Sex and Taipei City

by Yu-Han Chao

  Ellie decided not to deal with it for as long as possible. There was a wisdom to the method of ostriches—once upon a time she thought they were the stupidest creatures, evolu-tionarily unfit, etc.—she now understood. Sometimes, life was just too much. It was better to hide and pretend.

  She missed one period, two periods, three periods. Her stomach barely swelled against her thin frame, her morning sickness was minimal, and nobody suspected anything or asked any questions. She wondered about telling her parents, telling Kai, telling somebody—anybody who could help. She was too scared to have an abortion because she’d heard all the stories about the blood-soaked ghost fetuses that followed around women who’d had them. She didn’t want to be haunted by a sad baby spirit for the rest of her life. Ellie was terrified of ghosts, more terrified than she was of labor or of her father beating her to death when he found out the truth. She was not even supposed to hold hands with a boy, let alone have a boyfriend or become impregnated by him. Unthinkable.

  The night of the end-of-semester concert, Kai performed beautifully on the violin. Ellie did not hit one wrong note on the piano. Kai reached for Ellie’s hand when they bowed together, and they held hands tightly for a few seconds. The audience’s applause was deafening, the stage lights blinding. In that moment, Ellie thought everything would be alright: she and Kai would become a young married couple, the baby would be incredibly independent and easy to take care of, possibly a musical prodigy like its father. They would all live happily ever after.

  But her belly was beginning to show. It did not take long for her mother to corner her and extract a confession. The school sent a letter ordering that Ellie be transferred to another institution. The board of the exclusive music school did not want a pregnant teen in their classrooms, nor did they want her walking around in Taipei with her belly bulging beneath the school logo on her uniform, sullying their reputation. At home, Ellie’s mother covered for her for as long as she could, but when Ellie’s father found out, he came after Ellie with a cleaver.

  Following the advice of a family friend, Ellie’s mother transferred Ellie to a boarding school for girls in rural southern Taiwan, partly for her safety. At her new country school, all the girls stared. Most of them had never had a boyfriend in their lives, and they called Ellie names: Slut, Trash, Worn Shoe.

  The baby girl died within a month of being born, ten weeks premature, weak and unable to breathe on her own. Ellie never held her and turned away when the infant was offered to her, covered in tubes and tape, attached to beeping monitors. She tried to forget its face: a pink, raw blur with closed slits for eyes. It did not look like her and did not look like Kai, whom she never saw again.

  Yuan Zu Socializing

  YOU KNOW WHAT yuan zu socializing is, right? Like in Japan, when the high school girls date older, usually married men in exchange for money—that kind of socializing. Yuan zu, to “help” the girls' pockets. You know how expensive clothes and cute knick-knacks are in Japan. Don’t be too fast to judge them. This happens in Taiwan, too. I should know, because I am one of those girls.

  I attend First Girls’ Senior High night division—this fact is very good for business. I saunter down the sidewalk in First Girls’ olive-colored shirt and black pleated skirt, and everyone in the streets turn their heads. Not that the uniform is attractive—it’s ugly as road kill—but it’s a status symbol. Only the smartest of the smart and most studious girls get into my senior high; that’s why it’s called “First Girls’.” So if a girl wearing a dirty green shirt climbs onto a bus, or walks into a 7-11, you stare. You wonder, how did she get so smart? You think, she will become a diplomat or president or CEO or doctor one day, no doubt.

  Look carefully, though. First Girls’ is divided into day and night school. The geniuses go to the day school. Their IDs are stitched in a rich, yellow thread. Girls like me, who couldn’t get into any other senior high anywhere, public or private, pay a lot to go to the night school, which is the exact opposite of the day school. Day girls have their hair cut below the ear; they study all day and all night. Their uniforms are neatly ironed, creased, and their skirts fall slightly below the knee. A lot of night girls work during the day, or lounge in bed with their live-in boyfriends. Night girls are identifiable by the white rather than yellow thread that the uniform lady uses to stitch our IDs, and our skirts are also unique. They are either very short, almost mid-thigh for those of us who have nice legs, or especially long, to cover platform black leather shoes, which day girls would never be allowed to wear to school.

