The Land of Tomorrow

2009-02-19T14:31:00.000-08:00

The Year In Review, a little late

2008 was the year of compassion for me. Never before have I tried harder or more passionately to keep the things I had been given, only to lose them because sometimes we are just not enough. 2008 taught me some, in a visceral sense, compassion.

Last year I was given the man I wanted, the future I wanted and the job prospects I wanted. None of this was an orchestra-swelling sort of climatic moment but rather I found myself, for the first time, on a trajectory that I really, truly enjoyed. I was able to let go of my usual petty complaints and it felt like life had shifted into a higher gear, one in which I could sway my small piece of the world in ways I felt were useful and then return home to a man with whom I could discuss, debate and process the day in a way that felt natural. It wasn’t the Hollywood sort of thing without fighting and all soft lighting but it was real in the ways that I valued. I had everything I wanted.

Unfortunately though, no matter how much I loved, hard I worked or earnestly I fought, the entirety of my being was not enough to keep what I needed. And, I feel that is a rather important lesson to learn.

I always knew, intellectually, that sometimes we’re just not enough to keep the things we love but I had never known it on such a completely decimating, primal level. I am infinitely, eternally grateful that I didn’t have children to sort out, no family passed away and that the only person I had to get through this rough patch was myself.

It has, however, left me on the other side a rather changed woman. People ask me “What are your plans now” and I’ve truly got none. I’m going to try law school because that’s always been my final back up plan but I honestly no longer care. When asked where I want to live, I don’t care. I know I can’t stay here much longer but I don’t care where I go. And, I’ve always had the caveat that I might consider staying put should I meet the right man and his life isn’t flexible but last night, whilst talking with a friend I realized that I no longer think I’m capable of that, realistically speaking. I no longer want romantic love or the hope of it. I no longer want to think about my future, the great family I could have or the work I could do. And I’m not particularly sad about all of that, which is the weirdest part.

But it has made me much more compassionate towards those who have lost the things they really wanted. I no longer even consider the notion that they didn’t work hard enough for it. What’s gone is gone and though we’ve all done the best we can to prevent loss, sometimes we’re just not enough and there’s nothing to be done about it.

2008-06-06T03:12:00.000-07:00

TAPEWORM

I have plunged headlong back into the haze of heartache. I don’t fully understand why I am here and I probably never will. All that is left to do is wait it out and get to a place where I can move on.

Simon and I grew insanely close over the past couple of months. It was lovely and perfect in a very real sense; we functioned as a process and not as some picture-perfect, static destination. However, he’s officially been blowing me off for two weeks now and I figure, it’s time to put my feelings to bed. I have my suspicions as to why but ultimately I don’t actually know.

And what upsets me the most is not the loss of Simon (which sucks, believe me) but the growing cynicism inside me. I’m just growing tired of the Russian Doll effect of my dating life. I would like to be DEVASTATED, DESTROYED, RAZED by the thought of never having him in my life again but I’m not. At the core of it all, I’m just highly irritated. “Oh right, this. Again.” The death of my passion is unsettling. That he feeds into the death of my passion should enrage me but it doesn’t. “Of course he feeds into it. He’s just like all the rest you’ve ever chosen.” Granted, I don’t long for the days of gut-wrenching sobbing and stones lost because I can’t eat but I do wish I wasn’t stronger than the sum of us.

I would like to finally be building towards something and not just in a relationship that will only amount to “lessons learned.” Frankly, I resent being as invested as I am in my relationships only to have the other bow out either with cowardice or without explanation. I hate being the girl that gets fucked over. And I know there are all these games and rules you’re supposed to follow about getting “your man” but the fact of the matter is I am who I am. The games and drama don’t really work for me. If I’m angry, I act angry. If I’m happy, I act happy. I’m brutally honest about how I feel because, well, life’s complicated enough without having to sort out what the real emotions are.

But, that would appear to be counterproductive.

So, here I am. Yet again. Irritated with the Russian Doll version of my love life.

Ultimately, what unnerves me the most is I’m less and less fazed by such disappointment because I’m starting to believe I don’t actually deserve the happiness that precedes the collapse. It makes sense to me that things would fall apart because I’m not supposed to find companionship. I hate that idea but it’s starting to seep into my foundation. It’s nothing I’ve consciously taken on but over the years, it has silently curled into my gut and like the unshakable tapeworm, it doesn’t look like it’s about to leave any time soon.

2008-06-06T02:42:00.000-07:00

DEPENDENCY

I am fully addicted to my iPod. There is no way around that fact. It is the simple truth of the matter. Granted, like the paranoid freak who really does have people out to kill him, I have very good reasons for my addiction. Well, one very good reason; I live in China.

For reasons beyond my control, I have spent the last two weeks without my iPod and I will be remedying that situation as soon as humanly possible. However, at current I am sans iPod.

Fuck, it’s brutal.

The constant invasion of China into my personal space is making me batty. Actually, it’s driven me into shut-in mode. I refuse to leave my apartment unless I have to now. What my iPod has been doing for me until now has been to provide a bubble of ignorance. The men I know who stare at me and talk about me are no longer drowned out by music of my choice that I control. I am now fully aware of their dialogue and it is the most irritating, base, chauvinist commentary about my physical self and how all foreign women fall within the stereotype applicable to me.

There are men who clearly think that I am little more than a blow up doll to be their dumpster. There are men who cut me down to impress their girlfriends. There are men who crack a multitude of jokes at my expense to impress the masses. Then there are the men who realize I speak Chinese halfway through their truly base conversation and then call me the equivalent of a “frigid bitch” because I won’t then engage in a dialogue with them. There are the women who giggle and compare themselves with my height to marvel and how big I am. There are the grandmothers who insist their grandchildren interact with the circus freak. There are the punk teenagers who try to work up the nerve to talk to me but then settle for being forced to merely rub (their genitals) by me as they pass through the tighter of the two squeezes of space on the bus or in the shop.

It is fully grating. It is fully irritating and offensive. It is everything New York purports to be but isn’t. I’ve never had to have such a thick skin in all my life. And, the truth is, I’ve never been a bigger bitch.

With my iPod, I missed the set up. I missed the dialogue explaining what was going on. Before, I was merely being jostled or pointed at. Now, I am forced to listen in painstaking detail, to why. I am forced to listen to the small minds and the prejudice and, worst of all, the lack of education. I am forced to hear grown men discuss in great detail how the “little girl” body is far more appealing than my fully developed woman’s body. What grown, heterosexual man finds breasts the sign of a ruined female body? Growing breasts is jumping the shark? Huh?

However, what I find heartening is the groups of silent people who awkwardly watch the spectacle I used to be able to blast into oblivion. Granted, those people are of no practical help and would never defend me but at least there is some semblance of what I recognize as a conscience somewhere. Two years ago, the complicit would have been what infuriated me the most but now it is the instigators who infuriate me. For some reason I have grown a soft spot for the hogtied, the silent resistance. In my old age, I have found compassion for those of us forced to live on our knees because we lack the psychotic streak that frees us and condemns us from the shackles of society. I would choose no other path but I do understand (and am jealous of their ability to conform) and can no longer fault them for their sheep-like behavior.

Fuck, I need to get my iPod situation fixed.

2008-05-01T04:19:00.000-07:00

THE EMOTIONAL GESTURE

The first time I ever heard of the “emotional gesture” was when I was eavesdropping on a master’s class at the Actor’s Studio. Essentially, the emotional gesture is to one’s emotions what a “tell” is to a poker hand; it is a moment when all pretense is dropped, subconsciously, and truth is distilled out.

Simon and I have been through a fair bit recently, none of which I’ll be getting into. Essentially, lots of externals have tossed themselves into the mix but what is between us seems, at least to me, to have remained fixed. It is safe to say he is notably good at not letting the rest of the world bleed into the space we have together. Whatever this is, I love it and I’ve never felt safer or more content.

Last night, somehow Simon and I ended up back at his apartment drinking wine. J- being the third of our musketeer troop- showed up just as I was passing from “buzzed” to “drunk.” The three of us had quite the evening and it’s safe to say I made quite the ass of myself. It was really, really fun and exceedingly silly. We stayed up until the Liverpool game was on and then the boys watched the game while I fell asleep… or passed out. Whichever works for you.

As all the commentary was in Chinese, the boys turned off the tv sound and hooked my iPod up to the speakers to listen to Linkin Park. It’s safe to say I was really out as I vaguely remember rolling over and thinking, “Gee, ‘Crawling’ is rather loud. Might wake the neighbors.” (For those of you not familiar with Linkin Park, their music is very loud and very aggressive.) However, I did eventually stir from the bowels of my nap at the deafening silence when the match ended and the iPod was turned off.

As my mind was pulling itself back to consciousness, J decided to go home. I hadn’t really stirred or opened my eyes but my capacity for processing sound was beginning to work again.

“What do you think the odds of her going home now are?” J asked.

Simon snickered. “Yeah, good luck with that man.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

I don’t remember if I actually said “Goodbye” to J or if it was something I merely thought I should pull myself from sleep to do. However, a blurry bit later and J was gone.

Lying there on the couch, I simply dissolved to unconsciousness again.

My consciousness was stirred again at the gentle brushing of fabric across me. The familiar sensation of being cocooned in a duvet settled me into even more relaxation and then Simon picked up my feet to tuck the duvet around them. Gently, he tucked the duvet in all around me to keep me warm. Curled up on my right side in the fetal position (the same position I always sleep in), he tucked his way up to tucking the duvet in around my hands in front of my face but was careful not to cover my face. Throughout his tucking-me-in, I was too tired to stir and so it’s safe to say he thought I was out. Whatever he did, he certainly wasn’t about to meet resistance from the barely there me. Finally finished tucking me in, he just placed a gentle hand on my head and tussled my hair a little.

It was the sweetest, loveliest gesture. That it was something he couldn’t help doing takes my breath away. I have never felt more adored in my life. There was more comfort and respite in that one gesture than in a thousand confessions or love letters. That is precisely the way in which someone makes me theirs.

I have recently turned down a multimillion-dollar offer for marriage, children and (his) American citizenship from a man who would pay others to pamper me. Frankly, I already have enough in terms of “things” and the notion that my stalker felt he could overcome my obvious disgust of him by appealing to the lowest common denominator of greed is just insulting. Frankly, there is no need to sell myself, much less forgo the chance of a man like Simon so that I might change my silver rings to platinum.

I am truly fortunate in this moment. I have a boy who can’t help but touch my hair after he tucks me in.

2008-03-20T03:23:00.000-07:00

THE JOYS OF AGING

I’m pushing 30. Come October, I will usher in the time I actually turn 30. As much as I feel I should dread it and hate myself for getting older, things just seem to get better with age. Granted, I’m 99% about my head and 1% about my body most of the time, so that may come as little surprise to anyone.

And, one of the advantages of being around your thirties is the clarity you get about men just beginning their twenties. Whereas once they were all powerful and soul crushing to the exclusion of interest in romantic relationships with them, now I find them cute and silly. I have become the “mysterious” older woman that they all abandon the perkier girls their own age to be “tutored” under. Granted, I have no interest in tutoring but it would appear their hope springs eternal. How adorable is that?

I was speaking with J the other day about my concern that Waffle House might actually make good on his threat to call me. Frankly, I have no interest in blowing him off but I’m certainly not about to give him false hope. And the problem with 20-somethings is they say, “I’ll call you” and, in the moment, they mean it. However, they lack the follow-through. I was explaining to J how much I hoped Waffle House lacked follow-through. Unfortunately, Simon had been standing behind me, unbeknownst to me and overhead a portion of that conversation. Clearly, his curiosity was raised.

“Who are you talking about?” He asked.

“Some 19 year old who wants to fuck me.” I answered as bluntly as possible. Frankly, it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing to be deceptive about as he can tell when I’m hiding things and frankly, I don’t want to give him reason to be suspicious. Besides, if there is a way to sugar coat that, I have NO idea what it would be, short of using my grandparents’ lexicon of “winkles,” “woo-woos” and whatnot.

He paused, snorted a small laugh and spoke. “Look at that; ask a question, get an answer. Wow.”

Then, last night my platonic French husband’s (“The Boy”) cousin (who is here, looking for a position to teach French and is 20 years old) asked me to take him home with me. He was adorably cute about it and it came up contextually but really, what could I say?

As I was leaving the apartment they share after watching “The Last King of Scotland,” the Cousin put on his hat and shoes to walk out with me. I was still puttering about collecting the rest of my things while he was clearly waiting for me.

“Where are you going? It’s 2 in the morning,” I said.

“He’s hoping to go home with you,” the Boy said.

The beautiful Cousin looked at me with puppy dog eyes and shrugged a little, “Hoping.”

“You tired of living together? You want to crash in my guest room?” I asked, still not getting it.

“No, he wants to crash in your bed.” The Boy said.

“Hoping,” the beautiful Cousin said again, still giving me puppy dog eyes.

My first reaction to that was, “But I’m in my bed and I’ve got a perfectly good guestroom.” However, I only actually said, “But I’m in…” before the light bulb went on. To which I did the only thing I could; laughed. “Oh honey, I’d eat you alive. I’d break something off you and I can’t send you back to your cousin broken.”

“It’s alright. I don’t mind.” He spoke up cheerfully.

I laughed again and it was later revealed if he wasn’t actually able to go home with me, he was going to get his iPod in the car.

2008-03-18T04:17:00.000-07:00

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Welcome back to the merry-go-round that is my heart. I am still not used to how fast and hard I fall but damn, when the planets align, who am I to turn up my nose?

In a phrase, Simon is utter perfection. He is incredibly, physically hot but that is simply nothing compared to his mind. He is without the vast majority of the hang-ups manly men of his generation (mid-thirties) often have. He is utterly comfortable with fraternal affection (case in point: he full-body hugs his close male friends and espouses how “fucking amazing” they are) and he possesses a staggering knack for finesse. His life is constructed around making the world a better place and he’s willing to put in the hard time it takes to make real change. He’s neither threatened by outside feedback offering a suggestion and thus shutting it out nor does he take said outside feedback as a whipped little boy.

After Saturday’s blow out with Simon and his incredibly quick turnaround apology to J, he took J out for dinner Sunday night. Apparently, Simon explained everything that had gone on between the two of us and spoke to J about how he felt I might feel. According to J he mentioned that he was lucky to have me in his life because I make him a better man. He then confessed that he needed to apologize to me for his ungentlemanly manner.

While I appreciate the sentiment behind the idea that he felt he needed to apologize, the fact of the matter is that he did nothing wrong. I came in hard and fast and he reacted appropriately. There were openings for things to get personal but neither of us took them and we just went hard about the issue.

St Paddy’s Day rolled around yesterday and J told me I should come out for beers with he and Simon. I double-checked with J if he was sure that he thought Simon would really want to see me and J insisted. So, I agreed, as my problem with Simon had nothing to do with me but fucking up with my boy. As my boy was fine with hanging out with him and it wasn’t about Simon and I, all was good by me.

J and I met at the South Gate Youth Hostel for dinner before we were to hit up drinks with Simon around the corner and a block North on the bar street. While we were in the middle of dinner, Simon texted J about meeting for food. We explained where we were and had a moment when we weren’t sure whether or not we were going to get blown off again. We just looked at each other.

“No,” I said, “we should make a good faith effort to take him at his word. He apologized and the only way to move beyond is to take him at his word.”

“You’re right,” J said and with that we found a larger table to fit him. Not a moment later, Simon texted J to ask him to order food for him. Just as J was finishing ordering, Simon arrived, inconspicuously not making eye contact with me. He sat down clearly a little nervous and, disconcertingly, not looking at me at all.

So, we proceeded to make small talk about nothing and everything. Slowly we came around to actually talking just about the time we started talking about books. We talked about our book collections and then I went off on a tangent about how I’ve divvied mine up into fiction, non-fiction, classics, foreign language fiction, foreign language non-fiction, foreign language classics and textbooks for straight learning. I also have an “oversized” section that contains most of my art and reference books. And of course, within each section, everything was alphabetized. I may or may not have been accused of being “anal.” And I may or may not have confessed to being an “entomology whore.”

All in all, it was really nice to sort of find our groove again.

We then changed venues to meet up with two men I shall call “Steven.” One calls himself “Bad [Steven]” and the other guy was named “Good [Steven]” by Bad Steven. In short, Bad Steven is the sort of detestable chauvinist that gets away with it because he talks a lot about “glamorous” things, calls himself an “artist,” is very young (mentally, physically he’s probably mid-twenties) and is good looking. Good Steven is a lovely, smart, silly, subdued, young English gentleman.

Bad Steven started off trying to charm me with his generic sleaze and when I wasn’t having it, informed me that I might be earning a place on his shit list.

“Okay.” I said, generally bored with him. And, as there is nothing more offensive to me than being tedious and boring, the feeling he was expressing was mutual.

“I’m done talking to you!” He hollered, trying to bait me into begging him to come back.

“Okay,” I shrugged and took a sip of my gin and tonic.

Laughing in a way that can be best described as “jocular” he turned to my boy J to try and socialize. I refused to engage in the conversation the two of them had despite Bad Steven’s many pathetic stage whispers to bait me into conversation.

Frankly, I was too busy watching Simon being, well, Simon. He is truly a sight to behold.

The only time Bad Steven was actually able to break me from watching Simon at the end of the bar was when he would physically touch me to get my attention so I’d hear another one of his stage whispers to J about how I was standing in the way of their good conversation.

Finally Douche Bag left and J turned to me. “Girl, you are always right on. You just cut through it.”

“Huh?”

“I thought you might be being a little harsh. I wanted to give him a chance but you were just right. You just knew and shut him down instantly.” My boy J is nothing if not flattering. “God,” he said exasperated at the thought of Douche Bag.

Then it was time for J to go up and play and Simon came over to me. “Should we move up to flood him with love?”

“Where do you want to move?”

“You pick.”

“You know he plays the Irish flute for you.”

“Yeah, I’m not that stupid.”

“No, I mean he told me specifically that he likes to play it for you because he hopes it makes you feel more at home.”

“That’s because he’s fucking amazing.” Simon then moved to walk past me but stopped. “You know, I’m not a total moron. I do know how to pick my friends.”

“You’re a very insightful man. You just need a good slap on the ass every once in a while.” Which made him snort a small, amused laugh.

So I moved us to a table up front and Simon took the seat straight in front of me. With him, he brought three beers. I got the first one, he then placed his across from me and then brought the last one up to J on the stage. Good Steven sat to my left and J’s empty seat was to my right. Several random folks and Douche Bag sat on Simon’s side. A beautiful, pouty girl took a place next to Douche Bag and clearly began to pout her way through some sort of lover’s quarrel with him.

As I studied her have her quarrel with Douche Bag, I noticed her stunning necklace a black metal choker in the shape of a rose vine complete with thorns and dewdrops in crystals. I then looked back to Simon and noticed him watching me.

“First thing; beautiful necklace. Second; very moody.”

“Yeah, it’s very beautiful.” I concurred.

“But very moody,” Simon made a sour face. Teasing he then dramatically rolled his eyes. “Women!” He unleashed, exasperated.

“Look, we can only work with what you give us.” I explained.

To which he smiled and took a swig of his beer.

J then started his set on stage and we more or less grew quiet to listen to him. He started off with one sort of flute/recorder type wind instrument. He then moved on to a large flute that had the mouthpiece almost half way down the body of the flute. He finished off with the Irish flute.

“Happy St. Paddy’s Day!” he opened with. To which there was a smattering of “whoo”s and clapping, primarily from our table. J started to play and Simon just lit up. He was clapping and hollering.

At one point, Simon turned to me and said, “You’re never going to hear this again; an Irish flute, a guitar and a synthesizer on ‘accordion’.” Simon then turned back to J to provide him some desperately needed rhythm. Later J thanked Simon because J was having a hard time keeping time with the way the back up was playing but when Simon’s clapping kicked in just then, J was rescued.

Good Steven and I then started talking about all sorts of things. He’s a very sweet bloke with a gentle demeanor and a strong sense of propriety. During our chats, I would occasionally tune in and out of our conversation to listen in to Simon’s. Often he was busy bragging about how amazing J is. There was a brief back and forth about going to yi jia yi (1+1) which is one of the local clubs. Simon made it none too clear that he wasn’t going and I like to think of it as “Rape Motherfucking Central” because it is. You literally cannot be in that club after midnight if you are a Western woman and not expect to be groped and fondled so aggressively and inappropriately that the last time I left my breasts were purple with bruises as were my thighs and I had a long key scratch across my stomach to say nothing of the fact that the men grab your clothes so hard my bra-covered breasts popped out of my shirt. “What the hell were you doing that you go treated like that” you ask? “Leaving.”

So I made it clear I was setting no foot near yi jia yi and went back to Good Steven.

While Good Steven and I were talking, Douche Bag made his drunken way over to me to review precisely who he had met for the evening.

“I’m sorry, I’m terrible with names. It’s not you, I’ve just forgotten your name again.” Douche Bag said for the hundredth time that night. “I know that [J] because he’s like me. He’s an artist but you, I just can’t remember.”

I resisted the urge to say ‘Cunt’ and decided to go with “Christina. And I fully expect you to forget it before we meet again.”

“Yeah I will. No, I’m just giving you a hard time, you know but we’re fine right? I mean you give me shit and I’m giving you shit.” He continued to go off at full volume about how we’re all good and he hopes I think we’re all good. Finally, he offered me his hand and I shook it.

“Right,” I said, desperately not giving a shit.

He then shifted around behind me, put his hands on my chair and announced to everyone that, “We’re all good!” He hollered that over and over for a minute. Then, to prove how “good” we are, he grabbed my chair and tipped it forward as if to tip me out of the chair. In lieu of tipping me out of the chair he merely slammed my knee into the large, heavy table directly in front of me and sliding it a good foot. He dropped the chair and tipped it again two more times and then grabbed my shoulders, squeezed them super hard while hollering about what good friends we are.

It all happened so quickly that I was merely stunned. I happened to glance up in my stunned-ness and see Simon in “kill” mode.

Douche Bag then drunkenly stumbled off to the bathroom.

“He’s actually a good guy.” Simon said, trying to subdue the situation.

“Yeah, I’ll take your word on that.” I said.

Somehow or another, the night went on and J got a phone call from his girl. J went outside to chat with her and Simon saw his bag.

“Where the hell did he go?” Simon pointed to J’s bag.

“His girl called.”

“He wouldn’t just leave all his instruments like that, would he?”

“He didn’t ‘just leave’ them. They’re with me. He trusts me.”

“Yeah. You’re just a LITTLE defensive about him,” Simon teased good-naturedly.

I picked up my fingers and made the gesture for “teeny tiny” with my pointer and thumb while I squeezed one eye shut and squinted the other. I mouthed, “just a little.” That made Simon laugh some more.

Eventually, all extraneous members of our group left and J was outside talking with his girl so Simon and I were left alone. Simon told me how happy he was for it just be the two of us and we just started going. It was just nonstop repartee. He was brilliant and hysterical and accommodating and incredibly patient with my alcohol-addled brain. It was just the two of us and it felt amazing. I wanted to never ever leave that moment. I’m never quite as fully present in the moment as when he’s around.

And then Simon leaned over. “You know, there was a point in the evening where I wanted to take [Douche Bag] outside.”

I shrugged and quoted Eddie Izzard, “Like you do.”

“I wanted to take him outside and put him up against a wall but there wasn’t really an intro. Had it gone on any longer, however, I would have.” He looked at me directly to be clear I understood. “I would have taken him outside and put him against a wall.”

“Oh,” I said, not really knowing what to say to such chivalry. He’s the first man I’ve ever liked that I know will not only fight with me but for me as well. “Strong all the way through” without being impenetrable is a very sexy notion. It’s safe to say I swooned.

“So, where shall we go next? I didn’t sit through all of that not to have a nightcap.”

“I don’t know.” I said. “I think Henry’s is still open.”

“Where’s Henry’s?”

“At the top of the street.”

“Henry’s it is.”

“But I only think it’s still open. I don’t know.”

“Henry’s it is.”

We collected J and headed off to Henry’s but discovered the bar just across the street was empty, quiet and still open. So, we piled in there and proceeded to chat for the rest of the early morning, leaving after 3 in the morning, all of us having work in a few hours.

Dear god, he is perfection.

2008-03-16T01:16:00.000-07:00

KNOCKDOWN, DRAG-OUT

I am IN love with men again. I always love men, even when the whole gender seems out to make me feel like utter refuse, but like all long-term relationships, one slips in and out of the passionate phases. However yesterday, I managed to rediscover my passion for men with a vengeance.

Simon and I keep circling each other and while he’s been allowing his intimidation to curtail our time together, I have nevertheless been perusing him shamelessly. However, he overstepped his bounds and blew off my boy J when my boy J (who is also his friend) needed friendly faces at this nightmare setup of a performance (J is a brilliant musical talent; he plays all instruments effortlessly but is most drawn to wind instruments and traditional folk music). That is unacceptable. I’m fine with Simon’s skittish games with me but J is, at best, collateral damage. And no one fucks with mine.

J had been invited to play at some bar and when we arrived Friday night, we discovered that the bar was, in point of fact, a death-metal bar (for those of you unfamiliar with “death-metal” it makes Metallica look like Britney Spears). Simon had declared he was coming out to see him play and while J and I were back and forth with his anxiety, J and Simon were back and forth about getting Simon and paper-perfect to the bar. And, what was a ten-minute wait at 9:30 for a 5-song set, turned into a 2-song set at 1 am. The whole time, my poor boy was hoping against hope that Simon and paper-perfect would show up. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that once paper-perfect took the phone from Simon and had a less-than-effortless conversation with one of the locals about directions, the boys would not be coming. I know precisely how little effort paper-perfect is willing to make about anything because he’s so beaten by life and now that I’m out from under the pressure to date him, I see precisely that it is his cowardice and refusal to risk anything that was the reason I could never feel for him.

I knew they would blow off J with paper-perfect’s pathetic, unwavering shrugging and go back to their drinking. Life happens and people can’t make appointments; I’m fine with that. This, however, wasn’t “life happens.” This was active, willful laziness with a duplicitous candy shell. This was “I’m too lazy to make the effort and too much of a coward to say ‘I don’t want to.” And, it wouldn’t make me nearly as crazy if I didn’t know for a fact that Simon needs to consider himself a decent friend to J. I could see it so clearly in my mind that it made me more than a little violent. However, I did my best to keep my mouth shut and only support J as this was his thing, not mine. J was, understandably, hurt when the jackasses blew him off by not sending him even a message to let him know they ultimately weren’t coming but J, being my boy, kept wondering if perhaps his expectations were too high.

Once I got home, I spent most of the night tossing and turning, pissed. So, at 7 the next morning, I sent Simon a rather strongly worded text message that called him to task and told him if he wanted to do the standup thing by apologizing, where he could find J. Around 10, I got an angry text message from him about how I wasn’t going to “pin this on” him. We had a brief back and forth mostly about him thinking I was “projecting” onto the situation and me thinking he lacked “common fucking courtesy,” but I would be lying if I didn’t confess to the fact that while we’re doing the text equivalent of screaming at each other, there wasn’t a part of my brain that was super happy to learn a few new curse words. But, that’s my special brand of crazy and there’s not much I can do about that.

Nevertheless, he put his foot down, presented his summation of things and asked that I not respond to his final message. I, being me, had to be the bitch and have the final word. So, I responded to his summation of what he feels my personal flaws are with, “Glad that works for you.”

And that was when I realized I had become a Dane Cook sketch because I was more than certain he was circling his apartment muttering, if not screaming the Irish equivalent of “You don’t even KNOW! You don’t even KNOW!”

My bitchiness aside, I was proud of the fact that through the whole fight, I didn’t get sucked into personal attacks. I stayed on issue and despite what he threw at me, I didn’t have to fight dirty.

I then called J to confess that I may have overstepped my bounds and apologized for the ensuing awkwardness he might experience with Simon but he’s my boy and no one treats him like that. I explained that I wasn’t fighting in lieu of him and Simon wasn’t under the impression I was doing his dirty work. I’ve tried to make it clear to all parties involved that I was acting alone. J, being J, forgave me and said not to worry about it.

We then arranged to go to Canada and Paris’s house (my married Francophile friends) for their barbeque. As I was going to meet my boy at the South Gate, I realized something; I was happy. I didn’t get caught up in distracting, petty squabbling. It didn’t devolve into attacking to simply wound. It was conflict to reach a resolution, not to hurt and I can live with that. My temper usually ends up consuming me and allowing me to say extraneous, irrelevant thing merely to hurt. Not this time. It felt and feels damned good. I’ve never managed to express precisely how furious I am while maintaining complete control of myself. It felt very precise and I love it… not that I want that everyday or even “occasionally” but I do quite like knowing it is now a talent I possess.

So, I waited for J in the kite park on the Southeast corner of the South side of the wall of Xi’An and felt more serene than I have in a long time. I sat under the warm sun with the cool breeze cutting across me and just watched the kites. It was one of those rare moments when my whole life became very still and my mind just embraced every sensation. It was delicious.

Eventually, some dude who works for Amway (it’s HUGE here in China) interrupted my peace and tried to force me to speak Chinese with him but I just kept insisting I didn’t speak any Chinese and he finally left me alone.

J showed up and we were off to Canada and Paris’s.

When we arrived, paper-perfect was there and looking beat. Paper-perfect and Simon had apparently been out all night and he crawled his ass to barbeque. Simon, knowing I would be at the party, did not show up… for reasons I assume are perfectly lucid. It may have been my projection but there seemed to be something extra attentive, extra puppy-dog-ish in paper-perfect. He didn’t stay for very long, begging off with having to go to a birthday party. Not surprisingly, Canada later told me she felt he would be perfect for me. It was all I could do not to laugh.

Anyway, a bunch of new people showed up at the barbeque a little later in the afternoon. Clearly all collegiate oriented, some of the folks were mid-twenties, some of the folks were younger but they were all fun. There was a band of fabulous gay men who I am madly in love with and with whom I shall be spending a fair bit of time; we’ve mutually decided to collect each other. There were also two boys; both of whom were clearly interested in being my lover. However, one was 26 and one was 19. The 19 year old, who I will call “Waffle House,” was sweetly, adorably, loquaciously desperate to get my attention. It was nonstop, “You’re beautiful,” “You’re brilliant” and “You’re polished” from such a sweet, silly, innocent boy trying to puff up his chest. Were I ten years younger, I would have been madly in love and utterly shattered when he flitted on to the next piece of ass. The 26 year old, who I will call “Puma,” was smooth, sweet, confident and charming in that down-home-southern boy way that Matthew McConaughey only dreams he could muster. That he has the faintest air of a broken heart about him makes him all the more appealing. I’m not the girl who looks to “fix” or save the bad boys (personally, I prefer them “bad”). Instead, that “fix-it” energy gets channeled into boys who are perfectly fine on their own two feet but have some element of melancholy lurking about them. I’m not interested in men who are hobbled by life but I am interested in men I can clearly make happier, provided they’re not exploiting said melancholy. Exploitation is just gross, predatory and ultimately, worst of all, lazy.

