Candy

by Mian Mian

  Just now a bird has flown over. There are markings by its mouth, a large fire-red circle, with fire red in the center, and three little yellow spots forming a triangle, so that the whole thing looks like a red face with yellow eyes and mouth, like the face of a child. This bird’s body is solid sapphire blue, and its tail is silvery white, with a split in the middle. The two sides are very slender, and from where I’m sitting it looks like two white ribbons fluttering behind the bird’s body. The pair of birds has found a slightly longer branch, and one of them perches at one end, while the other one perches at the other. They start pecking rapidly at the branch, moving along its length, until their beaks meet up, and then they separate again and peck back to their original place. They go through the whole process again and again, repeating the same motions over and over.

  The wind has come up, and all of the leaves are blowing down from the trees. There are many trees outside, but it’s only in that one tree that I love that I can see so many birds. It’s the weekend. Could it be that birds have weekends too? Is this tree a weekend playground? Why have they all chosen this very same tree?

  Sometimes I need to leave the surface of the earth; sometimes I need to be full of love for the entire world, I need some ecstasy; sometimes I need to nourish my brain. When there’s nothing else but me and the starry sky, and the moon looks like a child’s face, I don’t dare smile at it. It seems as if maybe I’m a child too. Children are the true observers in this world.

  2.

  This candy-coated city, blurred but seductive, where the speed of the car controls my mood and heartbeat. When he speeds up, I feel good, but when it’s more than I can take, he slows down. The taxi driver puts on the music I brought with me, the elevated highway becomes soft, and my eyes stand up, and my eyes lie down. Warm and gentle sparks embrace the emptiness; when the music plays and the bloodred pipes in my head begin to melt, I feel myself stepping into another skin.

  I’ve decided to go to China Groove on weekend nights. The first floor is like an aquarium, and they usually play ambient music there. Outside, there’s a big garden, where they play drum and bass. The second floor has several red velvet booths, and they play hard house and trance there. There are a couple of twenty-something Shanghainese DJs there, and they’re always going through amazing contortions to procure records and marijuana, and sometimes they can get a little E from the prostitutes they know. On weekends, Bug, Nunu, Cocoa, and I go and hang out with them.

  When the music is empty enough that I can put myself inside it, taking it in on every level, and the air is charged with electricity, I can achieve a dream state, and like a dream, there are no words to describe it. The music is moving me; I don’t need to move on my own. Sometimes the moon appears in the room, bringing this news: all the news that terrifies me to the depths of my soul, all the people who make me their clown. We will never be parted; we will always be this perfect, this complete.

  DJ King’s music is a kind of psychoanalysis. He gets deep inside you, he doesn’t wait on you, his mood decides everything, and you have no choice but to follow him. And even though you might catch up with him at some particular point, you won’t be able to stop there—you can’t stop. The King tilts his head, autocratically, mysteriously. For some people, DJ King is as dangerous as his name.

  I like clubs best in the early morning because all of the boring people have gone and only the truly boring people are still there. Chinese and laowai, phony artists and real ones, prostitutes, local slackers, dumb-ass white-collar types. It doesn’t matter who they are; it’s too late, and none of the men are likely to pick up a woman, and none of the women are likely to pick up a guy. Nobody is going to pick anybody up; they’re all fucked. A few cold rays of early-morning light pierce the room, and we sway inside the music. Everyone has a language that belongs to his own body. After hours is the most real time of all.

  3.

  The night is my lover, my sweetheart, and if I go out at night, I want my night to have all of these things at once: a sense of occasion, a dramatic plotline, and someone else with whom I can share an exquisitely beautiful understanding. But in fact, none of my nights out has ever possessed all three of these qualities. I know that somewhere along the line I get lost.

  That’s why every night when I get home I check my E-mail. E-mail begins at the vanishing point of you, me, and the night. My mailbox exists within a fixed protocol, and I know that as long as I don’t make a mistake, as long as I hit the right keys, the messages I write will be sent out. I can feel reasonably certain of this, and I find it deeply satisfying.

  I like to tell stories in my E-mails. If a plot that has me in it is unfinished and has lots of loose ends, I’ll add on to it. If none of the stories I’m in are ever beautiful or moving, I’ll still go on telling them. If none of the people in my life are ever adequate or ideal, I still won’t give up my search, even if the best I can do merely is to find something that resembles those people.

  When I transmit a story electronically, I’m weaving memories together between my fingers. If the recipient has come into my thoughts, he will learn what he means to me. Even though I may be rather scattered, I still think there’s nothing more important than stories. Every detail in a story dances because every detail is a fragment. Perhaps nothing has been set into motion yet today, but that isn’t going to knock me down.

  M

  Ninety-nine percent of the men I know are boring, and of the 1 percent who aren’t boring, 99 percent of them have girlfriends. A lot of men want to fool around with me, but they all have girlfriends. That kind of arrangement isn’t acceptable to me. I can’t believe that accepting that kind of offer could make me happy.

