Monday, May 28, 2007

THE JOY OF SEX

Rest assured, I’m not getting any. This is me, after all and I simply never get any. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy passing by the buffet and I really enjoy reading the menu. My favorite tasty treat of late has been Tank at the gym. Though I cannot take him home, I can certainly do anything I choose to him, in my mind. And, rest assured, I do.

Tank’s classes just rock. He’s fantastically fabulous and his music kicks ass. He’s passionate about his job (I find very little sexier than capacity for unbridled passion) and while he’s very clear on what you need to be doing, what you need to look out for physically and the reasons for maintaining proper form, I’ve never once discerned discussion about losing fat or the beautiful thing your body will become. Frankly, the reason and restrain that beauty requires just kills it for me. He talks about strength and power; two very unreasonable, unrestrained qualities. In a country where they’re still regularly binding infant baby girls’ hips in order to prevent hip development because the pre-pubescent look is the most desirable (one of the West Eggers married a PRC woman and his mother-in-law immediately set out to binding the infant’s hips; as most of the West Eggers were highly concerned about said practice when they heard the story, they spoke to their translators and the consistent answer from all the translators was, without batting an eye, “It is done to maintain the attractive shape”), it is unheard of that a woman wouldn’t have at least three mirrors on her at all time and the women talk of nothing but eating food that will make them slim, Tank makes no mention of the aesthetic traits gained (or lost) by his workouts. His body shape alone is a declaration of his love of athletics without bowing to the conformity of “lithe” here. His attention to me, above all others, is a statement of how little he is put off by a full hourglass shaped woman who is a full head taller than he. I am all the things an attractive woman should not be but he is still very clear with me that I am attractive beyond all others.

In his classes, he plays Pink as well as lots of House, R&B, Dance and House music. Without fail, I know almost all of the lyrics to his songs and they await me on my iPod as I leave his class. When the classes get rough, I find myself screaming the lyrics (which I feel safe doing as the music is so loud, it mostly drowns me out) to whatever is playing to push through the runner’s wall and he loves it. Frankly, screaming the lyrics to Pink’s “Who Knew” while my legs burn in some sort of exorcism of the broken heart encapsulated by that song is feels phenomenally good. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, “His classes are the best sex I’ve had in years.”

Today (5/28), I was warming up before his Combat Class (a shadowboxing/ kickboxing class) on a stationary bike and he came over to me to find out if I was going to his class. Casually, as he and I have a very casual relationship, he leaned over on the consol of my bike and we spoke quite close. Around him, I feel infinitely comfortable, forgetting myself completely and I get the sense that the feeling is mutual. Ironically, with the lack of personal boundaries in China, I am overly conscious of my personal space here but in a rare moment of peace, I simply don’t consider it with Tank. He does his best to speak English to help me and, unlike the other teachers who make a half effort to speak English that is actually less comprehendible to me than their Chinese, he studies his English language workout DVDs so closely that he’s got the New Zealand accent of the trainers on his DVDs.

So there we were, muddling through our conversation (primarily in Chinese, so you know we were in trouble), I was leaning in close and he was leaning on the consol of my bike and then he stood up straight, something behind us having caught his eye. It wasn’t until he returned to his professional, hands-behind-his-back, ramrod straight back and appropriate distance that I realized just how casual we were being. Irritated at having had my parade rained on, I turned around to see what was cock-blocking me.

There was my Brazilian Angel’s favorite trainer, looking at Tank with amused disapproval. He had a wide smile on his face but it was clear that they both knew Tank was doing something somewhat unprofessional. The trainer briefly looked at me and I gave him a “Yeah, and what of it” teasing look, which made him laugh to himself. It was in that moment that I realized that, in this case, the professional boundaries were there to protect Tank, not me. This afternoon my students nicknamed me “Tigress” and I suspect they maybe more right than they know.

It was clear that he wanted to tell me more but my boy had to go before he got in any more trouble. I suspect he’s up for a promotion to lead trainer and I didn’t want to fuck any of that up for him.

So, we met up again at his class and spoke a bit more. I warned him I was beat from a full day of naughty students and he did his best to get me ready for the ass kicking class to come. Per usual, he gave lots of Chinese instructions and then switch to English for me. As we were all laughing and grunting away, I looked to the back of the room and there was my Brazilian Angel’s trainer again. He was smiling and observing the class and Tank was super amped; fake taking hits from some of the weaker students who needed the inspiration. Frankly, such comfort with silly, self-effacement in a world of infinite concern over “losing face” is enough to make this addict flare up again.

How can a girl not be completely taken with that? Frankly, I have no idea how not to be, so I’m just going to revel in the joy of it all while it lasts.

Friday, May 25, 2007

LIFEGUARD, WHICH WAY TO THE DEEP END?

As I exist primarily in my head, it simply does not occur to me how many people exist within the visual realm. In my personal opinion, to exist primarily in the visual realm is a waste of time and often far more deceitful and depressing than beneficial. I remove myself from my mind on occasions of small pleasures and small beauties or on occasion that a man happens to move through space in a way that I find undeniably beautiful. I think of the visual realm as a vacation or dessert; it’s nothing to live on but it’s a nice break from my norm. Consequently, I am often taken aback when others feel the need to demand attention to their existence in the visual realm.

Of late, I go to the gym everyday because it helps me sleep better, it’s the only thing to do outside of my required daily routine (as going to the movies, the clubs, the cafes or what have you is more a place to pick up a mate and show your new money wealth than to hang out and socialize; frankly, it’s the only place I can go in a social atmosphere that doesn’t require “drag queen” levels of makeup and clothing) and as it is a gym, the staring (present though it may be) is actually kept to a minimum -comparably speaking- because most women are in little more than sports bras (stuffed and padded though they may be) and hot-pants. Since I’ve been in China, my diet has been ridiculously healthy (because in the inverse of the US, fresh foods are simply infinitely more available than real junk food) by default. So, as a result I have lost weight. I certainly wasn’t looking to lose weight and my motivation behind all of those factors hasn’t been “to lose weight.” In fact, my weight had nothing to do with it. To tell the truth, I kind of liked my body with all its curves, decent rack and its great ass. Granted, I was constantly berated by people who prefer the lithe look to the curvy look about what a fat pig I was but if you removed that outside influence of shame, I really kind of liked my body. In all honesty, really miss my ass and my rack.

However, my lifestyle is such in China that I am a good deal skinnier. To be totally honest, it hadn’t really occurred to me that I was losing more weight than when I first got here and had to shift my diet; I just noticed that my clothes were even more loose and I wasn’t filling out my bras. In fact, I figured I was merely wearing out my clothes and it was time to get new ones.
In light of this weight loss, however, everyone has come out of the woodwork to tell me how proud they are that I’ve been working so hard to lose weight. It’s been a strange phenomenon and one that is entirely unfounded. In fact, my last bought of food poisoning did little more than serve to prove to me that I need a solid layer of meat on my bones if I am to literally survive another round. To be without food or water for 48 hours is rough on the body, especially when it is already battling serious toxins. Had I been as skinny as is felt to be appropriate here, I doubt I would have survived without some sort of serious organ damage.

My personal perspective in the weight loss of an adult is one of great trepidation. To be frank, it is very rare that a full grown adult loses significant weight for a healthy reason. My gut response when I see an adult significantly skinnier than they were before is to wonder what’s wrong. Usually rapid weight loss is the body’s sign of great distress; either reflecting illness or emotional distress. Consequently, I have certainly don’t feel comfortable bringing it up with anyone who isn’t the closest of friends because I don’t want to congratulate someone on their body’s losing battle with cancer or their great emotional distress at the love of their life having left them. Or even, I don’t want to congratulate them in finally buying into the shame Madison Avenue is selling and for vanity’s sake dropping lots of weight because that deals with the symptom, not the illness. Granted, there are plenty of people who should lose weight for health reasons but that is between them and their doctor but I have no place in that discussion.

Of late, I have been proven to be in a staggeringly small minority. At last week’s West Egg party (5/19) the night before the wedding, after dinner we decided to go to a club in the same hotel as the restaurant after dinner. In the underground tunnel as the lot of us were strolling through the makeshift art gallery, I was pulled aside by one of the women in the group. I went to her and she kept insisting that we get more and more space between the larger group and us. This dramatic secrecy of solidifying the group out of earshot went on for a good minute.
“What?” I kept asking, really curious to know the secret I was about to be let in on. I figured we were planning a surprise celebration for the couple leaving soon.

“You have lost a lot of weight.” The woman who pulled me aside whispered to me in a low voice as she did her best not to move her lips so people couldn’t understand.

“Huh?’ I asked, confused.

“Really, you have. How much have you lost?” She whispered, finally comfortable enough to move her lips.

