PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE

CHASTITY IS A LESBIAN

For quite some time, one of the men in a position of power over me has been “falling in love” with me. I use quotation marks around “falling in love” because he’s not really in love with ME so much as the American who is nice to him. At first I didn’t think he was married and that worried me significantly. Then, I discovered not only is he married but his child is one of my students and his wife one of my colleagues. That offered me some comfort for some time. Then I came to understand the full dynamic of the standard Chinese marriage around here, and, well, I’ve returned to “significantly worried.” I’ve commented privately to those close to me that his affections towards the mythic me is “only going to bite me in the ass at the end but it’s helpful for now.” Well, I’m coming towards that end and, I’ll be damned if I’m not psychic.

The gentleman in question is my first stop in terms of getting things done. Consequently, if I want anything in terms of chain-of-command or anything complicated enough that I can’t manage the Mandarin, I must go through him. However, it has come to the point where he doesn’t actually want to help me, he simply asks me when we’re going to have some alone time. I have had a few significant, serious issues and he has brushed me off, telling me to ask (informally) another English teacher to assist me and turned our “official” meeting into a grilling about when and how we’re going to have alone time. I, always being slippery when first pushed, managed to wriggle out of the conversation only to turn to my bewildered beloved colleague for help with the serious issue so easily dismissed.

“Oh, no. This is about your contract. You should talk to [the man who thinks he’s in love with you].” He explained wide-eyed.

“I did. He asked that I ask a teacher for help.” I laid out curtly and simply held my beloved colleague’s gaze.

My beloved colleague’s eyebrows shot skyward but refused to ask anything further, guessing from my gaze that there was far more to the conversation than I was willing to indulge. Disputes of contracts are simply not appropriate for non-leaders to be handling, in any country. He nodded once, took the relevant paperwork. “Do not worry. I will clear this matter up.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and spoke from the heart. “Thank you.”

He saw my relief and smiled warmly. He knows something is going on but I’m not about to discuss it at work and I think he respects that. Consequently, in my silence he knows all he can offer me is kindness and logistical help.

And, I’m not all up in arms and outraged about this issue as I thought I might be. Most women I know who would hear of this would freak out and start hollering for lawsuits or whatever but, frankly, that’s not where my head is. I don’t feel threatened and I don’t feel victimized; it’s just a headache. I’m highly irritated and frustrated but I feel it is indicative of a larger issue I’m having.

In a nutshell, I’m tired of being adored for being a nice American. There is no difference between the schlock that Hollywood has put out into the universe and me. All the “good” that America represents (because I am nice and not horrendously ugly by Chinese standards) is all that I am. (Were I to be an asshole or aesthetically unpleasing, the exact opposite would be true.) I feel like I’m lost behind “THE AMERICAN DREAM” when all I really want is a few friends who can roll their eyes at me and regularly exposed to a boy who lusts after me because if I laugh to hard, I snort or to be found sexy for my penchant for wearing boy clothing on an abundantly feminine body. Granted, I have precisely two Chinese friends who fit the first bill and one of those friends fits the second. However, that friend who fits both bills is incommunicado at the moment and so I’m up that creek without that paddle.

Granted, it’s a phase and it’ll dispel soon enough but for the moment, I’m so tired of people thinking they love me simply because I’m an American who doesn’t treat them like shit. To be fair, this is a regular issue that manages to dispel itself with the presence of Z but as he’s very busy revamping his business while maintaining his classes right now, we haven’t had time alone together for a couple of weeks now. In a nutshell, I’m sort of bouncing off the wall and find myself in a position of incredibly vulnerability towards any Western male willing to take notice of me. I find myself making lists of West Egg gentlemen who can discern me from the haze of “APPLE PIE AMERICANA” and who I can contact first, how to open a dialogue and what the odds are of them rescuing me from the depths of my state of generic-ness. And, I can’t talk to Z about this because one of the cultural issues is that he does not see himself as a worthy contender for “boyfriend” status if his business isn’t soon to be turning a hefty profit. Financial security is one of the few non-negotiable pieces of masculinity for the boys around here. He doesn’t need to make significantly more than me (unlike most of the men here who feel that if they can’t pull me into a totally new realm of existence, then I might be able to leave them) but he refuses to be making significantly less. Which means, I’m all alone for the next few weeks.

Yeah. Not good.

And Z’s not responding to my attempts to have any time alone at all with him. I’m not talking a night out. I’m talking just a few minutes of conversation.

Today didn’t help in my mounting frustration.

There were more Americans visiting the school today (4/10) and, given the current single-minded attitude of the man who claims to love me, I was not informed about it until they were leaving. I went out to greet them as they were wrapping up and had a brief chat session with them. They seemed quite lovely and laid back and I wish I had had more time to speak with them. Of course, as we were talking, the man who thinks he’s in love with me felt the need to declare that, “We all like Christina but someday soon, perhaps we will say that we love her.”

Which, of course stopped the conversation dead. That’s just not appropriate anywhere.

I managed to cover up his adolescent declarations of love for me by swiftly moving the conversation along and then we got them onto the bus.

“You must come back with me to my office right now.” He said sternly once the bus was off.
As I keep waiting for him to blow up over the fact that he’ll never have me, I figured this is when the sublimated rage was going to pop.

Instead, he just wanted to use the opportunity to get some alone time with me.

“How is your [Z’s full name]?” The man who thinks he’s in love with me asked as he scrolled through my phonebook listing on my cell phone. He managed to get my cell phone from me under the pretext of looking at my desktop image of flowers I had photographed and then proceeded to check my call list and then phonebook.

“Sha? Ting bu dong.” [What? I don’t understand what you’re saying] I played coy trying to avoid allowing him access to my boy. First and foremost, my boy is sacred space to me; I don’t want it violated. (Distant) Second, I have no interest in condoning that masochistic pissing match he will invariably lose.

He repeated himself.

I repeated myself.

He three-peated himself.

I followed suit.

He finally gave up and changed the conversation. “This Friday, what are you doing?”

“I have a dinner with foreign friends.” Briefly issuing a double prayer that my flirting partner who made me paper roses and filled my water glass would and would not be there.

“What time?”

“Seven.”

“And what time are your classes over.”

“I have classes all afternoon.” I stretched the truth a little, knowing he would never check. The less alone time I have with him, the better. I’m angry at being marginalized into some smiling, generic, American sexpot and he’s angry I won’t be his trophy mistress.

“But I want to take you out to tea.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Can you change the dinner?”

“No. It’s with many people at the Shangri-La Hotel.” As if I would change a dinner party to have an affair with this married man. There is seductive and there is narcissistic; married men cannot afford narcissism if they are to be seductive. They’re don’t have “possession” to dangle in front of a girl so if they can’t sort out reasons to make me forget he’ll never be mine, I can’t imagine why I would waste my foolish youth on someone else’s masturbation.

Instead of tea he decided he was going to take me away to the mountains during our next vacation and I would be utterly smitten with the idea of being his pleasure toy.

Um, yeah, not quite.

I love the idea of our next vacation period because I can fantasize about sleeping late and then being around to spend time with Z when he’s free. With fewer school classes, perhaps we’ll finally get in a little smooching time. Fantasy of fantasies is that I’ll be setting the alarm so Z doesn’t sleep through his 6:30am Tae Kwon Do classes but I’m quite positive that will be realized only in my schizophrenia. I’m sure the reality will be I’ll either go away on a trip with some of the West Egg gang or I’ll putter about on my own. Let’s be honest, there are fates far worse than that but I'll be damned if I'm not pouting about it anyway.