Shanghai Boy

by Stevan Eldred-Grigg

  ‘I am rude, selfish and very bad,’ he says. ‘I feel very sad now. I know I am a childish and false pride guy.’

  ‘Don’t speak that way about yourself, Jay.’

  ‘I know to say sorry is not enough. I am just one worthless stupid young man.’

  The grill room of the Shanghai American Club looks out at a great height, through thick glass, onto a greasy bend of the Huangpu. The club is private and costly. Clubrooms climb with a sort of plastic pomposity through the top floors of this tower near the Bund. Members are mostly business executives who drink too much and quack at each other about money and sex and money. Carmen and I are here for the weekly open day. We pine, from time to time, for food with a high feel-good factor. Steak, mashed potatoes, sticky pudding. Where better to trowel it down than at the Sunday buffet brunch in the American Club?

  ‘After feeding my face I’m heading straight back home to tend to my love-starved moggy,’ says my sis, sawing through a bloody fillet. ‘Want to tag along and say hello to your niece?’

  Carmen’s hair is still raven, but now once more it’s glossy.

  ‘Sure. She’s coming around okay after the surgery?’

  ‘More or less okay. Like her mummy. Listen to those two suits at the next table.’

  ‘A colleague emailed me yesterday about accommodation,’ says one suit, a youngish guy in light grey. ‘He’s coming here to join our office; he’s coming from Minneapolis, and he was asking me about where would be good to live.’

  ‘Yeah?’ says the other, also a youngish guy, but in darker grey.

  ‘He was looking at a map of the metro. Guess what he asked me, man?’

  ‘What, man?’

  ‘He asked me whether it’s any good by the Shanghai South Train Station! Can you believe that, man?’

  ‘Man, you can tell he doesn’t know squat about this town.’

  ‘Anyway, I emailed him back and told him no way, nobody lives near Shanghai South Train Station. I told him it’s just commie apartment buildings out that way. Nobody lives there, I told him. Nobody, only Chinese.’

  ‘I’m not sure whether the food here is worth the vibe,’ I say.

  ‘Admittedly we could do without the vibe. Let’s face facts, though: we want the steaks. One might also add the spuds. Hey, you know that guy I’ve been dating?’

  ‘Wassname? French guy?’

  ‘Judas would be as good a name as any. He flicked me yesterday.’

  ‘Bastard!’

  ‘Flicked me like a bit of fluff on his angora sweater.’

  ‘You’re well rid of him. Obviously he didn’t know how lucky he was to have got the nod from you.’

  ‘Nice try. Let’s face it, though. I’m fat, not fair, and forty. Thank christ for Floss. Luckily she’s been so knocked about by her little op that she’s now craving cuddles, just like her mummy.’

  Downing silverware onto a plate swept bare of everything but a smear of sauce and a sprig of garnish, she takes a look around at our fellow feeders. My eyes follow her eyes. The grill room, walled with dark wainscot, is meant to look like some gentlemen’s club from some historic city somewhere, in some day of yore. Gilded Age Indianapolis, maybe. Or maybe you could say it looks like the lounge of an ocean liner on the eve of the Great War. Sèvres porcelain. Servile staff. No stench of cigar smoke, though — unlike the salons of those long-lost liners. Nor does the room move. No creaking of bulkheads, no throb-throbthrob of turbines, no swaying, no swing in the deck while swells are crested. Only inert, dull immobility.

  I think about the throbbing inside my room at the Foreign Experts. I think about the fluttering of the red ribbon. I think of the breakers cracking cleanly on the sand at Pines Beach.

  Why do I keep thinking about sailing out to sea?

  ‘I trailed along with some some friends to Zapata,’ says a young Yank woman jiggling on her chair edgily. ‘I was blown away by the crowd of Chinese girls hitting on white guys.’

  ‘Yeah?’ says her companion, also a young Yank woman, baring teeth fit for an ad for a top-end orthodontist.

  ‘I thought it was an okay club, Zapata,’ says Jiggler.

  ‘Like, you hit ladies’ night, right?’ says Teeth.

  ‘I don’t know what night it was but the whole place was packed inside and out. Chinese chicks were dancing in their underwear on the tables and all these white guys were looking on and just about creaming their pants. Is that the real Shanghai?’

