Z

The thing I like most about Z is that he’s always treated me like a human being. Everyone here either feared or resented or whatever-ed me at first. Every Chinese friend who knew I was going to Central PRC warned me about the opportunists who’d "Do anything" to get on my good side and then bleed me dry. I figured out pretty quickly the people looking to bleed me and the people who were simply par for the course. Everyone came at me with such staggering baggage that it was exhausting. Granted, when you live in an incredibly homogeneous society, literally never having met a "White" woman before, and suddenly the female counterpart to my predecessor arrives, I don’t know that you can blame people for being a bit, as Eddie Izzard puts it, "spikey."

However, I’m still me and I had no personal track record so it was definitely a bit bothersome to always have prejudices, opportunism, gossip and other people’s issues lingering in the air. I hate being a figurehead, stripped of my ability to be my dorky self.

Case in point, I said "Ni hao" to everyone when I first got here. I thought I’d do my best to dispel the "Arrogant Imperialist" notion straight away. After all, I didn’t need to know Mandarin to know that there was no real source of discussion the first few weeks I was here, aside from the minutia of my every move. So, to walk into a room where everyone is clearly discussing me in great detail, be stared at like a freak show and then have my friendly "Hello" be met with stunned silence was disheartening, to say the least. The last time I had to deal with that sort of "What is the great beast going to do now that she’s entered the room" crap, a woman peripheral to some new people I’d met was elucidating precisely what a heinous bitch (she felt) I am. Consequently, every time I entered the room, no one ever said anything, clearly awaiting the giant bitch housed inside me to burst forth and consume every last one of them. Like my friends here, I eventually won over my friends back home but it blows having to combat a legacy of bullshit you didn’t make.

Z was one of very few teachers who just treated me the way I’m accustom to being treated by strangers; neutrally. He returned my "hello" and went about his business, clearly curious and formal but no more than I would have expected in America. After a while, he even started flirting with me and being super friendly (in PRC terms) before we were even formally introduced. He seems to have no problem being demonstrative about the things he wants and the way he wants to do things. He’s also been very laid back about my "foreign" nature and earnest in the most seductive of ways.

On Monday (12/11) I was fiercely reminded of this. My schedule is, as always, different than almost anyone else I work with (my sole compatriot is my lunch mate who works in both the Middle and Primary schools) so I’m never in "at the beginning of the day." Mondays are no different as it is the day to raise the flag and sing the national anthem. I have no idea when the flag raising ceremony starts and no idea if I’m invited to attend (usually, they just forget to tell me these things but sometimes I’m not invited and in lieu of putting them in the position of having to tell me "Yes" because, god forbid, they ever actually say, "I’m sorry but no" when they mean it, I just don’t broach the topic), so I arrive when I’ve been told to arrive; 8am.

I make it into the English teachers’ office and someone’s bag is on my desk. One of the things about my desk is that it’s always bare. In the one of the countless they’re-more-Confuscist-than-communist strokes, no adult invades or touches my space unless explicitly invited by me. Amongst each other, they are perfectly comfortable being utterly equal and loose about boundaries but with me, they are overly respectful of my space. So, unless the students (who are too young to be held to the adult levels of propriety) are working on something or my immediate neighbor has too many books to correct and she takes me up on my explicit offer to use my empty desk space to prevent a book avalanche, nothing is ever on my desk.

But, now there’s a computer case/briefcase lying on my desk. It’s not a student’s stuff and I know it’s not a colleague’s stuff. I’m certainly not offended or put off by it; I just notice it with surprise as it’s something out of place in the most orderly work environment I’ve ever been in. Frankly, I’m kind of glad that someone is comfortable enough with me to make themselves at home in my space.

That brief moment of pleasure that someone is comfortable with me lingers as I start working on reviewing the classes I’ll be teaching in my monster day of seven classes. Outside the window to the office, I hear the flag raising ceremony end and the teachers start filing back into the office.

