At Night She Cries, While He Rides His Steed

by Ross Patterson

  “We’re here already?” I ask half-dazed.

  “Already? You’ve been in bed for three months.”

  After removing the limes, I slowly get up out of bed and stumble over to grab a bucket of water to splash on my face. My arm is still throbbing. I look down and see a dirty rag covered in dried blood wrapped around the wound. As I run water over my face with my hands, I feel a sweet-ass lumberjack beard.

  I look at a small mirror that is hanging on the wall, and I barely recognize the man staring back at me. Not only do I have a huge beard, but my hair has grown past my shoulders, and some of it is tied in Viking braids. Who the fuck braided my hair while I was bedridden with a horrible disease? It is weird, yet somehow matriarchal. I will say this: I’m pulling off this look with ease, almost as if I was born from a long line of seamen. You knew that line was coming, so you’re welcome.

  When I walk up the steps to the bow of the boat and look out at this gloriously strange land they call China, my first thought is how beautiful it is. My second thought is, “Holy shit, there are a lot of people here.” Thousands upon thousands of Chinese people are working in rice paddies and fishing for food, all of them with a precise discipline. Probably because they know they’ll be hungry an hour later.

  Stepping off the boat, I am immediately greeted by hundreds of them. Most of them are staring at me in awe, while they touch me. I look over at Samantha, puzzled.

  “What’s happening?”

  “They have never seen an American before,” he says with a lisp and slight laughter.

  “How do I say ‘Ladies touch first’ in Chinese?” I ask.

  “.”

  “Oh, cool,” I respond.

  I repeat his exact phrase back to the crowd that has gathered, and only the women start grabbing me.I

  Samantha lets the gorgeous women take me away, while he runs back to his village to get his people. He is compassionate about the long boat ride over with a bunch of dudes and understands that I need to have sex with a woman. Or multiple at the same time, whatever they’re cool with over here. Spoiler alert, it turns out to be multiple. I scream out to Samantha to come find me whenever he gets his shit together. After what I am about to experience that night, I don’t care if he ever finds me. It is obvious I am destined to be here.

  The Asian women lift me off my feet and carry me high above their heads six miles into the town of Quan Po. Sorry, I just made that up. I can’t remember the name of the town. Point to any city on a map off the eastern coast of China and pretend I’m there; everything in Asia looks the same.

  As we enter the main street that goes through the center of town, people come out of their shops and businesses to view me. They are clapping, hurling fresh fish at me to eat, and offering me karate lessons. Strangely, they’re all dressed like former president George Washington. Asia really has always been way behind the fashion trends.

  When we reach the top of the street, I notice a wooden house with steam rising from it. A painted large sign hangs underneath the faded red bamboo roof shingles. I see the letters “.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  One of the women responds, “Ladies touch first.”

  I told you that is the only phrase I need to know. A large wooden door opens, and I am hit in the face by a burst of hot steam. The women slowly lower me to my feet. As the steam dissipates, even hotter Asian women greet me, ones who haven’t been working out in dirty rice paddies all day. They are all wearing beautiful silk kimonos and wooden sandals. Suddenly, I realize I’m in some sort of exotic Asian bathhouse.

  I have heard rumors over the years that these are traditional in the Far East, but I never believed it. When the women take off their kimonos and start undressing me, I know that it’s real. They pick up buckets stuffed with loofah sponges and walk me back toward a gigantic bath. Four more nude women greet me once I hit the edge of the water. They spin me around, cross my arms, and slowly baptize me in the warm water like I am baby Jesus.

  There is something truly special about Asian women. They’re like exotic angels, wise beyond their years, who barely speak and always clean. They really know how to take care of a man, all the while possessing a high level of tolerance for shit, much more so than American women. This night I experience their hospitality firsthand, beyond your typical bukkake session.

  When I emerge from the water, I feel like I have been reborn. Mostly because one of the women is scrubbing my penis a little too hard with the loofah, and it feels like I am being circumcised again. Another woman puts a pillow on the edge of the bath and lays my head back, sticking a long hose connected to a hookah in my mouth.