“Oh, I don’t know.” I said, clear that this conversations was just going to suck. It is precisely the mate conversation to this one right here that causes all that shame and self-loathing that I have experienced all too much firsthand and frankly, is a waste of time. Bodies are bodies and they come in many shapes and sizes. If you work out regularly and eat as good a diet as you can, you can only help so much what your body looks like and still live your life. Consequently, the more I am praised for being “skinny” the more I know I am shamed for being “fat.” I’m still the same me; nothing has changed and I was under the impression that my value as a person had very little to do with what was going on with the exterior amongst my friends and acquaintances.

“Come on, you can tell me. We’ve all been talking about it. You have lost a LOOOOT of weight.” She insisted.

“I don’t know. Really.” I hadn’t planned on losing weight, the weight loss is a side effect of larger, probably transient changes in my life and I certainly hadn’t placed much value on the size of my waist.

“No, really, it’s a LOOOT of weight. You’ve lost a LOOOT of weight.” My friend kept insisting and then looking at me like I’m supposed to provide another half of the conversation.

I really don’t know what to say to that. Clearly there was some dialogue I was supposed to provide but I don’t know what it would be, so all I could say was “Okay.”

“No, really!” She said one finally time.

“Okay” I said, utterly helpless. I didn’t want to offend her with my perspective on it all as she clearly thought she was doing something very kind and friend-like but I had absolutely no idea what the appropriate response to her perspective of me as a former fatty was. I had the sneaking suspicion I was supposed to express gratitude but the sum total of the conversation as I saw it was that she was informing me that A) I had been a fatty and therefore had something to formerly be ashamed of and B) she and lots of people were in agreement that my formerly shameful self was now an infinite improvement, despite the fact that the only difference I see in me is that I think I’m wearing clothes whose elastic has worn out. I certainly don’t feel like some butterfly released from her cocoon because I’m merely doing the best I can to cope with this incredibly taxing lifestyle. And what’s going to happen to their opinion of me and our relationship when I return to a life of more comfort and pleasure? For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to thank her for.

To be fair, that comment has not been the usual response by people in my inner circle. My Brazilian Angel has commented that I’ve lost a lot of weight but only as proof positive of how little there is to do around here and she has also made it abundantly clear that she feels there was nothing wrong with either the before or the after of said corpse. And, while I was in the before stage and would be crippled by the daily onslaught of “You’re fat” from my students, she would always tell me, “Chris, there is nothing wrong with your body. Do you feel there is something wrong with your body? Why are you listening to them? If you do feel that there is something wrong with your body, we can take you to a trainer or change something about your diet if you want. Do you want that?” she would ask, rhetorically, knowing my answer.

And, at the gym itself, I have been receiving a lot of attention for my weight loss. In fact, the only person who works at the gym who has regular contact with me who hasn’t brought it up is Tank. The only thing he has ever commented on about my physicality is my height as he is on the shorter side of Chinese men and I am on the taller side of American women, which, despite our flirting and mutual attraction, makes us infinitely, traditionally lopsided. However, I have noticed an inordinate amount of smaller Chinese men with very tall Chinese women who always wear heels making them even taller, so I suspect there’s much less of a stigma in China about dating a women twice your height.

This commenting reached a fever pitch at the gym the other day while my Brazilian Angel was on the bike and I was on the elliptical trainer. One of the customer service-type reps whose job it is to wander about, make friends and make sure everyone has everything they need stopped by to chat with us. Her grasp of basic English is decent, however her breadth of English is not large (I find that it is more important to understand the conceptual perspective of a language at first than it is to have a dictionary bulk of words; she has that conceptual understanding but not the dictionary bulk.). Consequently, she hangs out with my Brazilian Angel (whose Chinese is quite good) to talk with her about both herself and me. On this particular day, it was clear from the gestures, her topic of interest was me.

My Brazilian Angel started translating her questions about my routines, which I though nothing of as I’m one of the few regulars at the gym who does not work with a trainer and does not need help either to understand the machines or to use the free weights properly. In fact, the trainers have all taken a social interest in me because, from time to time, I have a few tricks up my sleeve in terms of muscle development or new moves they haven’t seen before because I come from a culture where women aren’t afraid of developing feminine muscles. In my world the “chopstick” body isn’t the only desirable one for a woman and so the commonplace training for Western women is infinitely different from the one taught by Chinese government in school where the singular body image seems to have left weight training for women as merely light toning. In fact, I’ve noticed that a lot of the female weight training is merely modified male weight training with no allowances for the feminine form. Case in point: the idea of developing the Beyonce butt is literally a foreign notion to the Chinese and so the backwards lunge is absolutely something new. As I’ve always been interested in athletics, I pay strict attention to anything any trainer has to say about anything physical to see if I can incorporate it into my routine so I’ve got a fair amount of information to provide, especially for the development of the female body. Consequently, it’s nothing new that people want to know about the specifics of my routines and how I change things up et al.

We went through the standard “What do you do in a regular day” and the usual “How many days a week do you do X,Y or Z” but then we got to a section about my measurements and alarm bells started to go off in my head. Actually, alarm bells didn’t go off, as my version of alarm bells seems to be the inner monologue of, “Hmm, that was a strangely incongruous question within the parameters of the discussion as I understand us to be having.”

I explained I didn’t know my measurements and my Brazilian Angel translated.

From the confused look on the Customer Service reps face, it was very clear to me that we were having two very different conversations and here is precisely where our two conversations ceased to dovetail.

“How much weight have you lost?” My Brazilian Angel asked, knowing I didn’t know and had no interest in knowing. We had, not ten minutes before the customer rep showed up, been having a conversation about how I should weigh myself “for fun” just to see how much weight I’ve lost. With years of torment as the tallest girl in my school who always got mocked when it was time for the class weigh-in, more years spent in “fat therapy” complete with weekly “Tsk Tsk”ing at the weekly weigh-ins by my skinny counselor and the nickname of Shamu, despite my high school bought of anorexia you can be assured my fat ass is never getting on a scale again. There’s nothing fun about the wide-eyed, “Oh my god” that tumbles out of people’s mouths as they see the number, not realizing that I am not all otherworldly dense fat but a lot of muscle as well. Regardless of how fat or slim I look, I always weigh a hell of a lot more than I appear to because I am a hell of a lot stronger than I look, and I look pretty strong. In fact, those people at carnivals who guess your weight for a living have never once guessed mine even remotely properly. Though I didn’t dive into details, I had simply explained to my Brazilian Angel that I had no interest in weighing myself.

“I don’t know,” I repeated in order to give her something to translate.

She turned to the Customer Service rep and explained that I didn’t know. The Customer Service rep then blinked a couple times out of shock, shook her head and started to speak rapid fire with a slightly higher pitched voice. You know, the kind of voice and face that your mother might make if you told her you liked to have unprotected sex with lots of partners to pay for your IV drug use instead of going to the Ivy League college you claimed to be attending every semester.

In that moment, I realized I was being interviewed for their monthly success story at the gym. With the monthly calendar is the monthly weight loss story. I believe they’re called the gym’s “Customer of the Month” or some such thing. They publish, for all to see, the weight, the dimensions, the exercise routine and various photos of the champion in action with their personal trainer. From the first time I saw one of those, I thought, “Good on them for embracing fitness as a lifestyle” but I was unnerved at the idea of all of that for the world to see and felt great relief that I would never know those dimensions about myself so it would never even be a question about me being in that monthly publication.

Interviewing aside, my Brazilian Angel engaged in some of the heated dialogue for a bit. I watched her fight the losing battle I have fought so often about explaining that the Chinese and the Western perspectives on body image are very different. When she couldn’t convey these things and bumped up against the dogmatic wall of “China is the only right choice to make because our choices have survived 5,000 years of testing” (despite the fact that for most of China’s imperial history, the Empresses were zaftig women and there was a time when the Phoenix eye, not the Western Wide Eye, were also idolized as the West was shunned… to just name two of the consistent “5,000 year old standards”) she punched out, furious.

“You know, I’ve had my Chinese lesson for today. I don’t need to have this conversation.” She said, frustrated. “I tried to explain that there’s nothing to do around here so we come to the gym. She doesn’t understand that Westerners come to the gym not just for their bodies but also for their heads. She said she could understand that you didn’t want to share your weight but she didn’t understand how you didn’t know your weight!” My girl huffed even more. “She’s just so stubborn. She refused to listen to anything!”

In that my poor girl had to be subjected to the silly, single-mindedness of the Chinese dogmatically self-assured right answer, I felt bad. In that she finally saw just how hard it can be to converse with many Chinese when by simply existing, you challenge said dogma, I found comedy. In that she finally had a glimpse into the uphill battle that is a very large portion of my daily experience, I found solace.