  My skirt is short, way short. I wake up around noon every day, wiggle into my uniform mini, put on white elephant-style socks which I bunch down to flatter the shape of my calves, and slip into my shiny platforms. When I leave the house, my mother is still at the morning market, buying food, gossiping, browsing racks of cheap clothing. She’s kind of a clone—she’s like any other obasan, a middle-aged lady who speaks loudly with a coarse Taiwanese accent, has eyebrows tinted a strange shade of bluish-blackish purple, steadily puts on ten pounds every decade, and complains all day about her husband and daughter.

  Skipping breakfast, I head toward McDonald’s with my schoolbag, which is almost completely empty. I leave all my textbooks at school. I never study anyway, and carrying heavy books would stunt my growth and ruin the shape of my legs. I will allow nothing to ruin these legs, my nicest feature. So what if my eyes are small and slanted and single-lidded, my nose flat and upturned, my lips thin and too wide. My mom was no belle, so my not looking like Miss Taiwan is no surprise. But that’s okay. I have a Miss Taiwan figure. I pencil in my eyebrows carefully with a light-brown pencil, my hair is dyed brownish-yellow with feathered edges that flutter in the wind—I look better than one of those four-eyed, snooty day-school girls any day.

  I browse merchandise in cute little stores, eat at roadside stands, and either listen to records in the record store or sit in McDonald’s until 5:30 p.m. every day. Sometimes I even meet a middle-aged man for a quickie during his lunch or afternoon break. Occasionally, all they want is some conversation or my underwear for a keepsake—poor, gutless, emasculated men. Some of them want more, and pay more, and we go to hotels and motels to “rest,” the euphemistic term for renting a bed and privacy for two hours to screw. It never takes two hours, needless to say. Thirty minutes would be long, including the undressing, dressing, and showers. I charge one thousand NT an hour. All men look the same naked. With their respectable-looking suits on, these men are not that different from my dad. In fact, naked or clothed, they are my dad; they are exactly the same.

  Ever since I remember, my mother always yelled at my father, who never came home at a decent hour. As I grew up, I learned that my dad, my hero, my role model who, once upon a time, took me to amusement parks, propped me on his shoulders in the night market, and brought home gifts after business trips—he had little girlfriends. He went out with teenage girls, took them out to eat, bought them presents, and kept their dirty undergarments in a different secret drawer every time, which my mother would eventually discover and throw out in a fit, wailing and invoking ancestors.

  As soon as I was old enough to receive my first proposition, I had my revenge on the middle-aged men who were like my dad, who embarrassed their wives by doting on and sleeping with teenage girls, and who thought they could get away with abandoning their families and corrupting the innocent. I bought FM2 pills from a dealer recommended by one of my classmates who was also in the business. I look for him in a corner booth in McDonald’s every Tuesday if I need more.

  My first customer was also my first victim. I still remember how he looked as he approached me, greasy hair balding at the dividing point in the center of his scalp, his beady rat’s eyes, ill-fitting gray suit, and crocodile briefcase. I smiled and flipped my braids at him and he asked me in a low voice if I would like to go to a motel. I asked him for some refreshments from 7-11 first, which he promptly bought. Then, once in the hotel room, I told him to take a shower (no
favors otherwise) while I slipped the powdery contents of a capsule into his drink, an energy soda. The pathetic man needed some ginseng in soda pop to make him feel more virile. I didn’t even have to remove my clothes that time—the pill did its job and my first naked businessman passed out quickly. I didn’t kick my first customer, though later on I developed the habit of adding a dusty footprint to their white shirts, writing on their faces with my Dior lipstick, or spraying them all over with strong, cheap perfume, so their wives would give them hell later. Naturally, I emptied the contents of that man’s and every other man’s wallet into my purse—a little something for me to remember them by.