  She smiles sweetly and asks, “Opium?”

  “What? You can smoke this shit too?”

  She nods her head yes, and I roar with delight. I’m going to be rich as fuck when I get back to America.

  Fully relaxed, I hit the hose and inhale deeply. Holy. Fucking. Shit. On impact I am instantly flying. This isn’t the genie in a bottle I’ve been sipping on back in ’Merica. This shit is as clean as Zeus’s dick. My eyes roll back in my head and stay there until I cough them back forward, releasing the smoke from my lungs.

  To top it off, there are six different women simultaneously scrubbing every limb and orifice I have. One of them begins to ride me slowly, and although you know my stance on sex in the bathtub, this time it’s different. It’s more sensual somehow. Probably because I’m high as shit and I don’t have to care about my performance. They’re the ones who gave me drugs, so whether I last two minutes or an hour, they knew what they were getting into by sticking that hookah in my mouth.

  One by one, each woman takes turns riding me like the tourist burros at the Grand Canyon. I make love to what must be thirty or forty women for what seems like an eternity. When I’m finally ready to orgasm, they all line up in the water and stare directly into my eyes. There’s something really special about forty beautiful Asian women waiting for you to erupt. It’s a heightened sensation, like sniffing glue on the roof of a stranger’s house.

  After achieving the climax of the century, I unleash double Dutch–style ropes across everyone’s faces and chests. Yes, all forty women. Immediately upon my finishing, two girls grab my arms and pull me up out of the large community bathtub. They proceed to wipe me down with warm towels that feel like they have been resting above a fireplace for hours.

  Shortly thereafter, I am led down a long, narrow hallway, where another door magically opens. Thousands of rare Chinese butterflies fly out of the room and down the hall. A myriad of silk pillows cover every inch of the floor. Nude women are sprawled everywhere around another hookah in the center of the room that resembles a Chinese Medusa, with multiple hoses flowing out in every direction. Each of them takes turns smoking and passing the hoses toward one another. There is none of that junkie eagerness to them, probably because they know it’s endless.

  When a hose gets passed to me, I take a deep pull, and one of the women starts pouring hot oil all over my chest. One by one she walks around and pours oil all over everyone. Free of all inhibitions, we begin rolling around on top of each other mindlessly.

  Technically, what transpires over the next several hours would be classified as “sex,” but to call it that would cheapen it. It is a full-blown bacchanalia, or high-grade orgy to you common folk, and I am the only man involved. I can’t even guess how many orgasms are had. Women ride me, they ride each other, and a couple of them even fuck a hand-carved anatomically correct wooden statue of Buddha that rests in the corner of the room.

  There is no sexual judgment over here; you are free to do anything. Anything. For instance, during the second hour of this fuckfest, I start crying. Not like a bitch, or in an “I miss my home” way, but actual weeping, like a mature man reaching the highest sexual peak he’s ever known.

  Imagine Christopher Columbus dipping his balls in American soil for the first time. That’s the type of crying I’m talking about. The unabashed feeling of reac
hing a new plateau and wondering if you will ever achieve something like that again. I empty my entire soul into the room, and just when I have nothing left, the women pick me up and gently carry me out.

  “I don’t think I can take anymore. I have no more energy,” I say, defeated.

  They giggle and lead me through yet another door, where I’m hit with more steam. As the steam retreats, an entirely different type of oasis appears in front of me. A beautiful nude chef stands behind a hibachi grill cooking fresh shrimp, steak, chicken, and fried rice. She smiles and flips a cooked shrimp at me from across the room, and I catch it in my mouth. It is the tastiest little shrimp I’ve ever eaten. The girls lead me to a seat in front of the grill and pour me a glass of rice wine. They know a man doesn’t like to be bothered while he’s eating, so they leave.