A few days after the argument, I took my first trip to the gym’s massage/spa type place. After the brutality and bullshit of my last masseur, I was in no mood to have to suffer through another bought of therapeutic laying of the hands. However, before the customer rep lady started fighting with my Brazilian Angel, she gave us each a free pass to have a sample “Feet Steaming.” So, I went to spa to have my feet placed in a wooden bucked with a steam machine attached and just sit for a half hour. It was kind of weird and I guess relaxing in the Chinese sense of things but I just felt like my feet were on a top of a steam kettle for a half hour. Frankly, I’m getting a bit tired of the correlation between others inflicting agony and relaxation. I was less than impressed.

Then the masseur who sat with me and talked while my feet became dumplings offered me a half hour introduction to the massages they do. I turned him down, telling him I have no problem and no need for massage, despite my re-wrenched neck but then my Brazilian Angel popped in and she pushed me to try. She had just finished up her massage and kept insisting that, while it was therapeutic, it was okay.

“The last massage guy was just too painful. I don’t want to do that again. It really, really hurt.” I told her. I was also less than pleased with the notion of being taken advantage of physically, as I suspect my massage got entirely more friendly than it needed to be once he started insisting that we get married. Granted, it all remained within the realm of “professional” however, it just felt all too intimate under the context of a man trying to get me to accept his marriage proposal.
My Brazilian Angel explained the situation to the masseur and he replied.

“He says you have to be careful. He says that many people set up stores and think because they’ve had massage done they can do it themselves.”

“No, this guy was a professional and a teacher at a school but I still didn’t like it.”

“Why don’t you give it a try, Chris? My masseur, there are parts that are really painful but especially at the end it is very relaxing.” She pushed me and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Xi’An, it’s that my Brazilian Angel knows best and I should just say yes.

“Okay.” I consented and she sorted out having me get my sample massage promptly after the foot steaming.

My girl left, having an infinite number of errands to run before her trip to Macau and areas further south and I climbed onto the massage table, incredibly trepidacious.

As I put my face into the round hole, I decided that if I was to try this, then I should simply commit. There’s no point in staying all tense on a massage table. Either commit or get off the table, as it were. So I lay there, dropped my arms off the table and relaxed my body as much as I could.

The masseur placed the sheet (they use a sheet over your clothes in lieu of nudity and oil to reduce friction in China) over my back, lightly ran his fingers across my back having already been informed by me that my alignment is fucked and he instantly found the problem. It never fails to amaze me how obvious my body is to professionals. Hairdressers all over the world know exactly where the part in my hair is and masseurs all over the world know exactly where my alignment is fucked up. Language, cultural and aesthetic barriers aside, my body is consistently billboard-obvious to professionals.

On the table, he set about rubbing me down firmly enough to have some serious effect but not so hard as to literally bruise my skeleton. As he worked, his hands never completely left my body, despite taking the occasional cell phone call (rest assured that people always take cell phone calls in China; my last masseur would take them in the middle of a session however, instead of continuing to work on me like this new masseur, he would simply leave the room while he chatted) which managed to keep my level of relaxation the same. It was the perfect therapeutic massage; I was relaxed enough to let him work the muscles and he was strong enough to do something with them. It wasn’t so soft that it sent me to sleep and it wasn’t so hard that I was literally breaking a sweat to resist the pain (as I have in the past).

We finished up and he asked how old I was.

“28” I told him.

The look of surprise shot through him (highly uncharacteristic of the Chinese who are always so well guarded about their surprise with strangers and so it must have been a real shock) and he immediately said (in Chinese), “Your body is in excellent condition.” Granted, if I interpreted what happened correctly, he was shocked at how old I was and how well my body has been maintained, however, I never before thought that “28” was shock-provokingly old… except in Hollywood and even there 30 is the new 20. Regardless, it was a marked change from the outright laughter I received about how I was so fat my masseur couldn’t find the pressure points on my body and the fact of the matter is, I haven’t lost all that much weight.

It certainly is strange to have so clearly passed some sort of marker for other people and have it be absolutely nothing to me. Somehow, I have passed that invisible line between “unacceptable” and “acceptable” and now I’m being treated like one of the worthy and for the life of me I couldn’t tell you how the fuck I got here. It’s very strange and frankly, it disgusts me more than a little.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

LOVE DOESN’T CONQUER ALL
BUT IT DOES CONQUER MORE THAN MOST

So, I had been busy trying to articulate my great frustration in not having more partners in my life. I have my Chinese Angel and my Brazilian Angel and J and frankly, I should be entirely grateful for that plethora alone but my spoiled, selfish self has wanted more. My position in this society simply isn’t understood by anyone except Chinese men and Chinese men, by default, don’t understand my position in Western society. Frankly speaking, sex cannot be obliterated from any conversation and though Chinese men maintain a very healthy respect, bordering on reverential fear, of me while others are around to hold them accountable when I am alone with Chinese men here, they revert to what they know of Western style seduction; all of which has been learned (by default) via Girls Gone Wild-type videos, porn and Hollywood. And, when the best image being presented of your “kind” is what Hollywood has to say about you, you know you’re fucked… especially as a blonde girl with a (comparably) large rack.

I was feeling particularly cranky about this because I had received my umpteenth lecture about how Chinese men are “traditional” and “always thinking of marriage” except this time I got it from my Chinese Angel. The truth is, Chinese men are like that with Chinese women. They are not, however, like that with me. The vast majority of the people I am surrounded by truly believe that the spectrum of humanity is different with me because the vast majority of people surrounding me truly believe that “Girls Gone Wild,” Jenna Jameson (fabulous though she may be) and Hollywood are the norm for my brand of sexuality. This notion that you need only get me in a room and call me a “dirty whore” to unleash the sexual beast that lies within me is practically universal. My Chinese Angel doesn’t quite understand that the men she finds so traditional and respectable are flesh and blood men who see me a ravenous, all-powerful siren who will consume them and then toss them out upon my next whim. Consequently, when she shares with truly respectable men like the history teacher that I quite enjoy his company, she doesn’t quite understand why it is that he backpedals at the articulated thought of a Western woman interest, despite the fact that when we’re together, he sees me as human and perfectly lovely.

And, my Brazilian Angel has grown tired of my occasional anti-social behavior. She finds it a weakness that I am swayed by the ideas of those around me. She also does not understand that she goes home to a man completely taken with her, undone without her and a universe in which she is respected as a fully realized and sexual human being and not a mythical succubus hell bent on feeding her vagina dentata. She is so irritated in fact that she insists my mood is due to the idea that she thinks I’m on my period and not that I’m going through things she might not understand.

And J is fantastic and wonderful but J is a boy and for the first time in my life, that makes a difference. I find myself in a world where regardless of how much I adore and respect someone, their gender makes a difference. It is stunningly difficult for me to have to realize that but nevertheless, I find myself standing at the edge of the gender gap for the first time.

Nevertheless, life marches on and I do my best to keep going out despite my cranky moods as the only way to meet people to lift yourself out of the crankiness is to be out and about. However, I started to completely close off this week as I was really fed up with being trapped in this virginal tower while being perceived as nothing but a succubus. The ravenous, unending stares I get at the gym or anytime I step outside were really starting to accumulate. So, for the first time (excluding the food poisoning fiasco) in a long time, I didn’t go to the gym. As much as I hated to, I gave up on the universe. I tried on Wednesday (5/16) to go to Tank’s class but he wasn’t teaching his class. However, all my male fans were there and the women in the class have grown so accustomed to me in their class that now they all go to the front of the room immediately, knowing I’ll be taking a bike in the back. As a result, I am surround by the crush of thirty men all vying to get the bike nearest to me and stare at me as I sweat. Tank’s attitude and pounding music usually lifts me out of that space and takes me elsewhere but the girl teaching the class was simply too cute for her own good and she kept turning off the music to be heard. Consequently, I left early, disappointed in myself and in the class.

Thursday, I was just too much of a mess so I stayed home. While I was home, a man who found me on Myspace started chatting with me. As he was born in China and raised here until he was 18 and then moved to LA with his family but is now back in China, he has the broad spectrum and similar values. He understands that non-Chinese women have humanity too and he was just so easy to talk to. It was really nice and it served to lift me out of my funk a little.

Then Friday, J and I went to a West Egg party. It was really fun to hang out with J, listen to him speak Spanish and generally have a partner in crime around all the business people. As always, he was lovely and accommodating and the best date a girl could ask for.