  ‘What you saw was the free-drinks-for-ladies-drunken-fest-to-get-halfway-through-the-week Shanghai. Chinese chicks, like, they’ll do anything to score a white guy. We can’t compete. You’re new to town, so you don’t, like, know your way around. They’ll get down on their knees, the Chinese chicks. Like, you know — I mean, they’ll get down on their knees and do anything to, like, put a grin on a white guy’s face.’

  The suits on the other side are talking about the weather.

  ‘Man, it’s freaking cold!’ says Light Grey. ‘The Chinese always say, how come you feel the cold, you didn’t oughta feel the cold, you’re from Minnesota.’

  ‘Man!’ snorts Dark Grey.

  ‘Just cause we’re from there doesn’t mean we can handle it here, yeah? I’m yelling at my freaking maid in my apartment every time she leaves the sliding door open. Doesn’t she know it’s cold? Don’t these dumb fuckers know about heat loss?’

  ‘They don’t know nothing, man.’

  ‘Man, I had three layers of clothes on yesterday and I was still freezing at my office. My office building won’t turn on the freaking heat any more because it’s officially spring. It’s their building management policy. It’s their freaking rulebook mentality. Freaking slit-eyes!’

  A FORTNIGHT HAS gone by since the two of us saw the little beggar with the molten head in the metro and yesterday Jay told me quite calmly that at last he’s going to take me at my word. Seems one of the boys at basketball has been giving him the eye. Jay, after a game yesterday, asked the guy for a date. The guy said okay. Good. Well, that was the word I spoke when told about it by Jay.

  ‘Good!’

  Jay looked unhappy. He did his best not to look unhappy. He grinned at me, gamely.

  Grinning, he looked bewitching. He looked so wonderful, doing his best to behave well, to be a good boy. He looked like everything I’ve ever wanted and ever could want — hope and strength and litheness and quickness and warmth and — and love — and —

  Not wise to blub when you’re meant to shoving your baby out of the nest, so like him I screwed a grin onto my mug.

  ‘Good,’ I said again. ‘That’s great, Jay.’

  Now, seated on my red sofa waiting for news, I’m like a worried dad whose son or daughter has gone out on a dodgy date and who waits for the youngster to get home safely. My real daughter, by the way, has phoned to say that she won’t be able to come and stay after all. A pity, since quite apart from the happiness of kissing her, and holding her, and seeing her in front of my eyes, and watching over her the way I’ve always watched over my two girls, she’d be a wholesome way for me to forget my boy. I’m worried that my boy may be hurt by the other guy. Well, my real worry is that my boy may not be hurt. I’m worried that he and the other lad are getting on groovily and that, while I sit here doing my knitting — well, reading Nietzsche — in the Foreign Experts, they’re in the sack somewhere shagging each other legless. Or even worse, that they’ve gone to some club — there was talk of going to a club — where my boy has found out what a hot number he is, and how many choices he’ll have if willing to make a move, and that he’s made a move and ended up in some orgy.

  Jealous is the word.

  Jealousy is eating me up, while I stay seated here quietly on my red sofa. I’m feeling sick. I’m feeling guilty. I’ve been feeling guilty and sick, mind you, ever since coming back to this town — ever since my holiday, since my dad cashed in his chips in such a timely way during my short stay at Pines Beach.

  Somebody knocks on the door.


  A light knock, not a hard knock. A knock I know well. A knock I know won’t stop till a day that must come, a day when all that’ll be left for me will be a grimy red ribbon flickering over a vent, or the throb-throb-throb of turbines taking me nowhere.

  ‘Not locked, Jay!’ I yell.

  My boy lopes into the room, a spring in his step as always, yet he looks hangdog.

  ‘Well?’ I say, screwing that grin back onto my mug.

  ‘No chemistry with the guy,’ says Jay in a lifeless English. ‘We eat supper downtown and go to a gay club.’

  ‘You ate supper and went to a club, okay?’

  ‘Okay. We dance. We danced. I am cruise — cruised — by some old guys.

  ‘Old guys?’ I say nervously.

  ‘Old white guys with big bellies, talking and laughing loudly, and looking around and unaware of they are so ugly,’ he spells out with unthinking cruelty. ‘Old guys who got so much fat hanging on their belts and falling down, like the pigs waiting to be butchered.’