  It’s the first peaceful dinner I’ve had in a long time. After the chef finishes cooking, she draws a smiley face on the grill in oil and then lights it on fire. I can’t help but applaud. Afterward, she leads me back to the opium den, where we drink some more wine and smoke while I am massaged again until I fall asleep. When I awaken eighteen hours later, we do the exact same thing all over again. I am addicted—not only to opium, but also to this new way of life. The only question that remains is, how long will this last? How many days can one man experience sexual utopia? Turn the fucking page, and you’ll have your answer.

  * * *

  I. From then on, I was perfectly fluent in Chinese. I felt confident that this was the only phrase I needed to learn, and I turned out to be right.

  Chapter Thirteen

  AFTER SIX YEARS, I AM FINALLY READY TO LEAVE CHINA

  It turns out six years is pretty much the max amount of time you can live in utopia and have endless orgies every day. Who knew? Also, eating grilled hibachi food every day, which is delicious and something I used to consider to be entirely possible, has ended up taking its toll on me in the form of a ridiculous sodium intake. In layman’s terms, I have been ingesting more salt than a humpback whale. My blood pressure is so high that I have lost all feeling in my extremities.

  I try to soldier through, but when one of my baby toes falls off and it takes me nine days to notice, something has to give. Once I lose my sexual abilities, the women have no use for me. They are kind enough to make me a wheelchair out of bamboo and wheel me into town so I can meet up with Samantha Davis again . . . if he’s even still here.

  I flag down a man who is running up the street towing a rickshaw behind him. The man stops and smiles at me with big wooden teeth stained with dried blood. Son of a bitch, it’s him. That’s such a Samantha thing to do. His ability to find a job anywhere is truly remarkable. We share a chuckle and he tells me that his family is all loaded up on the boat, ready to go.

  When I ask him if they’ve been on the boat for the last six years waiting for me and he says yes, I feel a tad selfish for what I’ve done. That guilt goes away pretty quickly when I look back at the skyline and see the bathhouse in the distance, and think about all the sex I had there. I will miss this land.

  Since I can’t feel my legs from all the sodium, Sam lifts me into his rickshaw and runs us toward the boat, into the Chinese sunset. Watching him run at top speed makes me incredibly thirsty, so I pull off the canteen that is bouncing up and down around Sam’s neck and drink all of its contents.

  “Did you and your family gather up the opium I requested?”

  “Yes, boss. They even fully processed it for you, so we could fit more in.”

  “Excellent. Remind me to double your pay when I open up my new business back in America.”

  “So I’ll get two cents a day?”

  “I guess. You drive a hard bargain.”

  Upon arriving at the dock, I’m almost positive that I suffer a small stroke brought on by attempting to climb the rope ladder to board the boat. After I place my swollen left foot into the second rung, a shooting pain runs down my right arm, I smell burnt hair, and I black out. To be fair, I smell burnt hair the rest of the boat ride back to America, because that’s how Samantha’s relatives cut their own hair—by lighting a match, then blowing and hoping for the best.

  Much like on the journey over here, I don’t remember much about the journey home. I vaguely recall Sam’s relatives nursing me back to health with the opium. That shit really does cure any ailment you have. Also, at some point during my sleep, I think someone shaves my face and all my pubic hair off, which is apparently an old Asian tradition. It wards off sickness from recurring. Or Sam’s uncle shaved it and glued it to his face to fill in his own patchy beard. Either way, I’m grateful. If he wants to have a pube beard, so be it. He’s his own man.

  Three months pass before we approach US soil, and I miraculously feel better than ever. My sexual confidence is sky-high. I stand at the bow of the boat and take in this “new” America. A lot has changed in six years. San Francisco seems more prosperous, bustling with people. There are also a lot of dudes in fishnet stockings, which seems strange, but years later will make perfect sense.

  I am happy to be back in the States, but I’m missing something between my legs. My steed. Even though it has been a while, I haven’t lost any stank on my sweet two-finger whistle when I summon him. Everyone stops what they are doing as the whistle echoes throughout the land. I cup my ear and wait patiently, knowing that beautiful son of a bitch will come running.

