“News?” Jake says. “Regine, I don’t do news. What time is it?” He looks at his bare wrist, confused, before remembering that he left his watch in a hotel room in Dalian a week ago. The second one lost in as many years, so now he uses his cell phone display as a replacement. One less thing to keep track of.
“Well, I’ll tell you anyway because you need to know this,” she says, smiling and grabbing Jake’s watch-less wrist. “The Foreign Ministry is watching you.”
The comment doesn’t register immediately. It’s as if Regine is talking about someone else. They keep tabs on all foreign reporters anyway. Jake then pictures the connections between himself and Qiang’s documentary and the guy Qiang was interviewing, laid out like a graphic element in a news report. His heart rate picks up, snapping him out of his buzz like a sudden wind clearing smoke. Jake runs several scenarios through his head, the worst of which involves a knock on the door late at night.
“How does a financial news reporter like you get on the Foreign Ministry’s radar?” she asks.
The question is a form of respect, posed as much to congratulate him for stirring up shit as it is out of curiosity. With too many thoughts in his head, Jake can’t respond and Regine’s expression changes from playful to concerned.
“Jake, does it have something to do with your friend and his documentary? Qiang, right? Are you helping him with that?”
“Subtitles,” he says. “I’m just doing subtitles. Where did you hear that they’re watching me?”
Regine leads Jake to a quiet corner of the terrace.
“I’ll tell you but, Jake, you can’t mention anything about this.”
“Of course.”
“I’m telling you this because I’m concerned about you. If you talk to anyone else about this, or how I know this, someone else will get into a lot more trouble than anything you would ever face here.”
“Regine, I understand. I swear I won’t say anything.”
“One of your Chinese reporters was asked about the stories you’re working on. You know, in the regular meetings that we’re not supposed to know anything about. I’m pretty tight with my assistant. She told me this came up. Some questions about whether Toeler News was getting into political reporting.”
The spies among us, Jake thinks. Foreign news outlets in China must source local assistants through the Diplomatic Service Bureau and everyone knows why. Not that anyone cares anymore. Cell phone interception and improved surveillance technology now give the authorities a direct line into the lives of journalists. Most of the Mainland Chinese newsroom assistants just want to be in a profession that allows them to use their foreign language skills. DSB-appointed assistants aren’t supposed to do more than arrange interviews and translate but, in practice, many of them report and write stories from top to bottom. Some even get bylines. The DSB hasn’t cracked down, at least since anyone can remember. Regine is obviously tight with her Chinese colleague, showing how the system has holes and moles.
Regine looks around. “Where is Qiang, anyway? He’s usually at these soirees, right?”
Jake stands silently but wide-eyed, like a hostage trying to communicate over the shoulder of his captor. Regine pulls a pack of cigarettes out of a small purse made of a colourful Yunnan batik fabric. She shakes the pack until two sticks protrude, offering one.
“Jake, has Qiang been detained?”
“I’ve promised not to mention anything about what your colleague told you,” Jake says as he takes the cigarette. “So, I need you to keep what I’m about to tell you under wraps, at least until I say it’s time to report this.”
Jake urinates into the stainless steel trough that runs the width of the men’s room at Destination. Purple lights and black walls intensify his buzz and the delirium of physical relief. He had needed to piss when he left Pierre’s party, but Ben was close to the bathroom and he didn’t see any way into a casual conversation. Music from the bar pounds through the wall and the smell of urine rises from the trough, mixing with gin and tobacco fumes.
Jake sees the guy next to him in his peripheral vision. His head is cocked slightly as he checks out Jake’s dick. Equally blatant, Jake looks down at his neighbour’s business. In the low purplish light, the piss is translucent, glowing with the colour of cigarette smoke. Their streams resound where they strike the metal, emanating at slightly different keys.
As the force of the streams wane, Jake looks up, meets the guy’s stare and smiles. Somewhere in his 30s, the guy has a very fair complexion and a strong jawline, classically northern Chinese. The guy smiles back and then looks down again.