In one of my offices, there is a female teacher who truly sees me as a person. In fact, that whole office sees me as a real person. Granted, most of them are intimidated by me but I’m a real person nonetheless. My fiasco with Z seems to have truly humanized me to them and I think seeing me get really hurt by a Chinese man articulated just how much like them I am. Everyone has had their heart broken. A scarred heart is the sign of a human being and the idea that I could be scarred by a Chinese man really turned them around on their idea of me. However, the woman who sits directly next to me really sees me as just her super-cool friend. To her, I’m glamorous but I’m like an old friend who has made good; not someone who has descended from Mt. Olympus to grace them with my presence.

So she invited me to her wedding on Saturday (5/20). Granted, I have been invited to 4 weddings this week alone but she wanted me in her house for the ceremony, not just to be there for the photo op of the banquet. However, in accepting, I did have to get up at the ass crack of dawn to be ready by 7:30.

I rolled out of bed about 5:30 this morning because I’m very slow to wake up and need a lot of time, not just to get ready but to pull myself out of the haze of sleep. As the universe has quite the sense of humor, the later I go to bed the early I have to get up because it takes me that much longer to engage in consciousness. Consequently, I got about four hours of sleep between the West Egg party and my alarm going off.

I rolled out of bed, ate breakfast and just as I was about to begin my lengthy process of getting ready because I was explicitly told to dress nicely and wear a “pretty dress,” my phone rang.
“What the fuck? It’s only 6. They’re not supposed to call until 7. I guess something happened.” I thought as I picked up my phone.

“Hello, Christina? We’re on our way now, we’ll be there in a half hour.”

“What?” I said, still pulling myself from sleep haze to consciousness. “I thought you said 7:30” I spoke with my second closest friend from the office (the first closest being the bride and the second closest being the maid of honor).

“Yes, we’re early. We will meet you at the school gate. Hurry!”

“Uh, okay.” My mouth said as my brain let loose a whole lot of common expletives.

I threw on my skirt and custom made Chinese-style silk top as I hurried into the bathroom and did the fastest, best makeup job I have ever managed. Thank god I have so many gay boyfriends back home or I never would have gotten through all that.

Ten minutes later my phone rang again. “What the fuck!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, briefly forgetting that it wasn’t even 6:30, that I live in an apartment building (not a private house) and that everyone on the planet knows the word “Fuck.”

“Hello?” I answered cheerfully after my mini blowup.

“We will be there in five minutes. Meet us at the primary school gate.” The Maid of Honor explained the incredibly pushed up timetable.

“Uh, okay. I’m putting on my shoes right now. I’ll meet you there.” I said, despite the fact that the primary school is a good 10-minute brisk walk from my apartment. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Yes. Hurry!”

I hung up my cellphone, slid out of my first slipper into my first slip-on and as I was stepping out of the second slipper, my cellphone rang again.

“We will meet you at the East Gate” The Maid of Honor said.

“Okay. I’m just trying to get on my other shoe!” I explained.

“Yes, the East Gate is by your house so come quickly.”

“I’m coming now” as I wriggled into the shoe, grabbed my purse and fled the building.

Two minutes later I was at the East Gate and the minivan was parked across the street. I crawled into the front seat of the minivan and we were off.

I turned around to my girls and we started to talk. The Bride was understandably nervous as she is my age and still lives (as all my unmarried friends do) at home with her parents. I can’t imagine never having lived away from home and then having to make a whole new home with my husband, literally overnight. I don’t know how you can shift from child to parent in the span of a single day. I would be having a complete meltdown.

It was also in the car that I noticed that while I was advised to wear a pretty dress and dress nicely, no one else was going to be adhering to that dress code. In fact, the Bride even made a sweet comment to the fact that I would be more beautiful than she. Granted, I told her she was crazy and I expressed just how otherworldly-beautiful she looked.

We got to her house and, though she was in her veil with full hair and makeup, she was not in her dress yet. Her parents welcomed me incredibly warmly and her father set about bringing me candy as we got her dressed. At her home, was her “sister” (either a cousin or a life-long neighbor) who helped too. The Bride’s sister was clearly nervous about me, so I did my best to make her feel comfortable by touching her and treating her like Chinese girlfriends treat each other and soon she was gracious enough to try her best to speak English with me as I muddled through my terrifically bad Chinese.

We put the finishing touches on my girl as her extended family and the rest of the girls from our office started to arrive. And, my girl being the lovely and caring woman that she is, took her toddler niece (the daughter of another “sister”) and made her up to be beautiful. Frankly, I could think of nothing more like my friend than that. Her love of children and her kind nature caused her, in a moment of great stress, to focus on providing affection and attention to this little girl who was overwhelmed and a little scared at the thought of her auntie being married off.
As my girl was running about her home, I helped her not sit on her veil or tear the hem of her dress or get it dirty. Essentially, I did what all girlfriends do with their bride girlfriends but somehow it became a big to do within her family about how “careful” and “gentle” the foreign girl is. We were all fussing over her but, of course, my fussing was singled out because I chose my parents well.

We finished up in her bedroom and then we went into the master bedroom to begin the wedding ceremony proper. We set about hiding her shoes. One we placed out on the balcony off her parent’s bedroom and then the other in a purse that I was to carry so it wouldn’t be found.
At about 9 there were loud explosions outside as a cheer erupted in the house. The groom had arrived and his caravan of friends was setting off the fireworks to announce them. The front door to the house, that had been so freely open with people casually coming in and out to inspect the goings on was shut tightly and locked.

The girlfriends and siblings all piled into the master bedroom to prepare for the invasion. At that point, the little niece started saying “Guan mer” [“Close the door”] over and over, clearly not happy about the men coming to take away her auntie. She sat on the bed with my girl and held the hem of the bridal gown protectively.

“Xiao xin! Guan mer!” [“Be careful! Close the door!”] one of her male relatives, larger and taller than I shouted as he barreled into the bedroom.

As we were all wondering what was taking the boys so long, the front door was suddenly set upon by a hoard of young men banging and yelling “Open up!”

The extended family then set about the ritual of refusing to open until four envelopes of money had been slid under the door. Essentially, the family forces the groom to haggle for access to the house.

At the banging of the door, we closed the bedroom door and the largest of us piled against the door as my girl squealed with anticipation on the bed.

A cheer erupted from outside the door and then all went quiet. I was about to ask, “What’s going on?” when the door I was leaning against exploded with shoving and banging and screaming.

“Let us in” the men screamed.

The maid of honor started screaming something in Chinese that equates loosely to “Oh hell no! Let’s see what kind of money you’ve got!”

They proceeded to haggle as the first envelope was slipped under the door.

The little girls who were the equivalent of “flower girls” took the first envelope and checked it for money.

“Too little!” the maid of honor hollered. “How about a second!”

“Or a seventh!” one of the bride’s “brothers” hollered as they banged on the door and we banged back.

They continued on this way until four envelopes of money had been slipped under the door and we opened it.

In poured six men, a Wedding Host (a justice of the peace meets game show host meets Wedding Singer of the Bobby Bouchay ilk who narrates the whole thing and explains the significance of each action), a camera crew and the groom. I would be lying if I didn’t mention the fact that it felt a bit like one of those reality shows where the cops have been running an undercover sting operation and they finally bust down the door.

The groom immediately went to the bride and fed her a peanut candy from his mouth; one of the few ways he gets to kiss her before he has officially taken her to be his.

The best man then set about trying to find her shoes as the Wedding Host was very quiet for the first and only time all day. He just watched me like the sight of me was like being hit by a Mack truck. In fact, the first thing out of his mouth was how beautiful I was, which, let’s be honest, was incredibly awkward and I was infinitely grateful that there was a lot of distraction with the searching for the shoes.

Apparently, the best man has had some serious experience with finding shoes as the first place he looked was the purses of all the women. Granted, his instinct was right however, as we gals had been betting, he would not dream of searching “my” purse. Quickly he found the first shoe and simply couldn’t find the second.

Consequently, the bribing had to continue. The first people he bribed were the little girls. However, I am the English teacher of the flower girls, so they weren’t about to sell me out. And then he got to the little niece and gave her an envelope. She opened it and said “Tai xiao le” [“Not enough!”] which made everyone laugh.

The Wedding Host then recommended that they bribe me, which the groom did.

“Check it!” the maid of honor informed me.

I nodded, confirming there was money and then said, “Tai xiao le” which got a laugh as the men protested. “I’m American!” I shouted back.

“You want dollars!” The men teased the power hungry foreigner. “Dollars” in China isn’t just what Americans think of as currency but it is also the essence of power. In China, a single dollar is worth far more than its exchange rate would suggest. As it is near impossible for the Chinese to have a dollar (exchanging Yuan for dollars is more or less forbidden for all but the most elite Chinese), the word “dollar” holds with it the elusive “streets paved with gold” dream that we in America are too jaded to believe in.

