I know the subject of this blog doesn't relate to Chinese dating, online dating and/or international relationships, and I need to apologize for that. However, I couldn't hold myself back from writing this article for a personal reason. There is a blogger on CLM, whom I'm going to name later in the article if you bear with me, who, like a parrot, keeps repeating his preferred words of nonsense in almost everything he writes about as of late. And what really pisses me off is that he does this condescendingly, calling us, ordinary people, CLM members, and bloggers, sheeple. Well, he's flat out wrong. Read more…
On my last day in China, in appreciation of my help in the gym, Mandy invited us for dinner at the restaurant she worked at. After two weeks of dieting, my wife was exuberant. Not just because she could eat anything, but because the place was so fancy. Read more…
The Shouting Boy
So I turned to my wife and asked, “Did you hear that shout?”
“What shout?” she asked, sleepy-eyed.
It was Sunday morning in Shenzhen. The streets were quiet, nearly without traffic, cars and pedestrians alike. My wife and I were already up and on our way to the gym. I was very much jet-lagged and about to convince myself that the airplane engines were somehow still roaring in my ears, when there it was again—a bawl. This time, it got my wife's attention as well. Read more…
Visiting China always cracks something open inside me. If I want to describe this thing, I close my eyes, and it will appear as a hotel room that has just been put back into operation after being unused for a long while. Its door and windows are wide open to air the place out. Furniture is dusted off, floors swept. After the final once-over, the room is ready to do the only thing it's supposed to do: accommodate fresh memories. Read more…
This is half a chapter from a story that a brilliant Chinese woman and I wrote. It's a love story between a white man and a Chinese woman. However, it's just too long to post it on CLM. Something 80,000 words. The Chinese version is going to be available to read on a Chinese website when the translation is done.
To understand this part, you need to know that the white guy (Logan) and the Chinese woman (Wu Tong) are in a hotel room after they've had dinner. They both agreed not to have sex, but Logan is excited anyway, and while Wu Tong's taking a shower, he recalls an episode from his childhood...
My first English teacher was only ten years older than me. She was fresh out of college, and since it was her first ever job, she always looked and acted highly professional. She maintained strict discipline throughout her classes and had always worn her long brown hair in a bun like a librarian and her long, immaculate white lab coat over her street clothes, buttoned up all the way. And let's not forget about her glasses; if they hadn't been sitting on her nose, would have hung from a string around her neck. So, it's no wonder that under no circumstances would I have ever thought that one day—or one night, to be exact—she would be responsible for my first wet pajama bottoms.
But I'm getting ahead of the events here, so let's not go there just yet.
I was twelve years old, and it was an early spring that year when I realized that I was more interested in looking at girls during recess than playing soccer with my friends. This sheer curiosity about girls, however, didn't involve anything like going over and talking to them. Honestly, it was the girls' chests that I discovered my newfound admiration for, since they seemed to be getting bigger by the day. The preceding years, to the best my knowledge, the girls had had nothing. Or had they? See, now, I don't think I would be the right person to call for that because before that spring, I hadn't paid attention to them. Until that spring, to me, girls in my school had always been useless and awkward at all sports and catching frogs and belching the loudest after lunch in the cafeteria. In any case, after turning it over in my head a couple of times, I figured those tiny swellings of theirs must have popped out during the long winter, under the warmth of their winter coats, like plants and flowers in glasshouses. Still, it was hard for me to comprehend why they had become wonders to my eyes from one day to the next.
In my school, during recess, teachers took turns supervising the activities in the schoolyard. On a remarkably hot spring day, it was my English teacher's turn to supervise. The unusually hot weather for this time of the year streamed up from the Adriatic Sea. Just from the heel of Italy. Definitely unusual, but not like it had never happened before. “So, folks, today is summertime! All you can do is enjoy,” the radio had said in the morning that day as I left for school. I don't know how many other people enjoyed that heat wave. All I remember is that my friend and I liked it very much.
He—my school friend (let's not reveal his name)—and I were determined to draw a direct connection between this lively phenomena that grew on the girls' chest and the force that kept our eyes fixed on them. We didn't know a lot about girls, the world, or, in fact, anything else at all. Computers weren't a household item back then. To look for answers, we had to go to libraries, search for information, and read books, which we hadn't done that much. It wasn’t that we were too lazy to go or hated books. It was more that we accepted the big wide world as it was. We didn't question why my friend's father had only one leg, or what the thought process had been that triggered Ronald Reagan's mutation from a gunslinger in movies to the President of the United States, or the reason why dogs liked to bark at the moon, according to Ozzy Osbourne. As far as we were concerned, the world, perfect or not, had already been made. My friend and I had just grown into it like two wild mushrooms in an ancient forest. Who were we to judge the world? To us, girls were girls—annoying. And teachers were teachers—authority in uniform.