  Moments later, far off in the distance, I hear his hooves galloping across the amber waves of grain and through the purple mountain majesties—before finally appearing in an all-out sprint down toward the docks. Watching his long strides, all I can think of is how this motherfucker symbolizes everything powerful and free about America.

  As he trots toward me, I step down from the bow of the boat and greet him with a long embrace. My pistols hang in their holsters around his neck. God, it feels good to holster up again. It also feels good to stick someone up and steal their carriages, so my sixty-person Asian crew can ride back into town.

  As they line up and cram themselves inside, I realize that twenty or thirty of them are women I’ve slept with at the bathhouse over the years. We share knowing glances, and a few of them even graze my cock out of respect.

  Asians are just a step above slaves during this point in America, so we get a few looks from people on the ride back to my house. Someone even screams out, “What are you, yellow?” I refuse to answer, because I can’t tell if they are just being observational.

  Truthfully, I’m not concerned about what people think. After being in their country and experiencing their culture, I realize that these people are the future. If I want to have a successful business in America, I need workers that I can pay virtually nothing, preying on the fact that they are just happy to be here.

  When our carriages come up over the countryside toward my casa, I feel a twinge of nervousness in my stomach. After all, I haven’t seen my family in six years. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about them all this time. For instance, I remember this one time when I was all like, “You know it would be really nice to have someone to speak English with,” and they came to mind.

  As we draw closer, I see my six kids doing chores out in front of the house. Physically, they are almost unrecognizable now, because they have all grown into little men. Daniel, who is now visibly older, smiles at me warmly, then spits out a huge stream of tobacco juice.

  I halt my steed at the edge of the garden, which has grown tremendously. An abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables now populates the garden. When I hop down, my kids race over to greet me. My youngest son, Bourbon, actually asks who I am. At least they can all speak and understand orders now.

  “Hey boys, I brought you back something from the Orient.”

  “Samurai swords?” Bourbon screams in excitement.

  “No, something better.”

  When I pull off my cowboy hat to reveal six sets of Chinese finger traps made out of bamboo shoots, they seem a little let down. Each of them grabs
one, and they jam their fingers into them as they run off . . . except Daniel. He just glares at me as he strokes the sides of what appears to be a mustache, then he casually picks up the last remaining finger trap out of my hat.

  He shakes his head in disappointment. “What the fuck am I going to do with this, Dad? Put my dick in it?” he says in a deeper register. Holy shit, he’s really grown up.

  “It would probably fit, you son of a bitch! You got any milk to go with those cookie crumbs above your lip?” We share a laugh, and I punch him in the gooch as I put my hat back on. He doubles over on the ground and holds his crotch, trying to catch his breath.

  “Welcome home, Pa.”

  Louretta comes running out of the house screaming, “What’s all the commotion?”

  She stops cold in her tracks as our eyes fuck. Staring at her, all I can think is, “Wow, she’s gotten older. I was afraid this would happen.” Don’t get me wrong, she still looks good, but once that wagon goes downhill, you know that thing is going to need a lot of repairs after it crashes. Her tits are still huge, though, so I take my hat off again out of appreciation.

  “Good to see you, Lou. You look almost as good as one can at your age.”

  “Where have you been? It’s been six years, Saint James.”

  “Has it? Shit, I’m sorry. I knocked over my abacus and lost track of where my beads were. Anyway, I’m home now.”

  “Thanks, I see that. Who are all these people?”

  “These people? Come on, that’s pretty racist. How about we discuss this over a nice hot bath that you draw for me? Oh, and if you want to say ‘Welcome home,’ you can do that too.”

  “Welcome home,” she says flatly. I do, however, notice a twinge of relief in her eyes when she says this. Another little boy runs out of the house who I don’t recognize at all.

  “Welcome home, Pa,” he says.

  I stare blankly at him, before motioning to Louretta. “Who the fuck is this?”