“Where is the shoe?” the men demanded.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Do you speak English?” I teased.

“Shoe! Shoe!” The men hollered in Chinese.

The Wedding Host, overwhelmed with having to work without language grabbed the shoe that had been found and pointed frantically to it.

I feigned comprehension. “Oh, I get it, I get it.” I said in Chinese. “Shoe” I said in English. I nodded, leaned over and took off my right shoe. I stood back up and handed it to him.

He looked completely flabbergasted as he shook his head at the sight of my shoe. I did my best ‘confused’ girl look and then said. “Oh, I know. You have a right one. You want a left one.” So I took off my left shoe as the group laughed again and the Wedding Host again was completely flabbergasted.

“It’s okay, you can give it to him now,” the maid of honor said as the laughter died down and I looked to her for a cue as to what to do next.

I nodded and smiled and took out the shoe, handing it over.

The ceremony continued as he put her shoes on her feet and then her mother brought in some dumpling soup for the two of them to eat. The groom then took her off the bed and carried her out into the living room where her parents gave a short speech and wished them well.

As the bride started to cry, all the women started to cry. It was just so moving and sweet.

They then posed for pictures and we descended to the awaiting cars. While we were in the stairwell, the groomsmen set off more fireworks to announce that the groom had finally gotten the bride and, frankly, in cement space, the echo of explosions were bone rattling. I covered my ears after the first major explosion but could still feel my very skeleton rattle with each explosion.

My girls and I piled into one of the cars and we were off… sort of.

The stretch limo that the bride and groom were in kept stalling out and completely stalled out trying to get up the steep hill exiting the apartment complex. So, in the usual Chinese way of helping out whenever there’s a problem, all the men passing by on the street and in the apartment complex rallied together to pushed the limo up the hill and onto the flat street.
While we were waiting for the men to get the limo up the hill and I was enjoying the breeze coming though the open window of the car I was in.

“Oh, it’s a wedding!” People exclaimed as they walked to the market just inside the apartment complex and then, “And look! A foreigner’s attending!”

After the twentieth declaration of “Look, a foreigner’s attending!” and the gathering of a crowd around my open window, I decided to close my window because I wasn’t the bride and I hate the notion that I might be of more interest than my girl on her wedding day.

“Do you understand what they’re saying?” One of my girls asked as I closed the window.
I repeated the phrases relevant to my presence and nodded. We then got into a discussion about whether or not the generic word for “foreigner” is offensive. I was honest and said it didn’t really bother me (I don’t care what they call me, it’s the attention that bugs me) but there are plenty of foreigners for whom it does.

From there, we went to the couple’s new home and, my god, it was beautiful. The bride decorated it herself and it was just the combination of blues, purples and grays that I relate to. It amazed me how similar our aesthetic is. We wandered about the first floor of the apartment and then my girls and I decided to wander to the second floor. However, we were a bit late in making that decision as everyone else was already descending the narrow stairway and so we had to wait an eternity and a day for everyone to file down. Perhaps forty people made their way down as we waited.

“I think there’s a people factory upstairs. They just make people.” I said as my girls exploded in laughter.

“Do you want to give a speech?” the maid of honor asked.

“Uh, what?” I asked flabbergasted. I fucking hate that I steal the thunder of everyone I care about by simple virtue of showing up.

“We would like you to give a speech later. We would like you to say something for the bride and groom?”

“Oh, uh, I hadn’t prepared anything.” I stammered. I never know when this sort of thing is being offered to me because it’s supposed to be offered and then declined or offered and then accepted. Either way, I really hated the idea of taking any attention off the beautiful couple and, frankly, placing my blonde ass on a stage with them was guaranteed to take away some of their thunder. Granted, by proximity, they become more worldly in that they have managed to make a foreigner appear in their wedding procession (something so rare that I became the focus of the attention and not the stalled out limo carrying the stranded couple) but I’m still just uncomfortable with that hazy area.

“You will ride in the limo with us to inspire words!” It was decided and suddenly, I had been promoted to immediately relevant to the wedding party.

“Really? Uh, really?” I asked. It just seems so strange to me that convention, tradition and custom is so easily bent by the presence of all things I was simply given at birth.

“Yes!” and then we piled into the limo.

As the limo in dire need of an overhaul was trying to get going, the Wedding Host started asking questions about me like where was I from, how long had I been here, how old I was and what my life was like in New York.

We hung out in the limo making small talk and it was established that we’re both the same age (we’re both horses) and that I understand a fair amount of Chinese... for a foreigner.

He would ask the basic statistical questions and I would chime in with answers to the simple questions or offer clarification to my girls who were fleshing out larger notions. Every time I would respond in Chinese, he would jump with surprise and say, “You really do understand!”

“A little” I would say.

“Does she have a husband?” he asked.

“No,” the entire limo replied in unison, including the best man, whom I have never seen before in my life. I wish I could say that surprised me but at this point it doesn’t.

“Does she have a boyfriend?” he asked.

“No” I answered, looking up from my text messaging to my Brazilian Angel.

Flabbergasted, the Wedding host just said, “You really do understand” for the umpteenth time. They all chatted some more and I continued with my text message.

It was a long car ride. It took over an hour to get the hometown of the groom to visit his home and the limo kept stalling out so it took even longer. The Wedding Host spent most of the time chatting and filling the silence with entertaining commentary.

“He wants to know what you like; rice, porridge or noodles” the maid of honor translated something I didn’t quite fully understand.

I laughed and decided to use the “fat” interpretation of me to my comedic advantage. People in China are ferociously protective of the single answer they have to that question and I just like them all, which is incredibly odd. “Well, I’m fat, so I like them all!” I said as I put my hands out to indicate my large belly.

“She likes them all” the maid of honor translated.

The Wedding Host looked at me suspiciously, turned back to the maid of honor and mimicked my gesture, asking what I meant by the ‘large belly’ hand gesture.

“She said she is fat,” the maid of honor translated.

To which, his suspicions were clearly confirmed and he got very cross with me. “She is not fat. She is strong!” and the maid of honor translated.

Frankly, it was a really nice of him to say and then he said something about himself in Chinese that eluded my comprehension.

“He likes strong,” the maid of honor explained as he looked at me squarely and nodded.

“I’m getting picked up in the limo of my girl on her wedding day by the host of the whole thing. My life is just super duper surreal right now.” I heard my inner-self telling my slightly-less-inner-but-not-quite-outer self.

He said something else I didn’t understand and I looked to the maid of honor.

“Yes. He said when he first came through the door, you surprised him.”

“Surprised him? I don’t understand.” I thought back to earlier, trying to sort out what exactly I had done that was so strange. “Oh, because I gave him a hard time?”

The maid of honor looked at me squarely, laughed and shook her head indicating, “No.”

“Oh.” I thought as it dawned on me that it was the sight of me that rendered the loquacious man speechless.

“Do you know Chinese jokes?” was translated for the Wedding Host.

“No.” I replied. I neither know nor understand much of Chinese humor so it seemed a safe bet to go with “No.”

“On the ground is a $50 bill and a $100 bill. Which one do you pick up?” He asked.

“Which one is cleaner?” I asked. I had already summed up the shaved-headed, “Fo”-bracelet-wearing, spiritual Wedding Host as a Buddhist so I was clear it wasn’t about the value of the money but a riddle. And, coupling that with the fact that the ground here can be super filthy with the garbage left out to rot in the hot desert sun, I’m very conscious of what I pick up from the ground of late.

My question obliterated his answer of “Both.”

“I take my best gun to go hunting. I find a tree filled with birds and I shoot one. How many are left in the tree?” He asked.

“None. The sound of the gun scared them all away.” I answered. I grew up on ‘lateral thinking’ puzzles and it’s going to take a little more than these party versions to throw the likes of me!

“Do you regret leaving your home to come here?” The unspoken question in that question is, ‘Do you regret leaving a world filled with money to come and slum it with us?’ Granted, I don’t get always asking “Which is more important; money or happiness.” It’s like saying “Which is more important: air or water.” They’re not the same thing, they’re not mutually exclusive and choosing one over the other assures that at some point, you will see precisely how unhealthy your choice was. However, the thing is, I can get the physical resources I need; I’m resourceful like that. The active choices I make in my life are about finding satisfaction and pleasure.

“No.”

“As long as you are happy money doesn’t matter?”

Considering that I fully acknowledge it takes a certain base of money to liberate me to be happy but no, I am not someone who constantly is consumed by desire of bigger and better things, I figured I could answer, “Yes.”

“Yes, you are American.”

“What does that mean?”

“Americans do what they want.”

“Then yes, I am very American. I am very stubborn. Stubborn is a good word for me.”

“Chinese are not like that. We do not do what makes us happy.”