Nevertheless, we spent a lot of the evening in the basement pool hall and I spent my time on the couch as I can’t play pool to save my life.

J would come in from having chatted with some of his Spanish speaking friends to check on me every once and a while. I just maintained my domain of the couch and the boys came and went. To Waffle House’s credit, whenever the gay boys were piled up with me giggling, he would just sit on one of their laps. It was highly appealing to watch such comfort from a straight, southern boy. And, when Puma would come over, he always sat with me but his tenderness, affection and protectiveness for the gay boys was so touching and, frankly, startling coming from a southern Marine (because I’m aware I’m an elitist New Yorker with her own “Southern Boy” hang ups).

Paris and Puma started playing a few games of pool and, to be totally honest, I was weak at all the masculine concentration and swagger. Poor Waffle House was trying desperately to explain the massive love bite on his neck away and I was having none of it.

“I would have stopped her but it wasn’t during foreplay,” Waffle House tried to explain, “and I don’t want to interrupt a girl while she’s in the middle of all that.”

“I don’t know, I’d like to think if I got out of line in bed, he’d have the wherewithal to put me in my place.”

Which shut Waffle House up for a moment, while my boys started hollerin’ “Ooh, giiiirl!” and Paris and Puma just snickered and nodded knowingly.

“Hey, look, I’m very giving but she was a pain in the ass…”

“Or neck” I cut him off

“Touché.” Waffle House replied and without missing a beat continued, “and when we were done all she wanted to do was fucking cuddle!”

“What’s wrong with you that you haven’t learned the ‘hug and roll’?” I laughed, referencing the move guys do while they wait for women to fall asleep in the nook between their shoulder and their chest, pull the girl into a hug, rock her up on to their body and then roll her back onto the other side of the bed so they can get some sleep.

“I know the ‘hug and roll’! She just wanted to cuddle and talk.”

“Fuck, have some fucking patience, jackass. I know the urge to sleep is strong but you need to step up and manage that.”

“I do but she wouldn’t go to sleep. We were fucking for five hours and after, she wouldn’t shut up.”

Which gave me pause. Frankly, the idea of sex for “hours” on end just seems unappealing. I don’t know what other people having going on down south but south of my Mason Dixon, I’m a sensitive girl. “Hours” just seems like it would lead to a lot of pain and bruising and who needs that? “Wait a minute, you fucked for five hours and she just wanted to talk? Baby, you ain’t hittin’ it. I can tell you, you hit it right, it’s 20 minutes tops and I can assure I don’t want to cuddle much less talk after. Just put me to bed.” To which the boys playing pool started snickering again.

Which made Waffle House defensive. “I was hittin’ it right.”

Which made Puma speak up, to me, “Have you ever given a man a hickey?”

“No”

Puma nodded, knowing that already for some reason. “And what would make you bite a man like that?”

“I have no idea. Hickeys are disgusting.”

“Exactly. But have you ever left a mark like that on a man’s body?”

“I usually leave a scratch mark or two but those are, uh… unintentional. Intentionally, only ever on his ass as I was kicking him out of my place after not having hit it right.” I then demonstrated with my foot, “Get out!”

“Exactly. It’s a mark of frustration.” He smiled at me.

“No, no, no, no. See…” Waffle House started in but then Puma cut him off immediately.

And then Puma went from “hot, quiet man with a hot swagger” to “man with fist-sentences.” “Boy, you need to shut the hell up. You have the answers to everything in front of you right here” Puma good-naturedly started to scold Waffle House and then snapped his hand towards me in a gesture of ‘voila’ “and she’s telling you everything you will ever need to know AND she answers questions. The only time you need to be talking is to ask her questions. You need to be all ears and suck it all up like a sponge. If I was you, I would shut the fuck up and listen to every little thing that comes out of her mouth. Memorize that shit. And thank her. Fucking worship her.”

With that, Waffle House immediately rolled over and spoke directly and earnestly to Puma, “You know what? You’re right. You’re the god. You’re the man. I need to listen to you. You’re the god.”

To which Puma was clearly getting irritated so I interjected. “Actually, that would be me. I would be the god.”

While Waffle House was explaining the difference between me being the “goddess” and Puma being the “god” Puma just thanked me.

And in that moment, Puma went on my radar.

I then started to notice every time Puma and I were having a really good moment together, he would mention his girlfriend (which everyone else has informed me is “not working out”), but never by name… only the titular “my girlfriend.”

His girlfriend aside, we really got on, me and my Puma. He’s great fun to talk with; smart, compassionate, funny and he chose to stay sitting with me on that couch than to go out to a club with Waffle House and the rest of my (new) gays. I’m always a fan of a man who is willing to change his plans to hang out with me.

As I was beginning to sober up (it’s not a good sign that I started drinking at 3, was drunk by 7 and was sober by midnight), Puma was finally beginning to relax and drank a bit too much. And, he was just silly. The fact that he started calling me “Boo-boo” was super cute too. And we talked about everything and nothing.

Suddenly, he started talking all sorts of crazy, silly shit about “his” reality, how he would take me to “his” reality and got all super flamboyant. It was cute to watching him perform for the lot of us still there on the couch.

As it was after midnight, J and I decided to call it a night. Which prompted everyone else to call it a night. So, Puma came with us and as J, Puma, an Austrian friend and I piled into a cab, Puma started talking silly again for me.

As we drove along, Puma started to get a little serious as we went through a “Baghdad” street.

“But, baby, we’re in China. Ain’t no Baghdad in China. That’s the nice thing about China.” I explained gently because, frankly, there are no men more fragile than super heroes.

He looked at me as I looked at him earnestly and gently and I could see the joking defensiveness drop. “I know that. No one knows that better than me.”

He took a deep breath, looked around at the open boulevard we were traveling on closed his eyes and rested his head forward.

“Do you need some air?” I asked softly. No one needs kindness like people who pay for the rest of us to talk a big game.

He looked up at me, studied my face for a moment and shook his head, clearly relaxing a little.

“Are you sure?” I pushed.

He smiled through his haze and nodded.

“Okay.” I said.

After another moment, he went on to lay out his perspective on what people are “supposed” to do; the standard “get married,” “have kids,” step c, step d etc etc bullshit. It all sounded rather bleak.

“Am I right or am I right?” He asked when he was done laying out what one is supposed to do with their life. He sounded remarkably defeated by it all.

“I dunno. I’d say you sound very Christian.”

This pierced his haze and he perked up a little. “What do you mean?”

“I dunno. It just sounds sort of bleak and you Christians always have this bleak haze over you.”

“We do?” He asked with hope. “What do you think it should be like?”

“I think it should about love. And I’m not talking rainbows and puppy dogs and bliss, I mean real love. The shit you have to work for and it gets ugly sometimes but it’s real and it’s beautiful. I think family should come organically from love, not dictated by obligation.”

This made him very quiet and not ten seconds later we arrived at his house to drop him off.

He got out of the cab and scooted over to make it possible for me to get out with him. I wanted to make sure he got home okay. He seemed incredibly vulnerable going off into the night in that condition.

“You going to get home okay?” I asked.

He nodded and we all said our goodbyes. I watched his hulking frame disappear around the corner as he headed home and we headed off to drop of J.

J then checked a message he had gotten while he was talking with his girl in Spain and I was talking with Puma. Laughing to himself, he then turned to me, “Girl, you know how to get shit DONE.”

“Huh?” I asked utterly confused.

J then showed me the text message he had on his mobile. There was a very long message from Simon apologizing for the night before and what had happened.

There may be nothing sexier than men willing to step up.

2008-03-10T05:14:00.000-07:00

IN WHICH HE MAKES ME LAUGH

So, the Jude and I were talking last night about the- if any- thread of consistency through the men I date. In the last twelve months, I have knowingly dated (and perhaps occasionally been accidentally engaged to) a Buddhist Sichuan, a Muslim Turk, a smattering of various Chinese men and then (kinda, sorta) an agnostic Catholic/Jewish Frenchman. It should come as precisely no surprise that I am now skirting the/my issue with a Belfast Republican (don’t think “Bush and the right wing”; think “socialist revolutionary”) I will call “Simon.” Simon is here teaching criminal defense at one of the local universities, as he is a criminal defense barrister with over a decades worth of experience in London and a successful lecturing series on international law. In short, he is 180 degrees away from anyone I have dated in the past 12 months. Then again, they’re all 180 degrees away from each other… which kind of distorts the space/time continuum but who’s counting?

However, it occurred to me this morning that what binds them all is that they make me laugh. They make me laugh until it hurts. They all have a capacity for silly that is effusive. And what makes Simon so unique is that he cannot only play my verbal games but he can best me at them. I am well aware that I am an intelligent human being (kinda, sorta) but that doesn’t really help a gal much. Simon and I are intelligent in similar ways (he clearly more so) and our twisted sense of humor aligns quite well; from Monty Python to the obscene.

We first met a week ago when J and I were talking on the phone late at night. J had told me about Simon the moment he got back from Spain and his beloved. He told me all about how he wasn’t sure how to gauge the attractiveness of men but he would venture a guess that I would think Simon was hot and he thought we’d just get along being that he’s “a big, burly, loud, smart Irish dude.” Though I knew about Simon, we hadn’t managed to get together thus far.

“I just got a message from [Simon] about going to the bar tonight. I don’t have any money left on my phone to send him a message. I’m not going tonight but I’ll got tomorrow.”

“I’ll send it” I leapt at the chance. “What’s his number?”

J gave me his number and I promised to call him back the moment we had clarified what was going on.

I sent Simon a message explaining that J had run out of money on his phone but I was a friend and we had been talking when he got the message so I was sending the message on his behalf.

“I don’t know. Sounds highly suspect to me. [Same bar] tomorrow night at 9.” He sent a reply.

Never one to let a chance to flirt pass by, “Honey, I’m a broad from New York. You have no idea how suspect I can be.”

To which I all I received was, “You’re coming too, yes?”

We then had a solid back and forth for a good long while in which we started slipping in Monty Python quotes. The conversation lasted into the evening and we picked up again the next morning. That continued through the afternoon and on through the evening up until 5 minutes before he arrived at the bar where my French boy, his cousin, J, a student of J’s and I were sitting.

The one thing to understand about the French boy, his cousin and me in heels is that we are all well over six feet tall. The Frenchies are the classic lithe, poetic-looking, dark haired French men that they write about in teen romance novels. I’m (the “fat” version of) what Hollywood would have you believe all Americans look like. Taken as a unit, I know we can be quite intimidating. Nevertheless, my boys are my boys and I’m not about to exclude them from the goings-on in my life simply because they’re too good looking for anyone’s good.

“My god, I never thought I’d feel too short in this country but there it is,” was the first thing out of Simon’s mouth. Not that it matters but in flats, Simon is about an inch or two taller than me; in the platform heels I was wearing, he was solidly “shorter.”

And there with him was the paper-perfect man my friends had all been so keen on me dating back in December. It was jarring for me to see the two of them together. Seeing the paper-perfect man with the text-perfect man threw me for a loop. I couldn’t quite figure out what to do with all the randomness surging through me.

Frankly, I don’t know what I was expecting when I saw Simon but I think that discovering that he was a flesh and blood man just threw me for a loop, not unlike what my mother says about giving birth; you spend this time talking with a person and once you give birth, the baby they hand you is cute but it’s not really the person you were talking to. Granted, nothing would fit the bill you were expecting because you were expecting an abstract but nevertheless, there we were.

We switched to a larger table having realized the table we were originally at would be too small. The paper-perfect man took the seat across from me, I took an end seat. To my right sat the French boy and then his cousin. To the paper-perfect man’s left sat Simon and to Simon’s left sat J.

Simon then tried to make small talk, clearly put off by the French boys and nervous about me. Very quickly, my French boy got up to get me another beer and Simon clearly tried to sort out what the story between the two of us is.

He then asked me some question, his soothing baritone drowned out by the falsetto wailing of the on-stage group.

“What?!” I yelled towards him, making him reel back at the piercing sound of my voice. A moment later, he came back at me, mocking my American, nasal accent.

“What?!” he screamed back.

We volleyed back and forth like this for a moment until it was clear he could take no more of the nasal wailings, and could merely blinked from the sheer agony of the noise.

“Are you saying my accent is abrasive?” I accused as he shrugged in possible consent. “Fine. I’ll just sit here and look pretty.” I said, goading him to get out what he was clearly thinking of me.

He took the bait and made a comment to the paper-perfect man who laughed in agreement. Better to lance the prejudice boil than to let it fester and grow.

Though I have no idea what he actually said, I fully understood the sentiment and kept my mouth shut, merely raising my eyebrow at his comment.

Which set him off back peddling.

“So, what are you doing in Xi’An?” He asked nervously, rapid-fire. I shrugged dismissively. “I remember somewhere in the back of my very small brain you said something about your students. My deductive reasoning would lead me to believe that you are a teacher of some sort.” I nodded briefly. “Do you teach university students?” I shook my head. “So you teach younger students?” I nodded indifferently. “Do you like doing that?” I shrugged indifferently. “What do you like to do in Xi’An?” I pushed my hands up in a “whatever” gesture. “How long have you been here?” I waddled my head back and forth suggesting I’ve been here long enough. “You know, I never actually asked for you to stop talking.” I shrugged ambivalently, with the slightest air that he might have. “Really, you can start talking again at any time. I never said your accent was abrasive…” he trailed off for a moment, “I merely didn’t disagree when you said it.”

I looked at him directly and nodded, which stopped his rapid-fire questioning very quickly. “I’ve been here about a year and a half.”

And that began a discussion about “liking” Xi’An versus surviving it. Simon fully believes I must sum-total “like” Xi’An if I would stay here so long. I tried to explain it’s far more complicated than that.

He then got up to get us some shots of iced tea and whiskey. He came back with a pitcher and some shot glasses. Quickly everyone but the two of us stopped drinking shots. We, however, kept on in between verbal sparring sessions.

He told me about how his first assignment was an analysis of a track off Radiohead’s “Amnesiac.”

“It’s off Amnesiac,” he explained.

“Really? It’s not off Pablo Honey? Or Kid A?” I teased.

Sheepishly, he spoke, “I didn’t know how much you knew.”

“No, I appreciate that but I love Radiohead.”

He smiled, “Really. Well, which track is it?”

I paused for a minute trying to count how many in on my iPod it is but couldn’t think of it. “I…. have no idea.”

Smiling triumphantly, he toasted another shot.

Then he challenged me to a drinking contest and before I knew it, we were through two pitchers of booze.

Not much later, the French boy and his cousin informed me they were going to leave.

As I was hammered and I will not be swayed when drunk from the decisions I made when sober, I went home with the Frenchies. I had promised myself that no matter how drunk I got or appealing it was to go home with Simon, I was going to go home with the Frenchies. I’m old enough to know that I trust no one like I trust myself to make decisions for me but I have to be sober. So, I make sweeping decisions while sober and stick to them while drunk. No matter how horribly torturous the decision seems while drunk, I know that there were very good reasons I made those decisions while sober and I just stick to it. Such thinking has spared me a vast and varied array of STD’s, pregnancies, broken friendships and broken hearts. It is the magic behind my ability to drunkenly dodge bullets.

I kissed Simon’s cheek and hugged him goodbye, his hands lingered on my hips holding me in place against him as his siren song whispered into my ear, “You sure you want to do that? We’re going to go play pool.” And suddenly I was Odysseus lashed to the mast of his ship screaming to be released and allowed to crash upon the rocks. But like Odysseus, I was tied fast by the sober me and despite my desperate cries of protest, my ship sailed on.

I released my grip on him completely and he let me go totally. I nodded and wistfully said, “Goodnight.”

And, frankly, it’s a good thing I did because the moment I was outside, I hit a drunk-wall and needed my boys to get me home. Apparently, I made quite the (entertaining?) fool of myself but I have no recollection of that, senator. I thank god that if I did or said anything that was truly mortifying or upsetting, my boys have been discrete enough not to mention it. Later I apologized profusely for my inexcusable behavior (despite the fact that they somehow got me home utterly unscathed) but they insist that I was merely highly entertaining.

We then continued our increasingly inappropriate texts to each other until we were to meet again on Friday.

Friday, Simon entered the bar and immediately took the seat next to me. He briefly told me about his shit week and then stopped himself. “I’m sorry, how are you?” he said apologetically.

“Alright. I had a shit week. I hit a new personal low. I wanted to punch a 6 year old today.”

To which he laughed briefly and then said, “I’m really sorry but I can’t sit here. I just can’t do it.” As he got up and switched to the seat across from me, he apologized again. “I’m sorry. I just can’t. Besides, from here I can look at you and not this ugly bastard.” He said, trying to lighten the mood as he joked with the paper-perfect man.

Simon took a deep breath and called over for beers immediately and it sunk in that he, while friendly and not defensive, he was clearly edgy.

My mind instantly settled on the fact that he grew up in a war-torn country, is a criminal defense attorney who lived in enemy’s territory for more than a decade and the seat next to me was the most vulnerable (in terms of seeing who’s coming and going around us) at the whole table. He switched the seat for the one directly across from me as it was the least vulnerable. However, our first meeting, he had been fine with his relatively vulnerable seat. Clearly he was spooked about something. Considering who he is and now that he’s teaching in China, I can only imagine how spooked he must be.

Not long after he switched seats, he mentioned he’s got a meeting Monday with Party members, which is what I settled on as being the thing that spooked him. Distracted for most of the evening, he flitted back and forth, never really talking to me. We had brief conversations but nothing like the verbal sparring we had had earlier or even had over cell phones.

A large group of German tourists showed up with a new, German Xi’An arrival who has made friends with Simon. They wanted to sit with our group so we had to switch to a larger table. Simon was immediately antsy about finding the right spot to sit in. He parked himself on the far side of a pillar, and clearly wasn’t happy about that.

“Your seat’s over there.” I pointed to the safest seat at the table.

He looked over the table and then looked at me smiling, “You’re right.” He reached down for the beer at the seat he was going to sit at.

“Don’t” I stopped him from taking a swig. “That’s [J]’s.”

“Are you playing musical beer bottles? How the fuck do you know?” He asked.

“That’s your seat there, so that’s where I switched your bottle to.”

He smiled at me at took the beer as I passed it down to him. “Thanks.”

I nodded and smiled.

My favorite Francophile couple then showed up and he (a Parisian) started getting on well with Simon. His wife (a Canadian) then started trying to pick fights with everyone at the table, most of all Simon. Simon handled it all with great aplomb and I was thoroughly impressed. However, I was definitely disappointed I wasn’t getting the face time I had been looking for. In fact, he seemed to be actively avoiding me.

At one point Simon got a round of beers and I happened to drink one extra fast. I then asked him, “Can I have another one?” pointing to a full beer near him.

“Of course.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, feeling like too much of a leech.

“Why did you just waste two questions when you know you can just take anything of mine?”

Which is one of those sentences that hits a girl like a fist. Somehow I fumbled through a recovery, which led to a back and forth that ended with me saying, “Well, then I guess we can’t hang out anymore. Oh well.”

And all his aloofness and stand-off-ish-ness evaporated as he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Considering what’s going on between us, I think we’re actually going to be hanging out a lot… for quite a while. I think.”

Again, another fist-sentence but this time all I could do was relent and smile. “That’s true.”

As the cloud of exhaustion descended upon me, lots of the extraneous people seemed to evaporate into the nothingness and we were left with paper-perfect, Simon, J, Paris, Canada and a few local bar fixtures.

Simon had seen fit to spend most of the evening at the exact opposite end of the large table from me for reasons my tired, alcohol heavy brain was unable to discern. (Granted, later it dawned on me that if he was spooked then I either distract him to a level he feels unsafe at or he was trying to protect me as he spoke at length and depth with everyone at the table but me.) Nevertheless, for reasons unknown, I have 100% faith in his word over one night’s actions so I decided to scuttle my irritation and just enjoy the moment with my friends.

Sandwiched between paper-perfect and Canada, we started talking about everything from the body-grooming habits of various countries to Eric Satie.

Canada was busy baiting Simon into an argument to prove her superior knowledge of music. Simon, like a good boy, remained evasive and refused to fight her.

“Do you like Debussy or Satie?” She flat out demanded at one point.

“Debussy” Simon answered, flashing a Mona Lisa smile.

“Good boy” I thought as I watched the two of them go at it. “Don’t get sucked in.”

“Do you even KNOW Satie?” She started in aggressively.

The Mona Lisa smile went up again and I knew exactly what was coming. So, I tried to sort through a way to steer the conversation away from the oncoming lecture about the finer points of music. “Of course I say I prefer Debussy because I know Debussy.”

Which, of course, launched her into a self-righteous lecture of the finer points of the difference between Debussy and Satie. When she got to the part where she explained his 4-phrase structure, I interrupted.

“Satie is the gateway drug to Minimalism.”

Which lit Simon up. “Does anyone have a pen? That is fucking brilliant.”

Too tired to suss out if he was mocking me or not, I sat upright. “But it’s true!” I insisted.

“I know” he smiled earnestly, “that’s why it’s fucking brilliant. I want to write it down.”

I laughed, took another sip of my drink, spoke with some local fixtures and when I turned back both Paper-perfect and Simon had vanished.

Paris was amused and outraged. “He’s great! You always got to have that aloof motherfucker in your group. I’m sorry, ‘aloof wanker’!”

Irony of ironies, I find him one of the most straightforward, purest, least aloof men I’ve ever met. He doesn’t need to be sorted or decoded. He’s just to be enjoyed.

And goddamn does he make me laugh.

2008-02-20T05:45:00.000-08:00

MATRIMONY

“Stumble” is probably the best verb to use in describing the oeuvre that is my life. I stumble into most everything. I’ve accidentally stumbled into walls, jobs, lovers, careers, languages, hobbies and even the occasional engagement (or two, to be totally forthcoming). I have never stumbled into a marriage, however.

As they say, “There’s first time for everything” and really, considering the overreaching arc of my life, it’s only appropriate, really.

The Boy and I have stumbled into a marriage of the first degree and it’s entirely unsettling for precisely how not unsettling it is. There are no butterflies, no nervousness, no freezing up and no jitters around him. It’s all just comfort and ease. Granted, to be fair, I did loathe the poor thing at first meeting, so perhaps that took the place all that moony-eyed crap that I loathe. Nevertheless, we’ve skipped all the foreplay, all the dating and gone straight to married.

All of my friends have become his friends very quickly and, despite the larger circle of foreigners I have exposed him to, I find myself at dinners with precisely the same people I’m normally with in the precisely the same quantities I’m normally with them, only he’s always there too. In short, I spared no effort to make his experience here as broad as possible but he actively chose the things, places and people that I chose. I figured he should spend time with me and my circle not because I’m the only game in town but because he actively wants to hang out with me and it would appear that that is the case.

Regardless, it’s a bit odd having a go-to person; suddenly being part of a non-existent couple. The “I,” “Me,” “My” and “You” has become “Us,” “We,” “Our” and “You guys.” Oddly, a byproduct of one of the most natural and honest friendships I’ve had in years feels unbelievably dishonest. To be fair, this byproduct hadn’t really occurred to me (or him, I think) until I got back.

The Boy picked me up at the airport and he was adorably giddy, being social and silly with everyone around us from the toll takers along the way back to the guards at our complex. Being that it was late at night and I was beat, he left me laughing and headed home to his visiting guest to whom he was [insert eye roll] “married.” (read: an anti-social friend he had to babysit) He had mentioned the friend was leaving on Sunday and I was meeting some of “our” friends for coffee on Sunday, so I sent him a message to extend the invitation. It turns out the coffee was for precisely when they had to leave for the airport so I let it go and figured I’d see him later at some point.

Friday night, I went out with some friends for dinner and drinks and I asked if one set of my married friends were going to the West Egg party in two weeks. I asked the woman of the married couple I knew the Boy liked the most because it will be his first West Egg party and I wanted to make sure he’ll have a good time.

“Are you going to the business dinner?” I asked.

“We’ll go if you guys are going. Are you guys going?” She replied. Not, “Are you going?” but “Are you guys going?” Only I had asked- hell, only I was there- but there was only one person that could turn the “you” into “you guys.”

There was just something about the “we will” if “you guys will” that stalled me out. I mean, that’s what married couples do, right? That “I’ll wager with my camp provided your camp wagers too” stuff just doesn’t apply to singles. If you’re good friends with one half of a married couple (or hell, even both halves), you’ve only got a single person’s company to wager with. Suddenly, it was socially understood that I speak not just for me but for the Boy as well (something I am never comfortable doing even when I’m in ACTUAL relationships… it just seems so Married). Suddenly, I had become the go-to person in terms of the final say of his personal life. I had passed over that invisible line from singledom to marriage and it was beyond weird.

What compounded the weirdness was that the Boy had said he was interested in going but only if I was going. As a result, I had RSVPed for us together, which felt a little weird in how utterly natural it felt.

“Uh, yeah, [the Boy] and I, we’re uh, yeah. We’re going.” I stammered through the dumbest affirmative reply ever. You know, because pulling his name from the first person pronoun really would stop the snowball effect of our friendship amongst our all our married friends.

My idiocy aside, Sunday’s coffee rolled around and I got to see a bunch of my friends that I hadn’t seen since before Christmas. (They work for international companies that give their workers Christmas/New Years off and I work for a Chinese school, which gives its workers Chinese New Years off.) So, it was nice to see my folks again.

While we were finishing coffee and about to adjourn to another friend’s for drinks before dinner at a restaurant, the Boy called me. “The divorce was just finalized. Where are you? I’m coming to where ever you are right now. I don’t care what you’re doing or who’s there. Just tell me where I can meet you.” I told him which Starbucks we were at and then told me he was still at the airport, on his way.

Now, I’ve been really upfront with him about the fact that everyone thinks we’re together. I even warned him that if I spent any time in his apartment without a chaperon, I would be marked as “his” because, well, I would. Frankly, he found it entertaining to no end that I might be seen as his possession. I even told him about the fact that my boss knows which apartment he lives in because everyone now knows who the foreign teacher is “dating.” I’m not sure why I do this but it just seems like I need to be forthcoming about that sort of stuff seeing as his actual girlfriend will be coming to visit in a few weeks. I think I do it because I’m afraid it hasn’t occurred to him and he’s going to have that same “ew! Gross!” reaction that boys have in middle school when they’re told people think you’re together. Desperately, I want to avoid that “ew! Gross!” reaction in public, were somebody to say or do something to “tip him off.” Granted, his reaction has always been one of a mild shrug with a vague reference to flattery (which is always nice). However, upon realizing that the first phone call he made upon his liberation was to me when he now has a phone book of people to call and the way he presented the idea that he would go anywhere necessary to be with me (he gets lost walking in our compound, much less driving around Xi’An) regardless of who else was around, it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps he was really and truly courting my company.

We arranged a pick up by the Drum Tower and were off to another couple’s for drinks before we all headed out to dinner.

At dinner, the Boy asked one couple about how to get to a jazz bar that “we’re going to on Friday” as he gestured towards me. First of all, these were not plans he ran by me, and, while I know a girl’s supposed to throw a shit-fit over that sort of thing, I’m not bothered by it at all, provided he’s not upset if it turns out I’ve already got plans. I was, however, surprised that anyone would make plans on my behalf. Even in my longest relationship, that boy never even made plans for me. To be totally honest, I’d prefer someone else taking the reins every once and a while. Hell, how many women can claim to have a boy around who takes the initiative to find a jazz bar for a Friday night? (I told you, he’s the sort of boy in teen romance novels.) Frankly, I’m not the kind of girl that anyone takes liberties with, so I kind of like that he does. Secondly, I was stunned that the Boy had been researching things to do while I was away, despite the fact that he claims to have done nothing but watch dvd’s without me. Usually, either someone researches and attends or doesn’t research at all. He researched and waited for me to return. Finally, it settled in that he was using couple-speak about us and I was surprised that it didn’t bother me in the slightest. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I was staring at him throughout the course of this inner unpacking/monologue. He looked at me and in that moment we both settled on his phrase “we’re going,” though for different reasons, I suspect.

“I mean, I’m going and you can come if you want to. Do you want to?” He backpedaled hard and looked at me sheepishly.

I smiled and laughed. “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

After that, there were a few more “we should go” as he was told about various things going on in and around Xi’An all followed up with his backpedaling of “if you want to.”

And then last night, we settled back into our weekly routine of going to Metro (that ubermarket) followed up by dinner and a movie at his place. (As a side note, as we were leaving Metro, he said, “Let’s bounce” which just about killed me with laughter. I explained that if he was going to say things like “Let’s bounce” he needed to call me “bitch.” “I know, but I figured I shouldn’t push it by calling you ‘bitch’,” he explained.) Once we reached his house, he switched out of his cardigan and tie and into his pj’s to make dinner. Again, total “marriage” area. Very strange but very nice.

We watched “The Island” which was decent Michael Bay fare (and, if you want to know what it’s like to live in China, watch the first half of the movie where everyone is speaking with perfect manners, diction and grammar and then Ewan McGregor’s character says, “Don’t you ever question anything?” The essence of living in China is summed up in the very kind, endearing friend saying, “Why would you ever question anything?”) but Ewan McGregor’s accent just killed me. It wasn’t so much an American accent (which I THINK was the route he was trying to go) so much as every-accent-but-not-Scottish. It really made me nuts and we had a small aside about English speaking accents where I elucidated a variety of American accents (all of which McGregor cycled through, often in a single sentence). Then I elucidated the various British and South-of-the-Equator accents (to the best of my Peter Sellers ability). I then explained that he (the Boy) thinks Scarlet Johansson and I (both native New Yorkers) and most American actors have no accent because he speaks a very good, New York English. As his father is a New Yorker and he grew up (part time) in New York, he wouldn’t hear our English as anything but the standard. I explained that, despite appearances, inside America, the neutral New York accent (often called the “Neutral Northeast accent”) is actually quite rare (see the multitude of “What American accent do you have” tests on Myspace and Facebook if you doubt that), the fact is that most American actors have trained in New York and it is Hollywood that makes the most public use of that training. Consequently, neutral New York English has become the international bar for English standards.

After the movie he thanked me because, apparently, he hates watching movies more than once and had already seen “The Island.” However, he claims that my explanation of the accents helped him enjoy it the second time around. In fact, he’s now decided he’s going to find it dubbed in French to see what they do with the accent issue (it plays into a crucial plot point).

I suddenly realized it was close to two in the morning and beat a hasty retreat. I had spent much of the movie saying if he was tired I could leave or just straight out asking if I should go as it was getting late. He had just spent the past week having his home infringed upon and the last thing I wanted was to continue the abuse on the poor boy. However, I got the sense he was relieved that I stayed for the movie and the scatterbrained boy even remembered that I had left some yogurt in his fridge that he fetched for me without my asking. I do like that sense of partnership.

Well, no marriage is conventional and it would appear that mine isn’t either.