  These men can’t go to the police about me because their crime is greater than mine. Society would never condemn a young teenage girl instead of a dirty, middle-aged sa zu, sandy pig. The man is always the filthy one, the corrupter, the one who breaks promises, ruins relationships, messes up his own life and the lives of those around him. I believe I carry out a form of justice. What I occasionally do with customers; the unwashed underwear I sell; old men’s freckled arms I hang on to; wrinkled, fallen bodies that I witness—these are a small sacrifice for the cause of punishing such men.

  This afternoon, a man with a scar on his face looks at me a certain way on the street. So much comes unspoken. Swinging my hips so that the pleats of my uniform skirt dance, I stop at the corner so he can catch up with me. Sure enough, he approaches.

  “Are you free tonight?” he asks in a low voice, but in a casual tone, like we’re old friends, so no passersby will take notice.

  “It depends. What do you have in mind?” I’m not sure about this man. He might be an undercover cop—certainly not the businessman type.

  “I need a pretty one to go to the karaoke bar with me tonight; it’s my friend’s birthday. I don’t want a dirty karaoke princess, they’re full of diseases. You look like a nice, clean girl. Smart, too, First Girls’ Senior High.”

  I feel flattered that he pretends there is no difference between day school and night school. And that he thinks I'm different from the karaoke joint whores. When he lifts his hand to brush his hair away from the scar on his forehead, I see what his sleeve had concealed—the bottom of a green, purple, blue, and red dragon tattoo that goes all around his arm. This is no policeman.

  “1000 NT an hour, just karaoke,” I say.

  “Just karaoke.” He nods. “Eleven o’clock, Big Loud Chef Karaoke Restaurant, suite two, under the name Mr. Chen.”

  He reaches into his pants and loosens five one-thousand-NT bills from a bundle.

  “Five thousand, that’s at least four hours, and I’ll call a taxi to send you home if you get tired early. Here’s two thousand now, and I’ll give you the rest tonight.”

  I smile, accepting the cash.

  In ten minutes, I am calling my mother to tell her that I will be staying over at my friend Ah Mei’s house tonight because her parents are out of town and she wants company. This excuse Mom has heard a hundred times and presumably believes. She grunts, saying that she puts on weight because nobody comes home to eat and she ends up putting everything she cooked in her own stomach.

  “Sorry, Ma,” I say, “but Ah Mei needs me.”

  “Go, go,” she replies. “Just as well. Don’t watch soap operas all night. The two of you should do your homework.”

  “We sure will, Ma, don’t you worry.”

  I’m not entirely lying. Ah Mei’s parents are out of town in a larger sense: they are dead. She and her brother live alone in a junky apartment near Taiping Temple. I go there whenever I have a late night. I call Ah Mei next, inviting her to come out and help spend my cash. Ah Mei doesn’t go to school or anything; I think she just watches cable TV all day. Her brother works in an insurance office, and their aunts and uncles give them enough red envelope money on birthdays and every possible holiday to help them get by.

  By the time I have almost finished my golden Filet-O-Fish, Ah Mei sits down across from me in a yellow McDonald’s seat and helps herself to my fries.

  “Let’s go to the cosmetics counter at SOGO, get our makeup done by the ladies, and buy everything they use on our faces,” Ah Mei says.

  She has no makeup on her face, and some marks on her cheek tell me that she was sleeping on a wrinkled pillowcase no more than twenty minutes ago.

  “Sure,” I say.

  Cosmetics counter ladies are usually mean, but not to young, reckless spenders like us. We have smooth, unblemished skin, but often buy more lotions, perfumes, and powders than wealthy housewives with facelifts and multiple plastic surgeries.

  Soon the cash is gone and I move on to swiping my credit card. Ah Mei and I, faces freshly painted and holding little pastel green and pink bags which hold our purchases and free gifts, top off the shopping spree with a nice Japanese dinner on the top floor of the department store. Spicy seafood noodles and green tea with red bean ice cream for me, fried vegetable ten don and sweet yam ice cream for Ah Mei. Much better than my mom’s cooking. My mom thinks the shelf life for leftovers is infinite, and always buys the cheapest fish with hardly any meat and a hundred thousand little bones in them. Getting one of those damn thorns stuck in your throat is enough to put you off fish forever. I can kind of understand why Dad would rather eat outside.