“Well, in a family you must do for the family but I don’t live with a family so I am free to do what makes me happy. In America, we leave our homes before we get married and spend some time doing what we want before we become a part of a family again. But, inside a family, Americans are just like Chinese; we work very hard for the group.”

He seemed to like that answer very much and the whole car started explaining how different Chinese values and Western values are. The greatest irony to me is how fervent the Chinese people are about the timeless quality of the 5000 year old culture despite the fact that, politically speaking, their country is currently younger than mine. That whole “revolution” thing truly severed a link to the past out of disgust with said “timeless culture” and frankly, the people who had to flee to Taiwan and now are not really a part of China know the 5000 year old culture far more intimately than the highly edited version here on the mainland.

Then my car-mates explained how much the people in China view the Chinese who marry Westerners as arrogant, wealthy snots and so Chinese/Western weddings are always a huge affair to remember.

“Actually, Western values are a lot like Chinese values. The Chinese only think they are so different from Westerners.” And with that, I had a chance to lance the boil that had been festering all week. “I think it’s strange how different the Chinese think we are from them when our lives are really more the same than different.”

“When do you want to get married?” the Wedding Host asked.

“When I meet the right man.” I replied in English.

As the maid of honor translated, the Wedding Host used the same words she used to translate, indicating he knew my answer without me having to answer. It’s always nice to be understood even if I am insufferably obvious.

While we were riding through the hometown of the groom, the Wedding Host’s window was open and people stopped in cars next to us, would look in and see me.

“Look a wedding! Look, they’ve got a foreigner!” they would all say and then all the people piled into the cars would plant themselves at the open windows to gawk at me.

“Ni hao!” I would call out to all of them. Though all I want to do is retreat into my own world at such treatment, to do so is only perceived as arrogance and that was the last thing I needed to be projecting on behalf of my girl.

We made it to the groom’s parents home and I was immediately given the seat of honor as everyone oohed and aahed over the foreigner in their midst. I was give the guided tour by the mother of the bride and shown the master bedroom of the home and how it was decorated as a marital bed for the new couple.

I must admit, the only thing I found unsettling about the whole day was how comfortable everyone seemed to be with the idea of having sex in their parents’ beds. Call me a prude but frankly, the idea of combining sex and my parents just never really sat well with me. Granted, I have plenty of friends in America for whom it was one of the biggest turn ons in high school but even then I never got it. It’s like the phase so many of my girl classmates went through in adolescence of thinking of having sex with their fathers. I just never got any of that. Parents + Sex = Ew, empirically speaking.

After our brief visit and more photos, we were on our way to the banquet lunch… sort of.
The limo officially died and so those of us in the limo got split up and put into various cars. We got to the hotel with the restaurant and the Wedding Host led me in while lots more pictures were taken.

He led me into the banquet hall and told me where to sit.

Unfortunately, though I understood what he was trying to convey (where to sit) the minutia of his directions was lost on me.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Where is my seat?” I said in Chinese.

He opened his mouth to clarify, looked at my helpless face and simply gestured for me to follow as he smiled. As I glanced up, I saw Z watching me from one of the nearby tables and I was infinitely grateful to have male company as I had to make the long march from the back of the restaurant to the front by the stage.

He led me to a seat and said, “Sit, please,” in English.

“Thank you,” I said gratefully in Chinese.

He smiled and shook his head, indicating it was nothing and then hurried back out.

And there I sat for an extensive period of time, alone. The banquet hall was practically filled but I had been led to one the table for honored guests, namely the honored employers of the couple… which also meant that when her employers showed up, so did mine. Which is fun.

So, there I sat, knowing Z was watching me while my employers sullenly watched me, as this is umpteenth one of those things they’d been to that week. The pre-lunch festivities began and the Wedding Host managed to keep the entire room in stitches. I have been to several weddings but he was the first host who managed to actually engage the room and entertain everyone.

Of course the Wedding Host finally introduced me and as he was introducing me he asked if he could hold my hand. It was strange to be there holding his had through the introduction as he declared what a lovely woman I am and how fortunate he and the rest of the people involved in the wedding were to have such a good friend. He then gave a little information on my background before giving me the floor and the microphone. As nervous as I was, I managed to muddle through something horrendously bad about the beauty of the day, the beauty of the couple and wishing them all the best on the beginning of their life together.

I finished my speech and the maid of honor translated for me. Once I was done (and having been the only non family member/non government official to speak) they exchanged rings, formally introduced themselves as the children of their in-laws, the maid of honor and the best man did the requisite flirting and marriage proposal, the feasting began.

Then the toasting began and I was toasted individually by every single member of the family; groom to mother of the bride. So once that toasting was done, I toasted my bosses and sunk back down into my chair, desperate to not make an ass out of myself by saying or doing something stupid. I slapped my friendly, light smile on my face and made small talk with my friend, the principal of the primary school.

While I was doing my best not to make an ass out of myself, one of my girls from our office showed up and hauled me off to a more plebian table filled with my friends. It was so wonderful to be rescued like that.

“You looked so lonely. You had no one to talk to up there.” She said.

“Yes, it’s true. Thank you!” I gushed.

“Not at all,” she said smiling.

At the new table, I sat with lots of my friends and had a good time. The toasting made its way back to us and as it was a more plebian table, the whole wedding party toasted the whole table once. The loud, messy gaiety was refreshing from the somber neatness of the honored table. Everywhere on the table were crumpled napkins and spilled food. Everyone was serving everyone else and children were poking about in the way that children do. The honored table was an elegant place to be with waiters and waitresses hovering over you to meet your every need but the formality of work obliterated the warm friendly nature of extended family.
I was so happy to be at the table that it didn’t bother me one bit that Z was at the next table over. We took lots of pictures and made lots of jokes. It was lovely.

And then it was time to leave and we all filtered out and hopped onto the awaiting bus. As I had started the day very early, it was still very cold so I had worn a wrap sweater. However, it’s the desert and we’re getting into summer weather, so I ditched the sweater not too long into the day.

My sweater got put with all the changes of costumes the bride makes between rounds at the banquet. So, I was told to get on the bus and the maid of honor would bring me my sweater.
Consequently, I got on the bus going back to the compound and waited, doubtful I’d see the sweater again today. I figured I’d just type a text message and have the maid of honor bring it to work next week. No worries.

However, one of the female gym teachers came around the corner and got on the bus. As she’s Z’s coworker and with her was his male friend/coworker, I immediately got a bit anxious about whether or not Z was coming. It’s just so fucking awkward being around his awkwardness.
As they got on the bus, I presumed there had been enough lag time that Z couldn’t possibly be coming. Why would he be so far behind?

I watched them board and then turned to a girlfriend sitting with me.

“Christina. You sweater.” The female gym teacher said, proud she managed to get out her English.

“Thank you.” I said, reflexively in English and smiled my sweetest smile on automatic pilot, a little distracted that right behind her was Z doing his best not to look at me.

Z wriggled his way around his coworker and handed me a bottle of water. “Gae” [“Here”] he said as he passed me the water.

It took me a moment to understand that he was talking to me and was in fact giving me the nurturing gesture of water in this desert community. He had been so far behind because he had stopped at the vendor to buy me a bottle of water.

However slow I may be, I usually catch on eventually. I took the bottle of water and nodded my head, “Thank you.”

He shook his head and then Z and his two coworkers got off the bus to catch their ride elsewhere. It was very strange.

Nevertheless, we were off for the hour and change ride back home. I quickly fell into that twilight space between asleep and awake, constantly pulled from the brink of sleep as the small children sitting not three rows ahead of kept chanting things about the foreign girl, the American girl, the strange language she speaks and “Good morning.”

I played possum and simply refused to acknowledge them as they were wired enough without my prodding.

As we made it back to Xi’An and my girls got of the bus a little early to catch a public bus home, the kids reached a fever pitch with their mockery of all things foreign.

So, I spoke to them in Chinese, which shut them the hell up. They asked me some questions in Chinese and then started to tell me how funny my stupid language sounds.

“I speak Chinese but do you speak English?” I asked in Chinese.

Which shut them the hell up again.

“Can you understand me? I understand you.” I said in English, allowing another teacher to explain.

To which they responded like all my naughty students caught in being lazy do; they started singing their English songs.

I finally made it off the bus without losing my cool and met up with one of the disembarking passengers; a close girl friend of Z’s and fellow teacher who has always been interested in talking with me but is clearly intimidated by me.

We made small talk solely in Chinese while we walked home to our respective buildings about where we lived, who we live with, how long I’ve been in China and so on. It was cool to be able to manage better in Chinese than she could in English. I like being able to meet people more than half way on occasion.