2008-01-17T19:47:00.000-08:00

LITTLE THINGS

I have been MIA from my life for the past week and a half because last Sunday, (1/6) I got a phone call from the French replacement of Le Francais (husband to my Brazilian Angel). Le Francais- generally being a good guy for those not on his shit list- set up this new lad with both his former apartment and his car. My Brazilian Angel has told me he was a lovely boy but certainly a party animal (strike one) and “very handsome” (strike two) as when he had come to Xi’An to visit in November, she was utterly unable to get the lot of us all together for dinner for his partying schedule. She suggested that I drop by to see him at some point and, though more than cautious about any 25 year old with the party instinct, I felt the tug of being indebted to my Brazilian Angel for having helped me when I first got here. Frankly, Xi’An can be great and it can be brutal. The deciding factor is (as it always is) knowing the right people. Which is not to say that I constitute “the right people” but I’m certainly better than the vacuum of nothingness.

Nevertheless, I was quite certain that some hotshot, “goooorgeous,” corporate sales, 25 year old party animal would be interested in precisely nothing I would be interested in. Frankly, what I most value (and most hate; I’m a complicated girl, I tell ya) about my experience of this area is not the Disney-fied clubs, the West Egg bubble and the inflated sense of my worth simply because I am white but the fact that I am firmly entrenched in a Chinese world. Granted, there’s no “Real China” just like there’s no “Real World” but I see a piece of China that is rather untouched by an extensive history with the West and I am full well aware how rare and valuable that is. I’ve worked at more than enough corporate environments to know that those boys and I rarely have common ground on anything, much less enough to make conversation over a brief dinner.

Ironically, I knew the less the boy and I had in common the more he would need me. Frankly, the area we live in is very isolated and the only people living here are families that are so insular they don’t trust singles living in the apartment complex. I am only given a reprieve because they are all intimately aware of the goings on of my day, their children love me, they have watched me intensely and all have sussed out that I am a “good” girl. I knew any boy I wasn’t going to get along with was going to have an extra hard time.

The fact that my Brazilian Angel is my girl and she asked me to do it aside, she saved my ass when I first got her. So, in the beginning of December, I dropped off a note to say hello and gave him my number. I hadn’t expected to ever hear from him and when my Brazilian Angel asked me about it about a month later, I had completely forgotten.

“That’s strange. He should have called you. I thought he was there,” she said after I told her I had dropped off the note.

I didn’t push the issue as I had kind of been dreading the idea that the corporate party animal would call me. I had secretly hoped that they had hired a cleaning lady to come in to clean before he showed up and that she had thrown away the note.

However, I got a call from the boy who introduced himself on the phone. I had no idea who he was as he gave me no points of reference save his first name, the fact that he knew I spoke English and that my name was “Christina.” Talking with him was exceptionally easy and all I could think was “Whatever the hell I did to get this man to call me, I should do it again.”

He then asked if I was from “Italia” as I “signed [my] note with ‘Ciao’.”

And the rusty wheels of my brain creaked to a slow turn. “This is the party animal?” I was flabbergasted. No corporate sales boy I’ve ever met is this easy to talk to. Frankly, anyone who treats me like a “buddy” or is the kind of guy you “just wanna have a few beers with” irritates the ever-loving hell out of me. Everything about the conversation exuded comfort and I was actually not utterly dreading the plans we made to have dinner on Tuesday.

I decided to take him to my favorite dumpling place in Xi’An, which happens to be quite the little dive. I figured, if he was uncomfortable with this, then we would both be on the same page about the kinds of China we were looking to experience.

So, I took him through the decrepit, ramshackle alley that most tourists think of as “Real, Urban China.” Frankly, most tourists are put off by it. Up close, they want the grandiose Forbidden Palace but the shabby alleys only from the safety of their hired rickshaw while their guides to translate. To be totally honest, I love the alley. It’s cluttered with biked-in fruits and veggies on carts, makeshift tables littered with slabs of meat, children running amuck, dirt and garbage pounded to make the permanent muddy grayness of ground and hole-in-the-wall eateries. It’s kind of a dividing line for me here.

Comfortable with being able to lay down a line, I went to my Brazilian Angel’s old apartment and rang the doorbell. The first thing that struck me when the door was opened was that the smell of her home was still there but she was not. Leaving the apartment like he was comfortably at home was one of the more attractive men I have ever laid eyes on. His tall, lanky frame hovered a head taller than me. His curly black hair was brushed back from his face. He was comfortably, casually dressed and his eyes were those insanely beautiful eyes that makeup companies try to convince women they’ll have if they use their mascara but that you only ever actually find on men; dark blue and rimmed with the longest, blackest feathery lashes. In short, there was the physical embodiment of the sort of French man they sell in teen romance novels who is revealed (through the heroine’s uncovering of some innocent deception around some missing museum jewelry) to be nobility and despite his offence manages to not only remember to shower but also wear cologne as chases her to the top of the Eiffel Tower with a single white rose on New Year’s Eve as snow softly falls and someone plays “La Vie En Rose” on an accordion in the background.

Yeah. Growing up, I liked Steven King.

This charming, gorgeous stranger coming out of the scent of my Brazilian Angel’s home, through not fault of his own, was not winning over this version of Alley Sheedy from the “Breakfast Club.” I am nothing if not territorial about the things my friends cherish and the childish reflex to be defensive about the home she spent two years working so hard on and being so proud of was now being inhabited by the kind of dashing man they write teen romances about. Reflexively, I was back in high school watching the popular kids hover near my gay best friend’s locker. It just rubbed me the wrong way.

But, I’m an adult and I recognize that I should just keep my mouth shut about all my crazy and my prejudice. So, he made pleasant conversation (read: did not talk AT me) with me while we headed to the alley, where, I was certain, he’d do his best to hide his revulsion.

“Thank god! Life!” was the boy’s first response when he saw the alley. “Thank you so much.” He really lit up as he turned, grateful, to me. “I was worried I’d never see this kind of life again. I didn’t know where to find it here and now to know it’s right next to my home is great. Is it always like this?”

I nodded, a bit off kilter that he not only wasn’t uneasy but actually quite comfortable. “Maybe it’s not his fault he’s so well pulled together.” As we passed by the bordellos, I informed him that’s what they were.

“Really? Out in the open like that around here?” He asked, truly surprised but not scandalized (god love the French).

“Yeah and they call them ‘pink houses’,” I explained in French so that anyone passing by with a modicum of English wouldn’t know what we were saying.

“Really? Not red?” He asked.

“Nope. Pink. Look at the light.” I explained as the pink lights inside are from where they get their name.

While we continued through the alley, he told me all about his travels and the things he loves about China. Frankly, he was charming and my cold, cold heart was beginning to warm towards the boy.

Over dinner, we talked about everything; art, life, travel, passions, politics and, of course, movies. He told me he had given away his whole stash of films when he moved from Changzhou (a city peripheral to Shanghai) so he had nothing to watch. I offered him some of mine.

So, we headed back to my apartment to peruse my films. He got excited over all my favorite comedies and then he came upon “The Simpsons” movie. I have been unable to watch the film as my computer and the DVD are fighting so I had put it away and forgotten about it in the crush of things to get done in my everyday life.

“Isn’t this great” he exclaimed like a kid on Christmas morning.

“I actually haven’t been able to see it yet.”

“You were giving me shit about not seeing the South Park movie and you haven’t seen the Simpsons movie?” It’s true. I had given him a lot of shit about not having seen the South Park movie.

“It skips a lot,” I tried to justify my crimes as he shot me a look letting me know just how weak we both found my excuses. “Look, the Simpsons came out this year. South Park has been out since before you were born!” I teased him about our running joke that at a whole four and a half years younger than me, he is infantile while I am roughly his mother’s age.

He smiled in his concession to my (lame) argument. “Well, you have to see it.” He then pointed to the pig that Homer is holding on the cover of the DVD, “’Spiderpig’ that’s all I’ll tell you but just remember ‘Spiderpig’.” In his barely containable glee, he then proceeded to softly sing to himself, what I can only assume is, the “Spiderpig” song. Frankly, it was just silly and, truly, there is nothing more appealing to me than an elegant person with a lot of silly.

It was in those dulcet tones of the softly murmured “Spiderpig” I realized we really were going to be friends.

The future of our friendship firmly rooted, he left, DVDs in hand.

Since then, we’ve spent all of his free time hanging out. The next night, I went to get him for dinner and as we were leaving his apartment, he explained that he had see the South Park movie but he had seen it in French. He then proceeded to sing the “Uncle Fucker” song. In French.

As he was happily reciting a few lines of the “Putain Oncle” song, I was struck by the notion that I was relieved he has a girlfriend. He is lovely and so easy to be with that, were he free, I would have absolutely no restraint. Emotionally and mentally, he is on par with me but nevertheless, he is still physically 25 and being physically 25 comes with hormonal baggage that just doesn’t let up until closer to 30. Refreshingly, he is very open about his struggles being 25 and in a monogamous, long distance relationship. Nevertheless, that does not change the fact that he is in a relationship.

On Sunday, we went shopping at Metro (a German membership, ubermarket chain that is a gourmet version of Costco/Sam’s Club; I have my Brazilian Angel’s card and he has le Francais’) to get him supplies for living in his new apartment. While Metro is very European, it is also in the middle of China and consequently there are a lot of things to the modern Chinese taste.

To understand the modern Chinese taste, one must imagine lace with glitter, plastic flowers, rhinestones and metallic thread. It can be overwhelming for people accustomed to the minimalism of modern architecture, the i-world (macs, pods, phones etc) and real nature (read: not the concrete amusement parks that pass as “nature” in China). The Boy and I have similar ideals in aesthetic and I assure you they are decidedly NOT Chinese; clean lines, simplicity, intentional usage of color, etc. We are both in agreement that adornment should be a bit subtler than what is currently in fashion in China. Frankly, China is in a baroque period and we’re a bit more post-modern.

Which, of course, led to me suggesting that he get every terrifyingly ornate, frilly, god awful tchotchky we passed. He, not being one to be out done, proceeded to get the iron that he needed. He glanced at all of the irons on display and saw the hot pink one.

“Where’s the hot pink one?” He asked himself.

“Seriously?” I said, highly amused.

He shrugged, smiled and said, “Sure, why not?”

I smiled broadly at his silliness.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just that I love that.” Which I do.

And, a bit later we were discussing something and I simply jumped in with my opinion, as I am apt to do when I am comfortable enough that I forget myself. The Boy promptly teased me for being so opinionated.

“Oh, sorry. I do that.” I said, highly apologetic because there’s nothing like China to make a single gal self-conscious about letting her strong opinions fly. “Seriously, tell me to fuck off it gets annoying. I know I can be overbearing. It’s fine. I don’t mind ‘fuck off.’ Silent resentment makes me nuts.”

He smiled and shook his head. “No. It’s fine. You’re a strong woman. You’re in control. I like that. My sisters are like that.”

And I took one of my rare, deep sighs. I have a few close friends here and they all appreciate my strength. However, most days my strength is either mocked, ignored or generally disrespected. In short, I am semi-neutered for it. To be with a man who actively seeks to spend all his free time with me and that he really likes the fact that I am opinionated is such a blessing. That he can handle it and give it right back to me is incredibly steadying. That he has a girlfriend rescues me from making a huge error in timing. However, after losing my Brazilian Angel to the ether that is life, it’s just really nice to have a friend to play with all the time again.

The comfort of home hit me with him Wednesday night. We weren’t supposed to meet as it was my Chinese Angel’s birthday. However, she decided she only wanted to go to lunch and so I was left with a free evening. I informed The Boy that if he was willing to hang out with the least popular girl in Xi’An, we would do anything he wanted. So, we ended up making plans to go to the pool hall.

Somehow, in my jackass-itude, I managed to get my first ever Xi’An splinter. Of course it would be in my left thumb as I am a girl with absolutely no right-handed, fine motor skills. It was huge and I managed to get most of it out but there was still a little left. When he got home from work, The Boy told me to come over and he’d get the rest of it out.

And perhaps it’s the fact that we’ve got an unspoken rule about “appropriate” proximity, to say nothing of the straight out ban on touching but there was something so comforting about being taken care of like that. The relationship I have with my father is, at best, nonexistent and the relationship I have with my older brother is, at best, strained. You can be assured that I don’t really have a forte for letting men take care of me. It’s not that I think all men are evil or not trustworthy or whatever. It’s just that I’m really, truly bad at it. (I am, in fact, quite jealous of these women who effortlessly go to pieces and know exactly how to orchestrate all the men around them to care for them. I could simply never do that because I lack that talent.) However, because The Boy is quite a lot like my eldest younger brother and also an older brother himself, he managed to relax me and manage my dependence on him without the usual escalation of masculine opportunism.

So there we were, in the silence of his concentration as he tried to find the very small sliver left in my thumb. Sitting there on his couch with the scatterbrained boy so oblivious to the minutia of life that he puts salt in the fridge if he’s talking while sorting groceries, it was heartening that he thought to sterilize the needle without my reminding him. There is simply something unspeakably appealing about watching grown men do something well.

Before each time he tried to pry the near-invisible splinter from my thumb, he apologized and made sure I would be okay. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my tweezers and so he had to open my thumb up a bit but he managed to wrestle it from me. At last, victorious, he got the final bit out, I resisted the urge to snuggle into his shoulder and then we were off to pool.

During the game, we had yet another surprisingly open conversation. It never ceases to amaze me just how comfortable he is talking with me. Normally, I would just presume that he speaks to everyone this frankly or that I’m doing something to pry it from him but that’s just not the case. He’s far more interesting and profound than I would have ever given him credit for or than I would have ever been interested in prying from him. And, while he’s extremely pleasant and nice with all my friends, he certainly hasn’t been as forthcoming with them as he has been with me.

After pool, we engaged in our nightly habit; he made me dinner, we watched Scrubs, I did the dishes and then around one, I headed home. It’s the simplicity and the ease of atmosphere that he creates that I like most of all. Ironically, in a place where I am allowed to be strong and defend myself, I find myself infinitely comfortable with being as I am; equal parts strong and vulnerable. From the man I would have least expected, I am pressured to be nothing except myself and in return he is interesting, surprising and, best of all, silly. I’d forgotten how much daily exposure to honest-to-god friendships means to me.

2008-01-04T00:32:00.000-08:00

THAT NEW BOX SMELL

It will come as a surprise to precisely no one that I am hard up. I’m in the land of perennial children with nary an available adult in sight. Which is fine, sort of. I bitch and moan about it every chance I get, I force myself to believe that someday I might actually be able to couple with someone long-term, believe (with waning ferocity) that I might actually one day make up for the lost lovin’ time and I do my best to ignore my incredibly oversexed (with multiple, extramarital partners, no less) colleagues and get on with my day. Chinese, foreign, American makes no difference; when I’m surrounded by women exasperated with having to have sex with their (multiple) sugar daddies (read: not their husband) every time they are given something, it makes me want scream. Sex is great. Sugar daddies are great. If they’re not fabulous across the board, you’re doing something wrong!

So, not listening in on those bitchfests are generally in my sanity’s best interest.

However, today the two married women in my office were busy waxing poetic about the greatness of being married (they are both married for less than a few months, so they are both clearly aware of the depth and breadth of all that lifetime commitment has to bring) and when people get on their high horse, it’s impossible to get them down (as is often witnessed by bystanders in my everyday life).

Granted, the irony to me is that while they love being married, they actually loathe the “marital relations” piece. To be honest, it’s more or less what most of my married foreign friends say, only they’ve been married for several years. Which brings me to wonder; why is everyone having all this sex if it’s so bad? And, better yet, why am I having none and I like it so much?

There they were, talking about how it’s great to not only have no one to tell them what to do at home but they can also boss their husbands around. From the sound of it, their husbands are just whipped and incapable of doing anything at home short of what my girls command.
They love this. They want nothing more than a man who says nothing at home and does everything in public. Personally, I’d kill him in under ten minutes of marriage, but whatever. It’s their fantasy come true. The only drawback they say is that you have to have sex with him regularly if you want to keep him doing things for you.

Huh?

At this point, you can be assured that the computer chip in my brain seized and promptly fried. There was a small puff of smoke released from my eyelids and my hearing went dead.
I can only imagine the man I will end up married to and, well, I’m pretty sure I’ll never actually say the words “must have sex” within the context of an outside power forcing me to have sex with the man good enough to partner with for life during the first few moments of our solidified time together. I’m quite certain I will utter the phrase “must have sex” directly proceeded by the phrase “or will go insane and kill people.”

And while the women are discussing the horrors of marital relations, I started thinking about all the small children I know. They rarely like what they get in a box but they love the box itself. They love the packaging the product comes in but don’t really care either way about the product. It’s like someone gave all these women brand new macBooks but all they care about is the cardboard around the blessed thing.

Such a waste.

2007-12-28T21:24:00.001-08:00

FAMILY

That family of which I was speaking earlier has reared it’s (not-so) ugly head. It’s just heat breaking.

One of my girls here has had her heartbroken. The man she has loved since before she understood love has left her entirely. His parents have deemed her “too poor” to marry, despite the fact that they come from the same town and have less money than her family. They told her they would reconsider after she wrote his father a letter explaining that her drive would change her familial destiny of “poverty” and that she would be a success.

And it’s true. She’s worked her whole life and she’s dragged herself up to make it in the “Big City” of Xi’An. In a world that values women who strive to be Paris Hilton, she’s gotten herself from “farm girl” (the Chinese equivalent of the Indian “untouchables”) to “Xi’An English Teacher” (the most respected type in a highly respected profession). She works twelve hours a day, seven days a week and rests only during a few days every New Year. She is an amazing woman and has accomplished so much in her life. I can only imagine how much she has left to accomplish. Were I in a position to bring anyone to America, I would choose her as she has never depended on the gifts of others to accomplish.

Nevertheless, the patriarchy that views woman as mere receptacles for the abuse of men has deemed her unworthy of the love of her life. And the love of her life, being a coward and a repugnant human being, has kowtowed to wishes of his parents. I find it morally repugnant the way that the Chinese lack the will to ever stand up to their family. It’s not that I necessarily advocate the American style of always standing up to your family for everyone but in this situation, he truly needs to grow a set and be a man.

Actually, in the long run, he needs to do nothing. If he is, as I originally estimated him to be, then he needs to wallow in his cowardice and reap what his cowardice sows. I find comfort in the idea that anyone who could do that to my girl will always live knowing he had perfection and because of his cowardice, he let it slip away. For that reason alone, I wish him an eternity of crystalline, lucid thought. May he never know a moment’s senility and on his deathbed may the memory of having been loved so completely and allowing his castrati-like behavior to turn it away be as fresh as it is now.

2007-12-28T21:23:00.000-08:00

IN WHICH I BECOME A WHORE

I’ve been, done and see a lot of things in my almost-thirty years on this planet. The one thing I’ve never been is a whore; in the bad sense of the word. The fact is that while I’ve compromised, been promiscuous and been disingenuous, I’ve never felt like I’ve sold anything essential to my core being.

Now I can check that off my list of “never”s.

For Christmas, the school decides to break my contract and make me work the day. However, the night before they take me out to dinner for what they deem to be appropriate fun. In other words, this means a banquet dinner followed by KTV (Karaoke TeleVision… yeah, I know). Last year we had the banquet but were too far from KTV to go to KTV. This year, however, they chose a restaurant I know well (in fact, my Brazilian Angel and the Jude hosted my birthday dinner there) and it happens to be right next to a KTV.

I find Chinese banquets remarkably unsatisfying as basically all your food is on a Lazy Susan in front of you and you have to pick at your food while you make small talk. Usually, by the time you’ve sampled everything and find something that you like, it’s eaten, cold and certainly not swinging back your way anytime soon. Also, most of the dishes are meat laden as banquets are the time to break the bank but frankly, I don’t like Chinese meats and my stomach has adjusted to a more or less lacto-ovo (eating milk and eggs) vegetarian diet. So, I get very full very fast but you’re supposed to just keep eating and eating. Physically, it’s just unpleasant.

I guess I’d like the set up better if I could understand the conversation but being a guest of honor in a situation where I can’t understand the “praise” being heaped on me is a bit disconcerting as there’s a TON of toasting (read: lots of drinking and very little eating) and I’m supposed to look grateful and appreciative as the each person sitting at the table stands and gives me a long-winded speech.

Which brings me to my whoredom.

Last year, I could get away with being overwhelmed but not this year. I knew I had to toast. So, as the last of the people finished their toast to me (15 people in total; imagine 15 shots of hard liquor on a relatively empty stomach) I knew I had to say something and it had to be good.

I had been sorting out what to say most of the day and some of that evening. I kept circling around the idea of “family” as, for them, it’s the most important thing… to the razing of self. With the help of my former boss I gave my toast to the table.

“I just want to thank you for your generosity and being my family away from my family.”
And, as the toast was translated, I was greatly cheered and applauded. And, it true form, I found cheeks flushing and myself unable to look anyone in the eye.

They would have seen my reaction as my “innate” shyness. I’m by no means a shy woman but they have all decided that’s what I am. My reaction, however, was one of shame.

I realized that I just sold out the most important thing to me; my family. My family is not a conventional one, nor is it all blood, nor is all blood included in it. It is, however, distinctly and very separately mine. It is the one thing, the one place on this planet where I am seen, for better or worse, as what I am. My family is strewn about the globe and they don’t all know each other but I love all of them desperately and would do anything for them.

The more I think about having offered up, as a point of business, something as precious as a position within my family disturbs me and I am, fundamentally bothered by what I did. However, I see no way to right it. I don’t know what to do about it. It is the Chinese way- to blend so permanently business and family to the inability of extraction- and it seemed to be the most appropriate concession to make. Instead, I found myself a million miles from home telling my John on Christmas Eve (to me, one of two days of family) that I did in fact love him and it wasn’t about the money. Being a person who values her passion and earnestness above all other traits it greatly upsets me that I so easily and casually forfeit all that I value for very little discernable reason. Hopefully this “feeling like a whore” thing will fade soon. I’ve certainly learned my lesson.

2007-12-28T21:22:00.000-08:00

JEALOUSY

Jealousy comes in all forms and I am suffering from one but not the one everyone expects of me.

Everyone I am surrounded by is stuck in a (relatively) miserable relationship. No joke. And this is not sour grapes. In all honesty, I love to see healthy, happy, contented, long-lasting relationships because they give me hope and strength for the long haul of the brutality that is being "pushing 30 and still single" for a woman. However, I can name all those relationships that I know of on my left hand.

Out of the blue, my Italian friend has ditched me. I had no idea why and he had bailed on me for numerous plans for coffee. Now, I wasn't hurt by his discarding of me so much as irritated. Any man who spends the vast majority of our time together asking me to agree just how beautiful and perfect his rather boring, tedious, self-centered and obnoxious ex-girlfriend is certainly is not bound to grab my lust, much less my heart. Nevertheless, it was nice to have some male company and not feel pressured to go anywhere with it. However, as I discovered yesterday when my French friend and his obnoxious wife showed up at my house (I'm dog sitting), it turns out Italy has a new Chinese girlfriend. It also turns out she's less than thrilled with him but she's essentially sleeping her way to the top and he's more or less interested in proving to his ex that he too can fuck someone after their relationship.

It's not that I begrudge them their dysfunction- lord knows we all need some in our lives- but what I do begrudge them is their condescension. My French friend and his obnoxious wife invited me out as a "Thank you" for dog-sitting for the next two weeks and they invited Italy because he's my +1 in such settings. However, they invited him out and only just discovered that he has a new girlfriend. So, when the new couple wasn't making out at dinner (dear god that always makes me uncomfortable; I just don't need to know some things about my friends libidos) Italy was shooting me apologetic looks as if he knew that I loved him and this was breaking my heart.

Which, in turn, made me want to punch him in the face.

Frankly, it's fine. I'm not jealous that he has someone because I want him. I'm jealous that he has someone because I want someone. Desperately. Frankly, the only thing I want more than a lover is not to be with the wrong person. Nevertheless, I'm unclear exactly when I was supposed to have fallen in love as he never listened to me, only talked about his ex and treated me like one of the guys with no regard for either my ego or my femininity. I'm not particularly insulted by any of his behavior as I was merely looking for company but I am infuriated that this would make me the subject of condescension. Whenever he would shoot me one of those groveling looks of "Can we still be friends" I wanted to put my fist through the back of his head. Really, where do men get their egos?

Also, where do men get their taste in women? I don't get it. Men I find to be perfectly reasonable human beings are married to the most obnoxious and inane women simply because they think the women are beautiful. I can understand an affair based solely on the physical but a marriage? What is that?

I don't know. I'm just having a bad day compounded by a dinner that was supposed to be a "thank you" that somehow morphed into a "poor you." So, please forgive the irritation. I'm sure it will wane soon.

2007-12-28T21:21:00.001-08:00

WHEN DID LIFE GET THIS HARD?

Answer: About the fifth grade. And “hi” by the way.

The following conversation was held by me with my first love over IM. I- as I am apt to do when in a funk- opened with the rather direct “when did life get this hard.” His response more or less sums up every reason I ever loved him and why I still have faith in menfolk. The usual response to a question like “When did life get this hard” is some sort of pity-fest. I kvetch about the problem, my friend consoles me, we work on a solution and the conversation comes to conclusion.

Not my boy.

He knows there is no real solution short of allowing me to run my moods. He also knows there is great validity and universality to my quandary. And best of all, he knows how to admit he’s listening, thinking and unable to answer the larger issue but he does it with humorous truth. I think I have no dearer friend than he. Our time has passed and there are a great many things about my life he will never overtly know because, considering our history, I simply cannot speak to him about them but there is something so distinctly precious to me about what is left between us.

I’m in a funk because I’ve got what I want romantically on paper but not in life. What I want in life is not to be mine, my girl is leaving and I’m in domestic limbo with my home. And last night, I slowly came to realize that all my friends will do everything in their power to make the paper-perfect man my lover because they like him and they like me and so the two of us as a couple would be perfect for them.

The paper-perfect man is a lovely gentleman who would care for me and do anything for me until the end of time. He has the means and the will to provide me any lifestyle I would like to grow accustomed to. He is European, elegant and smitten with me. He is kind, smart and self-effacing. He sees me and he is simultaneously elated and at ease. He is does and says things with great regularity with the express purpose of making me feel good about myself. There is nothing creepy or unsettling about him. He is truly, genuinely lovely.

However, there is no spark for me. And somehow, I understand implicitly that he would always be little more than my slave because of that. I have absolutely no desire for that. I crave an equal and it gets damned lonely without one but even lonelier with a servant. The notion of having to hurt this man is truly unappealing. However, my friends are going to make it damned hard to extract myself from the situation because they’ve all clearly decided we’re to be together.

This certainly is not one of life’s great horrors but it has left me notably blue and feeling markedly guilty. The guilt is only compounded by the fact that while I should have been fully present with the paper-perfect man, I kept drifting to the man who truly has my attention; a man I may never see again and a man with whom I could never be the platonic friend his girlfriend would demand. An artist friend of mine, J, to whom I have confessed my smitten state said, “I thought so.” Of course, hearing from him that he could tell there was something between us only deepens the guilt as it strengthens the attraction by confirming its less-than ephemeral existence.

However, I am resigned to this state so well captured by Cesaria Evora’s “Besame Mucho” because of the dinner I had on Sunday night. I had dinner with my French friend married to the Chinese woman alone in their home. She made the decision she wanted to go out and tango dance with a single man friend of theirs and so I was invited to their home for dinner to keep my French friend company. In short, they’re both still dating, despite the fact that they’ve just married. That may work for them but it wouldn’t work for me and if I were to take up with the paper-perfect man, it would be the only way our relationship would survive.
So, instead, I have Cesaria on repeat and take comfort in the greatness I once had and may have again.

2007-12-28T21:18:00.000-08:00

RED’S REALLY NOT MY COLOR

For Thanksgiving, I spent the evening with three of my favorite people in Xi’An; my newly discovered French Canadian girlfriend, my Italian friend and my fellow American, J. We went to the Thanksgiving dinner served here at the Sheraton and had quite a good time. We talked about music and art and life and work. My Italian friend tied a few more than expected on and ended up kvetching about his ex-girlfriend a little more than he should have.

Then Friday night, KLM sponsored a free dinner at the Hyatt in Xi’An to celebrate 35 years of serving the European and Chinese community for the West Egg crowd and I got invited. My Italian and Canadian friends were both going away on Saturday, so they decided not to come but J and I decided to make an evening of it.

J, of course, was lovely and quite honestly, my favorite +1 ever. I had such a great time and being that our relationship is solidly platonic, it such a relief to be around an equal without having to worry about cultural landmines. Sitting with us were my favorite couple who hail from Bristol (he is wonderful and she is everything I hope to be) and Mr. Bristol paid me the best compliment I have received in a very long time; “You and [Mrs. Bristol] are the very same kind of woman.” You see, Mrs. Bristol is singularly minded, got married in her mid-thirties, had children in her late thirties and is the only woman I know in Xi’An here on her own dime keeping her husband company because she’s earned a full retirement. She gives me hope and she’s just a wonderful person to boot.

After dinner, a Korean woman (who clearly began life as an anatomical man) insisted that Mr. and Mrs. Bristol, J and I join she and her husband at the bar on the ground floor.

Along for the ride was the most delicious looking man I have seen since I first laid eyes on the Turk. However, unlike the Turk, his energy was more simmering than explosive; the Turk burned hot and bright but this man is slow and steady in the way that made me recall a conversation I had with my Canadian girlfriend. We were both speaking about how neither of us can relax in situations where everyone else is relaxed; we need to be surrounded by people who are more capable than we are in order to relax. This new man has the energy of someone capable of being more capable than me. And, despite this delicious man’s English accent, there was something indefinably familiar about him. There was some underlying something that felt like common ground.

Nevertheless, I got rather wrecked by the fallout from the Turk, so despite my hormones, I made the decision to avoid the very thing I want because, well, the things that I want never turn out to be all that good for me. I took a seat across from my Korean girlfriend and Mrs. Bristol took the seat next to me. And, the Mr. Delicious took the seat next to Mrs. Bristol and proceeded to have an intense conversation about the NGO work that he does here in China that Mrs. Bristol is desperate to get involved with.

Every time I stole a glance at Mr. Delicious, he was looking at me and it was lovely. And, I would be lying if the fact that he could fill out his suit and has body hair wasn’t remarkably appealing. I’m so sick of hairless men swimming in cavernous, worn out suits tacky suits that are always inevitably feminizing. However, Mr. Delicious’ suit was clearly chosen with European taste.

After a brief conversation about his travels around the world and experiences in America’s “Heartland,” it was revealed that he was Jewish. And then I was able to place the familiarity. The two deepest loves I’ve ever had were with men who come from Jewish families and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. It’s something about the focus on life-long education for education’s sake and the quite, reasonable approach to everyday life. And, there’s something about the sense of humor. It just all comes together in a way that I understand and at last I finally understand when my secularly Jewish aunt told me that she didn’t care about marrying from a specific country but she only wanted to marry a fellow Jew. There really is something common and easy about the basics, despite the country of origin.

He then excused himself to go to the restroom.