  I’ve been feeling more and more dismal all the time. Clouds are darkening my skies and I’m sinking into gloom, and my hopes are fading. I’m yearning for a day when I’ll walk into some situation and suddenly something there will set me free.

  A month ago I started running twenty minutes a day. Working hard to maintain a graceful and balanced posture and keeping my head lifted as I jogged along, after three days I realized that the swaying motion of my body was real exercise.

  Maybe I’d overlooked a lot of finer points before, but physical activity brought on some changes, and I decided that it was high time for me to have a sex life again.

  I got in touch with all of the men who were potential partners, and I settled on someone who definitely didn’t love me and whom I was sure I didn’t love either. Our first night was a bit depressing. Sweetness was elusive, always a step or two ahead of me, there were spooky-looking green roses in the garden, and I’d all but forgotten how to touch a man’s face. I needed opening up. When I’d opened myself up, my life would be so much happier. My efforts left me feeling stupid, and I felt that life wasn’t treating me fairly at all. Why would life put me in this kind of position?

  Bug said, You’re going about it all wrong. You should try to find someone you honestly like.

  I said, I’ve wasted too many kisses already! Lovers don’t come to us unless they want to, but happiness is something we can go out and look for. At least this guy makes me feel relaxed, and when I make love with him I can forget myself for a while. Plus I like him a lot, he’s sweet, and he’s a friend. Right now I’m trying to learn how to tell the difference between love, and lovers, and friends, and friends you have a sexual relationship with. I think it’s important to have a clear sense of the distinctions between these things. And anyway, condoms are always faithful to one lover—that’s one thing in life that can’t change.

  Bug looked at me for a moment, and then he said, Even if you reach a point where love can’t touch you, I hope you won’t stop yearning for it anyway.

  One day I had my first orgasm. All I can say is that I experienced it, and that’s how I know. There had still been some traces of opium in his bong. I was completely unaware that I was nearing orgasm, and it came in a flash, nakedly simple, unbidden by my thoughts or spirit.

  I final
ly understood why I had always been so uptight. I had never allowed myself to relax and let go and experience pleasure.

  I thought about it all the next day, although my joy was mixed with grief. Now that I’d achieved one kind of climax, I wanted to have the other kind. People said that the two kinds of orgasm were very different. I recalled those long-ago pleasurable spasms of my girlhood, and I began to sleep with him frequently. It was always at his place, where there was music, and a big bed, and afterward I would always smoke a cigarette. Then I’d go home and take a bath.

  It seemed as if orgasms were hard for me to achieve. The next time I was with him, it took a lot of work to get me to come, and afterward I spent the night at his place for the first time. I had a nightmare there. I woke up in the middle of it, and I told him, I’m having a nightmare. He glared at me coldly, and without saying a word, he went back to sleep. This hurt me deeply. I felt so pathetic. I felt as though I needed tenderness and sweet words too. Language had hurt me again! I knew that I’d probably never be able to open myself up to him in bed again.

  Apple said, If you have it in you to screw someone and then kick him out the door as soon as you’re done, then go ahead, be my guest. But if you can’t do that, and if you can’t stop thinking about it all the time, just do me one favor. Please, please, stop hurting yourself.

  I said, But when I don’t have a man, my body turns to ice. What am I supposed to do?

  Apple said, I guess you’re getting what you deserve.

  I decided I would need to solve this myself. Life is a big experiment, and we have to keep trying new things, learning new lessons. This was a sort of lesson.

  I had come down with a very pathetic kind of sickness: I didn’t think that there was a man anywhere in the world who could love me. I was ill-fated.

  The moon is my sun; its rays penetrate my room, making me realize how depressed I am. When I lay my body down, I can hear the sound of my blood flowing. It’s a feeling that’s both inspiring and oppressive. So many tedious efforts, my body is cold and frail. In my own bathtub, it’s me and my body together under the moonlight. And when we’re alone together like this, it’s as if we’ve lost the entire world, but at least we’ll always have each other. To hell with language! To hell with orgasms! To hell with whores! To hell with love! My body and I just want to throw up! If there ever comes a day when I can have an orgasm without having to depend on a man, I will lie down in front of the moon and have a good cry.

  Saining was back in Shanghai again. He said he wanted to open a little bookstore there.

  He had found a huge plot of marijuana growing in the Beijing suburbs. A lot of people had found similar places. Everyone smoked as much as they wanted and then harvested a bit to take home. Nobody knew how it had happened; just like those hole-punched records, it was a gift from heaven.

  We’d never talked about our orgasms. He slept beside me every day. Looking at him, I found myself thinking that it didn’t matter whether or not we came. I felt that the weak were finally getting some muscles, that the bored had finally reached orgasm, and that the stupid assholes had finally seen the big picture.

  But I was still ashamed, ashamed of our relationship.