Z comes through the door with my girls and leans over to talk to me as he takes his bag off my desk. As he pulls his bag from my desk, pulls out his phone and says "Number, disconnected," I realize he had come in before the ceremony, asked my girls where I was (probably had to explain why he was asking and ask how to say "disconnected") and left his things to see me after. He had preempted me. I had been wondering how I was going to find him to explain that the number he gave me had been disconnected. I was also wondering how I was going to explain "disconnected" but he had is sorted before I needed to wrestle with anything.

He explained that he had some problems with his phone over the weekend and (I think) we made plans to try again this Saturday. I gave him my number and he said he’d call me. He was very sweet and then my immediate neighbor poked her head in (as the sisterhood’s job is to make sure that all men are on the up and up when interacting with their friends) to get the rest of the story. Z had no problem explaining it all immediately as she watched him from behind the mask and then finally nodded approvingly.

While it was nice having a boy be so demonstrative, I suddenly discovered myself not trusting it at all. Not that I don’t trust him but that I don’t trust that he’s interested in the same thing I’m interested in. Because all New York women are a cheap knock off of Sex and the City, I found myself wondering how it was that a man who is interested in me could be so comfortable with that fact being known so publicly. Imagine a man in New York discussing with his love-interest’s girlfriends the fact that they were supposed to have a date, that it got screwed up and then asking them for advice on what he should do to fix it. That’s the foresight of gay men, not straight. Most men in New York won’t deal with a girl’s girlfriends at all, much less face the firing squad when the ball got dropped on a first date and to say NOTHING of asking for advice on how to make things better. I’ve grown so accustom to the signs of attraction being nerves, sarcasm, the occasional streak of masochism and the utmost discretion that the only logical conclusion I could come to is that he’s not, in fact, interested. No one has the balls to be that blatant.

Suddenly, I realized that I no longer trust anything romantic at face value. Naked, real attraction, real emotion with a relative stranger is not the thing of true New York "sophisticates" and so anything remotely resembling such "naked" expression must be either patronage or farce. I also realized that his demonstrative action is the very thing that has been making me think he’s not interested.

I then realized that I am, unequivocally, stupid.

As I was grappling with my realization and wondering how "location specific" my issue is, I found myself with my favorite 7th grade class. One of my favorite "naughty" students was teasing another girl by calling her ugly. Now, that bugs the hell out of me because I was the girl relentlessly teased throughout school and no one ever stood up for me. I was the girl who stood up for other girls so everyone always figured I didn’t need to be stood up for. As Ani says, "Some girl says ‘Thank you for saying all the things I never do.’ You know, the thanks I get is to take all the shit for you."

In front of the boy, I said, "He likes you" to the girl. It’s usually the fastest way to shut that sort of behavior down.

Both the boy and the girl shook their heads.

"No?" I asked.

"No, he likes someone else." The girl said, as he nodded.

"Really?" I asked, amazed at their comfort level, especially in middle school.

"Jennifer" He said, without hesitation and the girl nodded.

I looked at him, questioningly. I was amazed that he would be so bold as to simply name her.

He took my expression as confusion on her identity -despite the fact that I adore and precisely know Jennifer- and he turned around to point her out.

And I was reminded of something I once told someone about my affinity to John Mayer music. My friend was surprised to learn that I really like John Mayer’s music despite my more obvious affection for NIN and the like. I explained that his music is like a warm bath or a massage while NIN and the like is akin to a hearty kickboxing session.

"But his sentiment seems too, well, sentimental for you."

"True, I’d be freaked out if my boyfriend wrote ‘Your Body is a Wonderland’ but I like it in an anonymous song, sung by a guy I don’t know to a woman who isn’t me." How’s that for the coward’s way out?

My psychosis and jittery nerves aside, Z seems willing to try to deal with me. I’ve run rather hot and cold around him (he’s one of the few people not utterly thrown by me not smiling all the time and so I don’t think to put up a mask of any sort around him) and yet he remains demonstrative in his desire to be around me.

Like I said, I’m one lucky bastard.