“I quite like him.” I told Mrs. Bristol.

“He’s got a girlfriend from Australia.” She told me, god bless her.

“Oh well,” I shrugged, determined to push him from my mind, which proved rather easy as he then went into the snooker room and started play with the other men as Mrs. Bristol and I talked about her upcoming trip back home.

And then that fucking Titanic song. The bar band started playing that fucking Celine Dion Titanic song and that was where I drew my line.

“Let’s go into the snooker room. It’s much more quite in there and there’s a couch we can sit on.”

Mrs. Bristol consented immediately and we fled for our lives.

“Celine Dion finally did you in, eh?” Mr. Delicious teased, smiling as the door opened up.

“A girl’s got to have her limits,” I said.

And all I got in return was the sort of smile that makes your toes curl.

Mr. Delicious then left mid-snooker game and pulled a chair up to our couch under the pretext of talking to Mrs. Bristol but he proceeded to watch me for most of the conversation. There was something distinctly lovely in his observation of me. There was no tinge of desperation or escalation. He was simply trying to sort me out.

However, he’s got a girlfriend and I’m all sorts of gun-shy, so I certainly made no efforts to make things easy for him. Nevertheless, he was not to be deterred and he pushed through my inattention.

Finally, he managed to get a real conversation going and suddenly he broke left and the conversation went down the loveliest non sequitur road possible; his status as a “single” man.
“I have the worst problem in this country. I’m 25 and not married- single- and everyone here is asking ‘What are you doing with your life?!’. They all think it’s a waste.”

“Oh honey, I’m 29, female and single. They think it’s a medical emergency.” I held up my left hand with the jade ring on my middle finger. “Why do you think I wear this? Since I started wearing it, no one asks anymore.”

Clueless, he shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“Jade in China is the stone of marriage and any woman with a ring on her middle finger is engaged.”

“Oh, I had no idea.”

“Yeah, it’s the equivalent of wearing a big diamond on my ring finger in the West.”

We all continued to chat while he watched me some more. I always find being watched like that so amusing because, really, what you see is, more or less, what you get. There’s very little to sort out. It’s quite pathetic, actually but yes, I am that simple.

And when it finally came time to call it a night, he ducked out and while saying his goodbyes would shoot me looks whenever whomever he was talking to would look away. It was quite charming. However, he did not ask for my contact information, which I kind of liked. If he does have a girlfriend, I like that he’s not going mess around on her and if he doesn’t have a girlfriend, he’s not escalated anything. “Slow” is a nice thought.

While I was happily settling into the warm glow of a simmering man, trouble was brewing elsewhere over my friendship with my Italian friend. The fact is that, while my Italian friend is lovely, I simply don’t view him as an equal and therefore he will never be an acceptable candidate for lover. He’s too naïve and too gullible for me. I want to have children; I don’t want to date them. I adore him and I adore tending to his fragility because I need to get out my mothering impulses in ways other than sorting out the phrase, “Teacher, he hit me!” Designs on him, I certainly do not have.

However, my friend from France married to a Chinese woman has mistaken our companionship for dating. Apparently, his Chinese wife (a beautiful girl who makes me nuts and, unfortunately, is best friends with the putrid ex-girlfriend) was infuriated by the idea that my Italian friend might be getting on with his life and she insists that though the ex-girlfriend moved back to the US to move in with an old lover (and resume said love affair), the ex-girlfriend and my Italian friend are still exclusively dating. Which, apparently, led to her tearing into my character. Which, in turn, led to her husband (with whom I have a closer-than-should-be relationship) tearing into her for tearing into me.

“You should have heard him defend you,” my Brazilian Angel related to me after she explained the whole story. “It was really sweet of him. I tried to explain the situation so that she wouldn’t tell [the ex-girlfriend] but he thought she shouldn’t say anything bad about you to begin with.”

Which split me in two. I am touched that the people I value defend me even when I’m not around and- my god- to the exclusion of their spouses. However, the inevitable has finally begun to happen. I was always concerned about being the only single woman in the area as I would eventually get labeled the adulteress.

And here it comes.

Granted, I find irony in the fact that on the very night I met another man who- despite a possible girlfriend- I would absolutely say yes to anything asked of me, a single man whose bed I would truly choose second in a contest between he and my own brother is gaining me a very large, very scarlet “A.”

2007-12-28T21:17:00.001-08:00

WATER WATER EVERYWHERE

Everywhere I turn, there are gorgeous men and lots of whom want to sleep with me but none of whom are available. It’s killing me.

Last night, I went on my first pub-crawl since I came to China. I got super hammered and had a great time. All of the most gorgeous men I know in West Egg were all distinctly aware that their wives were away and that I am single. The night ended with me being propositioned for a threesome with the most beautiful Francophile couple. It was a difficult decision but ultimately, I decided that even though the Parisian is one of the most gorgeous men I’ve ever seen, I really don’t want to test drive him, being as he’s not for sale.

Then, this morning I was invited out to lunch with some of my Chinese friends. There was a PLA policeman at the lunch. Dear god he was delicious. He was super aggressive and an amazing dose of testosterone. He was, in fact, so single minded about getting my attention that our mutual friends apologized on his behalf. It was fantastic and very dangerous. The last thing I need is to hook up with an aggressive, PLA special policeman running high on testosterone but dear god, it’s hard to turn down a handsome, solidly built man’s man singularly focused on seducing me. There’s just something about a man with the right swagger. I seriously need to be manhandled.

2007-12-28T21:16:00.000-08:00

IT’S ABOUT DAMNED TIME

It’s fall in Xi’An and- by definition- fall in Xi’An is kind of lame. They literally shake the trees to preempt any leaf-color-change and then quickly sweep away and evidence that there ever were leaves to begin with. They fail to turn on the heat until November 15th despite the freezing weather. The “White” season moves in and the air fills with exhaust, desert dust, construction debris and general pollution so thick a white blanket of fog envelopes the city and you can barely see more than 50 feet ahead of you. The sum total of this is that everyone everywhere is constantly sick. I, for one, have at least three more bouts of bronchitis to look forward to once I’m done with this one.

Another angle on the whole “fall” aspect is that I’ve been rather blue. I have no steadily available man friends to flirt with (all my male friends are married to Chinese women and therefore unable, under threat of castration or worse, to flirt) and my Brazilian Angel is leaving me at the beginning of December.

However, a new male friend who has been threatening to take me out to dinner for ages finally did and it was lovely. There’s no great lighting; it’s just lovely. He called me Saturday night for dinner, we met up and ended up talking until one in the morning. He’s also invited me over for dinner tonight (Sunday) because he’s having a small party with some mutual friends and he wanted me to join them. One of the best parts about it is that there is no pressure. His girlfriend left him here a few months ago and he’s still getting over their breakup. He’s not made any moves to imply that he’s look for me to be a rebound. We can just, simply be around each other and be two adults as two westerners understand “adulthood.” I can dote on him and he spoils me. The conversation is interesting. He’s fun and I can just relax. And, even though he’s Italian (read: not from my culture) it’s so pressure-free and we’re both of such similar temperaments that I completely forget myself. I never thought I would so very much enjoy the relief of playing the role of a man’s +1/date but I have truly missed it.

I was just thinking on Thursday (while trying to extricate myself from a situation where a wealthy, older, powerful man was clearly making the move to turn me into his wife/mistress) how sick I am of being a female (not that I would want to be a man) because it seems to be this sentence to be placed on a pedestal and never be spoken to, merely spoken at. But my Italian friend not only talks to me, he curses (though at first he was very apologetic about saying “damn” until I clarified that I have a mouth like a sailor) and talks to me about all sorts of things with no strings attached. He himself has even declared just how tired he is of trying to talk to the women around here and there being no topic except answering questions about how rich he is and if he’s willing to marry “a Chinese.” We both want to be able to talk about the same things (passion, art, life, politics, relationships, philosophy, etc) with someone of the other gender and now we have it. What a relief!

It’s about damned time.

2007-12-28T21:14:00.000-08:00

CULTURE CLASH

It’s a difficult thing being a tomboy in China. First of all, I’m not at all what they recognize as female. However, they are willing to grant me leeway on my androgyny for the political advantages I would provide as a wife. Secondly, the rules between men and women are far too isolationist for my good.

My masseur is a lovely man who is hell bent on marrying me. I have time and time again turned him down. I have even told him in no uncertain terms that we will never be together. I have tried to switch to another masseur at the gym but he keeps switching me back. I would stop going all together but I have a highly painful pinched nerve in my neck that needs regular treatment. And, frankly, I’m tired of switching masseurs. I’ve switched several times before this masseur and it always ends up with the masseur asking me to marry him.

Nevertheless, I went to my massage session yesterday and this time he asked permission to kiss me. Yet again, I told him “no” and I even went on to explain that we want different things. He wants to me to be his knight in shining armor and rescue him from this life, marry him, protect him, support him, bear his children, and adore him. Forever. To be honest, I’m so sick of being the physical embodiment of “The American Dream.” It is a dream that is so over-hyped that it can only disappoint in the end.

Frankly, I have come to find the notion of marrying a Westerner less intimidating because my divorce of a Westerner, while devastating emotionally, isn’t devastating politically. Our union would be about us and it would remain together because of us, not because he needed it to work for his parents, society and country. I don’t know that I can live with someone who needs me because his society tells him he’s nothing if one of us leaves and not because the thought of a life without me is too much to bear. It’s too much of a burden to make the whole of China happy with the inner workings of my marriage when I’m not sure I even want to get married in the first place.

But I digress.

Nevertheless, I finally understand where the line that I’m crossing is (in the “I’m leading him on” sense) but I find myself, well, screwed because I’m just not constantly conscious of that line. As an American tomboy, I’m accustomed to speaking with my male friends about all sorts of things, including sex. I’m simply not self-conscious about my male friendships. My super feminine Chinese girlfriends, however, would never dream of having a social relationship with a man who wasn’t related to her (or about to be). And, while most of the time I can maintain those limits very well, when I’m on a massage table with the express purpose of relaxing, it’s a bit harder to remind myself to remain vigilant. When I relax, those filters simply come down.

And I don’t know what to do about that. Ultimately, it’s simply a place where the two cultures don’t mesh and it’s simply what is but I loathe coming out of the very relaxed state of having my pinched nerve released to overly polite sexual requests. (A man who literally asks my permission to make sexual advances nauseates me, as I am one for the slightly more confident/brutish type. I’m not in high school anymore. I’ll say “no” when I want him to stop.) It’s really getting on my nerves to come out of a state of high relaxation to revolting sexual advances.

And, I can’t complain because he’d get in some serious trouble.

It’s days like this when I wish I was just a super feminine girly girl.

2007-12-28T21:13:00.001-08:00

BLAH

So, I had an affair (by "affair" I mean romantic relationship with someone single, not married or even partnered up in any way) with someone and despite the lovely pillow talk, the light of day has withered and dried any promises and, in short, I have been discarded like rancid garbage. In the grand scheme of things, that's fine. Frankly, either he knew what he was leaving and, well, there's no point in flailing about screaming "you'll live to regret this" or he didn't know what he was leaving, in which case, well, there's no point in flailing about and screaming "you'll live to regret this." And, either way, I don't want to spend my time consumed with someone who would find it so easy to leave me.

Drama is always remarkably unsatisfying to me, in real life.

Nevertheless, I've been unceremoniously ditched and now I have to deal with the "mutual friends" issue. On principle, I refuse to speak to any of our mutual friends about what happened as he asked (while I was still in a giving mood) that I promise never to speak of what happened to anyone because (for extraneous reasons) he would have gotten in a lot of trouble for the timing of our affair. (Let's just say days of attonement are not usually best spent in the licivious arms of me if you want god to think you're truly repentant.) At the time, I gave my word because I would do anything to protect the people I care about. Now, I keep my word because my word is not worth sullying over someone who can discard me so easily.

However, our mutual friends adore him as a wonderful and fantastic boy. They cannot praise him highly enough. They insist upon knowing what has happened between us (as everyone knew we had a flirtation) and upon my supressing the urge to shriek at the top of my lungs "He used me and then threw me away" and toss dishes acros the room, found myself capable of smiling pleasantly and saying, "I think I'm just not for him."

What took the wind from me and has left me in a bit of a funk was the constant dismissal I have received as every woman who praises him so highly shrugs dismissively at my modest explanation responding with something like, "It's true, I think he likes girls who are, ah, DIFFERENT from you," in the most patronizing tone ever. Frankly, it feels like I'm the one they feel falls short; as if I were dating out of my league and they're not in the least bit surprised that he wouldn't want to be with me.

Never before has being an independent, strong, single woman felt like such a pity case. All these women are married and it's clear that their opinion of me is that I'm just not appropriate "wife" material. Being so effortlessly discarded is rough; finding out people you were close with aren't surprised as said disposal just stalls a girl out.

Thank god for my Brazilian Angel. She is the one confidant here who knows all about what happened and she has been kind enough to not say anything. As it was becoming clear that I had been disposed of and I told her how sad I was, she said to me, "Chris, don't think like that. He's the one who has to spend the rest of his life without you. He had you and walked away? Feel bad for him." And then, after the first such rough meeting with mutual friends and their declarations of how he likes "different" girls and resulted in me crouched into a ball, weeping openly in an elevator, she said, "I'm sorry, everyone says he's so wonderful but I hate him. He's a wonderful jerk. Fuck him. It makes me sick the way they talk about how wonderful he is. I've never met him but I hate him."

I'm still floored and breathless at having been treated like garbage once again but thank god for my girls.

2007-12-28T21:13:00.000-08:00

PRESTIDIGITATION

I had been depressed about the vanishing of the Turk (the Turk and I had a wonderful time and then something shifted in him the last time I saw him, he wouldn’t talk about it and I haven’t seen him again), the homesickness of coming back from Beijing (Beijing is just like home in that it is a huge, international city complete with too much shopping and people all over the world) and the suckitude of the returning home of the Jude (having mom around is nothing short of comforting and having her return to the other side of the planet, well, frankly, blows). So, I did the only thing I could; I fought the urge to never leave the house again, squeezed my ass into a nice outfit, resisted the urge to bend to the crappy weather and headed out to see my friends in the West Egg community. I did my best to turn off my brain and just let the auto pilot take me to the Oktoberfest that West Egg was having but it was, nevertheless, super hard. Had my Brazilian Angel not been around, I probably would not have made it to the party.

And, of course, I’m glad I did.

I got to see a close girlfriend from Bristol and her husband, drink lots of beer, eat lots of bratwurst, be horrified by the lederhosen-wearing four-piece band and flirt shamelessly. And most wonderfully, I got to flirt shamelessly with a fellow West Egger who is getting over being left by his girlfriend. There’s nothing quite like being distracted from depression by flirting with a gorgeous Italian with a passion for life and then watching him get on smashingly with my favorite English girlfriend. It was such a nice reminder of life as I recognize it.

And it was such a lovely moment.

2007-12-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

MYOPIA/UTOPIA

“If you love yourself, no one else will have to,” the Jude always said. And, by and large, I agree; unbridled narcissism tends not to breed what I recognize as “love.” However, the constant self-dismissal I was raised to cherish has become somewhat of an issue. Frankly, I’m just me and one of the many reasons I loathe discussing my past with strangers is because there is the inevitable moment when I run through my litany of experience when the person’s eyes get big and I cease being human and start being larger than life. I always feel like “I” must be such a let down. I don’t have any particularly fascinating stories to tell and I really, truly did Forrest-Gump my way through most of my life. I have been incredibly lucky to be given the gifts I was given and those gifts just seemed to compound themselves. To me, the true delineation between myself and “interesting” people is the day we September 11, 2001 disaster relief workers sat in a conference room and had a frank discussion about why we came to work every day. Clearly, it was not the paycheck, so our leaders wanted to understand what our motivations were so we sat around and discussed it.

“No one would come to this job out of pure virtue. No one would come back day after day simply to help people. We all get something out of this. There’s nothing wrong with feeling like you’re a better person than most for doing this work.”

I sat in that room full of bobbing heads and thought, “No, I really just want to help people because I know that no one else will do it. When people leave this job, no one comes to fill in for the missing.” My whole life, the most powerful poem I ever read goes through a long list of “They came for the Jews and I said nothing, They came for the gays and I said nothing. They came for the…” and so on and so forth. It ends with, “And then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak for me.” After two weeks in the recovery efforts, it was clear that they had come for some of us but most of the rest of us were not about to take a stand.

Frankly, the thought the job might make me “better than you” struck me as odd but I was fascinated to be surrounded by a room full of people all in agreement. The idea that you might want to be above humanity while toiling at its underbelly seems odd to me. That mixture of motivation is fascinating. Virtue born of vice; it’s truly complex and interesting. I’m just pretty nakedly obvious; I’ll carry the load that must be carried if no one else will do it because I’m part of a community and to be so is to have a responsibility to something larger than yourself. I am very cut and dry. I don’t know why that would be of even the slightest interest to anyone. I’m certainly not the thing of revelation or revolution. And I’m certainly not a person of weight.

However, it would appear that my self-dismissal needs to be reconsidered.

Recently, I was given a gift at extreme cost to a close friend and little cost to me. The friend merely asked that I never reveal it, and that I will not do. The act of faith, the leap, the trust that the gift took to give was beautiful and it has made my life a better place. And really, the gift while it had the nice element of feeling good about doing something for someone else, it really was about the act of make this sacrifice for me. It wasn’t done as a gesture of self-sacrifice for my happiness either. It was truly a gift.

For the first time in my life, it was a clean, loving, profound gesture from a friend whose singular motivation was my happiness.

And it has forced me to reevaluate my own sense of self-worth. If this friend, capable of this kind of gift, that kind of selflessness, has deemed me worthy of such a gesture, perhaps I should reconsider how I see myself. Not that I will ever (or would ever want to) be above humanity but that perhaps I should accept less toil. Perhaps I should draw the line sooner and show myself more respect.

I’ve always considered the notion of karma to be a valid one and perhaps it’s visibly manifesting itself. That gift was a bit of a watershed moment. I am surrounded by people I adore, love and like (all together) and I’m infringed upon by very little.

2007-09-14T03:52:00.000-07:00

OY VEY

One of the most common phrases in my lexicon is "Oy vey." It simply pops out whenever I'm rendered utterly reflexive by benign disappointment. It just happens. I grew up surrounded by Jewish people in my family and in New York City. It's safe to say that of the major religions, Judaism is the most pervasive in my life. And, while I am not Jewish (my mother is not of Jewish descent nor was I brought up in synagogue) religiously speaking, it is more than clear to me that I am Jewish culturally speaking. In fact, most of my Jewish family and friends have said that they have never thought of me as goyem but rather as one of the tribes... though my particular tribe may be the lesser-known (outside the Upper West) Zabaar's.

The friend of my Brazilian Angel's who I happen to want as my Mentor invited me out for lunch a few weeks ago. My Mentor, my Brazilian Angel and I all went out to lunch at one of the thousands of malls downtown.

We took our seats with my Brazilian Angel and Mentor facing me. Just as we were about to start eating, my Brazilian Angel looked up over my shoulder.

"Oooh, look at those American girls," my Brazilian Angel said in the tone of voice that teases the recipient about the fact that they look sexy.

My mentor looked up at the women behind my back and raised her eyebrows. "Oooh, yes. Look at those American girls!" She exclaimed.

I, being one to rile against presumptions that anyone is from any country given the state of history and how bloody it has been, was about to get all riled up and lecture my two friends on how "It's not nice to presume someone is from somewhere! What if they're Canadian? They wouldn't appreciate your assumptions very much." To make my case, I turned around to take in what I knew would be a myriad of visual cues that might imply another country.

At which point I saw precisely WHY my girlfriends thought the girls were American. They had "Paris Hilton" scrawled all over them.

Defeated, I turned around and said, "Oy vey." I didn't think about it. I just said it.

"What did you say?" My mentor asked.

"What," I said, not realizing I had spoken outside of my disappointed sigh.

"Did you say 'Oy vey'?" She asked, determined.

I paused and replayed the moment in my head. "Yes. Yes, I did."

"Why did you say 'oy vey'?"

"Because those girls are SO American. I mean..." I spoke and was cut off.

"How do you know 'oy vey'?"

"I'm from New York. My mother's first husband and their son, my older brother, are Polish/Israeli Jews. My brother's grandma was in New York when I was growing up so I think of her as my grandma too. Not to mention, that whole extended family was there too. I never went to synagogue but all the holidays we celebrated with my grandma."

"So, you are Jewish."

"My mom's not. So, no. I'm kind of a proud shiksa."

"But your grandmother is Jewish. You practice the customs, so you are Jewish." My mentor said in the inclusive, familial way that my Jewish family has always embraced my mother, my brother and me despite what should be outsider status.

Shyly, I smiled. It is how I see myself- a secular Jew or "Jew-ish" as many of my friends say- and it was really nice to have someone else who understands the rules see me like that too. "Yeah, that's true."

And then we had the inevitable Shoah discussion.

After that, my Mentor apologized to me about not having included me in the past year's worth of Jewish celebrations and she promised that I would be invited to anything happening during Rosh Hashanah.

Reflexively, I was about to demure when I thought how nice it would be to have those customs back in my life. I had figured all references to religion, no matter how secular, were simply to be checked at the door in China. Now, I not only had the chance to re-embrace the cycles I grew up with but I would be re-embracing them with nomadic, secular, Polish/Israeli Jews; my kind of Jews. What can I say? It's family to me. "Okay, that would be really great. I would really like that." I said and smiled, really, truly happy.

We talked a little more about family and history and then my Mentor laughed.

"What?" I asked.

"All because of 'oy vey'!"

I smiled too. I used to get teased that it made me sound like an old rabbi when I said "oy vey" but it's always just felt natural. It has always served me in good stead and now it has even served as some sort of secret handshake.

Having discovered a Jewish circle in China felt really good and I have since been making friends within that circle that has been marked by one distinctive trait; we are all very similar. It's amazing to have so much in common with foreigners. I've been out to lunch with several of the Israelis and we've all just clicked. I never knew how much of my temperament I owed to New York, my extended family and the Torah in general but my god, it's a lot.

The day before the sunset marking the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, I texted my Mentor to wish her a happy New Year. She called me right back and invited me to dinner to celebrate. I immediately accepted, finished work, hopped in a cab and did my best to find the restaurant.

My cab driver didn't really know the area so he dropped me off on the right street but with a street with several different restaurants on it. I had the exact address but there were no numbers on the buildings and no one around (it was a busy street) knew the numbers to the buildings either. Unfortunately, my instructions were in pinyin, not characters, which narrowed down my search to three different restaurants on the street.

I ended up walking back and forth on the street once and then I called my Mentor. We tried to sort out where I was and finally we got me found. I went into the restaurant and up to the room where we were to be seated.

Upon entering the first room that had been reserved, I was met with a flood of gorgeous twenty-something men who were all Western of varying countries but all of whom were "single." I was introduced as "the girl from America I have told all of you about" by my Mentor. It was really lovely and I was in heaven surrounded by all those single men curious about me.

And then, about thirty seconds after I was introduced to one man from Turkey, he looked at me and said, "I saw you outside, on the street" with mild surprised.

I took one look at him and all I could think was "I fucking hate meeting single men so far out of my league." My mouth, however, said, "Yes. I was lost. I wasn't sure which restaurant and I couldn't find my way."

He looked at me in that way that made me realize he wasn't really talking about the logistics of my finding the restaurant, more that I had struck him. "Yes, you were outside," he said again, more to himself than me.

Tearing myself away from a man I'd never have a chance with, I turned to meet the other unbelievably gorgeous men. We all greeted each other warmly and I settled into the comfort of common social rules.

It was just about then that the man from Turkey's large, warm eyes and steady gaze struck me. He had not stopped watching me since we shook hands. He was watching me to take me in, not simply to see me. "Shit. It's that gaze again," I thought and knew immediately that I was in trouble.

I flushed and looked away. I'm not very adept at handling these sorts of things at first blush so I just sort of avoid them. Usually, my nerves assure that he will quickly lose interest.

Not so much this time.

Our party, having grown too large to be accommodated by the original room was switched to another room. I made the conscious effort to speak to the people other than the man from Turkey because all I wanted to do was talk to the man from Turkey. I always figure my desire will be more than self-evident and that I should make every effort to counteract my selfish drives. I'm also terrified of being labeled "that girl" you invite to parties and always spends her time hooking up with some dude instead of being social and entertaining. My social life is so fragile and new and this social circle is so precious to me that I don't want to ruin it by turning myself into some brazen hussy on the first major get together with everyone. However, it would appear that you can't fight your own nature.

When we got to the new room, the Turk immediately gestured for me to sit by him and I did, out of pure reflex. We sat down and started talking. He informed me he was starving as he was in the middle of a fasting.

"Really? How long?" I asked, as it seemed odd to me that a Jew would be fasting during Rosh Hashanah being that Rosh Hashanah is sort of like Mardi Gras before Yom Kippur and Yom Kippur being the time of fasting.

"29 days" he told me.

"29?!" I know some Jewish people fast for more than a single day but that, to my knowledge, is all around Yom Kippur, not Rosh Hashanah. "That positively Catholic," I declared, teasing him.

"Really? Are you Catholic?" He asked clearly ignorant of all things Catholic.

"No," I said, confused how a Westerner wouldn't get the overly-self-punishing Catholic reference.

"Are you Jewish?" He asked.

"Secularly." I said. "And you?" I asked, suspecting there might be more to this conversation that I originally thought.

"I am Muslim," he said smiling.

"You observe Ramadan?" I asked, inanely, trying to cover my surprise at having just met a Muslim at this Zionist feast. I can't help but have the somewhat inappropriate question, "Why is this boy different from all other boys?" pop into my head.

"Yes," he answered, smiling again at my curiosity.

I was stunned, nay FUCKING FLOORED, that he was there and that he was neither arrogant nor apologetic about his religion. Clearly an observant Muslim as he was refusing to eat meat or drink beer once the sun was down, I was left to wonder how on earth it was that he didn't find anything amiss in a sea of Israeli Rosh Hashanah.

"Yes," my Mentor said. "When is Ramadan this year?"

The Turk answered her as I drifted out of the conversation. Here I was, amongst the Chosen people and my company was a Muslim who actively chose to sit with those of us with intimate ties to Israel. He had said, "I am Muslim" like Allah and Yahweh are brothers whose kids love to hang out together. I glanced around the room, uncertain why he was completely unaffected by the room full of Israelis. Rationally, I know that the Qu'ran is quite supportive of the Chosen people; most commonly treating them like cousins. However, that is not quite how things have played out in the current political climate. And yet, this man was there, hugging and kissing and embracing like family, Israeli Jews. In fact, our Chai-wearing hostess was his adoptive mother, declaring, "he is my son" and the Muslim who lost his own mother at 13 gratefully accepted with a big hug. He even went so far as to explain "I can eat meat killed by Jewish people or by Muslims. Both are okay but if the animal is not treated the way the Jews and Muslims do, then I cannot eat it." His comfort with the fluidity of religion while remaining comfortably, clearly in his own just amazed me.

"I have so much left to learn." I thought.

As my Turk and my Mentor finished their conversation he turned back to me and smiled the sort of smile that makes a girl's toes curl. We went back to talking and joking with each other. He is quite the prankster and he told me about several of his hilarious pranks.

A few moments later, the waitress showed up to add one more seat to our circular table, placing the chair right between the two of us. Before she managed to get the chair in place, my Turk deftly took the chair from her and planted himself in it.

"May I ask for your phone number?" He then asked quietly, not five minutes into our sitting together.

"Sure" I smiled, probably a bit to eagerly but dear god, I'm only human.

As I dug into my bag to hand him my cell to have him call himself because I never remember my phone number, we started talking about the ways we learn. Quickly, I learned that he knows a multitude of languages and can learn a language quite fluently in a single year. He speaks Turkish, Arabic, Mandarin, English (all quite fluently) and starting next year he'll learn Russian. It's been a long time since I've met someone whose brain I just wanted to crawl into and poke around for a bit but every time he opened his mouth, that's all I wanted with increasing urgency.

Unable to think of anything but him, I made the conscious effort to occasionally engage the table in conversation. At one point, I had a cross-table conversation with one of the wives about my history. She asked the usual what-do-you-do-in-real-life questions and then she dropped a bit of a bomb.

"And how did you two meet?"

I paused for a moment. "Huh," I asked as she gestured to my Turk and I. It seemed an odd question to be aimed at Turk and I. After all, we had just met. I was quite certain she must have meant my Mentor who was sitting to my Turk's right while I was to his left.

"You two, how did you meet? I was wondering what the story behind you two meeting was." She made it very clear she meant Turk and I.

Surprised, I turned to Turk wide-eyed. I was pleased by the notion that people were certain we were a couple but also a bit nervous because as soon as I think things are going well, that is precisely when they fall apart.

He smiled broadly, not taking his eyes from me as he answered her, "Here. We just met tonight." Had he not been projecting his voice, I would have thought he was talking only to me.

It was just enough to pull me from my nervousness and regain my composure. "Yes, we've only just met." I said, smiling and returning to the lovely woman.

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you two came together."

Smiling I shook my head, "No."

"Oh." She said and then promptly turned to her husband to let us have more time together.

After that, the evening was a blur of intimate conversation and jokes with Turk. Every once and a while, I would turn back from an outside conversation to see him check me out. And I must say, there's nothing like a cute boy's attention to boost a girl's ego.

At some point he took of his jacket to reveal that not only is he smart, kind, handsome and funny but he has a body to end all bodies. It's not so much that he's very well muscled naturally (which is nice, I gotta admit, but it never last much beyond the momentary, "Dear god, look at that!") but that his bone structure is broader than mine. My hands disappear in his and his hands are stronger than mine. His shoulders are broader than mine and he's not appropriately sized by Chinese standards. Seeing the breadth of his shoulders was breathtaking and as he slid his jacket off, he spoke.

"I should be a gentleman and give you my jacket but I don't think you're cold."

I smiled and shook my head. "No, but thanks for the thought." Though, rest assured, had the room not been sweltering, I would have taken him up on it just to be wrapped in his dizzying scent.

After a year of being surrounded by beautiful works of art that I would worry about my capacity for hurting them if I ever really let go, here was a man built larger than I. There's nothing delicate about him. He's all sorts of rugged and for the first time in a very long time I felt distinctly, physically feminine even with my tomboyish tendencies. It was the first time in a long time that I didn't feel like I was looking at an equal but at someone who could keep me safe, even if he's five and a half years my junior.

What a lovely thing.

He made lots of self-deprecating jokes and lots of comments about how I "will see" about various aspects of his life. It was such a relief to once again be around a man taught to be aggressive. I'm so tired of the men here demurring at the slightest suggestion that I won't commit to marriage upon the first conversation. The women in China really need to be the aggressors, hacking themselves to bits in order to prove their willingness to marry even before the first conversation. I'm just not built for that. Hell, I'm not built to make the first phone call much less lay myself out to prove I'll do anything to marry him before I know his full name.