  Thank fuck for all my workouts at the gym!

  ‘Okay, I see.’

  ‘Old white guys who want sex with young Chinese boys,’ he goes on remorselessly. ‘One guy, he’s got hair dyed gold, and he’s wearing a little silver ring on one ear — it look sick — and the worse thing is a Hawaiian style shirt with big yellow flowers with orange dots in the flowers, so he look like a clown and I feel pity for that guy.’

  Oh, my lord — note to self: chuck out all colourful shirts as soon as Jay’s back is turned.

  ‘Did you and the basketball boy go to bed together?’

  Jay shrugs.

  ‘No chemistry, like I say. We kiss once, but nothing more. I don’t want to bed with that guy.’

  What I feel right now is relief, of course, since that’s what I wanted him to say. Also, equally of course, I feel bad about the sense of relief.

  ‘Why not?’

  He throws himself into my arms and looks into my eyes.

  ‘Don’t want that guy, want my Daddy.’

  Okay, now it’s time to up the stakes. Looking into his eyes, looking into those big trustful pupils just as searchingly as he’s looking into mine — mine which I know are battleworn and wary — I tell the lad not only that he’s got to go with other guys but that I plan to go with other guys too.

  Just as he did that night in the metro, he bursts into stormy tears.

  ‘No! Why, Daddy?’

  ‘I’m not your daddy, Jay. We’ve got to start getting real.’

  Next morning he lopes out the door and quietly I close it behind him and slink back to the sofa and sit down and want to slash my wrists. I don’t slash them, though. I whistle to myself. I look at a book. I get up, and step into the bathroom, and strip off, and stand under Flying Angel. I’ve been firm with my boy. I’ve made him give his word that tonight he’ll head back to the club, by himself, and that he won’t leave till he’s hooked up with some guy. I’ve given him lots of words of wisdom. We’ve talked over what should be worn on his beautiful bod. The style at the club, he’s noted, is to squeeze the torso into a tight tanktop and let hips and legs move freely inside baggy trousers.

  ‘I guess I shouldn’t wear black, right?’ he asked doubtfully.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Cause the club is dark. Black will invisible in the dark.’

  ‘Yeah, the club’s dark — but black is good. You can’t go wrong with black.’

  ‘Then I will go with all black, with my black leather shoes.’

  ‘Wear your green shoes. Wear a necklace, too.’

  ‘Aww, I should get a fashion adviser!’

  ‘You don’t need a fashion adviser. You’re a clever, handsome, healthy young man. Go to the club and buy yourself a drink and nurse it and check out the other boys, and ignore the old white guys, and smile at any boy you like the look of, and you’ll see that you’ll get smiles coming back your way.’

  ‘Okay, I am going to squander ten yuan to buy a cola and rot.’

  ‘What’s a cola and rot?’

  ‘Rot verb, not noun.’

  ‘Oh! Hah!’

  ‘Rot from inside so bad I possibly stick to the chair.’

  ‘You get yourself off your chair and boogie, youngster!’

  No news from the young man before I go to bed at two. Nor any news after I get up next morning on a grey, loveless, lonely Sunday. No news through the afternoon — a dim afternoon when a yellowish blur high in the sky can be made out as a sort of ghost of the sun sensed through a thick dirty fleece of cloud that seems to press down on my mouth, my nose, making it hard for me to breathe — not till nightfall does the door open on Jay.

  Eyes bright, his whole face alight, grinning from ear to ear. Fuck! He’s scored!

  ‘Matt is his name,’ says Jay.

  ‘Nice name,’ I say, plotting murder.

  We settle down with green tea on the red sofa, our bodies at right angles to each other, and I feel in a feebly self-pitying way that this will now be my fate forever — to sit at right angles to a young man whose heart I want to own. At the same time I’m patting myself on the back for my bravery in showing none of this to Jay and for feigning to be stoked by his good luck at the club.

  ‘I’m very so happy, he’s nice guy,’ says Jay.

  ‘Great!’ I snap.

  The outline of the story gets told swiftly. Matt is a Yank. He works for a multinational pharmaceutical corporation, AstraZeneca. He’s thirty years old.

  ‘Why not someone your own age, Jay?’

  ‘I like the old guys.’

  Since when was thirty old?

