom one of the math teachers of the 9th grade. As teachers move, not students, when the subjects change, I have not been able to figure out why he is always at that classroom when I pass (although, considering the conversation I had with one of the 7th grade math teachers I had today, math teachers may also be the homeroom teachers… or I am mishearing entirely and they are saying something like “main” teacher) but nonetheless he is always there.

The 9th grade math teacher is often on the periphery of my world. He clearly understands English but has never spoken English to me. We pass on the stairs all the time. He’s always about when I’m wandering. Upon my first official day here, he sat with the English teacher assigned to care for me at lunch. (I should mention here that my guide is the kind of girl who is too beautiful for her own good.) The three of us sat, my guide speaking English with me and Chinese with him. My guide declared with great surprise that I not only could use chopsticks but I used them with my left hand! My great talent for staving off starvation with my dominant hand somehow enhanced her prowess because in my continental company, she was suddenly that much more attractive.

I made some comment about being self-conscious that I use my left hand for chopsticks (no joke EVERYONE here is right handed) and the English teacher repeated what everyone has always said, “In China, a person who can use chopsticks in their left hand is said to be very clever.” I nodded half-heartedly at the platitude I’d heard a million times that week and said, “Yeah, everyone says that,” to myself. Frankly, I stick out enough and my guide is a pretty young thing confident (or dependent) in the permanence of her beauty the way youth is confident (or dependent) of its immortality. In other words, she couldn’t have cared less about my discomfort because it is nothing that affected her ability to be adored.

The fact was lost on her that I had spoken because I was weary of being “clever” or “fresh” or generally different and didn’t want yet one more scene made of my unique nature. I wanted to be able to fit in some little way. I don’t want much but the idea that not EVERYTHING about me is unique (from my sex life to my eating habits) and therefore up for infinite study, communal debate and eventual public judgment would be nice. Sometimes, a girl just wants to eat in peace without a hundred sets of eyes staring at the Elephant Man. Me aside, my guide was proud and made a scene about my latest point of freakdom.

Upon the lowering of my eyes and the raising of her voice to inform everyone of my latest great talent, the math teacher snorted a small laugh to himself, briefly glanced at my guide who wasn’t paying attention to either of us and then directly at me, half-smiling that cocky smile men get when they’ve got a secret they know will make you happy (something that, in retrospect, was incredibly brazen of him to do). He immediately got my full attention. He looked pointedly over my left shoulder, gesturing ever so slightly with his chin and I turned around.

I didn’t see it immediately. Behind me was a table full with four students. Each one looked totally normal with nothing amiss. I looked at what they were eating and they were having the standard lunch. I looked at what they were wearing and each one was dressed as a usual student dresses. Each one was sitting, eating, talking and generally being a kid. Each one was holding chopsticks and a spoon in their other hand. (Note: if you’re ever in China and can’t use chopsticks, spoons are a perfectly acceptable, native option. Many children eat with spoons exclusively and most adults use them as an adjunct to chopsticks. I am a rarity even among the Chinese here in that I use chopsticks exclusively.) I turn around, shaking my head and not seeing anything. I looked at the math teacher and he shook his head and looked back at the table more emphatically. This time, he raised his eyebrows, something the Chinese never do. So I turned back around and thought, “Not only am I left-handed freak, I’m a moron to boot. Now, what would I be trying to tell me if I was him?” I noticed it as I realized what I’d be telling me. There was the one left-handed student in the whole school sitting just over my left shoulder. There was the mirror image of the right handed norm; my brethren in “cleverness.”
I turned back around smiling, my mouth open to say “Thank you” in Chinese and the math teacher cut me off with the small, lower lip jut of “Don’t mention it,” a slow blink and a nod. My English teacher guide noticed nothing of our exchange.
It is safe to say the insightful, discreet man has held my affection for some time. He even came to my open class: the only teacher who hasn’t spoken English to me to do so. I like him and he always gets a smile when I pass him.

However, I wasn’t thinking of him today as I bounded down the stairs from the third to the second floor, even though I should have been able to predict his presence. I was looking out to my left to see if my friend the physics teacher (the one with the son fluent in English who wishes I had a younger sister, one his age) was in her office. The wind was blowing from my right so my hair was doing that obnoxious hair-commercial blowing thing across my face that boys love but cause more knots than anyone knows what to do with. As I hit the landing on the second floor, the math teacher was there, openly staring at me, making no secret of liking to look at me.
A look like that from a man like that turns off all ability to think, in any culture. It was the look of a man clearly intent on engulfing himself in a woman; from her minutia to the grandeur a man and a woman can create. It is the look that spurs a gal to simply react without thinking. It is a look I have rarely gotten in China. It is a look I have never before gotten in China from anyone socially able to do anything about it. It is a look I really, really like.