"Have you ever been married?" He asked quietly and awkwardly towards the end of the evening. I got the sense that he knew he might be crossing a line but his desire to know overcame his sense of propriety. It was, in fact, the first really intimate question he had asked me all night.

"No." I answered, laughing at the absurdity of me having done something so profoundly monumental as get married. I can't commit to a career; how on earth could I have committed to a man on such a grand scale? My relationships all nose-dive long before romantic whisperings of commitment have had a chance to take root. Frankly, I'm such a fucking mess and far too willful for my own good that it's not a surprise that I haven't gotten it together enough to be married/significantly coupled/whatever before 30.

I then thought how much I thought about myself in that answer. I have not reflected on my relationship state in public for quite some time. To be fair, it was the first time in a long time that question was about me. No one here wants to know about me; they want to about the opportunities I will provide them. It is literally the second question asked of me by everyone here. (The first being, "Where are you from?" People only get around to learning my name after extensive, intimate questioning aimed at me, followed by a solemn swear that I'll knock myself out to be friends.) That he waited until he had laid a fair amount of groundwork, waited until I was comfortable with our conversation and then even had the tact to be nervous about prying made the question feel far more intimate than it should have been.

Then he nodded, followed by the smallest, warmest smile for reasons I have no interest in guessing but I do know it made me glow.

At that point dinner had wrapped up and people were moving about to talk with each other and I had to use the restroom. I excused myself, found the restroom, splashed some cold water on my face, fixed my hair and tried to regain my senses. I did the usual stare-at-yourself-in-the-mirror-in-order-to-will-your-reason-back thing.

It didn't work as well as I had hoped but I figured it was time to get back to my seat before they sent a search party looking for me.

As I came back to my seat, Turk was surrounded by my Mentor and our Hostess. They were smiling broadly and patting his shoulder happily. I was curious to know the conversation so I checked in as soon as my Mentor and our Hostess saw me. I was, however, to Turk's back.

"eh... dui... wo gao xin" ["Well, yes... I'm happy"] He replied in Chinese as Chinese seems to be the most comfortable language for he and our Hostess to use.

As I sat down, I caught Turk's attention. "Hello," I said to break the sudden silence that fell over them.

"And look at you! Now you're blushing!" Our Hostess proclaimed in English as my Mentor pinched his cheek. Nervously, Turk nodded and for the first time he didn't look at me but focused on the table.

We all talked a bit more and then he leaned over to whisper into my ear, which, let's be honest, made me swoon. I was actually glad I was sitting. I have a thing, a big thing, about my neck. It just makes me stupid when the right man (hell, even a not-too-wrong-man) puts his lips anywhere near it. My head spun so much it took me a moment to realize the hand he was using to support himself on the back of the seat of my chair was definitely pressed against my rear.

Ah, demonstrative action, how I have missed you!

"Do you think it would be very rude of me to leave now?" He asked as were finishing the end of dinner conversation. "I have to get up at 3 for prayers and food and it's already 10 and I have class tomorrow."

"Don't be silly. Go! You have class and have to get up very early. Go." I insisted.

"Really?" He asked, unsure.

"Really! You need your rest, especially if you're fasting." I pushed, making him smile.

He took one final look at me and then turned to our Hostess whispering that he needed to leave.

She looked at him and stroked his face, "Yes my love. Go. You must get up early tomorrow." It was such a lovely gesture between the two of them. I really wanted to hug them both right then and there. Turk stood to leave and I stood to say goodbye.

As I'm American, everyone shakes my hand at first blush so Turk took my hand and shook it. He then shook his head to himself and leaned in to bisous me and was met with my eager reception.

And then he said a fond farewell to the table. After a brief explanation for his need to leave posthaste, that's exactly what he did.

I sat down again to lots of conversation with my friends as our Hostess's husband came over to me.

When our Host finally had a moment alone with me, he spoke. "Welcome to the Middle East," our Host said to me quietly, as he looked at me knowingly. For a moment, the notion struck serious fear into my heart.

Nothing scares me like the Middle East because I, and all of us, have so much to lose there and I have seen what the horrors of the Middle East have to offer the people I love. But then, I realized what was going on at dinner was precisely what needs to be going on; a laying aside of differences and a sharing of life. The Rosh Hashanah feast was dictated by Turk's Muslim dietary restrictions. Turk's first food after sundown was my apple dipped in honey with the wish for a happy, healthy New Year; the symbolic food of the Jewish New Year. That tolerance and blending is precisely what the Middle East needs to be. Granted, it's rosy and idealistic but the future needs to start somewhere.

"L'Shana tova" I said to him in Hebrew. It is the traditional blessing of the New Year. It is a hope that your name shall be written in the book of life, as is what happens to all people who lead a good and exemplary life. Having the Jewish and Muslim faith break bread during the mutual New Year certainly seems like a monumental step in that direction.

As my Mentor and I were leaving the restaurant with her arm around my waist and my arm around her shoulders, she laughed, "All this because of 'oy vey'."

I laughed too. "Yeah, who knew?"

"You should write the story of how this was all because of 'oy vey'."

And so I did.

2007-09-02T04:39:00.000-07:00

SCHOOL’S NOT SO OUT

Yesterday was the first day of school. This week, I’m going to work seven days straight and, to be totally honest, I’m perfectly fine with that. I mean, I’m not FINE with that but I’ve come to a grudging but peaceful resolution with my time here in China. I came home from work yesterday thinking about the fact that I did nothing but sob big, heaving sobs this time last year. I was so overwhelmed by the enormity of what I had done that I was completely wrecked.

However, this year, the worst that happened was that I was mildly annoyed at all the 35-year-old housewives who lectured me on the value of “young people working” when I told them why I couldn’t join in on their weekend plans. Women who’ve never known a day of work in their life feel that they can lecture me on the value of working hard at my young age. You know, because being thirty seconds older than me and never having had to do it themselves makes them infinitely wise in the area of work. Frankly, women who feel that having a child will “intrude” on their relationship rarely have little more than patience to teach me.

Desperate, foreign housewives aside, I’m quite content with my relationship with Xi'An. I came here in crisis over the politics of my homeland and I have come to see how truly not-bad things are at home. Yes, never before have we needed vaster improvements in our political shenanigans but the sentence “America is my home country” no longer strikes a disturbing array of “He’s my ex husband and she’s the mistress he left me for” emotions. In fact, I now occasionally introduce myself as “American” and not always “New Yorker.”

Last year, I was shrieking at the top of my lungs in each class, to no avail. This year, I merely need to look at my students and they quiet up. Last year I was trying to sort out how to get the airport every night; wondering what I could leave behind because I couldn’t manage getting all my stuff to the airport. This year, I’m trying to sort out how to fit Chinese and Gu Zheng (the 21-stringed Chinese lap harp/piano) lessons and their requisite studying into my gym routine. Last year I was afraid of most of the people I lived around; dreading their gossip and prying eyes. This year, they seem to be intimidated by me. Last year, I was quickly in love with China and her men. This year, I seem to have grown and affinity for French men. I’ve come to see just how well they do romance and how poorly they do reality here. This year, I’m relieved to be a foreigner. Yeah, this year will be infinitely easier.

2007-08-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

VANITY

I have been toying with the idea of chopping off my hair again. I miss the hair off my neck and the short hair that needs little more than a tuck behind my ears to be handled. I enjoy the romantic swirl of long hair but not the day-to-day reality and, ultimately, I am a girl built for comfort, not glamour. Not to mention, short hair just feels like me. Long hair has always felt too girly-girl for me and while I have grown to love being a woman, I'm not a frilly woman.

With this in the forefront of my mind, I went to the latest in a long string of salons to get my hair cut. After much arguing, I finally got the hair stylist to cut my hair like the photo I showed him. Apparently, no woman in her right mind would cut off all the hair I had. After all, I have the sacred, long, blond hair.

I, however, have never made claims to being in my "right mind."

And so, once again I returned to the land of short hair. By god, I missed it. It's long and tousled in the front and short and stacked in the back. Getting rid of my roots was another matter and I'll sum up the double bleaching, six-conditioner-free shampooings complete with the standard nail-scratching "relaxing" Chinese head massage and single dyeing incident by saying that the sores on my scalp are still weeping and clotting in my hair. Merely because my girls back home sent me a vat of cholesterol, I've managed not to lose my hair. It's safe to say that if my hair and scalp should survive this assault, I am rather happy with the results, despite the less-than-stellar shade of blond and lack of layers in my hair.

However, the fact of the matter is that in the back of my mind, I finally man-ed up and went to the hairdressers because I knew I'd be seeing that lovely French man with the lovely girlfriend at a wedding today and because Bill might be coming back to Xi'An at the start of September. Though I had signed off on him and am certainly not holding my breath, my Brazilian Angel is desperate to get Bill and I together. She thinks we'd be perfect and she really wants to make me happy. It is a kind gesture. She has even gone so far as to assure me that he was unable to see me because he did not stop in Xi'An this last time.

Nevertheless, I am amused by my own vanity. I cut my hair not because I wanted to look like "me" for me but because I wanted to look like me for the men I find infinitely attractive. Because I am not exempt from the human condition, I find myself reasoning to the edge, dallying about the edge ad nauseum and then flinging myself off the precipice without a second thought only at the (mere) mention of lust. I have admitted before to having an addict's problem with men and, frankly, it remains to this day.

Case in point: I spent the day watching the beautiful wedding of two of my closer friends in Xi'An and the highlight of the afternoon was the quiet joke shared between my French friend and myself. Such an addict I am.

When my French friend and his lovely girlfriend entered the banquet, she- being a truly lovely woman- waved emphatically to me and he nodded his casual nod towards me. There was no other indication of his recognition than the polite acknowledgment that I existed. I figured our delightful evening had just been one in a long string of lovely encounters for him and he would barely remember me.

After the banquet, I went over to their table under the guise of introducing some friends and much to my great pleasure, my French friend cracked a joke (aimed at no one but me) about something that happened the last time we met and then looked at me with those same eyes. I am such a sucker for that specific glance from a quiet, observant man.

And it got me thinking about the benchmark of that look; my first love. He and I had been talking online this morning before I had to head out to the wedding. He mentioned in passing how he's not happy with his body at the moment and so he doesn't really think about whether or not he's attractive because he's decided he's not. Upon reading that comment, I actually found myself laughing out loud. It is so odd, the things we pin our vanity to.

There are no words to encapsulate how utterly absurd the notion that he is not lust worthy is. Frankly, structurally speaking, my first love is a very handsome, masculine man. He is not some teenager tarted-up to sell magazines but rather a real man in the "Greek statue" sense of things. He is one of the easiest, most casually handsome things I have ever seen. In the era of pretty, effeminate, non-threatening boys selling whatever product with their lost little lamb qualities, my first love is a solid man. He is not pretty in any way. He is fully masculine in the traditional sense and every inch of him can only be described as handsome. His profile is striking, his eyes are penetrating and his eyes carry that incalculable quality of centered concentration that makes woman all atwitter. Most men watch a woman to see if she is entertained. Most men look (at me, at least) to gauge their own appropriateness in a situation, not to see her. She is little more than yet one more way to see themselves reflected back much like an assets statement or a flashy car.

However, in that gaze my first love articulated for me so many years ago lies the statement of patience and a level of commitment to stick through my nervous shyness and wait for me to gain my nerve so that I might bloom into all the colors I am fully capable of. It is a gaze to see me, not him. I can be a grand dame of epic proportions and often am in order to overcome my shyness but it's not who I am at home, much less in bed. It is that gaze that penetrates my peacock showiness and declares itself steady and curious enough to stick around and find out what I'm like at home. In that gaze, I feel comfortable enough to inhabit all my facets; grand dame to shy bookworm. It allows me to be seen as "versatile" and not "deceptive."

That gaze is my benchmark for all men. My first love spoiled me with it as a young woman and frankly, I look to be spoiled like that again. Money, things, stuff; I can get. I don't need someone to bring me things. I need someone to look at me like that. Given the diversity of my dating life, my friends are usually at a loss to explain what it is that my men have had in common but the fact is that it is that gaze that has been the common denominator. It is precisely that unwaivering ability to observe and remain focused that leaves a girl stripped and breathless. In that unwavering gaze, a girl realizes all the reason god made her a woman. A girl realizes her own perfect, specific beauty and the dust of insecurity is shaken off in the grip of that sort of gaze. To me, there is no lust without that gaze and without lust, you merely have friendship.

It is that gaze that I compare all others to. If a man cannot focus on me with that exquisite detail, I am utterly disinterested. It is tedious and boring to be with a man who cannot make you feel like the only thing to have ever existed, much less a man who would need the Cliff notes to my incongruous nature. It is the men who can look at a woman like that, focus on her and leave her utterly unhinged that make life interesting.

My French friend has the ability to look at me like that down pat and it's dangerous for me. First of all, I really like his girlfriend. She is a good woman and truly lovely. Secondly, I don't want to be a mistress. I'm no good at playing second fiddle. Frankly, I'm too spoiled to be very good at being first, much less second.

However, there is that gaze and I am a slave to it. In that incalculable, ephemeral state- that chemistry between two people- I am utterly lost. All he need to is ask and I am his for the taking. My safety lies not in my ability to reason but in his lack of articulated desire. Ration and reason strip themselves from me along with insecurity in that gaze. And, to be totally honest, since I've made the decision to join the nunnery, the long-term ramifications of my romantic life seem inconsequential so there is no longer a nagging voice in the back of my mind. I don't care about whether or not we'd have a future. I don't care how he'd fit into my life or how we'd "make things work." I just want to have time alone with him when it's convenient for me and then get on with my life.

And so I did the only reasonable thing in a no-win situation; I dug in deeper. I promptly gave them my contact information and said that we needed to hang out.

Ah, the vanity of my libido.

2007-08-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

INTIMACY

I must admit, I'm not nearly as prepared for intimacy as I'd like. Granted, I had forgotten just how pervasive the lack of intimacy is here but nevertheless I'm amazed at how much an intimate relationship can throw me for a loop. Keep in mind, as I discuss "intimate" it's not a euphemism for "sex" or even "romantic attachment" but rather that specific emotional connection you feel towards someone with whom you are more often than not without defense and equal parts raw and complete.

My first love almost always has and probably always will be capable of throwing me for a loop... without even trying. Ironically, I have never known him to try. In fact, I'm quite certain there is no one in the history of the world who has ever tried harder NOT to throw me for a loop... ever. To speak bluntly, there is no one in the world I trust more than he and there is no one in the world who has ever been steadier with accepting me as I am. Yes, I have pissed him off and known it. Yes, we have hurt each other. However, he is the only person I have ever known who has never abandoned me out of frustration and has always made himself available to the best of his ability. And, to his great pleasure- I'm sure- he is the only person around whom I have always felt comfortable just being me as I think of me, in all my lunacy. My one great regret about our friendship is that I was not there for him during a particularly difficult time for him. It is, actually, the single regret I have about my life.

There is no one who, at current, can get a rise out of me the way he can nor is there anyone quite as capable of putting me at ease. The fact that I live in a world where no one can access- much less challenge- me the way he does makes me even less prepared to handle myself around him. At home, I am surrounded by a social network of girlfriends who keep me honest about who I am and in whose company I can forget about the "role" I play for them. That keeps me honest and clear on who I am. However, I am not at home. So, in my occasional dealings with him while I'm here, I find myself not the stoic leader with this fantastical future ahead of her that everyone else seems to see but the spastic teen most of us fear being and are happy we outgrew.

This is China and so I am accustomed to the necessity of the patience of a saint merely to get through the day. The Chinese custom is that all meetings will consider beginning no sooner than one hour and a half after the scheduled start time. No one in China ever plans anything and, as my Brazilian Angel so aptly coined, "Darling, this is last minute dot com." I am accustomed to people not thinking about me until 1 am and then indulging in their desire to speak with me right then and there despite the fact that they flaked on our lunch date earlier in the day. I am not human to most of the people I meet here and so, in many ways, I am exempt from the human condition. I need to not be invested in the men who wax poetic about me for I am merely mute, alabaster breasts with blonde hair, blue eyes and a greencard vagina on a pedestal. I am every man's dream because I am merely their perceived perfect blank canvas. I need not be invested in most of the women who befriend me for I am merely the exotic beauty they use to up their social status. I need not waste my time connecting with most of the foreigners for I am merely the fellow sister with strength and potential to envy or the powerful goddess he wishes his wife still was. I am placid, unflappable and infinitely tolerant because, to put it bluntly, I am irrelevant.

However, one mere mention in passing from my first love that he had to pencil in time to contact me so he wouldn't forget and I go off the deep end. I'm furious someone as important as he has been to me has to remind himself to think of me; has to note me on a calendar. I'm crying at the thought that the affection I will always hold for him is a stupid, nostalgic fool's errand built on nothing but my own pathetic projection. And, I find myself erasing all the emails he's ever sent me because I suddenly find that I am not exempt from the human condition and am, in fact, very capable of going to that crazy girl place... and far more easily than I would care to admit to. In a world where I am the calmest, most rational, reasonable human being around- a veritable bodhisvatta- I find myself in the midst of an overreaction worthy of some sort of scientific award. I believe I discovered spontaneous generation; the creation of an infinite amount of energy from absolutely nothing. Because I'm an eight year old, I actually found myself swearing I would never speak to him again and see how he liked it. And then I shot off an email to my girl from that dark space about how hurt I was.

Kali was back but at least this time, for the first time, I had the good sense to see I was losing my mind and not inflict it upon him.

As I purged all electronic things (I would never be able to rid myself of the more tangible pieces of him) from him with vengeance, he then sent a follow up email and a request to chat online with me. Begrudgingly, I accepted, though not after debating ignoring him. And between the compendium email he sent me and the chat we had online, I remember precisely what I adore about him. I adore his steadiness, which results in various things, including his need to have a calendar of "to do" things in order to prioritize. He is anything but reckless and I adore that. That is not to say that he does not have earth-shattering passion but that is to say he's more adult about it than I am. He is mature enough to weigh the pragmatic and sort out a way to make real life coexist with his passion. It doesn't mean his affection is greater or lesser than mine, merely realized differently. Mine just happens to be a lot louder and his, perhaps, is a lot stronger. At the very least, it's far more dependable.

Frankly, it's lovely being revealed to be such an immature, raving lunatic. I was starting to think this detachment wasn't merely a geographical issue but rather something more permanent and insidious; that I had lost my ability to engage emotionally. Leave it to him to prove me wrong in the nicest possible way.

2007-08-13T04:40:00.000-07:00

GET ME TO A NUNNERY

It has been coming to my attention for some time now that I am meant to be alone for the indefinite future. I do not speak of platonic love, merely romantic. I am well aware that I am infinitely more lucky than the vast majority of the planet as I am surrounded by an abundance of love. However, there is a marked dearth of romantic love in my life, and has been for some time. Perhaps it will be the rest of my life. Perhaps it will be merely moments more. Who knows? I do know that I don’t know. I also know that I am tired of waiting.

This in mind, the fact of the matter is that I have always found idea of the mechanics of a monastic life appealing. Like all true romantics, I have always been secretly enamored with the idea of living in a space where you have resigned to the idea of solitude and removed yourself from the angst of romantic love. It always seemed so ballsy to me to buck the system I have been addicted to my whole life and just find the inner resolve to get on with things. To be honest, I fantasize about being a soccer mom the way most people fantasize about being a rockstar; the quiet mourning of a dream you know will never be, at least not within the parameters you envision.

In light of my time in China (and the world in general), that is what I have decided to do. I will grab the bull by the horns and resolve myself to live my life with no account for making my own family. To be without a family of my own creation is one of my greatest fears and I will live with that fear no longer. I will embrace what I fear about never having a mate or biological children and learn to live beyond it. If it happens upon me, so be it and I will embrace it with open arms but I’m tired of the quiet, nagging voice in my head that wonders when companionship will arrive, wonders if he’s around the next bend and wonders if I really can compromise enough to keep the latest “him” in my life. I have been loved greatly by lovely men and in that, I have no complaints. However, I am shackled by this nagging voice and constantly at odds with a situation I have no control over. My conscious effort to remain open has merely led to heartache whose only two lessons to be learned are; 1. The things I love always have been and seem to always be less-than-healthy and 2. I can survive innumerable immolations. That’s all well and good and probably completely normal but, to what end?

So, I have resolved to scuttle that voice and live beyond it. Frankly, I’m tired of remaining open to the possibility of love. I wish I could say I was outraged by the way most of my pathetic attempts at relationships have ended but they have merely served to make me feel more for my fellow human beings. I wish I could say I loathe love and resent my fellow human beings for it but quite the contrary. The more I get kicked around, the more I love love because I see it for the fragile, near-impossible beauty it is. The more I get kicked around, the more compassion I feel because I keep learning that we lash out most often because we are afraid of losing love. The more deeply I’m wounded, the more clearly I see the suffering of the person wounding me.

That said, I’ve grown tired; bone weary really. I don’t begrudge anyone romantic love. I don’t, however, want it for myself anymore. I hate the duality of wanting to hate someone but the more I need to hate them the more I find myself unable to do so. And I now wish to construct a life for myself that services the ephemeral nature of my personality. A long-term commitment to solitude and the greater good seems peacefully appealing. In short; a nunnery.

The only snag in my little plan is that I don’t believe in god. Granted, I don’t disbelieve in god either. Frankly, I’m neither here nor there on the “god” issue and instead choose to focus on what I do know about with some certainty (relatively speaking); mankind. It is why I stayed with the 9/11 work far longer than was healthy for me. That is why I have done a myriad of things that were, perhaps, not the best for me but definitely have serviced the greater good. My humanitarian bent aside, I’m pretty sure that whole “who knows” attitude towards god rules out a marriage to whatever deity nuns tend to wed.

So, in lieu of the nunnery, I’ve chosen the Foreign Service. I am not built to remain in the education of students for the rest of the life that lies before me. I can see myself returning to academia but the thought of always doing this for the rest of my life has never sat well with me. I’m sure the Ivory Tower is my destiny but I’m not ready to resign myself to that life quite yet. The Ivory Tower always seemed like a job for retirement and, frankly, I’m not even 30 yet. Also, I have no desire to return to the States permanently yet. I’m sure the desire will return upon my need to “slow down” or whatever, but I’m not there now. I love wandering about the planet, seeing what there is to see and interacting with new cultures. The fact that I would be moving once every 2 to 4 years is perfection to me. Also, I love building bridges of communication. I love art and expression and all the good that mankind is capable of. (As a full spectrum species, we are capable of just as much evil however the nightly news seems to have cornered the market on the depressing aspects of our human condition) Fortunately for me, the Foreign Service has combined the Art and Press departments as a singular unit meaning that those of us with a communications background (as my film experience offers) must also manage cultural liaisons (as my academic background offers) while speaking one of the “hot” languages like Mandarin and the ever-standard French.

Which means I will be working on my Mandarin, studying for the FSO exam and generally imbuing my daily life with a bit more focus than I’ve had recently. This decision makes my head a peaceful place to be. Perhaps I’ll even go the Mia Farrow route and start adopting a million children. I think I could be an okay mom, despite my lack of SUV.

2007-08-10T06:09:00.000-07:00

INTERMISSION

I've written and rewritten this entry for a couple of weeks now. So many things keep happening and I find it too difficult to encapsulate it all into a single analysis. I guess I can't and so I'll just relate the broad strokes to you as the unfolded. There's no real "story" here, complete with a beginning, middle and end because, well, it's just my life. It seems to defy encapsulation for me. And, as Utta Hagen once said to her student when she told him to be more passionate about a scen and he responded with "Oh, I get it. You want 'larger than life'." she replied, "My dear, there is nothing larger than life."

At the end of July, a lovely couple came to stay with me. I did not know them and they did not know me. They remarked, on several occasions, how kind it was for me to open my door and allow them to stay in my home. It wasn't until the first time they made such a comment that it even occurred to me that I might not have offered a place to stay. They are, after all, friends of my great (and I mean "great" in both familial description as well as genuinely fabulous) aunt and of similar minds. The only reason I had not offered my place to stay after our first email exchange was that I wasn't sure my guest room would be open and I needed to run the idea by the Jude to make sure it wasn't an inappropriate gesture as I have never before been in the position of being able to offer residence to people I'd never met but with whom I felt a kinship of sorts. Once the Jude assured me it was not an inappropriate gesture, I offered and they accepted.

It was one of the best things I've done in China. I got to hear stories of the rest of China and I got wonderful company. They were highly respectful of my schedule and simply a pleasure to have around. She was a ball of silly, wonderful fun coupled with such a fantastic ability to roll with the punches. It was heartening to be around another woman who lacked such marked fragility as the women I am surrounded with. It was such a relief not to have to be concerned about my female company and her emotional fragility. In short, I not only didn't have to mother her but in an utter inversion of what I have been experiencing here, she had quite a lot to teach me about what I value most in feminine strength, kindness and perseverance.

And he was simply lovely. Given the relationship I have with my own father, I am always a bit uncertain about the friendships I have with men older than myself. I worry about the men I am (platonically) attracted to and my own judgment about such matters. Familially speaking, wonderful men surround me however, I did start off with some less-than-stellar lessons and so every once and a while my supremely bad judgment crops up. Not true in this case. There was the element of my mother's father that exists in every man I adore in my family; the element of a quiet man set upon astute and kind observation. Frankly put, no one has made me consciously think more about my perspective on my time here than he. And, he didn't do it with a lot fanfare It simply came through in quiet moments.

They were a breath of fresh air I didn't consciously realize I needed. I found myself entirely unedited and pieces of myself that have verbally atrophied (I can still write about them but there is no one here with whom I can share significant pieces of myself verbally) were awoken. For the first time in a year, I was challenged by the questions being asked. Seeing the two of them together, seeing the two of them in the flesh and seeing how much they seemed to like being around me reminded me that there is a world (small though it may be) of people of like mind and that I belong there. She reminded me of a world where women can take care of themselves and he reminded me of a world where men can see the full spectrum of the things I value. They brought a lovely bubble of home into my little vacuum and I am forever grateful for that.

There are no witty anecdotes to sum them up and no astute observations to typify them. It was the broad spectrum of their entire time here that I value and there is no one moment I value more than another. The were all priceless to me. I hope that we will be life-long friends.

And then there is school. I was clearly placed in the only class they had and it was way too advanced for me. I did my best but was irretrievably behind the other students who had all been studying for at least three years in an academic setting and even longer in a personal setting. However, now that they were all in China for the first time, it suddenly became summer camp. Korea, not long after our "You're very Asian" encounter, soon revealed himself to be entirely too frat boy-ish for my taste. In a few years I have no doubt he will be a lovely and wonderful boy but he is in dire need of a good, life ass kicking. He's too obsessed with people liking him and the drama of being the cookie-cutter, good-looking bloke as women duke it out around him. He's a dreamboat but he's also a man you would never be alone with, even if it was just the two of you. He is attracted to the girl who only wants the validation of being wanted by the boy all the girls want. And, after I spent one night out with the group in a club, it became abundantly clear that the boy I would make a total ass out of myself over (the sensitive, thoughtful, steady, 19-year-old, half-German/half-Chinese lad) were I young enough was not romantically valued by anyone except myself. So, socially, I knew I had nothing in common with the soap opera unfolding of unrequited hormones and masochistic, twenty-something drama for drama's sake. Which meant the only thing I would be getting out of my class was the academic work.

Unfortunately, the first teacher had had enough of my fellow summer campers and decided to focus on me and teaching me almost to the exclusion of the rest of the class. She became so focused on making an example of me in front of the whole class that I simply skipped her last day of class because it became untenable to constantly have, "I just want to audit the class because it is WAY over my level" constantly ignored. Then, the second teacher, a much more serious teacher, followed suit. I had explained that I wanted to audit and wasn't able to fully participate as the class (on the whole) significantly above my level. Apparently, my levels of honesty were a bad thing as she quickly decided (within the first hour of class) that she should teach, shame and punish me to the exclusion of the rest of the students who all showed up at least a half hour late to her first class. The first day of that class was the first day I've ever tried to write Chinese and so, bright as I may be, two weeks of class is not going to cover the at-least-three-years-of-reading-and-writing the rest of the class has on me.

None of that seemed to matter to the new teacher and I was the first one she called upon to do any reading or writing exercise. Now, I've been a teacher in China long enough to understand that this tough love is considered a sigh of great affection from a Chinese teacher, however, I was there to learn and simply could not with the constant barrage of, "Wrong. Class, what did she do wrong THIS time?" Frankly, it got so bad even my socially inept classmates simply stopped responding to her questions to open up her berating of me. Tough love teachers simply shut me down. I am unable to function in a "tough love" classroom if I am granted no respite. And, this started to damage my ability to speak Chinese. I lost more Chinese taking that class than I learned. The confidence that class killed makes it difficult to go out in the morning and simply do what I've always normally done. So, as I caught myself making excuses and hedging my lifestyle simply to avoid speaking Chinese because the class made me feel stupid, I decided to quit. Frankly, I am the only person who can take care of me here and the last thing I need is to be housebound with agoraphobia.

And the day I quit, I was invited to a party.

I have made a lot of friends in the French contingent of Xi'An. In fact, none of my close foreign friends here speak English natively. Most of them speak French and a few of them speak German. One of my favorite French men invited me to his and his Chinese wife's home for a party with their other friends.

And then I realized I have grown into my age. I was at last at a party of similarly aged people (for the first time, not significantly older) with whom I felt comfortable socially.

As the party began, I noticed I was getting a bit of extra attention from a new Xi'An arrival. He was boisterous and there with his beautiful girlfriend but none of that seemed to stop him from constantly looking to and speaking with the more subdued me. At first I thought nothing of it and figured it was merely a social boy being social but after a while it became clear I really was getting extra attention.

A bit of the way through the party and after two sets of couples were there, a third showed up (always couples here!). We were all chatting when the new couple entered. The woman was a fireball, instantly the "life of the party," and the only other American there. She was everything I dread about being at a party with women my age; she was loud, confident in that naive 20-something way, overtly sexual and non-stop. She is the archetype that walks into a party and instantly has all the men captivated while the rest of us mere mortal females seem to vanish into the background. I was certain at her arrival, this attention I was being lavished with would evaporate.

However, it was not so at this party. She showed up, was her fiery self and none of the men much noticed. Everyone was lovely and social with her but she did not captivate the room the way I am accustomed to seeing. In fact, the lovely French man lavishing me with attention and with whom I would most certainly have gone home had his girlfriend not been in existence, did not miss a beat with me. My platonic interest for the evening acknowledged the fireball within the limits of propriety but kept his eyes on me the whole time. Whenever he had a free moment, he found his way to me to talk and towards the end of the evening clearly settled himself down with me for a long discussion. It was the first time in a very long time I had the very clear message that while he was absolutely physically attracted to me, he was most interested in my conversation. Granted, he is one I can never be alone with for obvious, messy reasons but the affirmation that he wanted to be with me above all others was really lovely.