  ‘Old guys — no need for a definite article, okay?’

  Jay spent the night and the morning and some of the afternoon with Matt at the bastard’s classy apartment in the old French Concession. How many fucks could they fit into that half a day? Grrrr. Jay skips telling me about the sex. He’s too sweet, too dazed, to tell me who did what to whom, or who put what where, and how often it was put or done. He says it was good, though. Grrrrrrr! Yet stay civilised, Manfred. We talk about the outlook for more meets, maybe more than mere meets, with this bloke Matt.

  ‘The dating the guy is dangerous,’ says Jay slowly, after thinking for a bit and sipping at his tea. ‘I begin to worry already, maybe he won’t make a next move.’

  ‘Mm, that’s always a worry when you like a guy. You like him quite a lot already, right?’

  ‘Right. Yet the most rational choice must be keeping my expectation low. But that is a vicious cycle, making it all uninteresting.’

  ‘Yes, exactly. Be ready to feel happy, or hurt. Feeling hurt is part of life.’

  As I know bloody well.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But so’s feeling hopeful.’

  As I don’t know bloody well.

  ‘I guess I probably won’t feel hurt for him, but just this unreasonable anxiety for the call.’

  ‘Well, that’s part of having a sex life — waiting for phone calls.’

  All the short sharp stabs of agony caused by thinking about what might or mightn’t have happened in the sack after the Yank was picked up at the club are enough to make me aware how much my life lately has come to be grounded on Jay. Well, let’s not pussyfoot about, let’s come right out with it, let me admit here and now that I’m in love with Jay. Yep, that’s the word. I love him in a way I’ve never loved anybody. Hotly, frantically, terrifyingly. All alarm bells are ringing. All red lights are pulsing fiercely.

  Stop! Abort! Run!

  Run away!

  Cause it’s crazy. Crazy not only for a guy of fifty to lose himself in the body and brain of a boy of eighteen but for any of us to lose ourselves — to lose ourselves in anybody. You mustn’t lose yourself. Lose yourself, and you’ll never be found. Nobody else will find you if you lose yourself — you’ll always be lost. You’ll die. You’ve got to stay safe, don’t you? So here’s me crossing town in a cab at midnight, on my way to find a fuck.

  Crossing to
wn, looking out at cold neon night, looking behind the night for the darkness.

  Our forebears knew the darkness, didn’t they? All day, while they worked and worried and hoped and pissed and kissed, they knew that darkness comes at the end of the day. We squirt neon into twisted glass pipes, the way we squirt cum into latex tubes, but maybe we know less about the night than our forebears. I know nix about darkness.

  Darkness is so fucking dark!

  Anyway, now my cab has stopped outside Union City. Lights glare here and there, while elsewhere is murky nook and murkier cranny. I nip out of the cab. Crossing the street, I come to a sort of glassy notch that opens in the wall of a hotel and leads to a dirty courtyard. A grubbily draped door on one side of the courtyard leads in turn to a counter where a yawning woman says something in Shanghainese.

  ‘One forty-yuan ticket, please,’ I say in my bad Mandarin.

  The woman, listlessly taking my money, rips a paper ticket off a roll. Now what? Slope along a short, soiled corridor to a second counter. A bored bloke takes the ticket, hands me a key on a flexible rubber wristlet.

  ‘No shoes inside,’ he says in Mandarin.

  ‘Oh, okay,’ I say.

  Yank off my trainers. Slide them into a wooden cupboard. Slip on a couple of the flipflops left lying in a wet slippery mound under the cupboard. Slope along another short, soiled corridor. Flipflop up a narrow soiled staircase. Treads on the staircase have been carpeted for many years with some kind of worn, frayed, grimy red weave — not exactly Axminster. A locker room at the top of the stairs is the lair of a tired guy wearing trousers of shiny black terylene and a business shirt of white nylon. He proves to be the turnkey. My key, together with his key, opens the door of one of a rank of lockers. Throwing the door open wide, and throwing off my clothes, and stowing them inside the locker, I nab a little white towel and a sachet of liquid soap from a stock near the tired guy’s counter and puzzle my way through a few smeared doorways into a shower block. A row of shower roses can be seen blooming with warm water, wreathing the air with steam, under a cracked and mildewed white ceramic ceiling.