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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.