Frankly, it made me miss Bill. My platonic interest was quietly aggressive in seeking out my discussion and unwavering in his pursuit of me the way Bill had been. In spite of myself and in spite of the clear message of not contacting me during his most recent trip here, I missed Bill most acutely at that party. I was reminded of a lesson in my introductory art history class about the importance of what is missing from art. Often, the absence of a single thing that would fit best within an image is stronger than the foregone conclusions of its presence.

I am insufferable sap.

I missed that about me.

2007-07-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

DIGGING MY OWN GRAVE

"You're very Asian. With women," my new Belgian girlfriend broke the flow of the break-from-class conversation the group had with this. She was speaking to the Korean guy and, as our class is filled with Westerners (there is on retired Japanese gentleman but he's not interested in socializing with us) there was no question to whom she was speaking. While the half-Chinese, half-German is seen as Chinese in China, he's seen as European in our circle. Korea is firmly alone in his "Asian" roots among us.

I have spoken a fair bit with Korea and merely by his speech patterns, I already know (and it was confirmed later) that he learned the basics of English in Korea and then moved to Australia to immerse himself in the language during his teens or early twenties. I know this because his basic English vocabulary has an English accent and as the English teacher in Korea are primarily English and expensive, it's clear his parents were doing their best to provide him with a strong base. His conversational English and flow is clearly Australian. His physicality with women is clearly Australian. His grasp of English is incredibly high and he clearly wants to be seen as a Westerner from Korea as he made such a serious effort as to even learn humor in English. Most people, even if they become fluent in a language, don't understand the humor in each culture. Humor is the absolute last concept to come, as it is entirely cultural and has nothing to do with a classroom. My humor is very dry and cerebral. You must have a pretty good grasp of English to understand my whacked-out sense of humor. He gets it. He not only gets it, he can give as good as he gets. He has clearly adopted the idea of being a hybrid of cultures. And, well, it takes a cuckoo to see a cuckoo.

Now, one must understand the subtext of that comment from my Belgian friend to understand the true power of alienation behind it. We had all just spent two hours discussing sexual relationships and how they differ from China/Asia to the West. Everyone in class is in quite a lot of agreement that Asian cultures are incredibly chauvinistic and several women even said how horrible it must be to be a Chinese woman... to our female Chinese teacher.

Fortunately, Korea and I were doing most of the talking and we had a really interesting discussion fleshing out the word "like" in Chinese is used as we use the word "love" and the word "love" in Chinese is used like we use the phrase "the one." We then tried to explain how cohabitation is not unlike marriage for us.

"90% of men in China get married [only] because they want to have sex," our teacher explained trying to explain why it's bad to cohabitate without marriage.

"Horrible" I whispered in English under my breath so that she wouldn't hear me.

Korea was sitting in front of me and he turned around, shrugging sheepishly. "Well, it is a natural urge," he tried to defend the faultless idea of lust.

"It's natural to get married because you want to get laid? What sort of marriage is based on getting laid?" I asked, clarifying my "horrible" statement.

Korea went quiet for a moment and thought. "That is terrible. You're right." He thought some more. "That's really awful," he muttered, clearly disgusted.

She then asked what stopped men from cheating on women if they weren't married, because, as you well know, extramarital affairs don't happen in China.

"Living together isn't serious." She said.

I couldn't respond to that because I'm not a man and so my voice wouldn't hold much weight on this matter to her.

"You live together and he can go and have sex with anyone."

"No!" Korea answered reflexively, upset at the notion of infidelity. "No, if you live together it is serious."

"What a lovely, upstanding young man." I thought.

So, given two hours of this subtext to our conversation, to equate Korea with all men "Asian" when it comes to "women" is more than a little heartbreaking. As a consequence, when he finally understood what the words my Belgian friend had spoken, the normally loquacious boy went uncharacteristically quiet. He understood and was hurt.

In a circle of "We're on vacation!" kids and young adults, suddenly he was pointed out to be the freak. It's stunningly alienating to feel like you're part of a group and then suddenly have the curtain pulled back to reveal that you're the circus freak the group has been entertaining for its own enjoyment. And, in case he had any doubt what the women in the class think of "Asian" men, we had just spent two hours articulating just how freakish "we" find "them" to be. Though he clearly is on the "us" side of things, because of things he has nothing to do with, he was clearly being placed back with what "we" perceive to be the more antiquated side of things.

"Yeah!" all the other women followed suit and the men hung back as the girls laid out all the funny things he had done to be "so Asian." With each context-free anecdote, the girls giggled at how funny he was. What the girls didn't understand was that he didn't understand that chivalry is, primarily, dead in the West. From his perspective, it was clear that he had been perceived as silly, trite and probably offensive but I'm pretty sure he didn't quite know why.

I could see the great divide growing swiftly and so I decided to rephrase what had come across as a rather unpleasant notion.

"Yeah," I agreed. "You take care of women... of us." I explained quietly. That raised his defeated, ground-oriented gaze to my eyelevel, as he finally understood the divide. I had reached him through his alienation and offered him a little something, or so I like to think that naked look he gave me indicated.

I completely forgot myself in the look he gave me. "It's nice," I said far more earnestly than I thought I was capable of. I smiled honestly and the self-revelatory truth never felt easier.

He smiled and I literally felt his anxiety dissipate like mist.

When he opened his mouth and inhaled to speak, I realized that we were standing in the midst of a bunch of people and his words wouldn't be for me. We had said all that needed to be said. As reality settled around me, I tried to hide my gasp. My nudity was there for everyone to see and in my embarrassment I watched the ground.

The women picked up on my sentiment and started explaining the things like how Western men wouldn't even mention the car coming, much less guide you away from it.

And then the conversation bloomed. Korea understood the perspective from which we were speaking. We were not laughing at the trite, petty chauvinistic behavior he clearly thought we were discussing but rather our amazement that a man with no reason to, would take care of us.

"But your perspective on relationships is decidedly Western" I said, attempting to further clarify.

"Yeah, I guess I'm a hybrid of cultures," he tried to explain. "There are good things and bad things from Korea and there are good things and bad things..." he trailed off, losing his nerve and clearly a bit rattled by all of this.

"Yeah, there are good and bad things in every culture." I agreed trying to keep the conversation going. Everyone else simply watched him. There is nothing like dead air in a conversation you want to go away when you feel fucked up. "Except America," I joked. "Our contribution to the world has been McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut. We're just offensive."

Korea laughed at that and jumped on the idea but tried to consol me by telling me how much he likes Burger King.

"And you're forgetting the wondrous cultural gift that is Hollywood," I added as we headed inside, laughing, to continue our class.

We finished class and as I was leaving with Belgium, Korea spoke up.

"Bye," he said directly to me as we left the post-class chat circle.

"Bye," I said.

"Bye!" he yelled after my receding figure.

"Bye," I repeated myself.

"Bye," he said to me, once again but now making me laugh.

"Bye" I called out, laughing a bit harder at the silly back and forth.

"Bye!" he yelled out one last time as I turned around.

I let him have the final word but raised my hand to the air to wave behind my back.

I know he headed back to the hotel and he and the Italian girl he's fond of are staying at and I know that they're most likely together but that doesn't stop my godforsaken gut from wanting what it wants. My conscious brain has absolutely no desire for a man in my life and I loathe the idea of ever dating again but he's managed to splinter his way in and my reflexes certainly aren't stopping him. If I hadn't opened my mouth to clarify "Asian," I probably wouldn't have even occurred to him but now he really wants to make friends.

Bloody hell.

2007-07-24T23:11:00.000-07:00

BLOODY HELL

Enough already! I want off this fucking ride!

I've started Chinese class and there are two lovely boys in our class. Actually, there are several boys but there are two I find notably lovely. One is Korean and one is half-Chinese, half-German. I had been doing my best to ignore them but they're both really lovely in their own way and I'm only so human.

I sat next to the Eurasian for the first class and behind the Korean for the next. The Eurasian is shy but interested in talking to me. When he works up the nerve to look me in the eye, he smiles shyly and warmly. When he had to introduce himself to the class, he turned and spoke to me and no one else. He is beautiful and shy and he looks to me for camaraderie. It's a strange predicament, as I made the conscious effort to make no overtures to him. It's becoming distracting and I loathe the perking up the hormones. However, I'm not particularly concerned as he seems to lack the nerve to ever really approach me.

The Korean lad is a bit more of an issue. He's highly flirtatious, very outgoing and very interested in making friends. He's not interested in me romantically as he's clearly hooking up with one of the Italian girls in our class but, dear god, he's really attractive inside and out. We clicked and our senses of humor align frighteningly well. As he's spent some serious time in the past living in Australia, his English is excellent and he's wonderfully funny. He makes me laugh and he laughs when I give him a hard time. But, the worst thing is that he does that thing of looking me in the eye when he speaks to me and then loses his train of thought. He forgets which language he's in (when not in class we all speak English as it's the only common language we all have a decent handle on). Z used to do that and I loved that. I'm a sucker for a boy struck dumb around me. Also, Korea's the spokesman for our class (if we're all lost, he speaks up as his Mandarin is the best) he always turns to me to confer. A man asking for feedback and consent is also unspeakably appealing.

However, it's distracting and it's infuriating because it's a dead end. If he would just leave me be, I could ignore him and fantasize about violating his lovely body. Howeer, he puts in serious effort to be friendly with me (as well as several others in the class) so I can't ignore what a lovely person he is. I don't want to have to like him. I just want to lust after him and forget about him the moment he leaves the room.

I'm so fucking tired of being jerked around. I wish he'd just go away. I can't and won't have him, ever, and I'm just so tired of that eternal fucking hope poking its head out just long enough to get caught by the speeding bullet.

2007-07-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

ACADEMIA

I’ve been avoiding writing because I’m feeling amorphous again. I’m exhausted by the emotional toll of the year. I’m exhausted by the disappointments and the joy. I’m exhausted by my own humanity and I’m exhausted by always having to ignore the role of “freak” I am constantly, actively given.

The simplest of tasks has become monumentally difficult. The joy of teaching my classes to interested students has abated and to reveal dread at the thought of yet more hours of my life purchased by the highest bidder. I have begun to feel like a high-priced whore. I loathe meeting new people because it invariably means having to calmly, tactfully remove myself from the inevitable wooing for a favor. They will buy me an inordinately expensive meal in return for the ability to ask if I might be so kind as to simply exist near them, making them more desirable to those around them. Frankly, I am most often, socially speaking, little more than an escort. I’m even exhausted by going to the gym, though the social payoffs of Tank and several other trainers with whom I am friendly is large enough that I’m willing to deal with being gawked at like a circus freak in the locker room by every single woman. My particular favorite is being stared at for minutes on end, mouth agape in a neutral fashion of awe (but would be interpreted by most Westerns as horror) while the stare-er fails to finish changing her sanitary pad because watching me for minutes on end is more important than her own dignity. That my nipples are pink and not brown is far more important than her menses flowing freely. I wish I could say that was a singular event but it occurs with surprising regularity; at least once a week.

Nevertheless, as much as I fight it and as much as I disagree with the assessment, I am consistently called an “academic” and an “intellectual” by those who know me best. And, the truth is, while I’m not built out of academic stuff, I do adore the learning process. It is precisely what cheers me up when I’m in a funk; like I am now. Granted, I loathe fighting for a grade or concerning myself with the opinions of a professor about my worth as a human being but I adore learning. I love the process of fleshing out new space, new ideas and forcing myself to wield the unwieldy. To me, learning is the equivalent of life; the end of learning would be death to me.

Given my current situation (no full-time work and no close friends currently in China as my Brazilian Angel’s back home in Brazil) I’m languishing. I’ve got nothing to challenge me and nothing to work towards. I teach one, three-hour class a week at one of the more prestigious universities in the area and the students are good enough that I start them on talking and they simply go. I loathe that I am considered a good enough teacher, a fine enough instrument, that I am not given any sort of curriculum. The fact is that, once I understand a language, I am highly talented with it but I need structure of some sort. I can come at language from an infinite number of ways because I am, at first, so infinitely bad that I learn all the mistakes there are to make. Given that bulk of knowledge, frankly, I need to be limited. I’m slowly learning the mindset behind the Chinese’s English lexicon but I’ve grown bored with that struggle as it has very little rhyme or reason because it is primarily a hodgepodge of native French speakers informing the Chinese of what English is and what the Chinese dictionaries tell the Chinese “experts” “real” English is. (I cannot begin to express how frustrating it is to be told what your language is by people whose only exposure is limited to an electronic dictionary; I have long since given up.)

So today (7/22/07) I woke up bright and early on a Sunday morning and headed to the South of the city about an hour from my home to take my entrance exam for my Chinese class. Out of ten students, I was far and away the worst student there and none of them live in China. Most of the students are Western European and have been intensively studying Chinese in their respective countries for at least a year. This trip is for them to refine their already-excellent Chinese. Frankly, after a year here, my Chinese is embarrassing.

It’s inspiring.

I feel like I’m waking up. I feel like I’ve been resurrected. I feel like the gauntlet has been thrown down and I, at last, really have to work for something valuable but nothing of great importance is on the line. When I first got to China, everything was of essential importance. Frankly, it was sink or swim time and if I messed up, my well-being was at stake. It was unbelievable pressure to be under but I’ve made it through. The Westerners I know that live here are amazed that I managed to survive at all much less as well as I did. I know I can get around and live in China with no problem on the minimal Chinese I speak, read and write. I have the confidence to deal with my life here. I know the bus system, I know the colloquial speech and I know the accent. The other Western students, I can see, do not. In many ways, Xi’An has become a home-away-from-home and there is something to be said for that unquantifiable way in which I have come to understand, not really the language, but the life here. I’m so excited to begin studying the language because I know it will enhance my experience. I know it will offer me shades and subtleties to my life here that I didn’t have before. The ability to exist will not change because I’ve won that through hard work already. No, what will change will be the quality of life.

I cannot express how excited I am to be getting back into a classroom as a student. I’ve had enough of being the teacher!

2007-07-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

IT’S RAINING, IT’S POURING

So it’s been raining for most of the end of June and the first half of July here in Xi’An. Normally, I would embrace the break from the sweltering weather. However, as I’ve discovered, it’s not really a break from sweltering weather, merely the addition of unbearable humidity. China has been having record-breaking rain and all around us is flooding. Fortunately, I live in a stratosphere (both economic and physical) that is untouched by said flooding.

However, it does mean that I can’t do my laundry (because if I hang it out to dry, it will not dry, merely get mildewed) and my hair simply does not dry after each shower. There is also the small issue that I am completely exhausted everyday. I hadn’t really noticed anything exceptional about the exceptional exhaustion as it has truly been unspeakably hot and humid here and I figured such levels of exhaustion were par for the course. What did catch my attention was the unshakable headache I’ve been suffering with for the past week.

I did everything in my power to keep up my fluids, to eat properly and to take painkillers but the headache simply would not leave. Soon, my joints were achy and I had developed the slight tremble I get when I am not sleeping enough. I couldn’t sort out if it was really bad PMS or a light flu.

“Not so good.” I thought, upon finally recognizing the unshakable slight tremble. As I went to bed thinking about what in the world was I going to do about the possibility of a neurological disorder in China, I noticed my back was super itchy. I didn’t think anything of it at the time because I’ve got a leak to a world of mosquitoes that just pour into my apartment, so I figured I had yet one more bug bite.

That was last Thursday. Since then I have come to realize that I have developed a mild case of shingles and that all my neurological symptoms can, most easily, be blamed on that. The virus that first causes chickenpox and then shingles, as you may or may not know, is a type of herpes. Granted, it seems like most viruses in the body are some type of herpes or another the way that most growths in the body seem like one kind of cancer or another. Fortunately, the fact is that the chickenpox/shingles virus is not the genital brand but nonetheless, to know that I have an outbreak of Paris Hilton on my back is just mortifying. Stigma aside, it could be infinitely worse.

My case seems to be a very mild case and it is easily disguised beneath clothing or even a bathing suit. Often there are outbreaks on the face and neck, often they are much larger and on not-too-rare occasion the outbreaks are painful, itchy and generally horrible. Mine is located just below my bra strap, small and only occasionally painful, itchy or numb. It is little more than a nuisance and an embarrassment. Also, I am not contagious except to anyone who hasn’t had the chickenpox and even if they have no immunity then they must touch the rash to catch chickenpox. No matter what, I can’t give someone shingles.

My blessings counted, it has not lessened the stress of this week.

Wednesday of last week, I met up with le Francais at the gym. We happened to bump into each other and we spoke for a bit.

“Oh, and [Bill] is coming.” He mentioned, knowing my interest in Bill.

“Really?” I perked up at the thought of seeing Bill.

“Yes, next week. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.” He said, watching for my reaction.

I smiled pleasantly, as it was a bit sudden and the reality of the man I like coming to visit hadn’t really sunk in.

“But it will be all work. He won’t have time to visit.” Le Francais said, perhaps covering for his friend.

Which leaves me here. I’m certain that if Bill is interested in me, he will ask me to dinner Tuesday night, the only night of the week I have class to teach. Even if I could get out of that (which I can’t) or if he asks me for another night, there is the small matter of feeling like a leper. I can’t even do so much as kiss him without having to ask if he has had the chickenpox and I certainly can’t be naked in this state.

Six damned months and maybe he’ll show up and maybe he won’t. And, even if he does, I am guaranteed that very little, if anything will happen. The only man to touch me in over a year couldn’t stop confessing the romantic notion that, “Raping you isn’t fun for me. I don’t want to have to rape you.” Frankly, I’d simply like that whole thing struck from the record and now this!

When it rains, it pours!

2007-07-03T02:28:00.000-07:00

RANDOMNESS

I thought I’d begin my official summer (7/3) by going to Starbucks and using my Mac on a weekday. Granted, as I have no full-time job (I’m teaching a single, 3-hour oral English class every week for 5 weeks for more than most Chinese will ever see in a month but it’s not full-time employment) and am technically unemployed (with my contract having run out and not yet signed the new one) I thought I’d return to my New York writer-ly roots and nestle into a Starbucks with my Powerbook, reveling in my naughty hooky from life.

I was flipping through the gossip pages and happened to click upon a link that led me to Wikipedia. I had no intended to go to Wiki, nor had I any idea that the link would take me there. You see, Wiki is verboten in PRC and I’m not particularly interested in raising trouble while I’m in China, so I have avoided courting trouble.

However, the link worked.

Wikipedia actually works in PRC. I checked out the general PRC entry as well as Xi’An’s and a few random entertainment figures’. Granted, I have not clicked on the more sensitive “T” “N” “Ah” “Men” “incidents” links as I have no interest in raising the attention of the filters that Wiki is up and running but how cool is it that Wiki is about? I love that.

But then again, I have no been able to get onto the official Blogger sites (or personal blog sites in general) for weeks now. My access has come and gone in the past year to personal blogs but of late, they’re really not working. I can still post, edit and peruse my blogs, I just can’t read the final product.

So random.

2007-07-02T04:55:00.000-07:00

GOING OUT ON A POSITIVE NOTE

It has come to my attention that god wants me to be a lesbian. Unfortunately, I was not born gay. However, if you can be “therapy-ed” into being straight, why can’t I therapy myself into being gay? I don’t mean to make light of disgusting practices in the states but I truly have come to a turning point in my attitude towards the more appealing gender in China. I have spoken to the Jude about my decision to be gay and she fully supports it. “Like the women in prison. They’re not gay but they don’t have any other option for comfort. I totally support you.”

On Sunday (7/1) I went on my peer pressure date. More than anything, I did not want to go on my date with my masseur, not because he was going to hit on me but because I was going to lose a good masseur. However, all my married, Western girlfriends here have been giving me a hard time about not being open enough to dating and generally being “too hard on men.” They all saw my masseur as god’s gift to women; sweet, sensitive and thoughtful. They felt we were a perfect match; he would domesticate me and I would culture him, despite the fact that we don’t have a common language and I feel absolutely not a moment’s lust towards him. He and I have the opposite of chemistry; I neither hate him nor desire him. I simply don’t care.

So, I went on my date and did my best to make small talk in Chinese. He was edgy and not really participatory in any way. It was strange to share such a newfound space with him. In the massage room, he’s really inquisitive and I wish he would shut the hell up and just give me a rub down. I was not particularly fond of his newfound silence and felt, “Ah, here’s my punishment for not listening to my gut. He won’t talk and this once calm gentleman has turned into a cranky, temperamental date.”

We walked to the restaurant, I tried to squish my dread at having to masticate an entire meal in his presence and promised myself that I would get a nice, long nap after this obnoxious ordeal. We sorted out what we wanted to eat and as the “conversation” died, he handed me a note. On the bottom of the note, written out by him in Chinese and on the top was the translation (by another person) in English. “Dear Christina, Will you take me to your apartment? Yours, [Your Date]”

It took me a moment to collect myself. To go back to my apartment meant to have sex. To have sex meant to get married. To get married means to never get divorced. I have spent less than 6 hours with this man in my whole life and am completely unable to communicate with him.

The first thing that went through my head was, “Well, it’s more romantic than, ‘I don’t want to have to rape you. Raping you is no fun for me so save me money on a hotel by taking me home because you have to trust me,’ but somehow this just isn’t the romance I’m looking for. I mean, I know you’re supposed to compromise to make a relationship work but this still seems a bit too much compromise.”

Still stunned, I said, “Uh, no.”

“No?!” He asked, furious. Angrily, he picked up his chopsticks and stabbed at his food. Astonished at his rage, I looked at him, questioningly but he refused to make eye contact or speak for the rest of the date.

“Perfect” I thought. “This is the perfect end to the perfect fucking year. I’m in a position where I’m surrounded by people who are all only children and spoiled only children at that, and all 1.6 billion of them don’t understand why I can’t make an exception for just them. Each one of them fully believes that they are special beyond all others and clearly should be given license to abuse me as they choose. It’s getting on my last damned nerve.”

And, as I’ve been walking around Xi’An in these few days between the end of being a teacher for the year and the beginning of being a student, I watch parents and children and realize that there is no way that relationships as I understand them could possibly exist on a large scale here. Parents love their children purely; it is a love and a doting that exists nowhere but within the parent/child relationship. For the most part, parents don’t care for each other and ignore each other. For the most part, friends merely spend their time gossiping about the other friends who aren’t around for that mahjong game. Adults have had the ability to love (because what is more revolutionary that love and passion?) and adore each other beaten out of them to such an extent that most romantic relationships are merely a financial transaction of sex for money and most friendships are merely convenient fair weathered friends.

The only source of love (as I know it) that a child around here will ever see is the one from their parent and so it is no surprise to me that even within adult marriages, the in-laws and the bank account numbers have a stronger pull than the spouse.

To be honest, I wish money was an aphrodisiac for me. I have been proposed to by a great number of wealthy men looking for a kept, blonde mistress. Things would be much easier if I had a boyfriend who simply wants to keep me. However, the sexiest thing anyone has done in Xi’An is forgo his obscene wealth and power to instead choose to make me roses out of paper napkins and refill my water glass to prevent a hang over.

It’s funny but all of this makes me miss both Bill and Z. Bill, I miss for obvious reasons I won’t reiterate. However, Z is a new case. Not that I would take Z back or that he would have me back but I miss our friendship. Our major problem was that I’m very comfortable with men and he’s very jealous. I did everything I could to curb myself and my male friendships when we were together but it was simply not enough and I couldn’t continue with someone who went so far as to make things up to be jealous about. When our relationship was devoid of outside interaction, the intimate, personal stuff was really lovely. He never pressured me or took advantage of me; he respected me as a human being. Despite our incompatibility, I think he’s a good guy. In fact, he’s the reason I keep being pulled back from the edge of racism and furious thoughts about the idea that “all Chinese people” are a certain way when I get overwhelmed by the naïve, self-absorbed, high-school drama that is so pervasive here.

So, I had hoped to go out of the school year on a high note or at least, not a crappy note, but it looks like that isn’t going to happen. Everything that should have been worked out with the school before June 30th (when I ceased to be an employee of the school) has been delayed indefinitely, the technical issues I was having have gone unsolved and my bosses still treat me like I ought to be grateful for being graced by their presence despite the fact that my contract has already expired. Even the weather sucks. It’s rainy and that horrible temperature that’s too cold for a t-shirt but too hot/humid for more.

I wish I could say that I learned more than survival and shared anything but I have my doubts. At least next year I’ll know what I’m doing and the learning curve shouldn’t be so great.

Perhaps upon further reflection, I’ll have something more interesting and more poetic to say about my first year here. However, for the time being, consider this the end of my first year in China.

2007-06-22T03:16:00.000-07:00

INDIFFERENCE

I'm at a very strange place in my life right now; I'm thrice bitten, twice shy. I feel like I'm growing hard and disinterested in anything male (with the glaring exception of Bill) and I'm so "over" love. The fact is that the culture I'm steeped in is so oversaturated with absurdly childish images of romantic love and idealism while contrasted so harshly with the "bait and switch" reality that I just want no part of any of it. The problem with my cynicism and this newfound utter indifference towards men is that it has nothing to do with me or the things I want in the grand scheme of my life. I want a life partner. I want a child. I want a family. However, I find myself in the position of making decisions that preclude such options.

My latest massage therapist has also professed his love for me. Unlike the last massage therapist, he is a good, decent man. He is incredibly respectful, if not to a fault and he has even won the great affection of my Brazilian Angel. And, were I in an average headspace for me, I would leap at the chance to be with him. However, I feel absolutely nothing. I feel no dread. I feel no nervousness. I feel no happiness. I feel no excitement. I feel no nothing. It's very strange that my only thought is "Oy vey, not again."

The last time I was on his table, he texted someone for help and had them text back the phrase "I like you" which is the phrase the Chinese use before they are married. (Between a couple, the only time "I love you" is used is when they are married or to be married. "Love" is such a profound word it only exists between state solidified families and no one else.) What he likes about me, he claimed to my Brazilian Angel, is the simplicity of our relationship.

"We speak plainly." He told her among, apparently, a great number of other things as he spent the entire hour of their massage session speaking of me.

And, the truth is we do. The simplicity of being stripped bare and having to converse very frankly, I'll admit, is incredibly seductive if you have the courage to be seen for your basic needs. The mask of a fluent language can be incredibly cumbersome and deceptive; it provides our cowardice far too many safe havens. While it makes for a wonderful beginning, it can make for a harder long term as the explanations of motivations must be forfiet for lack of ability.

But none of that is neither here nor there.

The fact is that something in me has gone dormant. I have no desire (save Bill) for men. I feel like I'm in a world where every childhood fantasy of romance could come true, I need only ask for it, and I'll have it. But I know I'm also in a world where once that fantasy has been stripped away, there is nothing left but the jaws of the bear trap sunk into the flesh of my calf. I am little more than an opportunity to access a dream no one has any idea how to realize and as a girl who grew up on a mother referencing the Ice Man Cometh as a warning about supporting dreamers, I know exactly how lovely it can be to help people dream who lack the fortitude and knowhow to follow through.

So, at lunch yesterday with my Brazilian Angel and another lovely Brazilian woman I desperately want to be my mentor, when the topic of how much my massage therapist is in love with me came up, I found myself at a lack of words. I have no faith left in the reality of PRC love because all I've seen is as real and valuable to me as the rhinestones on the jeans here. Rationally, I know that my massage therapist is a good man and respectful and had he found me a few months back, I would have been completely over the moon for him but not now.

Now when my Brazilian Angel and my Mentor ask me what it is I want from love, "Conversation with a good friend, not romance" I am "Tsk tsk"ed for my silly notions of wanting to skip romance.

But the truth is, I'm tired of romance right now. I don't want someone blinded by the romance of it all. I want someone engaged by my minutia.

Frankly, I'm worn out by the old-fashioned "Man" and "Woman" roles and how everyone here plays them and fools themselves into thinking it's adult. I haven't met one married man who isn't cheating on his wife and I haven't met one mother who feels her husband holds any importance anymore outside of keeping her in the lifestyle she has grown accustomed to. If I hear one more woman say, "I have my child now, what do I need my husband for" I'm going to scream. I fear that more than I fear being alone and childless for the rest of my life.

So, my poor massage friend is simply against impossible odds. I have no desire to become part of a partnership that will wither and die a resentful death upon the birth of our first manchild. I have no desire to be part of some farce where I play the sucker until I birth forth his manchild and the man behind the curtain is revealed to be totally over putting up with my bullshit so he could get his son and his passport. And the truth of the matter is I don't think that's what my friend is offering me but I don't believe it. I have no faith anymore. The only way to disprove me is to make it to that time after the firstborn son which, by default, he simply won't get to.

But there I found myself with my Brazilian Angel and my Mentor at lunch, their growing skepticism about my desire for a partner. They simply have no understanding what a difference it makes to be permanently branded as owned by a Western Male entity and so their view of Xi'An and her people is quite a bit different than mine.

"But she's so young" My Brazilian Angel declared to my Mentor.

"How old?" my Mentor asked.

"28" My Brazilian Angel answered for me.

"Oh, you're still a baby!" My Mentor replied.

"I know, so young!" My Brazlian Angel answered.

"I know. I'm still wet behind the ears!" I mockingly declared, irritated at being declared to be so young. My Brazilian Angel is not yet anywhere near forty and I loathe being patronized and belittled for my lack of years.

My Mentor picked up on my irritation but my Brazilian Angel did not.

"You are very strong and very smart. You work very hard. I could not do what you do." My Mentor told me.

"Yes, but we both worked very hard at her age. She's very young. The very young should very work hard." My Brazilian Angel tapped into the one aspect of our relationship I don't like; the condescension she feels she needs to exhibit when women she wants to impress are around.
Ignoring my Brazilian Angel, I spoke, "Yes, I work very hard but I don't have a husband or a family. I only have me so only have to spend energy towards work and my life."

My Mentor stopped to reflect and then she said, "Yes, at your age I had two children" because I needed to be stabbed in the heart. I would give anything but my integrity to have that and it has been my integrity that has cost me just that.

I desperately want my partner and children. I've really never wanted anything more but my life is constructed as such that in no near future will I have those things. The value of my life isn't notably high in my opinion but there's nothing I can do to change my lack of a partner or children. I don't have the financial resources to properly raise a child on my own and I don't have a partner with whom I could make a family.

In my attempts to open myself and put myself out there to find my partner and my family, I found that I'm simply growing hard and cynical and warping into something unrecognizable. In my earnest attempts to take chances and risks to find what I want, I find that I'm losing interest in the reality of it. Despite my girlfriends attempts to make me feel like I have all the time in the world, I, in fact, feel more old and more alone than I have ever before. I'm not as resilient as I used to be and I'm my naive hope of wondrous things has hardened into a mere hope for survival.

I feel like the passion has bled from me, the fire gone out and mere indifference has settled around my heart. I feel like this is the place where I inject hope and a concious prayer that perhaps something from the universe will swoop in and turn me around but, to be totally honest, I feel like it's hope that has gotten me here. I don't want anything to pull me out of this. I don't want to be rescued anymore. I feel like I'm surrounded by farce and that the hope offered here to women is mere a ploy to get me in a position for a larger letdown.

So, categorically speaking, I give up.