“Hao kan,” he says. Good looking.
Jake isn’t sure if the guy is referring only to his penis or if he thinks the whole package is hao kan. Not that he cares too much either way. This is going well enough to help him bury the frustration and fear that has built up throughout the week, the sort of irresponsible and reckless activity that one must engage in, Jake thinks, when nothing else is working out.
The flow of piss stops for both of them and they’re now doing the shake, for longer than necessary. And the shakes become strokes.
Two other guys stagger up to the trough on Jake’s left side. As they fumble with their zippers, the one closest to Jake almost falls backwards and adjusts his stance to regain balance. Once their dicks are out, the unstable one notices the stroking. He leans forward to get a better view of the display, teeters a bit and puts a hand on the trough’s rim, covered in droplets of urine and moist pubic hairs, to steady himself. Jake moves closer to his playmate on the right and turns to face him, close enough to smell vodka on his breath.
Turned on and completely erect, Jake wraps his fingers around the guy’s penis and strokes it. He then works the guy’s jeans lower and feels his scrotum, only vaguely aware of others around them, some lingering and giggling out comments too slang for Jake to understand. The guy is completely hard as Jake brings his hand out and handles his penis again. Jake then brings his hand to his nose and mouth to breathe in the guy’s essence. Organic, like damp leaves in autumn. The guy grabs Jake’s dick. Spurred by the smell of booze and saliva and sex and the perversity of the setting, Jake moves in and begins kissing him, scissoring jaws and wrestling tongues, one hand massaging the back of the guy’s head and the other continuing the slow masturbation.
“Wo men yi qi hui qu, hao ba?” Jake says. Let’s leave together.
“My boyfriend is outside,” the guy whispers in accented English.
“Nice,” Jake says. “Bring him along and we’ll take turns fucking you.”
The idea of a threesome excites Jake so much that he feels a surge of energy that could trigger an orgasm, so he backs his hips away.
“He do not…” the guy says before exhaling a quick moan as Jake fondles the head of his penis. “He do not like foreigners,” he finally explains.
From the bar just outside the men’s room, Jake hears shouting though a megaphone. Everyone begins stuffing their dicks back into their pants. The stern voice pierces the pulsing dance music which then stops abruptly.
“Fine then, we can take turns fucking him.”
In the sudden silence, Jake’s voice booms. Bright light from the bar area floods the restroom and several men walk in as the voice from outside barks orders. Jake’s playmate withdraws like he’d been electrocuted. He turns towards the wall to do up his pants.
The sudden rush of fear and confusion concentrates the energy that had been building in Jake. Two of the men who had just entered wear uniforms. Two others wear polo-style shirts and dark slacks. The moment Jake realizes this is a bust, the escape instinct morphs, uncontrollably, into the first pulses of an orgasm. Fighting for control, Jake turns to the wall to shove his dick into his pants but the sensation of his own hand against the head of his penis combined with nervous energy in the disorienting haze of purple light causes the eruption that sends white gobs into the urinal trough. Jake arches his back and puts a hand on the wall to steady himself.
The
uniformed men and the plain-clothed officers push the others, including Jake’s playmate, out into the bar area.
Jake shudders. The spasms abate and he turns around. There’s only one officer left in the bathroom, holding a video camera pointed at him.
“Jie-ke Bu-la-de-li,” the law enforcer says as he closes the viewfinder. They know his name. “Ni waiguoren keyi zou.” You foreigners can leave.
In the cross currents of post-orgasmic release, shame and paranoia, Jake walks out through to the bar area where police officers are checking ID cards. Some are singled out and sent toward the exit where Jake is heading.
Jake understands most of the comments the police are barking. The Mainland Chinese are in for drug tests and some might also be charged with liumang zui. Hooliganism.
Jake looks at the lineup one last time and sees the guy he was fondling just a couple of minutes earlier held next to the police officer barking out orders. The guy looks up at Jake. They might as well be on opposite sides of an ocean. Jake can only look back with an expression meant to show solidarity but probably looks like stupidity to the one who’s now facing a night in jail and an embarrassing new entry in whatever dossier they had on him.