  Satiated by our meal, we get a taxi which drops me off at the gate of First Girls’ and then takes Ah Mei back to her apartment.

  I am forty-five minutes late for class, but nobody cares. The biology teacher doesn’t even look at me when I walk in. He is completely absorbed in the act of drawing some kind of molecular structure on the blackboard. I used to like biology, but then I came to a realization: what’s the point? (There is none.) My classmates must have had similar epiphanies. They are combing or braiding their hair, touching up their makeup in small mirrors, sleeping on bent elbows, or scribbling words on scented stationery. Tan Ni, sitting to the right of me, passes me a note: Nice makeup. Did it yourself?

  No, I write back. Cosmetics counter at SOGO.

  Big spender, she scribbles back.

  I’m not sure how to take this comment, so I crumple the note and take a comic book out from inside my desk to read instead of replying.

  Later that night, at Big Loud Chef Karaoke, I arrive fashionably late, still in my green and black uniform. The man who has hired me, who tells me to call him Ren Second Brother, introduces me as his favorite mei mei, little sister. Three karaoke princesses in revealing clothes and high heels are already sitting with five other men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. So much for not hiring princesses. Blue velvet sofas line the room, and a giant TV screen is playing a sexy music video with dancing women in bikinis.

  Ren makes room for me next to him and hands me a drink. “Just came in with the waiter, I promise it’s good.”

  The princesses are already sipping similar cocktails, and they nod at me. I’d been thirsty all day, especially after the salty restaurant food. My drink looks tropical, bright red with a slice of orange on the glass, and I like the way it tastes on my tongue: sweet, tangy, with a trace of bitter alcohol. In no time I am enjoying myself with these total strangers, even though the karaoke working girls can’t sing and keep nagging the men to purchase a few more hours of their time and order more oysters and shrimp at exorbitant prices to go with the drinks. People fight for the microphone, clap when someone sings well, and laugh when someone is too drunk to get the lyrics right. The karaoke princesses can never agree on what song to pick next. For women who do this for a living, they sure can’t carry a tune worth a damn.

  At one point I feel tired and dizzy, and lean back against Ren on the sofa. He puts his arm around me and guides me to fall into his lap, which is warm, hard and soft at the same time. The next thing I know I seem to be dreaming, my surroundings fading around me, strange, why am I sleepy so early, I am relaxed, so relaxed, floating above my body, feeling safe and content.

  After what seems like a full night’s sleep, I wake up, groggy and dis
oriented, to the coarse Taiwanese accent of a cleaning lady. “Wei, time to get up. Here are your clothes.”

  She is covering me with my green uniform shirt. She reminds me of my mom.

  I realize that I am completely naked. I feel soreness down there, and when my right hand brushes against my crotch, I find an unmistakable, slippery, sticky substance, a lot of it, still leaking from my body. Some of it close to the edges has crusted. The cleaning woman now has her back to me, and is wiping the table. I put on my white panties quietly, then my skirt. I hook my designer bra in the back and button my green First Girls’ shirt. How many men? How many times? What of my revenge?

  Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

  SONNIE MU DID not know that he was looking for love when he entered an internet chat room called “Gay Chat.”

  He hardly believed there was such a thing as love, at least for him.

  He had never wanted the pretty girls that every boy had a crush on as he grew up. Instead, he gazed secretly at his male coevals, admiring their athletic prowess on the basketball field, their taut muscles, their dark, lively eyes. His own eyes were soft and, remarkably, his left eye was dark gray while his right eye was brown. His friends called him yin-yang eyes; he was supposed to be able to see ghosts. Sonnie never saw ghosts. All he saw were boys, boys he couldn’t have and shouldn’t approach, boys who soon had girls hanging off their arms, and boys who slapped him hard on the back and whose friendly gestures he was too shy to return.