Universe, don't help me. Don't save me. Don't make me hope.

Just leave me alone and let me wither in peace.

2007-06-15T19:26:00.000-07:00

DUPLICITY

Barring truly horrendous first dates in which I do fear for my safety, I tend to not think of myself as a notably duplicitous person. Granted, it’s not for lack of desire to be mysterious or anything quite as noble as “being a good girl” but rather, it’s simply too difficult and it takes too much energy to consistently “bait and switch” folks. Frankly, I’d like to be interesting enough to be duplicitous and all “Dangerous Liaisons” however, my reputation of “virtue” has nothing to do with “being good” and everything to do with my laziness married to my inherent stupidity. In a nutshell: I am virtuous for all the wrong reasons and therefore in no place to judge.

However, the extent of the duplicity here in China is impressive, even by my rather, “Eh, whatever” non-plussed perspective. I’ve said it before I’ll say it again: the women in China tend to be unstable bordering on crazy but they’re not stupid while the men tend to be overly misogynistic (as if there were a “moderate” misogynist). It’s a recipe for disastrous hell.
Consequently, now that my Chinese Angel has firmly pitted herself against my Beloved Colleague, I find it difficult to discern who I can trust and consequently will not be trusting anyone for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, as I am not interested in getting into the (middle school) drama, I choose neither and would prefer to simply walk away before things get ugly.

Today (6/15) was a nightmare of a day. There was a violent outburst in one of my primary school classes and though I did my best to control it in real time, a student still got hurt and I feel infinitely responsible. The bottom line is that I have consistently been put in a classroom with a student who is entirely too volatile and while I have consistently explained that I am in over my head and that I need help, my cries for help have fallen on deaf ears. Consequently, while my (far and away) most violent student lost his mind today in class and (per usual) there was no one available to help (despite my sending responsible students to go find responsible adults), I did the best I could to contain the physical violence this one student (approximately my size and my strength) was unleashing. However, the triage decision I made to get expel the violent offenders from my classroom led to one of those violent offenders getting hurt later and so I was reprimanded (lightly) at lunch for having made the wrong decision because “putting students outside a class during class time isn’t safe and we should make every effort to try and keep students in class.”

At that reprimand for having done the best I could do in an impossible situation sent me over the edge. Not only did I have a student’s injury on my conscience, the frustration of being patronized as the typical girl who overreacts and the rage at being ignored because foreigners don’t understand how to handle children, I now had my boss lightly scolding me when, in all reality, if I was Chinese, my ass would have been fired.

It’s safe to say I lost my shit.

Granted, I lost my shit in a way that isn’t really cinematic but I lost it nonetheless. I simply got up from my lunch place, informed my lunch mate, “I’m sorry but I have to go for a walk because I am very angry right now,” and I calmly walked off and continued to walk until the shaking subsided a little.

After my freak-the-fuck-out and a phone call to my Brazilian Angel to calm me down, I returned to my office for the meeting to discuss my refusal to teach that class anymore. The meeting turned into a three hour tirade against the issues that teachers who have to deal with a child who is regularly and viciously beaten by a parent have to face. The Chinese teachers clearly were angry with the boy and the parent for not dealing with the situation and the principal was clearly having trouble dealing with how to deal with a student he couldn’t expel.

“Don’t be angry,” was repeated over and over to me.

I fully articulated that not only was I angry and going to stay angry for a good while but that when my employer forces me to choose between having to allow one student to get seriously hurt or allowing numerous students get seriously hurt, you can be damned sure I’m going to stay fucking angry.

My point was made and then I was told that I couldn’t stop teaching the class because to stop teaching the class would mean that I was telling the students it was okay to give up.

“No, it’s not about giving up, it’s about respect. I am not just a single teacher. I am everyone who is not Chinese. With me, they build their understanding of everything that is not Chinese. When I came here, they had many bad habits from the teacher before me and it has taken a lot of work to break them of those disrespectful habits and I will not start allowing disrespect back into my classroom. I will not allow my students to think it’s okay to be rude and disrespectful to all foreigners. That would mean I am a bad teacher.”

The principal conceded that I had a point and promised to sit in on my next/last class with this particular class.

Just as I finished that discussion that left me with a migraine and an incredibly shaky nervous system, I had to go see the headmaster to resign my contract for the next year.

I was supposed to see my Chinese Angel so I went to her office. In her office, my Beloved Colleague showed up and they exchanged words. Clearly neither was happy with having to talk to the other and I have suspected for some time that though they are both seriously involved with others, they have had some sort of romance going on. Clearly something between them has soured and something between my Chinese Angel and I has soured as well. She seems to be clearing house of the people she cares about.

Earlier this week, I brought my Chinese Angel to my gym. I wanted her to have some fun and see some gorgeous men. I told her to take it easy on herself and not to push too hard but the fact of the matter is, she’s in terrible shape, though she is very thin, and we couldn’t do anything without her being totally exhausted. So, I suggested we take one of Tank’s spinning classes as I figured she could just sit on the bike and peddle along with us when she felt like it. However, something went terribly awry, she pushed too hard, did something to hurt her leg and fell off the bike. In other words, she lost face.

And, in China, there is nothing worse than losing face.

Since that class, she has been angry with me and is not willing to invest anything in our friendship. Because she is embarrassed by what happened, she refuses to deal with me and treats me like our friendship is an incredibly taxing effort for her. In fact, she now refuses to speak English around me as it is clearly too much of an effort for her to patronize my lazy linguistic capacity and insists that I use Chinese. Of course when I do use Chinese, she laughs at my pathetic attempts and when I don’t understand she simply repeats the Chinese over and over without telling me what she means.

Consequently, I don’t trust her anymore. She is looking to humiliate me the way she felt she was humiliated so we’ll be back on common ground. This return of tit-for-non-existent-tat that I haven’t experienced since high school is quite obnoxious.

Thank god, this duplicity has reared its ugly head today, of all days. Today, I had to re-sign, despite the fact that it was the LAST thing I wanted to do.

Nevertheless, I went to my Chinese Angel’s office and as I entered, things were weird (as they’ve been all week). Then my Beloved Colleague entered, they had words and he left, very cross. I was told I should go with him and he had a long head start but did not wait for me.

That was clue number one that something was quite wrong. Then as we sat in the headmaster’s office, my Beloved Colleague did not look at me. Clue number two.

“Are you okay?” I asked, worried. I don’t trust most people in China but I do trust him. I’m quite certain if something was wrong, he’d tell me.

He blinked from behind the mask and then acquiesced to my concern. “Yes, I am okay,” he said, smiling.

I didn’t fully believe him, as he seemed exhausted and irritated but I did believe it didn’t have much to do with me. In fact, if it did have to do with me, it was only peripheral.

He translated for me with the headmaster and we walked back together, his foul mood clearly lifting as we chatted. We then parted, he clearly a bit distracted as it’s the end of the year and he’s got bigger things to worry about than me.

As I was heading back to my apartment, I received a text message from my Chinese Angel telling me not to trust my Beloved Colleague. “Do not trust [your Beloved Colleague] do not believe his is a good man. He is half good but also half ugly.”

I replied by saying that I am old enough to know that no one is always all good or all bad and I asked what had happened to make her say this.

“When we were in my office he said bad things you could not understand. He knew I could not stand it so I did not go.” She explained.

I figured everyone’s under a lot of pressure right now and the last thing they need is to be babysitting me; it’s no wonder he wasn’t thrilled with having to care for me.

“Is he just having a bad day or did I do something wrong?” I asked. It’s a tense time, under tension people say and do things they regret and perhaps I had overstepped a boundary that set him off. Frankly, if he was going to talk shit about me, I probably did something to deserve it. He’s a rare, good man and I seriously don’t think that he gets off on talking about me behind my back.

She explained that he is a deceitful man who loves to hate people and that “everyone” has grown tired of him. The moment anyone speaks to me how “everyone” has suddenly grown tired of a single individual my suspicion is aroused. With the usage of “everyone” the sound of “Hmm” entered by brain and won’t leave. “Everyone” is a word people use to serve themselves, not the greater good. “Everyone” rarely agrees on anything. “Everyone” certainly doesn’t give a resentful shit about this friend who confides in me and shows active curiosity. “Everyone” usually means “me in a way that I am so overwhelmed by I can’t control.”

As she pushed this idea that he really despised me, it began to dawn on me that this wasn’t about my Beloved Colleague and but rather about drama she was trying to stir up. At that point I figured, I had had enough. I wasn’t interested in cultivating drama and to push the matter further would be to stir up things. It was established I did nothing wrong and it that the attack (on whomever) was unprovoked.

Let sleeping dogs lie, as it were. Besides, if this wasn’t about me and it was about her, there would be a great shift at some point about fake concern for me. People always think that presenting themselves as selflessly trying to assist you in your plight against the ills of the world is going to convince you to trust their (lying) word. Frankly, she has not been concerned about me since she fell and I don’t believe that in a single fight between the two of them, she would suddenly regain the great affection she had for me before she lost face. I have been relegated to doghouse and despite my efforts to take care of her when she was hurt, I clearly need to be punished for her error in judgment. I don’t believe for a second that she would suddenly be concerned for me above all else.

And, confirming my suspicions she then sent several text messages about how she hoped nothing would upset me and that she just wanted me to know and that she was just trying to be a good friend by informing me. I’ve never seen someone cover their own ass so fast. It was really disheartening.

And, in the greatest stroke of irony, I found solace in the West Egg party I attended tonight. I found my own duplicity waiting for me. After too much assault of the Chinese duplicity, it was comforting to be surrounded by Western familiarity. My good friend who is French who I always end up sitting with just got married. I’ve made new friends with some Kiwi folks who’ve recently made the commitment to up and move to Xi’An. Even the constant discussion of my weight loss and how I’ve “come so far, keep it up” seemed to blend in with the comforts of home. Perhaps my favorite moment of the evening came as I was leaving and an older, Australian friend kissed me on the back of my hand to the tip of my shoulder. It made me laugh with happiness.

“Why do women always laugh when I do that?” He asked, feigning hurt. “My wife says it’s because I’m funny and they should laugh at me.”

“Maybe we’re laughing with pleasure!” I exclaimed. I know I had been. It was the loveliest, flirtiest, most direct gesture of affection I’ve gotten in some time and I adored it. “They do say, ‘Women date tall, dark and handsome but they marry short and funny.” I said to the man a head shorter than I.

To my great delight, he smiled broadly and kisses me from the back of my hand to the tip of my shoulder again. It was a lovely moment. I’m growing too hard. My sense of romance, so in bloom when I first got here has withered and dried up with the constant onslaught of the Chinese perspective of using romance as a means to an end. The “gold and jade” on the outside has given way to the “rot and decay” on the inside and I miss my middle ground. I miss my naïve sense of romance. I miss the pleasure of male company. I miss the comfort of steady men happy to see me because they think I’m pretty, charming and generally lovely. Most of all, I miss what I found with Bill. I miss the freedom I felt with him and I can’t stop thinking about him. To be close to anyone here is so dangerous and I just want the safety of Bill again. If even for only a day, to know such comfort would be a gift I would be forever grateful for.

However, as I look back over what I wrote about our brief time together, I find the hardness in me simply baffled that a man like that could exist. As I wrote out the things that we did, I remember thinking how much I wish I could have done a better job at capturing all he did and gave me. Now, I read those passages and find myself disbelieving a man like that could really exist and I really don’t like that. The cynicism I find creeping in with this constant barrage of rather childishly executed duplicity that I’m surrounded by coupled with the patronizing, let’s-see-if-we-can-fool her romance is beating out my capacity to believe in beautiful relationships and the moment you lose the ability to believe in the beauty of relationships is the moment you lose the ability to have beauty in your relationships. If you can’t see it, you can’t embrace it.

2007-06-14T02:05:00.000-07:00

THE JUDE

For better or worse, I am probably best described as, “The Jude’s daughter.” One of the Jude’s high school friends met me, we hit it off and he commented later to her that I was exactly what he always thought her daughter would be like. It was one of the best compliments I have ever been given.

Most people view the similarities to their parents as their cross to bear in life. However, with all the upheaval in my life and all the conscious decisions about what I do and do not allow into my adult life, having made the conscious choice to embrace the similarities between my folks and I as well as pursuing an adult friendship with my mother, I embrace the idea that I’m “just like my mother.” Frankly, it is precisely because my mother offered me the clarity of vision and always raised me to make my own choices, that I think I am so comfortable embracing the pieces of me that are clearly her. I can think of no one more compassionate or more passionate about being a mom than my mom. It is not that she is empirically without flaws (no one is and who would want to be?) but it is the way in which she embraces humanity and does the damned best she can manage in the most selfless manner possible that makes her amazing to me. All that is good and compassionate in my personality, I can honestly say I received from my mother. All that is clinical, decisive and unflinching I got from my father.

To be totally honest, no one knows me better than the Jude (barring my father, with whom I have no and will have no adult relationship) as no mentor could possibly understand me on the genetic level she does. She simply understands both my nature and my nurture as she is the source of half of the former and most of the latter.

To me, nowhere is this more evident than “the voice inside my head.” Frankly, as an adult, it has always been the Jude and it will always be her. When things go awry, it is her voice that pops into my head to offer guidance, consolation or humor to the situation. Usually, it’s all three in a single quote. And if she’s not directly speaking to me, she’s at least given me the tools to be entertained with the great passion I have for men. I inherited my rather unwavering affection towards men from the one woman on the planet who might love men more than me. So, when she’s got no direct words of advice, she’s taught me to love men enough to use my real life examples that fit the moment.

On Friday (6/8) I had, empirically speaking, the worst date in the history of my dating life; and I’ve had some winners. For about two months, I had been chatting online with a Former Marine (I love the armed forces but it takes a special crazy to make a Marine; it’s not always a “bad” crazy and it’s not always a “good” crazy, but it is always a “special” crazy) who was born in China to Chinese and Japanese parents, moved to the US when he was a teen and then moved back to China for business. His kind of crazy seemed to be working well with my kind of crazy and he was just a pleasure to speak with. In spite of myself, I found myself rushing home and extending my online time just to have a few more minutes to talk with him. I had made no mention of it until now for two reasons; 1. It seemed too good to be true and 2. I am incredibly skeptical of dating via the internet. However, I was simply hooked. I found myself staying up until two in the morning just to continue to talk, despite my 6am wake-up call. And, a couple of nights, I over-embraced my exhaustion to skip the gym and chat with him. Frankly, the relief of having found a man who understood both the culture I come from and the culture I live in to such an extent that he was able to offer me insight into my own experience made me euphoric.

And then on Tuesday (6/5) he asked what I was doing for the weekend.

“Nothing” I lied, knowing I could clear my schedule if he wanted to call or something.

“Good. I’m coming to visit.” He typed.

And there it was; what I wanted more than anything.

And it terrified me. There were too many “what if”s and more than anything I wanted not to lose this friendship.

But, he had made up his mind and he was coming.

So, on Friday, I hopped the shuttle to the airport and waited for his plane.

He arrived and immediately my antennae started twitching. There was just something about his demeanor that set off all sorts of very subtle “Hmm” messages from my gut. For me, “Hmm” always ends up becoming the louder, “Uh, no.”

He immediately declared that he was in a foul mood from the plane and it would take him a few minutes to settle down.

“Okay,” I thought, “You’re just responding to his foul mood.”

And then we made our way over to the cabs to take one back to the city and he started angrily negotiating with the cabbies. Now, in China, the men definitely need to show their aggression with other men to be treated with respect but it just seemed a bit much. While I was turned off, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and entertain the notion that this showing was not indicative of his nature and perhaps this was just one of his worse moments truly ill timed. In that moment, I promised myself I wasn’t going to be alone with this man until he had been kind enough for long enough to make me forget how aggressive he can get in his rage.

Nevertheless, there was nothing to be done as I needed to get into a cab anyhow to get home. It was a public place and we were going to a public place. I felt safe as long as there were other people around.

Finally, he settled on a cab and we climbed in. He started chain smoking, despite claiming that he only smoked “once in a while” and suddenly his hand was around mine.

And all sorts of things flared up in me. Anxiety settled in around me but I couldn’t sort out why. When I get overwhelmed by feelings, I tend to freak out and so the panic tends to feed on itself and I know that. It takes a lot of effort but I do my best to calm myself down and sort out the panic from the initial emotion. I may be close to thirty but the sensation of a mans fingers laced through mine still sets off all sorts of “I can’t think” things and so I need a lot of time to move from hand holding to much else. And, after the extensive period of time I’ve had without so much as a hand-holding session with even Z, I’ve grown accustomed to feeling intense emotions long before anything physical happens. So, putting the cart before the horse was definitely discombobulating and unnerving especially as he clearly wanted some sort of emotional commitment and not just a fuck. Committing my body is one thing, committing my heart is a very different story.

In the moment, I’m incredibly slow moving and I loathe being pushed because I’m not good at moving at anyone else’s speed but my own. So, I did all I could think of and sorted through my rolodex of girlfriends to figure out what they would feel about this moment.

Frankly, I’m Western and so gauging the moment by how my Chinese girls would gauge it isn’t going to work. Hell, most of my girlfriends in any country think entirely too highly to approve of my sexuality in real time; no man will ever be good enough for me and any moves will always be too fast. My Brazilian Angel is the rare case of girlfriend who doesn’t need me to remain a vestal virgin and would insist that I use this moment as a good one-night-stand to get my sexual deprivation out of my system. However, she and I have very different taste in men and our kinds of sexuality are very different. Not to mention the issue that he keeps joking about me marrying him so I didn’t think casual sex was going to be in these cards.

So, I decided to try to enjoy the moment and did the best I could to push aside rising anxiety in my gut. Frankly, it was really nice to have a man who had no girlfriend and no wife touching my hand. I haven’t had the overt physical attentions of a single man in over a year and it’s killing me.

As we rode in the cab, he kept looking at me like he was going to kiss me but I knew I wasn’t ready for that and so I didn’t look at him very much. Not to mention, the idea of a man deciding between my lips and the butt of a cigarette wasn’t very appealing.

We finally made it into town and found a bar. We made our way to the roof of the bar and it was just beautiful. The breeze was warm, the lights of the ancient walls twinkled in the night haze, the glow of the South rose from the massive plaza off the opposite side of the roof and the music wasn’t so loud you couldn’t hear each other. I didn’t feel like talking; I felt like luxuriating in the moment.

“I really, really like you. I don’t want to say I love you yet but I really, really like you. You know what I mean?” He asked, interrupting my lovely headspace.

“What?” I asked, confused by this confession of love.

“We had a good first impression at the airport. I don’t want to say I love you yet but I really, really like you.” He repeated himself, as he would continue to do throughout the night.

“Huh. That’s a lot of way-over-committed-crazy.” I thought. But then I corrected myself, thinking that it shouldn’t be so harsh on him for believing in love at first sight.

“You know what I mean?” He asked again.

I nodded, knowing he was talking about his thought that we had a love at first sight moment at the airport.

“And I know you really, really like me.” He whispered, hushed as he reached out to push my hair behind my ear.

Flinching, I pulled away. I don’t like strangers touching my ears or my neck and he did both with a single gesture.

Claiming to still be tweaking, we got some beers and he said once he was properly sauced, everything would be better.

“Hmm,” I thought. I made excuses for him but the fact is that I don’t like anyone who feels so comfortable with their alcohol relationship that when trying to make the best first impression they’re comfortable declaring what they need is to be hammered. I’m not in college anymore and the appeal of being shitfaced has long-ago evaporated.

Nevertheless, we had had some seriously fantastic conversations via the internet and I was looking to recapture some of that. I found that I was making all these excuses for him under the premise that we would have more of the kind of conversations we had on the internet, so I needed a little payoff for my constant excuse making.

“I came because I’m so fucking sick of typing. Always typing. In the amount of time I spent typing, I could have said a million things and laughed without writing ‘haha’.” He answered me, bitter about having had to invest so much time in the one aspect of our relationship I really, really liked.

Gutturally, the Jude rose up from some part of my brain that could actually keep up with the moment. She once told me a story about a friend of her parents who, at some point not long after she got married, her husband slapped her on the ass, told her, “Roll over” and proceeded to completely ignore foreplay. When the woman asked her new husband, “What happened to the romance?” his response was something to the effect of, “We’re married now. I don’t have to pretend anymore.”

With the presence of the Jude, I suddenly reclaimed my parameters. I found my voice in the moment the Jude made herself present. It was like someone pressed the pause button again to release me from being overwhelmed.

Once I returned to the moment, I thought “[Bill] wouldn’t find anything wrong with taking the time to write things out. In fact, he would find this evening perfect with the weather, the breeze and the beautiful lights. He would linger in all the right ways. God, the way he lingers is sexy.” Immediately, I had a flash of my brief moment pressed up against Bill at the Tang Paradise. The comfort, the complete lack of pressure and the companionship of that day will always stay with me; it was perfection. The warmth of the summer breeze coupled with the ancient wall looming over the rooftop bar not a block from the site of our first dinner together so many months ago made me want to know the specificity of the softness of Bill’s lips. India, the latest sight of his latest job, never felt further.

Outside my head, I said, “I like the pace of typing. It gives me time to think. I don’t like to rush things.” I also took that moment to put his hands back on his own legs and move my legs around so his knee wasn’t pressed up into my crotch.

“But if we waited for you to be ready, nothing would ever happen.” He teased me in the ‘it’s a joke but not really’ sort of way.

“Hey!” I declared, mock-offended, despite fully understanding the underlying issues, “I will fight you!” and I play-punched his arm, noticing that his body certainly has not gone to pot since his time in the Marines. There was clearly no way I could possibly put up a fight against this man. It’s hard for anyone to beat me physically for two reasons; 1. I’m strong as a motherfucker and 2. I’m very honest with myself about my odds in a fight.

“You think you can fight me?” He said, fully serious and clearly challenged and clearly willing to let me find out just how of my league I would be. It was the first time in my life I met a man who clearly had no qualms about physically putting a woman in her place.

“[Tank] could bench press me despite being half my height but when I play hit him, he feigns pain. It never remotely occurs to him that we might actually fight. He would never actually fight me. He could kill me effortlessly but he would sooner let me kill him than raise a hand to me. The thought of his own destruction is nothing compared to the mere thought of wounding me. The one time I mentioned my own brothers hitting me back when I hit them got him highly agitated.” I thought, thinking about my Tank and how just my presence makes him smile while my presence makes the Former Marine stare at me with cannibalistic eyes while saying things like “I know I spoil you” after having bought me one beer. The fact that my Brazilian Angel was at the gym while I was at the bar and the first words out of Tank’s mouth to her were not “Hello” but “Where’s Christina” seems to sum up the error in my judgment.

At some point, the Marine leaned over to kiss me. It was the strangest moment of my life. There was no shift in the look in his eyes. There was no sense of submission to the moment. There was no moment of being overwhelmed by us. His black hole, ravenous cannibal eyes just continued their glare. Part of what I love about kissing is the way the whole world shifts just a little bit before a kiss but this time there was nothing. I love the way the shift in a look makes my capacity for life functions rank at “breathing is a serious effort.”

“He’s kissing me.” I thought, quite removed from the moment. I did not kiss him back and I didn’t really understand how the kiss happened. There’s always some sort of climactic moment just before a kiss but not this time. I couldn’t even glance at him without his constant, cannibal stare and somehow by simply glancing at him, his lips were on mine.

He then felt comfortable to start putting his hands on my body and my neck to pull me in close to him. I did my best to pull away and remove his hands from my body but it took quite a lot of effort to do so.

I tried to slow the moment down by talking with the people who were sitting with us but his cannibal presence consumed that entire conversation as well. Suddenly a casual conversation was this huge, guffawing affair complete with the mortifying moment of lifting of his shirt to flash his chest, which no one but he found funny.

When no one but he laughed, he lifted his shirt again. “I’m on a date with Borat,” I thought. “He’s just starts out horrifically awful and then makes things worse.” Our bar mates then turned to each other and talked amongst themselves like we weren’t there.

I placed a light hand on his arm and said quietly, “Let’s just leave our clothes on.”

“You will never do that again.” Reflexively shot out of him, cold as ice and definitely not to be fucked with. I’ve never been threatened like that before in my adult life.

“Excuse me?” I asked, doing my best to remove the New York Bitch from that statement, as it was clear to me he was barely able to control his violent impulses in a very public place on a the first two hours of the first date. Not to mention the fact that his Chinese is far better than mine. And, in a date-type situation without girlfriends around to protect me, whatever he explained to the waitstaff about what was going on between us would be respected and I would be left without protection. Thank god for the Chinese misogyny.

In that moment, I decided that with a militarily trained man clearly stronger than I with serious alcohol dependency and violent impulse control issues, it was best that I roll over, play innocently dead and get out of there as soon as possible. The Jude popped up and spoke to me, “She stoops to conquer.”

Ashamed at his blatant threat, he shook his head, closed his eyes and for the first time all night, his serial killer gaze was hidden from me in an act of contrition. I took the moment to inspect him but then he opened his eyes again and saw me watching him.

He kissed me again, this time with tongue and I pushed him away.

“No, this is just too fast. I can’t do this so fast.” I said everything I wanted to say but kept qualifying each statement with “so fast.” So, “I can’t do this” became “I can’t do this so fast.” I wasn’t about to shoot him down while he could put his hands on me.

“But if we had to wait for you, nothing would ever happen.” He declared again for the umpteenth time in the hour and change since we had met.

“I’m sorry but it’s just too fast.” I said, feigning hurt as I pulled away. I also kept saying “I’m sorry” and dropped the “you feel that way, asshole” in order to make him think I was upset about disappointing him. He clearly saw me as an innocent and if that was going to keep me safe, I was going to use that for all it was worth. As the Jude says, she stoops to conquer!

“You know, we can just sleep together tonight. Nothing has to happen.” He looked at me, desperately. “You know, I don’t need to have sex with you. We can just lie together and I can hold you. I won’t have sex with you if you don’t want. I won’t rape you. Sex with you if you don’t want it is like rape. I won’t rape you. You believe me don’t you? You have to believe me. I don’t have to have sex with you.” He told me as I looked away. The Former Marine was having serious St. Augustine issues; he was constantly denying precisely what he wanted. In some way, people who deny their baser instincts like that are worse than addicts who completely submit to it; they not only have to admit they have a problem but they also have to admit they want it. They obliterate all other conversation except the one about how they don’t want the thing they want so badly they can’t breathe.

I did my best not to laugh as the Jude’s “I just want to lay it on your belly” story came to mind. One of the Jude’s nursing school friends had a date with a guy who kept insisting that they go back to his place. He didn’t want to have sex; he just wanted to “lay it on [her] belly.”

“Yeah, right. I just want to lay it on your belly” The Jude would always comment and roll her eyes.

In that moment I saw the Jude roll her eyes and speak, “Yeah, right. I just want to lay it on your belly.”

I bit my lip at the thought of the Jude and got myself together. As no piece of what he was offering appealed to me, I saw that scenario clearly play out before me. I would go to his hotel room. He would let me sleep a little. In my sleep I would indicate by the way I twitched my nose or the way my index finger on my left hand shifted to the right that I needed sex right then, I would get raped and then things would get seriously ugly as guilt consumed him. Frankly, I’m not so stupid I’m hemorrhaging from the ears so the idea of going to an anonymous hotel room with a highly trained killing machine with impulse control issues and a serious guilt complex didn’t seem like a good idea.

Frankly, I was more than a little disappointed. Had he not been as crazy as he clearly was or had he not begun declaring his great love for me, I would have totally been up for a fling. Clearly this was not a long-term love for me; he simply could not enjoy the silence nor the moment. However, I am doing my best not to scratch my eyeballs out for lack of a lover. Regardless of how much beggars cannot be choosers, I am not about to put my safety at risk to get laid.

“Of course I believe you.” I lied through my pearly whites. “I just am not ready for things to move this quickly. I’m sorry. It’s just too fast.”

Fending off the millionth “Don’t you want to save me money on a hotel and let me come back to your apartment?” request (because I want to die on the rock hard shitty mattress the school bought me in the apartment the school owns) to not be found until early Tuesday morning when they sort out the key/lock issue, I told him I was very tired and I needed to head home. I promised we’d meet up early Saturday morning and I headed off after some more fake concern for him.

I went home and collapsed in bed. It’s amazing how much “not getting raped and killed” can exhaust you.

Early Saturday, I woke up, completely freaked out at the prospect of having to deal with this again. “Fuck, it wasn’t just a nightmare,” I said out loud as I lay in my bed trying to sort things out.

I texted my girl Cakes and the Jude and each woman called me back, helping me sort things out.

Not surprisingly, the Jude said most of what I heard her say in my head the night before but also not surprisingly, she had quite a bit more insight to add. She helped steady me and make things okay. She rehashed enough to help reassure me that I was safe and in that real time conversation, I was able to find enough courage to straight out reject him in lieu of hiding in my apartment until the weekend was over and hope that he wasn’t able to track me down on the scant information he may or may not have remembered about me.

Frankly, if I’m ever lucky enough to have healthy kids, I hope that they feel a fraction of what I feel for the Jude. Even when she’s on the other side of the world, completely unaware, she still protects me, helps me and keeps me balanced.

2007-06-02T02:29:00.000-07:00

DESERT TOWN

In an attempt to understand what I’ve been going through, my beloveds back home have been reading Peter Hessler’s River Town. And, as an introduction to the life I’m living in China, I couldn’t think of a better opener. From what I’ve been able to stomach (and I’ll get into why I can’t stomach a lot of the book in a moment), our lives are quite similar; with the minor exception that he taught college students and therefore his students actively wanted his classes. As a kindergarten, primary and middle school teacher to the wealthy and spoiled, my students have very little sense of “earning” anything. They have not yet truly failed at anything that wholly damages their lives and so they are not yet aware of the skin-of-their-teeth by which they are living. College students have vividly glimpsed the failure of their more lazy fellow classmates and so they are much more keenly aware of just how close they all came to complete failure. The students I deal with neither have the fear of god nor the foresight that major milestones of academia force upon you. Hell, my predecessor (with whom I am now growing a friendship because of his Hessler-like mystification of the social aspects of Chinese personal relationships) used to stand upon the podium for all the teachers to teach from, holler “SHIT!” to get the attention of the students and then try to teach them for a few minutes to no avail. He is now happy in his college position and calls most of his work a “dream.”

Now, the reason I find it difficult to read River Town is through no fault of Mr. Hessler’s. He is bright and observant and insightful. His writing style is sensitive and beautiful. However, he is male and as a woman staunchly against all things feminist-ic (I believe in equal rights for all PEOPLE; to engage in even acknowledging genders in terms of policy, I believe, is acknowledging chauvinism and thereby defeating the cause set out by “feminism”), I suddenly find how vastly different his experience of China is/was. Frankly, it makes me ill to have to accept that my socially perceived genitals make such a stunning difference, but it really does and I have to deal with the issues that brings up for me because that’s my own shit. To Mr. Hessler’s great credit and as the recipient of my incalculable respect, he fully acknowledges the great mystery he finds Chinese women to be. In other words, he plants himself firmly on the other side of the divide of the gender wall I have inexplicably found myself trapped behind. Things as basic as eating out alone, which he writes of doing often to socialize with the locals, I cannot do. The only women alone who are my age are hookers and I am treated as such if I venture out around Xi’An’s less touristy spots without escort.