However, when this invariable picture that we had gotten used to since birth suddenly changed, we wanted to know the reason behind it. So, my friend and I came up with a plan to take turns following the development of the girls’ puffiness and playing soccer. We couldn't just stop and give up everything for the girls. We had a life too, you know? Soccer is a beautiful game, and we couldn't just stop playing it from one day to the next, no matter how strongly we felt this force inside us to look at girls almost all day.
Anyhow, the plan was to watch the girls from a distance and come up with an explanation for the changes that befell their chests. Every other day, I watched the girls in the schoolyard during recess while my friend played soccer. And on the other days, I played soccer while my friend watched the girls. At the end of each day, we shared what we had experienced just to make sure the other wasn't left out of anything significant.
As I mentioned, on that day, it was unusually hot for a spring day. My friend and I agreed neither of us should play soccer that day but instead watch the girls from the shade of a tree. I don't know about my friend, but sitting under that tree, I felt like a farmer examining the growth of his cornfield from the previous day. The girls, as usual, walked up and down in groups around the schoolyard, talking—they were unbeatable in that—and showing off their early blossoms under their shirts. Occasionally, they fanned themselves with their hands because of the heat. But regardless of the hot weather, they sort of seemed to enjoy that walking-up-and-down thing in the schoolyard under the scorching sun. I brought up this observation of mine to my well-respected partner in research, who sat beside me and chewed on a stem of grass. After a few minutes of debate, we came to a joint agreement: we had no idea what could have actually made the girls want to stroll under the sun. Baffling us even more, the girls seemed to be annoyed and made faces when they caught us looking at them. And yet, there they were in front of us again a matter of minutes later, strolling and making faces. It made no sense to us.
I decided not to look at them any longer. The girls could do anything, as far as I was concerned: walk, make faces, be annoyed. I knew, even then, that I would never understand them. And so, I looked over at my English teacher, who was supervising the activities from the middle of the schoolyard. The basketball court, where she stood, was paved with asphalt and soaked up the sun's rays in abundance. The air actually seemed to shimmer around her. Literally, it was a naturally occurring stove she stood in. And it wasn't even noon. The sunlight hit her from an angle—a ten-o'clock-in-the-morning kind of angle. Figuratively speaking, she was roasting herself in the middle of the basketball court. Occasionally, she tried to fan herself with her open hand, just as the girls did, but without any results. She was sweating all the same in that long, white lab coat, which kind of seemed to me to have the same purpose as hard hats at construction sites: protection. Always keep them on. This puzzled me. I gave it a deeper thought.
Protection. What danger was there at our school that required teachers wear lab coats all the time? Protection against what? Against chalk powder? I wondered. As stupid as it sounded, it very well could have been. But why didn't they wear masks as well, then? I challenged my own thinking. Inhaling fine chalk powder could be even more dangerous than messing their street clothes up with chalk residue. No, that wasn’t it. What else was there? Against the dirty hands of unmanageable children during recess? Again, it could be, but it was rather unlikely.
After I had gone through a couple more possibilities like this in my head, I noticed my English teacher unbuttoning her lab coat. I'd never seen her without it before. What she was doing didn't fit into the picture I was accustomed to. Girls were girls—annoying. Teachers were teachers—authority in uniform.
In a short time, this was the second change that I had witnessed at my school. Why had everything suddenly started to change around me? Or could it be me who was changing from within? The growing anticipation building up in me was something that I had never experienced before. My mouth got dry; my heart beat as fast as racehorses' hoofs on turf, and my breathing became rapid, shallow, uncontrolled. Heatstroke?
Watching my teacher and feeling all that excitement inside of me, I slowly realized that it had to be me who had begun to change. I must have started to see the world from a different viewpoint. Girls were girls—delightful to look at. Even if it was hard to admit. Teachers were teachers—without uniforms, people, just like me. The picture that I'd seen from birth didn't change at all: it was only more detailed now. It honestly felt as if the world had slowly opened up for me and begun to make sense. I felt if I were walking in an enormous room toward a picture on the wall. Every single step that got me closer to it also revealed more details to my eyes: sweat-covered skin; a loose lock of hair, out of the bun; fingers, long and delicate, working on the buttons. My English teacher had finally shed her cocoon, folded it, and let it hang from her forehand. To me, at that moment, she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen in my entire twelve years.