The whole day was exactly what my anti-social self needed.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

PILLSBURY DOUGH GIRL

Here I sit, my stomach sore on the inside and painfully sore on the outside. “Why is it more sore outside than inside,” you ask? “Well, because I spent all day getting pinched by women,” I reply.

Today (5/9), my food poisoning finally came up at work as a topic of conversation. I had a longer day, as it was Wednesday, and was feeling quite tired.

“Why are you so tired?” one of my colleagues asked.

“I had food poisoning that was quite bad on Sunday. I’m still really wiped out. I only started eating late yesterday.”

“Food pointing?”

“Shiwu zhongdu” I explained “food poisoning” in Chinese.

To which, all the women in my office squealed with delight as all the men flinched with concern. Granted, I heard the squealing at first and though, I was quite certain it sounded like delight, I wasn’t totally sure what was causing it.

“Surely not my food poisoning,” you say and I would say, “Yes, I thought that too but, unfortunately we would be wrong.”

And how do I know we would be wrong? Because the women in my office all leapt up from their seats and pinched my stomach fat, squealing with delight.

“Lose fat! Lose fat!” They chanted as they all pinched my belly fat hard enough to leave bruises on my already-abused-to-the-hilt stomach.

Really, not since grade school locker room antics has the rhythmic chanting of women standing around me made want to cry. I’m not given to being raw like that (no, public school bitches beat the “raw” out of you pretty well) but being as tired as I am from lack of food and water and being as in pain as I am from trying to recovery, this complete blindsiding knocked me for a loop. I wasn’t expecting sympathy in simply sharing my story but I certainly wasn’t expecting assault.

And then, as I went down to make the obligatory monthly visit to the man-who-thinks-he’s-in-love-with-me, I ran into several more female colleagues who must have just found out about my food poisoning as they proceeded to squeeze my belly fat and squeal with delight about my “lose fat!”


Not to be overly blatant, but I had FOOD POISONING. You know, the potentially life threatening depletion of nutrients, electrolytes and fluids from you body which can send your heart into arrhythmia and give you a heart attack, to name the first of the myriad of issues this less-than-pleasant illness causes. As much fun as organ damage or failure is, I’ll pass, thanks. That whole Karen-Carpenter-look never really did it for me.

The female response? Not the masculine response (which I got on several occasions) of outright anger that it was a “serious illness” and “why didn’t I call [him]?!” because if something had gone wrong no one would know how to help or what to do but rather, “Yay! Christmas and your birthday came together this year; you’ve lost fat!”

And they were so overcome with joy that I’ve got the myriad of bruises to prove it. All day long, women gleeful the way women are about your first menses in those coming-of-age movies would pinch my stomach fat and smile at me with that, “Now you’re a woman” smile as they left their two marks on me.

What. The. Fuck?

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

LOATHING

From the bottom of my teeny tiny heart, I LOATHE food poisoning. There is nothing redeemable about it. It serves no purpose. And yet, there it is. There it fucking is. Someone needs to be accountable for signing up for that because, well, I’m not pleased and someone needs to take this bitch slap I’ve got waiting.

Sunday (5/6), I was to have dinner with a “girlfriend” who isn’t really interested in me, so much as cultivating a relationship with a female American. Which is fine. However, I always get a bit nervous about confusing business with pleasure; a great friend is rarely about business and vice versa. They are neither mutually inclusive nor exclusive. However, in China, the two more often than not are directly linked. As she is the boss of my friends and a pleasant enough woman, I try to maintain a comfortable acquaintance but her constant declarations of our tight-knit friendship is a bit unsettling for the commitment-phobe that is me. Nevertheless, once in a while we have dinner, which always seems pleasant enough but is always tainted with a follow-up favor. No matter how hard she tries to be social, all I can think is, “So, what do you need this time?” because every time I see her, I am guaranteed an imposition of some sort.
As she is a translator, she often needs my assistance on a variety of things. Out of courtesy and curiosity, I always lend a hand. However, at the latest dinner to butter me up, I got food poisoning the likes of which I have never had before.

Truly. I never thought it would be possible to that sick and not be on death’s door. I had some sort of modified Ebola and I could never figure out which end of me was to take priority. Consequently I have bent and twisted myself into positions the likes of which not even my over-a-decade-of-yoga-limber body was ready for. My face is nothing but a patchwork of bruising from the force of involuntary pushing and my stomach is so sore both internally and externally, it hurts too much to eat a whole banana two days later. Once I was “empty” as it were, I simply had to suffer the wondrous indignation of burping straight from my intestines for a day… to say nothing of what the other end of me was doing. I now understand what people mean when they talk about the “bowels of hell.”

Frankly, if you could have lived without those images, you have no idea how many lives I could have lived without those experiences.

To top it off, as I’m lying in bed, trying to figure out how to get the strength to crawl to the toilet not ten feet from my bed to commence my umpteenth full-body Heimlich maneuver, said ‘friend’ who took me to said poison dinner calls with the favor she forgot to ask me over the deadly food. Per usual, it was a last minute thing and I only had a few hours to correct two pages of dense legal text. Under normal circumstances, unraveling all of that would have taken me a solid two days of uninterrupted study. Under current circumstances, I couldn’t compose coherent sentences of my own much less make sense of what Chinese lawyers were saying through her less-than-stellar written English. Christ, I couldn’t keep down more than a sip of water, much less enough sugar to power my brain for higher brain functions.

After some indignant protesting on her part, I finally made it clear that I simply could not, under current eviscerating circumstances, focus well enough to sort through her (god awful) written English, much less sort through it as filtered through “legal lingo.”

And, as I fell back into silence my stupefied brains could only resonate the emotion, “Food poisoning, I loathe you.”
THE END

I have just gotten the suit to end all suits. If you can read this and you can get to China to visit me, do so. I will hook you up with your very own suit to end all suits.

Tomorrow (5/5) is my older brother’s birthday, Cinqo de Mayo (because beating the French in issues of military battle is such a big and unique deal) and part of Chinese Labor Day general celebrations. So, I celebrated by picking up my handmade, perfectly tailored suit today.

It is a suit of black gabardine with very subtle brown pinstripes. I got a shell of brown silk with black iridescence (in a sort of inversion of the suit coloring) made into a sleeveless tunic with a single frog over the deep slit down the chest. It fits me like a glove. If for no other reason than to always be able to wear this suit, my weight can never fluctuate.

For less than 800 Yuan (with an exchange rate between 7 and 8 Yuan to the dollar), I have a suit and a ravishing silk top custom made to my specifications. Everything I have ever wanted in a suit, it is outfitted with. It has a low, but not vulgar, waist so that my natural waist does not get cinched. The jacket is slim fitting. The pant is cuffed. And the way the suit fits to my body is a thing of beauty.

I actually like my body when I wear this suit. I tried it on and looking in the mirror, the girl with the ravaged body image, thought, “I look hot.”

The addict in me has been triggered and I now want an entire closet full of these suits. In a tiny cubical no more than five feet by twenty with one sewing machine and two weeks, this tailor managed to pull together a miracle.

I hate shopping for clothes and I think I may never shop for them again. His prices are just as good if not better than the mass-produced counterparts and I don’t have to wonder what’s going to fit me, not “well,” but “best.” Simply put, clothes never fit me for one reason or another. There is nothing about this suit that doesn’t work. I am in love.

Seeing myself in clothes made for me has made me think that perhaps there’s nothing wrong with my body. Seeing myself in clothes made for me has made me think that perhaps the issue is that I simply don’t fit the mold set by computers.

Come to China. Get a suit made. Your whole life will change.
BONNIE AND CLYDE

Last night (3/3) I was not doing well. I was trapped in the depressed headspace of a woman not consumed by love. Granted, the consumption of being in love has its own depression but “in love” is not so much my fate at the moment.

Yesterday was lovely and I spent it with my Chinese Angel finding universities for me to study Chinese at this summer. We found one and I returned home to just chill out for an afternoon. However, by the evening, this hollow feeling has seeped into me. I missed having someone to think about in my quiet moments. I missed being in love. I missed fantasizing about conversations that may or may not happen. I missed wondering what he was doing right now. I missed the silence filler.

I was lucky enough to have spent a decade in love with the same man. Granted, I have been in the heady stages of love that never last much more than a year more than once but only once in a long-term love. It wasn’t easy (like love ever could be) and there was never an indication that he wanted me to be his but as Nina Simone says, “And I don’t care if you don’t want me, I’m yours right now.” He filled my silence. It was a love that mellowed out of that first year intensity and into a steady comfort that quietly obliterated everything else. No man, regardless of the headiness of his romance, stood a chance (in the long run) against my first love. I had flings. I lost myself in countless moments. However, it always came back to him in the silence. Even my first boyfriend noticed my emotional abandonment of our relationship once I understood my love, despite the fact that my first boyfriend mistook the object of my affection for someone else.