In the West, at least in my social circles, a woman like myself (sexually mature, mentally capable and fully educated) is able to fight her own battles. In fact, most men I know would not dare fight my battles for me. To be totally honest, most men I know (and I know a lot of strong, powerful men) would not dare fight me, much less fight my battles for me. Generally the response to my, “Excuse me?” is met with a hush and most men back away or backpedal immediately. Often men who’ve done battle with me will simply laugh at the attempts of another man to fight me. Hell, my own mother knows better than to argue with me once my mind is made up. My “No” means “No,” is respected as such and my protests are never interpreted as false modesty or fishing for compliments. I am taken at face value. I am given the same respect (relatively speaking) as a man. And, contrary to most self-declared “feminists” back home, I have never needed to be an angry bitch to do so. I simply display the self-respect I have and I am treated as an (relative) equal.

However, that is not the case in China. The married men who all have made the decision that the “dirty Western whore” will be “my girlfriend” literally refuse to hear, “No” when it comes out of my mouth. I have, so many times, literally wondered if I’m actually speaking. I have come to the understanding that I am, in fact, speaking however the men have already decided the conversation and there is nothing I can do to sway them from the script their ego has already written. Had I been raised in the environment that fosters this truly offensive behavior, I would probably have killed myself long ago. Simply put, I am not a strong enough human being to survive having my future dictated to me like that, especially my sexual future and in a society where there is an even more fucked up relationship with sex than the US.

Hessler’s quote of China’s suicide rate being higher amongst women than men does not surprise me in the slightest. The women are sold these bullshit fantasies about what their married life will be like, are, essentially, sold from their parents to their husbands and in a single day they move from the romance of a man whose “only wish is to wash [her] feet” to in-and-out sex, finalized by the idea that they must be proud of their husbands’ desire to take a fat Western whore for a mistress because she has blonde hair. Their dreams must be crushed, their worlds- so trivial to begin with- must be shattered in profound ways and then they must smile, thanking their husbands for all he gives them. The only thing of value an average Chinese wife receives is cash and if her husband isn’t bringing that in, well, there’s literally nothing left.

Women in China, on the whole, aren’t supposed to like sex (“Men are sexual animals. Women are not. Women do not like sex.”) and it has been my experience from talking with my Chinese girlfriends that they don’t. The notion of a lover’s tongue on their skin truly repulses all my Chinese girlfriends. I can see absolutely no reason why they would enjoy any aspect of sexuality as there is absolutely no interest in understanding a woman much less her sexuality. One of the few women trying to make strides in the understanding of female sexuality, female desire and female satisfaction was met with the resounding male-intellectual response of “Thanks for sharing way too much about your own sexuality.” Women simply aren’t heard so why should they be even remotely satisfied? Women simply aren’t heard so why should they have any will to live? Women simply aren’t acknowledged as anything more than a consumer and a dumpster for the occasional lust of a man. They are the sin eaters of men and they are the whipping boy for the faults of the family. Women do not exist as people. Women are receptacles who bear the fiscal responsibility of helping to support a household with no real public voice. Ultimately, they forcibly, surgically sterilize the wife who has too many children, not the husband and no one finds this inequitable.

The longer I am in China, the more I understand precisely why Chinese women will do anything to be with a Western man and why Western men love nothing more than the hospitality of the Chinese; the Chinese all want to BE Western MEN. They will stop at absolutely nothing to seduce that. Even the predatory Western men who come here to leech off the desperation of young Chinese women are a better fate than the standard issue Chinese male. I have said it before and I will say it again; if I was Chinese, my ass would be one of the numerous scantily clad women in Starbucks cruising for her “Pretty Woman” ending.

The Chinese women, by and large, seem unstable and irrational precisely because they are. The one thing they are not, however, is stupid. They understand how irretrievably fucked they are no matter what they do. They cannot make the right choice, no matter what they choose. Yeah, that would send even the strongest women off the deep end. They are the whores responsible for their husbands’ infidelity. A man is never has infidelity issues; his wife is frigid. And it is only love if, when he comes crawling back, she takes him back. Otherwise, she is just a heartless, cold bitch. A woman is never stolen; men are stolen while women are grossly immoral. A husband never has too many children; a wife does. It’s HER sexual organs that are at fault if there’s a population problem and therefore HER sexual organs that are removed if there is an issue. God forbid there be a discussion of a vasectomy. And women aren’t given the tools to even question this. They simply understand they are supposed to bear the bullshit without being given a voice to articulate their great frustration or even a voice to start to mend the fences. I understand now why, despite their great checkmate position socially speaking with the higher numbers of men and lack of desire for Chinese men, the Chinese women make no move to better themselves within the game they were born into; they have been systematically beaten into submission and shamed into believing substandard lives are the only “dignified” way to live their lives. I too would say, “Fuck it, someone else can sort out this mess.”

So better educated Chinese women, left with no way to live a satisfactory life, choose to leave the game entirely; they refuse to marry or they marry foreigners. Less well educated sisters choose to deal with the unmanageable burden the only way they know how; by turning it in on themselves and taking their own life.

Frankly, it sucks being a woman in the People’s Republic. Lip service is given in universities to feminism but the blunt fact is that there is no way this country can placidly deal with the quagmire they have built by systematically stripping women of all power and turned her position into second class citizen. And, without gender equity, men are stripped of the great benefits fully realized women offer. The fact is that there is such potential for so much more pleasure and enjoyment by both genders from life in general. However the fear that hobbles the men and turns them into cowering, quivering naughty little school boys with their porn star delusions about fully realized female sexuality around me will continue to ravage the female population for as long as there isn’t a gender revolution. To live in a world where all women who have had a boyfriend feel that love is little more than a waking nightmare is a world where love and satisfaction as I know them, and I think most reasonable adults, cannot exist.

As for Hessler’s discussion of not knowing any female Chinese women the answer to that is very simple: he would destroy them. Actually, my gut response to his commentary on the “mystery” of young Chinese women was, “Well, DUH.” For a woman to socialize with a foreign man in China means that she is forever ruined for men. In China, the sexes cannot be friends. It is believed that there is only one reason men and women are ever together. That rule, to some extent, has been bent for me as I am a very different, exotic case as I have the power of the West but I also have the incapacity that comes with my genitals. Clearly I am lesser than my male counterparts (intrinsically speaking) but I am still Western. Consequently, I am of the gender that is possible to break and conquer but I bring with me the advantages of being a Western male (because once you have broken me, you get an American passport). I am not inherently threatening to any Chinese male I see fit to be friends with. So, my very peripheral male friendships are tolerated as it is impossible to further stain me.

It is understood that I, without country and singularly individual, am a whore and infinitely beneath Chinese women as I have been ruined by having had an American boyfriend. You can’t ruin the reputation of a whore. (The gender divide in this country for me, is most clearly articulated by the perception of me by men and women. My girlfriends all call me a “good girl” while the vast majority of men call me a “dirty whore” when no one is watching in an attempt to unleash the succubus within. Z, a man from the area Hessler was in, never trusted me with men and in fact would often fight with me about giving my number to men I never even was aware of being around. His jealousy ran so deep that the source of him ostracizing me was more often than not his belief that I had some fictitious romance with some dude I didn’t even notice.) While the women respect me and my “virtue” (as women understand that most women have had at least one lover before they get married) the men are willing to forgive my spoiled perspective because it is through me that they themselves might be able to gain the same spoiled life. Anyone who manages to break this whore will become the recipient of the golden ticket; the ability to work, not just outside of China as comes with most foreigners but in AMERICA. Make no mistake about it; Chinese men worship the golden idol that is America, despite what Americans think about China.

Chinese women don’t have my trump card. A Western man must, in a very real sense, marry (and never divorce) any Chinese woman he wants to be friends with because the mere friendship means she will never be available to Chinese men. By mere proximity, the world the Westerner can offer her is something that would so beyond-spoil her that no Chinese man could possibly live up to the standard the White man set. Consequently, no Chinese man ever would even attempt to try to take possession of a ruined-by-foreigner Chinese woman. Chinese women are nothing if not very bright, socially. They would not risk their entire livelihood on an impossible dream. I suspect the attentions Hessler got from his Miss Ou was because she had already ruined herself (socially and consequently psychologically) on an affair gone awry (ending probably about the time she was 30 as all the women here tend to cling to the age their first love ended; it’s the time they view as “youth”) and so had nothing to lose by further ruining her whore reputation.

Like I said, the Chinese notions of sexual relations are staggeringly brutal, fiscally speaking and staggeringly naïve, romantically speaking.

And Hessler is right, money is an issue most clearly identified with men. It is the equivalent of penis size. The more money a man makes, the better quality woman he can afford. Make no mistake about it; women here are to be purchased. There is a reason narcissism is a virtue, eating disorders are the order of the day and plastic surgery is rampant; the women are selling themselves. The only question about the sale is how long the purchase is for. The more beautiful and complex the woman, the longer the sale. Frankly, only the Bill Gates of China can even attempt to consider a “real” relationship with me because only the Bill Gates of China can afford to pull me out of my economic stratosphere and into a world where, if I were to leave him, I could not possibly afford to maintain said stratosphere on my English Teacher’s salary. (Frankly, there are other jobs I could do that might match most of those men fiscally speaking but it is not understood that a woman can change her position professionally speaking because a wife’s position, essentially, is not in the work force unless her husband insists upon making himself richer.) In other words, I am to be taken from my father’s house with my meager, silly profession and yanked into a world of riches beyond imagination (good luck with that by the way: I’m a rich, white girl from Westchester County, New York replete with private schooling, China’s never seen spoils the likes of which I raised in) and to be dunked so in over my head that I cannot possibly think of leaving the man because the machine behind our marriage is more than I could ever combat alone (and I would combat it alone because my parents, my society, even my employer would be fiercely against a divorce).

Hessler makes the point that the personal understanding of self is utterly dependent on the public interpretation of the individual here and I totally agree. Without the public feedback of “self” a person is without identity in China. I felt it when I returned to the US and- instead of receiving the daily onslaught of feedback that women get about their physical appearance- I received deafening silence. I found myself wondering why no one was telling me what they thought of how I looked. I was actually anxious; I felt like I had vanished. I remember having the very conscious thought, “No one’s telling you because it doesn’t matter, dork. You’re home.” As pervasive as the public declarations of men are, and Hessler noticed it being overwhelming for men, I assure you it is infinitely more for women. It is so strong that I, a girl who never gave a shit about public opinion of her personal appearance before, was actually mildly unnerved by returning to a place where I wasn’t given constant (multiple times hourly) feedback. Consequently, women are in even less of a position to buck the status quo than men are, and history has proven how unstable men become in light of a fraction of such pervasive public perception.

To be completely honest, such a ferocious gender divide makes a relationship with a Western male wholly unappealing at the moment. I can’t imagine living in this world that is so inherently different with no real understanding on his part of why I never want to be around his Chinese friends or why I need him to repeat what I’m saying when Chinese men speak to me. The Chinese couldn’t be more docile or hospitable to Western men. By default, my Western boyfriend would never see the bullshit I have to put up with and I wouldn’t want a boyfriend who is inherently drawn to fighting my battles for me. J briefly glimpsed the world I live in when he overheard my conversation about desperately not wanting to perform but most Western males wouldn’t think to speak up about the autonomy of my desire. Frankly, Western men will never see my China, much less experience and understand it. Hessler briefly mentions how a student talks about “being fat” and how he thinks it might make her more attractive in passing without fully realizing the societal implications of a woman being perceived as fat here. I would have a hard time managing a balanced relationship as I understand it with such pervasive societal inequity because it’s not fair for me to always play the victim at home but this society is constructed to turn me into such.

So, my hat’s off to Hessler. I only wish there were more female voices to add to such a discussion as I think China’s next revolution will be a sexual one and the current experience of women is so underrepresented that what I am witnessing daily (and I am in no way trained to properly observe such anthropological notions) will be lost as an unwritten chapter in history because it can’t last much longer. It also cannot be penetrated (by virtue of the chauvinism ingrained currently in PRC) by anyone but other single females of marrying age. No other group is seen as so emotionally crippled and so no other group is given such unguarded access to the full spectrum of Chinese life.

2007-06-01T20:28:00.001-07:00

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

So the Chinese have a very different sense of boundaries than Westerners. It’s 9:45 am on Saturday (6/2) morning and I’ve been up for the better part of three hours. I’ve been exhausted this week and had fully planned on sleeping in this morning. However, at 7 am, my cell phone started ringing.

Incessantly.

Concerned, I answered it, still half asleep. I expected it to be news of the Jude who was having minor surgery today. Even if it wasn’t the Jude, it could have been important. Perhaps it was one of my friends. Perhaps it was another family member. Perhaps they were in trouble and needed my help. Perhaps my grandmother, who has been ill in the hospital, passed away. Perhaps I got that job at the local university teaching literature for the summer.

“Hello?” I answered, sleepily.

On the other end was one of countless, random Chinese people who have my cell phone number. As this is a communist country, everyone must have the same everything, including sleep cycle. The Chinese sleep cycle is from 1am to 6am. Before 1 am and after 6 am, the Chinese are perfectly comfortable calling each other because anyone caught sleeping outside of those five hours are lazy. Even on weekends.

And he had the audacity to be angry with me because I hadn’t returned his (literally 6) emails in a timely manner. It was all I could do not to yell, “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

As it is considered exceptionally rude to not give out your cell phone number, I find myself between a rock and a hard place. All the people I meet know at least one person I know so to not share my number with them is an affront that will certainly make it back to a social circle that matters to me. My favorite piece of this all is that the conversation being offered by most of the people who ask for my phone number is not notably interesting; they primarily see me as a receptacle for their desire to express their thoughts in English. They do not see me as person and the singular argument for their frustration when I’m not 100% committed to our “relationship” is “But you are the first foreign person I know.” My gut response is, “And how is that enough for me?”

I really adore being their foreign toy because means my cell phone number is unquestionably communal property and they are free to share it with everyone and anyone who wants proof that they actually know a foreigner. I get lots of calls from people who simply want to hear my “Hello?” And, I’d resort to screening all my calls but often my friends and family call from numbers my phone doesn’t recognize, to say nothing of the people looking to offer me a summer job. And if they’re calling from a number I don’t recognize, they usually can’t text message me. And China doesn’t believe in voice mail. Which means I can’t screen.

And, this lack of Western time sensitivity extends to banging on my front door. At 8 am, someone started banging on my door. As history has proven, only the people I know call me before banging on my door. And, invariably, the people banging on my door without calling first means I have a neighbor desperate to shoot rapid fire Mandarin at me. As I am the first Western they have ever met, I am also the first adult they have ever met who does not speak Chinese fluently. In other words, they have no idea how to handle my minimal Chinese so they neither slow down nor simplify when I am confused; they merely speak more rapidly and do their best to over articulate their concepts. When I ask them to do slow up and simplify, they laugh, thinking me silly, and continue on with their rapid-fire baroque language. Which means, I have to confront a stranger’s great frustration at the language barrier at 8 am if I choose to open the door. The cherry on top is that if it’s a bunch of women (and it usually is) they feel no qualms about inviting themselves into the check out every inch of my apartment. (I reflexively hide all expensive looking items so as not to appear as wealthy or wealthier than the people I’m surrounded by. The last thing I need is to gain a reputation as the place to hit for thieves.)

And yesterday, it was Children’s Day. I got to school at 8 am (despite the fact that, contractually speaking, I’m not supposed to be there until 10) was dressed up to celebrate my babies and was constantly berated with “Wow! Teacher you are beautiful!”

You might think “You are beautiful” isn’t ‘berating’ but trust me, it is. Countless teachers stopped me to tell me that, “I know you for one year and this is the first time you have impressed me.” To recap: I moved to China, didn’t speak the language, wrangled 1600 students every week, manage to get them to improve their English so much the school is being recognized by the government for its excellence, am loved by these children with whom I share no language, was courageous enough to risk a romance with a man while ignoring all cultural boundaries, I survived him breaking my heart/making me nuts, managed to maintain some semblance of my sanity and to top it off, I did it all with so much finesse only my closest coworkers (and then even in passing) noticed just how hard my life must be at times and what impresses them is a nice shirt.

A nice shirt and my newly shrunk ass is what impresses them after a year’s worth of survival.
A nice shirt and a small ass.

The sum total of a woman’s worth here seems to be her taste in clothing and her eating disorder. At least in the states, my closest friends don’t give a shit about my clothes and the size of my ass.

It’s safe to say that today I’m fucking sick of being a second-class citizen (read: woman) in this fucking country. I feel like I’ve worked hard, earned some goddamned respect and it’s about time people fucking heard me when I spoke.

2007-05-28T16:55:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-25T17:07:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-05-09T05:55:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-05-08T03:25:00.001-07:00

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.”

2007-05-08T03:24:00.001-07:00

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.

2007-05-08T03:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-04-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

GIFTS FROM THE UNIVERSE

I do love what the universe sets out. I have to teach 18 classes on Saturday, Sunday and Monday (dear god, I wanted to die at the prospect of that) and so I was having a bad day yesterday (Friday, April 27). Cranky and bitchy, I dragged my Brazilian Angel to the gym. I had to drag her because she hasn’t really been up for the gym but she’s clearly got that extra, angsty energy you get when you haven’t been working out but normally do.

So, I dragged her to the gym, got a card for my class with my favorite Tank-built trainer and then forced her to take a card for any class (she chose Latin Dance while I chose Spinning with my short but not small Tank). For her not to give up, I had to slap a happy face on but, frankly, I didn’t want to do anything but hide in my apartment until Tuesday is here and I have a week’s vacation.

As much prodding as she needed, I was not going to take the Latin class with her as I really, really needed Tank. If the thought of a class with Tank was daunting, the thought of a class without Tank was downright insurmountable. Tank’s ability to stay happy, focused and energetic absolutely saves me. That he’s built in the stockier, tank-like way I’m accustomed to in the West, makes me a bit more comfortable being as noticeable as I am in his class. Frankly, I stick out like a sore thumb and most of the time I hate being in the class with the lithe, poetic bodies of people who work out not to feel great and kick some ass but to look slim and lithe. I just don’t relate to that mindset. There’s nothing wrong with that mindset, I just don’t relate to it. I work out for one reason and one reason alone; to feel amazing.

I love the way athletics make me feel. I love the way I feel powerful after a notably hard session. I love the way it feels to be the most powerful person in the room. I love knowing I have conquered myself. I love the way it feels to give it my all and come up against something or someone stronger than me. I love the way it feels to have control over my body and, most of all, I love the way my muscles ache as they let me know I’ve pushed them to their limit. I just feel sexy when I’m going to bed and my muscles ache and feel tight from a day’s exertion. There’s something about knowing that my acts of consent or submission must be hard earned and cannot be demanded by just anyone. It’s the same feeling I get when I conquer an intellectual issue or have a particularly articulate argument.

That it makes my waist smaller or whatever genuinely means nothing to me. I know it’s what most people focus on but it’s just not where my head is. That it makes me “pretty” or “attractive” is simply not incentive enough for me to get up and fight. I have always understood that I will never have the kind of petite body that could be called “lithe” so I never even think to join the club. I can’t have “lithe” but I can have “power.” “Lithe” just isn’t relevant to my life the way that “power” is. Consequently, most of the trainers here, with their discussion of “fat burning,” “slimming,” etc., don’t move me. I’m not captured and I certainly can’t transcend the suckitude that is runner’s wall for mere vanity because I know that there will always be someone more beautiful, more slim, more youthful, more well-dressed, more… “whatever” than me but there will never be anyone more “me” than me. So, why fight a losing battle when the consolation prize isn’t even for me but for those who choose to look at me (which I would really rather they didn’t in the first place)?

Tank, however, is all about the sheer joy of it; the ecstasy of the agony. He blares the kind of music you can’t help but move to and his cries of joy push me through the staggering heights of runner’s wall. He is the kind of athlete I relate to and I feel that kinship despite the fact that we have no common language. (It might be overly obvious to state but we bonded over our mutual love for the movie “300” [which he loaned me because he mentioned it and I got all excited] in which the Spartans kick some seriously oppressive ass.)

Consequently, everyone at the gym knows that I take one kind of class; Tank’s. I don’t even have to ask anymore for the card for his class (you must have a card to be admitted to classes); they are merely handed to me upon entry. If I don’t know he’s got a class, he finds me and lets me know that there’s an extra card that’s been saved for me. And, it’s gotten around the gym clients that Blondie’s taking Tank’s classes.

In a sea of exotic, exquisite faces, “common” becomes “uncommon.” So, Tank’s classes are now filled to capacity with a waiting list because the Westerner is there. I sit quietly in the back of the room while the rest of the group (predominantly men now) peddle on their bikes and take every opportunity to stare at me while we work out.

Which bugs the hell out of me.

There’s nothing I want less than to be stared at like some science project while I’m gasping for air, sweating profusely and grunting like a woman close to climax. I don’t want to have to think about the way I look. I’m not very good with vanity (that’s not to say I’m not vain; I just tend to freak out when it occurs to me I should be “pretty” because people are watching) and to be worried about vanity when I’m trying to focus is truly bothersome. And, if it weren’t for Tank, I’d never join another class again. But, I really, really like Tank so I’m willing to overlook the mortification factor and simply lose myself in the sheer exhaustion of it all.

Last night, it was made very clear to me just how much Tank wants me in his class, which, to be totally honest, never occurred to me. I mean, I knew his classes have become the most successful because all the men want to stare at my cleavage when I lean over but I never thought about Tank thinking about me. I really like Tank but I never really thought about the fact the he sees me more than any other client at the gym. To be honest, it should have, as I am taller than most of the men, look decidedly Western and am inordinately loud but it just never did occur to me.

Normally, I don’t understand what the instructors are saying. I just watch what they do with their bodies and follow. But last night, I suddenly did.

“Er” was hollered in Chinese and I started to translate it into English as something else came through. “Second position” was hollered over the sound system.

It took me a moment to realize I didn’t need to translate that sound and as I looked up, Tank was looking at me, smiling. I smiled back and dropped down to the second position.

Then we took a moment to recover when the second position had wiped us out.

Tank gave a long monologue about what the proper positions were, the benefits of the workout and how to most effectively use your body for the various steps of the work out.

“Okay, Christina?” filtered over the sound system.

“Okay” is “okay” in Chinese. There is nothing that sounds like “Okay” in Chinese and it means the exact same thing in Chinese as it means in English. So, when I hear “okay” my mind slides into the calm state I feel only when speaking Western languages. I simply nodded without looking up.

But then I could have sworn I heard my name, so I looked up and Tank was smiling at me again.
“Okay?” He asked again.

“Yup, that was aimed at me but how the hell does he know my name?” I wondered as I nodded my head enthusiastically. “I must have misunderstood something he said. He said something that merely sounded like my name.” My students, on many occasions have tried to explain what the sounds of my name mean in Chinese but they haven’t managed to completely convey themselves.

Our class continued on with the flat-out psychotic driving periods followed up by the recovery moments and Tank continued to say things like “Sit down,” “Okay” and then something that sounded like “Christina.”

It was a damned good class and it managed to exhaust my body as much as my mind has been exhausted by the overwhelming quantity of work I’ve had to do.

After we finished, I went to hang out and wait for my Brazilian Angel. I watched her dance class from the glass windows of the studio and I could tell that dance was exactly what she needed. Just as I am Spartan in terms of physical outlets, she’s lovely and romantically feminine, in terms of physical outlets, so I knew the dance class would be the perfect thing to pull her out of her funk. I need to be physically abused in a workout just like she needs to be physically expressive. It was wonderful to see her relaxed and focused for the first time in several days.
We slowly sauntered back to the locker room and she took her shower as I got changed (I shower at home; frankly, I can’t shower in front of a lover much less in front of a bunch of women who make no effort to hide the fact that they’re openly staring at my circus-sideshow-freak body) and waited for her. I sat there, listening to the music Tank had just played in class on my iPod; I love that he reminds me of all the great music I’ve got.

When my Brazilian Angel finished her shower and got dressed, we headed out. I was feeling intensely relaxed but certainly unnoticeable in my baggy jeans, wife beater, sports bra and no makeup when compared with the chronically stiletto-ed, fully-glittered, bejeweled, fake/pushup bra boobed, perfectly coifed and flawlessly made-up exotic beauties pouring in and out of the locker room.

“Christina!” I looked up at the sound of my name; sure I had heard it but also sure that I knew no one who would be there to call it out.

“Damn it, I need to find out what ‘Christina’ means in Chinese.” I thought.

“Christina!” Tank called out as he came running around the corner. He said something in Chinese to me that I totally did not follow.

“What did you think of the class?” My Brazilian Angel translated as I realized he was actually saying my name and not something that sounded like ‘Christina’ in Chinese.

It took me a moment to catch on, first thrown by the actual usage of my name and then as I had no idea why my opinion would matter. However, I looked at Tank and the nervous anticipation in his eyes clearly allowed one answer, “Faicheng hao” [Excellent]. Frankly, I love his classes and am willing to brave my nightmare (being the center of sexual attention in an anonymous hoard of men) to attend them.

He was really happy to hear that and then he explained that next week he’d be changing up his music and he hoped that would be okay.

“Of course, I love your music.” I explained in English as my Brazilian Angel translated into Chinese.

With that, Tank started beaming. “…love your music” he repeated to himself a couple of times to remember the words.

And then, ever so sweetly, my Tank stumbled forward after the two of us departing and said, “Bye bye” as he waved. In that moment, I realized what a lucky girl I am that, despite the (relative) suckitude of the exhaustion I’m struggling with and the unsettling position of “anonymous sexual object,” I’m the recipient of quite a lot of lovely attention from men I admire and respect. A girl really can’t complain about that, so thanks, universe.

2007-04-24T21:41:00.000-07:00

GULLIVAR

It's a strange thing being the odd man out. I must admit.

While on the busses heading to our various locations this past weekend, the women were checking my blonde hair with the intensity of Jane Goodall with her primates. I was informed that my hair is far too soft and how much harder it must be before I can be deemed "healthy." I then tried to explain that I have Northern, silken hair in a genetic adaptation to keep me healthy in the cooler climates. My scientific explanation was met with a patronizing giggle, tolerating my "excuse" for my sub par body. Then there was the standard issue "fat" discussion along with the discussion of (complete with gasping hands flown to slack-jawed mouths) at the thought that Western men might actually like my body with its wide hips, strong thighs, developed (for a white girl) ass, small (proportionally speaking) waist and large (by comparison) chest. "Curves are ugly," the women consistently said. "Why do Western men like fat women? Women should look like chopsticks." (I also noticed that no men participated in this piece of the conversation unless you consider the History Teacher's eaves dropping and his Mona Lisa, ambiguous smile a participant. I have found that men who really like sex with women, by and large, simply respond to curves, regardless of the current fashion trend or the fascist, self-inflicted demands of women.) Then there was the unabashed adoration of my eyes, which I find ironic as the blue iris with the yellow halo around my pupil (while rare) indicates the incredibly unhealthy and weak genetic material I have for eyes. Yet, somehow, my weak genetic material is my largest selling point for breeding. There was the standard issue adoration of my death-like pallor deemed so unhealthy in the West but maintained by me by simple fear of my familial history of melanoma and a general disdain for orange colored skin. Again, my genetic shortcomings are a large breeding selling point. My Chinese Angel even took to making fun of me that the night I had the migraine (and a full night of not having slept the night before), I went straight to sleep at 1am instead of not being lazy and staying up to chat with a wake-up call of 6:30 awaiting us. (Like I said, I hate sharing a room with someone who is neither lover nor family; there's always a complaint about my character not chronically being my "usual" cheerful and energetic self.)

But this is nothing new. What's becoming new is how different I am from my Brazilian Angel. We were at our gym last night. I went before her and spent an hour on the elliptical trainer working out my frustration at not having had a day of peace in a while. Hell, I'm even being given a hard time for NOT missing classes. (The students are in the midst of midterms and so when they have a midterm, we don't have class. All the students had midterms all Monday and I was told by one teacher not to come in. So I didn't because when I don't have classes, I don't need to be in the office. So the man who thinks he's in love with me kept cornering me on Tuesday to give me a hard time about the fact that I forgot there might be classes. "I knew there weren't classes. I didn't forget. I was informed." "No, I think you forgot," he kept teasing me in a reminder of the fact that he sees himself as the proper man taking care of the emotionally stunted, irresponsible child by simple virtue of the fact that I lack a socially perceived penis.)

While I was in my homicidal head space at the gym, the trainer just over five feet tall but built like a tank walked by and handed me his mp4 player. He put on an English training video for kickboxing and let me have at it on the elliptical trainer for a good hour. Frankly, being seen as a strong athlete before being seen as a Western, White girl was just what I needed right then. I was infused with such a strong sense of calm that I haven't had in a several days. It liberated me enough to verbalize my stress. I'm usually pretty good at keeping the turkeys at bay but when it's a nonstop barrage of in-your-face criticism and I don't get any time to myself, stuff starts to cease rolling off my back and I start to get mired in the shit. When I get really mired in the shit, I tend to cease vocalizing; I had ceased vocalizing on Tuesday. However, on that elliptical trainer, I started grunting and cheering along with the video. Quite literally, I rediscovered my voice.

When I finished my hour, my Brazilian Angel showed up to do a little cycling. I took the bike next to her and started to talk. I was talking to my Brazilian Angel about my recent few days and then I started kvetching about not having a boy around to flirt with. And she gave me the standard response of every woman who takes her relationship for granted; "Chris, you don't need a man to feel good about yourself. You're in a solitary period right now and you don't want a man to bother you." And, while that's true in the feminist, take-no-prisoners sense, it's untrue in the fact that I spend all day being told by 8 year olds I'm fat, all afternoon defending ALL things Western and all evening surrounded by a community that I am both of and not of. Not to mention, in the realistic feminist sense; it's not true. I'm a fully realized sexual being with needs that extend beyond a cheap fling. Pillars of virtue are nice fantasies but the reality of me is that I am a sexual creature. Granted, it's not that I need a man to define me but that I need intimate companionship that reminds me of all the beauty I have. I need someone taken with my minutia who is willing to fight and flirt with me. I need someone who's not curious about the way my people are but rather, curious about the way I am. That's not to say I need a Western boyfriend but I do need someone whose interest in ME transcends his interest in my culture.

I tried to explain to her that it's a hard thing to maintain a positive sense of one's self under the constant barrage of little attacks when I go home to nothing but me. There's no boy I can call who adores me. There's no real circle of peers for me. She has a man who adores her, needs her and cares for her. She has friends who are in similar situations. I have me and this narcissistic reflection of me on my computer; this very writing has become what allows me to maintain some sense of myself. But, writing doesn't love you back or kiss your navel and writing certainly doesn't challenge you to grow.