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.