May, 2005
Dawei sees people coming out of the restaurant in a row of storefronts across the street from China World Center. A China Construction Bank branch on one side; on the other, a florist selling flowers he’s never seen before. Huge ones with petals too large to be real and stamens glistening with nectar. He knows the restaurant is expensive because the lights are dim, lit by fixtures with countless pieces of dangling glass shrouding bulbs that throw very little light. Western people seem to like dim places. Now many Chinese too, especially the rich ones.
Dawei has practiced his speech so that he won’t stutter. But he won’t go in until he knows more about the place.
Two young Western women exit together and stand just outside the door, one of them licking white rivulets running down her ice cream cone. They wear t-shirts and athletic pants. Both have some kind of mat rolled up and slung over their shoulders like they’re going camping. Even the wealthiest Westerners wear casual clothes which makes it difficult to figure out how important they are.
The two women start giggling, as though the ice cream makes them deliriously happy. Ice cream is cheap and available everywhere now. Why would anyone order it in such a place? A dim restaurant that caters to Westerners is where they usually serve large slabs of red meat in individual portions, each with a bowl of uncooked lettuce and vegetables that they call sha-la.
Everything used to be dim. And dim used to mean ordinary and cheap but now it means expensive. How ironic.
The bare light bulbs in his home in Yongfu burned dimly enough to see every detail of their glowing filaments. He hated those light bulbs once he saw how everyone in the big cities had as much light as they wanted.
During those few months when he lived with Auntie and Uncle in Harbin, it was possible to do homework at night. Everyone said that would help Dawei catch up with the local kids but, for Dawei, it only illuminated the gap between himself and the others. Auntie scolded him. She said he couldn’t keep blaming his grades on the poor conditions of Yongfu, especially since he had the chance to make something more of his future while the kids of Yongfu could only expect a hard life growing corn or soybeans.
Now there’s plenty of light everywhere. All of the new grocery stores and building lobbies have fluorescent tubes so bright they turn windows into mirrors when it’s dark outside. Bright, pure light is everywhere. It’s become so common that the special places are the ones that seem to have gone dim, like the one he’s looking into. The boss of the restaurant in Macau wants to replace the fluorescent tubes with something that gives the place more qi fen. Ambiance. He’s talked to electricians but only ends up arguing with them over how much that would cost. Something about “co-ordination” and the need to replace everything, including the menu. So the bright lights remain in the dining room, the same ones that light his washing station and the rest of the kitchen, though the boss keeps some of the ones in the dining room turned off.
The bright places now are where you work and do ordinary things and the dim places are special. So why are people coming out of such a nice, dimly lit restaurant with ice cream?
The women finally stroll away and Dawei approaches the window for a better look. He’s so hungry that he would even eat sha-la, the raw lettuce and carrots and other vegetables that Westerners serve with their hunks of beef. Not ice cream, though. He knows how sweets can make an empty stomach hurt. Since he arrived the night before, he’s only had an orange he found on the ground at a night market and a handful of roasted chestnuts.
The late afternoon sun has moved behind China World, cutting the glare enough to see more clearly inside. Customers linger in front of a large case in the front of the restaurant which displays twenty or so different flavours of ice cream. There’s a dining area just as pristine as some of the best restaurants he’s seen in Macau, with carpeting and tables surrounded by upholstered chairs. Those seated wear jeans. One has a collared, short-sleeve shirt with a small insignia over the heart; another has a hooded jacket. Clothes that now cost so much more than the suits and button-up shirts that Zhihong wears.
The women have handbags with metal bangles hanging off their hinges, the ones that can cost thousands of kuai in the new shops of the expensive shopping malls near the Forbidden City. They’re also available in some street markets for less than 100 kuai.
In the dining area, everyone’s dish has ice cream arranged artistically, topped with bits of twisted chocolate and fruit Dawei doesn’t recognize. There are no proper meals on any of the tables, even for Westerners - no seafood or meat or sha-la. Also, no one is drinking wine or beer or even baijiu. Why would the owner of this restaurant take the risk of serving only ice cream in such a well-furnished setting at such an expensive address? And ice cream drips everywhere.