My payment, in China, for people who do things I like has been to smile sweetly (usually in a picture) as that is all most want from me. It is an innocent transaction but it does reinforce the idea that somehow I am post-their-human. There is an expression in Chinese about “the Horse follows the Snake.” As a White Westerner, I am seen as the “horse” in China; the horse being infinitely stronger than the snake and fully capable of crushing the snake. (Yeah, the whole, “A single snake bite can kill a massive horse” argument wasn’t addressed in my explanation.) However, when the horse (the Westerner) needs the “snake” (the Chinese) it will obediently follow the lead of the weak snake and “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” (The Horse/Snake analogy has been loosely and incorrectly equated to the “When in Rome” expression; the presumption is that Rome was a backwards/weak and ancient/intolerant place. The over usage of the “When in Rome” things makes much more sense now and, in fact, is poignant. It is a self-effacing apology.) My sweet smile firmly delineates the difference between “me” and “them.” My sweet smile is the statement, “I recognize I could crush you but I have no intention of doing so.” My sweet smile is what most Chinese need to feel comfortable with me. Frankly, I hate it but there is nothing I can do to undo centuries, if not millennia, of Whites invading to say nothing of the West’s current, archaic, naively ignorant foreign policies. I do not get to choose the parameters but I do get to choose how I play the game. And though I am complacent in said game, if I were not, the difference would be seen as a horse preparing to trample the snake. I am seen as a horse. There is nothing I can do about that. I am even born of the Horse year. The Chinese will always see me as a Horse and they will always see themselves as the Snake. My currency is my innocent smile and their currency is their kind generosity.
But, the math teacher’s gaze was decidedly not about a horse and a snake. It was about the lotus (woman) and the bamboo (man). It was the kind of gaze that slows time down towards the infinite. So, I took a gamble and decided to not bring race into the visual discussion. There would be no complacent smile. If I was wrong in interpreting his gaze, there will invariably be a federal case made out of my unhappiness. I’m sure they’d convene some sort of meeting to figure out how to keep the Western teacher happy and I’ll be lectured on the “great sadness” I am feeling so many worlds away from home. I will be told I must stave off the bad thoughts and only think happy things as numerous teachers are assigned ‘round-the-clock shifts of attending to my loneliness by obliterating my brief moments of solitude.

But, I’m brazen and a flirt. The thought of being tediously lectured yet one more time to “think happy thoughts” does not scare me in the least, so I did not smile. I stayed in that naked place, stripped of all platitudes and simply was myself, unedited. If he liked watching me free from the restraints of being “The Westerner” as much as his look implied, I had no intention of bringing up those arbitrary shackles. Besides, with a look like that, the hurdles he had to overcome were far more than the brief few I risk. His immediate culture fears and desires the completion of centuries of Western thought that I represent like a moth to the flame. I am too tall, too educated, too emotionally androgynous, too physically feminine, too willful, too promiscuous, too white, too free, too fertile, too discreet, too new, too liberated to ever be acceptable in real time, much less accepted as “human” (and forget about the “subservience” that is “woman”) and yet I am the benchmark the men push their women to strive for. As my Brazilian Angel puts it, “Of course they would never flirt with you. You are too much.” I am the unattainable Western ideal and yet here before me stands a man with the courage to put all that bullshit aside. The one thing that breeds a sense of kinship in me more than anything else is the willfulness to make your own decisions. The one thing all my ancestors have in common is that they all came to America because their unacceptably willful behavior amounted to treason. Rebels are my blood and no revolution is more difficult or frightening than unapologetic ownership of sexuality. I would be forsaking the most crucial element of my genetics to leave a man like that hanging. So I held his gaze.

It felt so good to be there in my own skin without having to be accommodating and it was the first time I’ve been there in a very long time. I’m built to challenge the men who approach me and so that’s what I did. I can’t get away with being the cute, giggling girl in the bar but I am allowed to not just know what I like but demand it as well. I held his gaze as I would any man who looked at me that I liked and continued on my path, remaining ensnared in his gaze. As I rounded the landing to turn and continue on my way down the stairs, he smiled the half smile and head shake of the contented man. The residue of my crap Saturday utterly vanished in the breeze. I love adult sexuality.

Like I said: Thank God for men.