My teacher's swellings, unlike the girls' mosquito bites, were fully developed and round. They were ample enough to stretch her white shirt to its limit on her chest, threatening to catapult a few buttons into the air in any moment. In the slanting sunlight, I could see her upper torso under her white shirt like a silhouette of a woman behind bedsheets on the clothesline. The knot in my lower stomach got tighter, as if all my anticipation had been compressed into a tiny but incredibly massive ball within it. The feeling was overwhelming. Even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't have taken my eyes off her. I caught every small detail, and my mind magnified them in a way that made me feel I must go over and touch her. Her slightly opened lips were moistened by her pink tongue. Beads of sweat rolled down from her face, making their way down to the valley between the mountain of soft swells. My teacher's shirt had collected all the sweat on her tummy and stuck to her skin. All I could feel at that moment was the ball about to explode and create a hole in my lower abdomen. I was looking for relief but didn't know where to find it. Finally, the sound of the bell, ending recess, did the favor for me and very slowly weakened the feeling.
That picture of my teacher etched itself into my mind. One detail after another, the image came alive that night and reconstructed itself in my dream. White shirt . . . sweat-covered skin . . . mounds of soft blessings . . . the tip of her tongue . . . the silhouette of a woman . . .
Before dawn, my body had found the proper relief on its own, and for the first time in my life, I awoke with wet pajama bottoms. Looking at the gluey stain as I sat in my bed in the morning, I was utterly convinced that wearing long lab coats was solely for the benefit of teenage boys to not wet themselves in school.
With time, of course, things got straightened out in my head about the world, girls, and wet pajama bottoms. The only thing that remained unchanged, losing no strength at all in my mind, was the symbol of a woman in a white shirt, which, to me, to this day, is sexier than a stark-naked woman—foreplay for my mind.
. . . Wu Tong emerged from the bathroom, wearing only my white shirt. Her clothes were in her hands, neatly folded, on top of each other. She coyly smiled and placed the pile of clothes on one of the cushions that lay on the floor. “Thank you for making my bed,” she said.
I nodded. “You're welcome.”
Wu Tong then noticed that the light in the bathroom was still on. Promptly, she spun around and stepped back into the shaft of light that deluged through the open bathroom door.
The silhouette of a woman.
She looked slim, well proportioned, and fragile under my shirt. From the threshold, she reached in to find the switch. To do so, she turned her body sideways. I couldn't believe it. Not big, not small, just perfect. The outline of two soft, perky breasts pushed against the fabric of the shirt, almost piercing it with the nipples. Unfortunately, to my chagrin, when Wu Tong switched off the light, her silhouette and the paired perfection were gone in an instant. The room settled into semidarkness. I could nearly hear it yawn. The only light source in the room came from my bedside lamp, hardly stronger than a candle. The part of the room where the sofa-bed stood was almost in complete darkness. I heard only the rustle of the covers as Wu Tong climbed under them.
“Good night,” I heard.
“Good night,” I said.
Read more…
With her arms crossed over her chest, the woman held the comforter as if trying to shield herself against whoever it was in the dark. Despite the insufficient protection the blanket provided, it actually stopped her from screaming out in fear. A little while later, though, when something grazed her forehead, she almost cried out. The only reason for staying silent was that the touch was soft and came with a scent that surprised and muted her. The smell was of orchids; she was able to identify it right away. Someone was touching her forehead, face, and hands with the velvety petals of the flowers. Read more…
When the woman regained consciousness, the things she noticed first were the hardness of the kitchen floor and its coolness against her bare skin. Her pajama top was open, and one of her breasts had a bright red bite mark on it, but in all likelihood greenish purple by the morning. She covered her breasts and pulled her pajama bottom back up from her knees. If it weren't for the smell of smoke, she wouldn't have moved yet. Out of the utter confusion and despair, she wasn't ready to see the state she was in. The smoke, however, was getting thick, and she forced herself to get up and look around. Read more…
After she had been pulled off the bed, the woman lay supine and in horror on the hardwood floor. Her husband, very unsteady on his feet, stood over her body, feeling smug after his demonstration of spineless dominance. His clothes and breath reeked of smoke and alcohol, and a dense haze of delirium clouded his eyes. He slurred something that the woman couldn't fully understand. Having no idea how to respond, she kept quiet. She didn't dare to even breathe or blink. Like a fish out of water, she just lay there, submissive, on the floor, clearly still in shock from what had just transpired. The old bruise on her back began to ache again, pounding a steady rhythm with her racing heart. She wished—if butterfly she could be no more—to be a fish, hiding from the world deep down in an abyss of eternal darkness. She wanted to be anything but a woman who got less respect from her husband than a homeless, hapless beggar. Read more…
On the balcony, the woman was busy trying to find a place for the orchids. Her vegetables and herbs were in plastic containers in sizes of rather on the large side, leaving not much room for anything else on the floor. So, for the time being, the woman decided to set the orchids on the concrete guard rail, thinking to hang them from a nail tomorrow when there was daylight. Read more…
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