And I miss that. I miss that durability. I miss that submission to something grander than myself. I miss my heart being flagrantly stronger than my will. I know that, in truth, my heart will always be stronger than my will (the fucker has a mind of its own and no respect for me) but I wonder if I will ever again know a man that consistently proves that to me.

Granted, I miss him now but it’s the way I miss all my friends now. What I miss more than him is how securely his I felt. It had almost nothing to do with him, per say, but rather everything to do with who owned my quiet time. He never asked for such ownership over me, nor do I think he would have wanted it but I miss it nonetheless. It was the closest I ever knew to having a purpose in life.

My silence is merely silence now. I so greatly miss the gentle steadiness of long-term love. And, I miss it most of all because I wonder if I will ever know it again. My girl Cakes recently said to me, “One of these days, you’re going to hit one out of the park.” And that thought gave me comfort for a while until it occurred to me that perhaps I have hit mine out of the park. Perhaps it has come and gone. Perhaps I am not in the game but rather retirement.

As you can see, it was not the greatest headspace to be in. So I put myself to bed and promptly had nightmares all night.

But, I woke up this morning (3/4) to do a few errands before I met my friend J to walk around the city wall. It was just what I needed.

I have come feel like a real part of this city. As I puttered about the city, I felt fully comfortable to take care of myself verbally and physically. There was no thought, no preplanning, no anxiety trying to sort out the errands I needed to run or the bus ride I was going to take. You see, I like to practice the various words I know in Chinese and might need on my specific errands in my head before I must accomplish my task. I didn’t feel the need to do that today. The sun was shining, the flowers were blooming in all their fragrance and the air was hot but not humid. So, bolstered by the impossibly beautiful day, I headed to the South Wall of Xi’An to meet J.

We had planned to meet by the small pagoda at the entrance to the touristy street inside the South Gate. I got there a few minutes late and then J got there right after me. As I cannot scan a crowd to save my life, J managed to sneak up on me and Looney-Tunes tease me with, “Which way did he go? Which way did he go?” I was the perfect gentle start to our day.

We got inside the wall and made our way up to the top of the wall, looking for the bicycles to rent. At the entrance we had been told that the bikes would only cost 20 yuan to rent. We got to the bike rental place inside and discovered that while they would only keep 20 yuan, we had to deposit 200 yuan to rent a bike. I was slightly pissed as my bank was just across from the entrance to the wall and had the 200 yuan deposit been mentioned, I would have got enough cash to cover us. Nevertheless, as we did not have 400 yuan on us, we decided to skip the bikes and just go with old-fashioned walking.

The sun was pretty rough, as desert sun tends to be and I found myself wishing I had gone with the passing thought to bring my umbrella for some shade. I also found myself infinitely relieved I had thought to wear my sunscreen extra thick.

Heat and desert sun aside, I was having a really good time. I was feeling super relaxed and J- ever the silly, fun even-keel cool dude- was very tolerant of my never-ending blathering. As we strolled about the old wall, we studied the stones it was paved with and he told me the wall had been restored “Sometime in the 80’s I think.”

As he said that, I passed a stone that, instead of a Chinese name being etched onto it (that’s how workers got paid for their labor; they counted up how many stones had their names on it and got paid for said work) simply had “1984” carved into it. It was the first one I had ever noticed, though certainly not the last, and I had wondered what in the world it was doing there, so incongruous a date with an ancient wall. I stopped, backed up and checked out the stone.
“1984?” I asked as J finished his “sometime in the 80’s sentence.”

“Guess so.” He said, shrugging like the cutie that he is.

We continued on checking out the various buildings that dotted the wall. Most of the ornately decorated Tang dynasty constructions were boarded up and unavailable to visitors. However, we came upon one small lookout house whose, back, private-ish window had been broken out and then opened, leaving a perfect entry way into the building. Granted, the building was empty- as they all are- but the construction was beautiful and there was a second floor.

We saw the open window and I joked about going in, half serious, half kidding. As both floors are primarily windows with no furniture to hide behind, anyone passing by would see you.

I lost my nerve at the thought of just chillin’ inside the building, waiting for some uptight guard to throw my ass out of the building and off the wall into the arms of an awaiting cop. Getting thrown off the wall didn’t bother me; it was the police trouble I was more concerned about.
As I decided I wasn’t going to do it, I looked up at the neighboring building and saw that the second story was not just a trump l’oeile. That was it. I decided I wanted nothing more than to stand on that second floor and look out at Xi’An with an unobstructed view.

“I’m going.” I declared.

“Okay, let me just take a look out.” J said.

“Wait, should I do it?” I had second thoughts.

“Why are you using first person singular?” J declared.

To which I could only smile.

We saw that there was no one for kilometers and then hurdled ourselves through the open window. The fresh footprints in the dust of the recent sandstorm comforted me in the idea that we were not the only ones who could resist such a lovely excursion.

We headed upstairs immediately and discovered the eaves of the roof were ornately decorated with fantastic murals and the reoccurring patterns on the outside of the building. It wasn’t just a shell to be illuminated at night; it was a full replica. J and I immediately started shooting photos of the eaves and I just fell in love with the space.

When we finished taking our pictures, J made the chivalrous offer to go downstairs first. To which I said, “Okay” but I kept a lookout for people from the top floor.

As soon as I glanced outside, I saw an older Chinese woman taking pictures of something or someone out of my range of view.

“[J]!” I hissed. “[J]! There’s a lady outside.” I quietly hissed.

“I know,” he whispered back, the view of him obscured by small bits of wall and the filthy glass covering the other windows.

I poked my head around to see if I could see anyone else.

“There’s a guy with her. They’re on bikes.” He explained how they managed to sneak up on us so quickly. J then launched himself up onto the windowsill to see what he could see of them.
“Yo!” J called out quietly as he silently launched back into the building. “Go!” he quietly hissed at me to get up the stairs.

Apparently, as J was peaking his head out of the building, he came face to face with the back of the dude’s head while he was taking pictures. That we were not found is merely, I think, by virtue of the fact that all the Chinese people I’ve ever met here are just not curious about noise. (Maybe it’s growing up with fireworks going off constantly or what have you but every time I hear a noise and jump, saying, “What was that?!” my Chinese friends always say, “What was what?”)

So, we fled back up the stairs, me trying not to giggle at the image of J poking his head out and then pulling back in cartoonish fear of being caught. We hung out and whispered nervously to each other, wondering what our fate would be.

After a few minutes, it grew silent and we ventured to poke our heads down again. This time we made it out, glowing with our narrow, harrowing escape.

We then continued on, laughing about our exploits and acknowledging that perhaps we’re getting old as we broke in to see what we could see and take pictures, not to vandalize and be naughty.

At the Northeast corner building, we stopped at the exterior arcade and had a little snack, provided by J, of apples and nuts. It was delicious in every sense of the word to sit there with our snacks and listen to him play his Chinese wind instrument. It’s rare that anything feels that still inside a bustling metropolis and I enjoyed every second of it.

However, under the beating desert sun, I was beginning to wilt, so I begged off the second half of the walk and J, ever the amenable dude, said he’d come with me in lieu of his desired second half.

We descended at the North Gate and made our way to the Muslim Quarter for lunch/dinner. It’s an interesting thing to visit the Muslim Quarter now.

The Muslim Quarter is never empty. There are seasons when it is less full but it is never empty. And, spring is one of the seasons it is not “less full.” It was jammed with people but the sites were familiar. We took a seat at one of the “not touristy” restaurants and waited to be served.

As the only Western faces in a sea of Chinese people who fully expect to have their Chinese bubble within the tourist zone, J and I were definite curiosities. Establishing quickly that we could manage in Chinese and that we were gainfully employed in the area (J in a very well respected university and I in a very wealthy but singularly Chinese area) we went from “looks like the honkeys picked the wrong restaurant” to “Humans we can actually have contact with.” It was nice to have the little bubble of human contact in the sea of tourism.

From there, we strolled back down to the area where we first met up just outside the South Gate to talk with J’s Chinese wind instrument teacher who owns a stall that sells the wind instruments. We were treated like kings, given seats in the open air market and quickly a performance of the teachers own compilations was happening. It was a lovely post-meal performance and, to add indulgence to gluttony, I was given a starter wind instrument by the teacher.

After the teacher needed to pack up his stall, we decided to stop in on the professor with the teahouse. J called him and we walked around the corner to the teahouse for a lovely post indulgence chat.

There really is nothing like having a friend interested in lots of things you’re interested in but willing to give you the extra push to do them. J’s awesome like that.