The customers in front of the display case study the options as though they’re choosing jewellery. The attendant hands some of them tiny plastic spoons, each with a small quantity of ice cream. Dawei wonders how much each of the small scoops cost because some of the customers get two or three. He strains to see the price list. The cheapest option is eighteen kuai. That could cover him for two days in Beijing or Macau, a week if he still lived in Yongfu.
The prices go all the way up to 260 kuai, which makes Dawei wonder what else could be included besides ice cream.
Dawei steps back to look at the name of the restaurant. Two words, in what looks like English, with a hyphen between them. He learned to recognize what’s English and what’s Russian when he lived in Harbin. He recognizes the letter that starts the English alphabet. The letter A. There’s a few of them in the name.
As Dawei leans backward trying to make sense of the name, the employee from behind the ice cream counter opens the door and leans outside.
“Hey, are you looking to make trouble here?” he snaps, holding the door open. He makes a sweeping motion with his free hand.
The question puts Dawei off balance. He doesn’t know what he’s done wrong. There’s nothing secret about what’s going on inside. If there was, why would they have such a big window? The attendant must be the manager. Otherwise, he wouldn’t care so much about what Dawei is doing outside.
“B…but I…I…I…,”
The manager glances at Dawei’s canvas running shoes, now wearing through near the base of both big toes.
“But, I wanted to ask for a job here. I…I…I’ve been working in a restaurant in M…M…Macau for…”
“Just move on or I’ll call security,” the manager says as he looks back towards the counter. Two groups of diners are waiting to pay.
The other attendant behind the counter looks harried, prompting the manager to trot back. The door closes gently, pushing out cool, vanilla-scented air.
SUNDAY, April 8, 2007
The Latin jazz is audible fr
om the street, discordant against the mechanised female voice, stern and direct, emanating from buses plying the north Second Ring Road. “Attention, attention…”
A double column of soldiers on the north side of Dongzhimen rounds the corner, marching in perfect synchronicity into the embassy district. The light green of new leaves on the massive oak trees that line the streets of diplomatic compounds had created a refuge until groups of North Korean defectors began rushing the gates of several embassies a few years earlier. Once an oasis for expats looking for a quick escape from the churning construction noise and bleakness of wide, monumental avenues, the neighbourhood wound up in news reports worldwide in the form of images of refugees climbing walls and hurling themselves through entrances guarded by security personnel unable to cope with the chaos.
The Chinese government responded by erecting banks of extra fences around all of the buildings and stationing pairs of army cadets on every corner. Jake and Pierre continued to patronize the few restaurants in the district and would sometimes wink and smile at the cadets to see what kind of reaction they’d get. But Jake will keep the looks to himself now that the authorities have footage of him climaxing in the bathroom of a Beijing gay bar. Thoughts about where or when that footage might emerge interrupted his sleep three times overnight.
Jake opens the door to Beijing’s first Cuban restaurant and bar. The syncopated rhythms and fairy lights strung through the fronds of fake palm trees on each side of the bar manages to create an air of Caribbean warmth even though it’s pure pastiche. Two women of some kind of mixed ethnicity step back and forth, shaking maracas, adding texture to the tunes played by three black men seated on stools behind them. The décor is a better attempt than most in Beijing. At least the lights glow in uniform amber rather than the usual blinking variety in every colour of the spectrum.
The tables are mostly full, occupied by a roughly even split between foreigners and Chinese. Scanning the bar, Jake spots Ben and starts weaving his way through the tables. As he approaches from behind, just a few feet away, he hears Ben talking to the bartender in Mandarin. Jake then stops and turns so that his back is to Ben, close enough to hear the conversation, and brings his cell phone up to his ear, nodding his head as though he’s having a conversation. He doesn’t want the bartender to acknowledge him.
The Wounded Muse Page 13