  N

  Maybe you think there’s something noble about doing heroin, as if it’s some sort of journey to self-realization. Junkies’ souls are richer than ordinary people’s, and their aesthetic needs are even higher. Even if you recognize that it’s an illusion, you will still experience many revelations and become aware of many new things, as if you had thought of all the things you’d never thought of before. Your metabolism speeds up, you experience the drug, and the drug is good to you. Your sense of safety is enhanced because you are transparent and others are unaware of your sharpness. Because you are so self-realized, your entire being is like a thief. You think it’s a gift from heaven, it’s impossible to feel guilty, and because you feel it is so pure, it’s the key to your soul, and all of your inhibitions and self-doubts vanish into thin air.

  But if you want to be a “flight commander,” I’m going to give you some advice. You need to be extremely cautious around chemicals, even a three-yuan bottle of pills. Because, as you’ll discover very quickly, you’re constantly going to have to increase your dosage, and it will never end. Everything will start to seem boring to you, until finally it will have stolen away your entire self. My lungs are shot full of holes, and my vocal cords have been ruined by heroin; I’ll never be able to get onstage again. My brain is like a sieve—I have no memory—and there are a number of other heroin-related traits that will always be with me. If you want to get high, there are plenty of ways to do it, but don’t go using just any old drug without thinking about it. For instance, you can put Fisherman’s Friend in your espresso. This is a trick we impoverished Chinese kids came up with. You have to do it regularly, but it can throw you into the realm of the imagination in a hurry.

  Don’t be so serious! I just happened to come into the pharmacy to buy some medicine, that’s all. I need the warmth; I’m one of those people who always need to be high.

  Let me tell you something. If you were to give me your drugs and I took them now, and if we were in a high-rise right now, and if what we saw before us right now was a smooth and shiny plate-glass window and you said you wanted to jump, I would want to see how you looked as you jumped. You’re my best friend, but I would want to watch it happen, because if I couldn’t see it happen, it couldn’t touch me, and I wouldn’t be able to respond. Because I’m your friend, I wouldn’t try to pull you back.

  That’s you. You’re low, and I’m high. We’re not the same. Your heart is sad and dark.

  Bug had used Special K a few times lately, and he’d changed. He was looking for ways to get high every day. It didn’t take him long to discover at the pharmacy a kind of pill that cost only three yuan a bottle (and because I don’t want anyone else to go try it, I’m not going to say what it was), but the effect of this medicine was a lot like speed, and after he’d taken some, he felt energized. The first day, he took three pills, and he was euphoric. The second day, he took five pills. The third day, he didn’t take any, but on the fifth day he took seven, and that’s when he discovered that his genitals were starting to shrink. Nothing frightened him more than that.

  So he came and told me. That’s how he is—whenever anything happens that makes him upset, he runs and tells me right away. He looked as if he’d been up all night partying, and in fact he hadn’t eaten or slept in days. His face had a green-gray pallor, his breath was foul, his eyes were sunken and often crossed, his face was covered with fresh acne, and the skin just below the corners of his mouth was a mess.

  That’s how chemicals are. You feel great for a while, but afterward all the bullshit that’s been troubling you comes back in full force, and you find yourself in even deeper shit than before.

  He soon quit taking that stuff, telling me that he thought his old life was better for him. It was more solid.

  The night he told me that, I lit all the candles in the house and brewed a pot of oolong tea. I said, Let’s pretend it’s a pot of magic-mushroom tea. That night I played DJ and played him some music, and for a long time we watched the shapes of the candlelight flickering to the music, and we talked about silly things, and once again we had the sensation that we were being lifted up together, in one of those rare peaks of experience you have from time to time. Bug was like Saining, one of those hard-to-find people who always understood me, no matter what nonsense I was talking. The more off-the-wall I got, the better they understood. Conversations like those were my favorite kind because they had nothing to do with everyday life. Some weekends, Saining, Bug, and I would get together, along with a few others we didn’t pay much attention to because they were just hangers-on. If we’d eaten E, we would emerge from a club on a weekend morning, sure to be bound for the café in the eighty-eight-story Grand Hyatt Hotel, where we could continue our bullshit session. Places like the Grand Hyatt didn’t feel so over-t
he-top if you went there with your closest friends. Saining said that the Grand Hyatt building was the only place he liked in Shanghai, and aside from wanting to be a fireman, he had another fantasy, which was to be a window washer at the Grand Hyatt and to hang by a safety rope. We always left the Grand Hyatt with black circles under our eyes because we always sat there for at least ten hours, blabbing about everything and nothing and gazing out the windows.

  A month later, Bug told me that he’d been running a low-grade fever for two weeks, and he had had diarrhea. And there were other symptoms that were more serious. I said, What are you trying to tell me? He said, Can I show you something? He led me into the bathroom and took off his pants. He wasn’t wearing any underwear. He took my hand and said, Feel this. I said, What are you doing? He touched my hand to his inner thigh, and it felt as though there was something hard inside the muscle of his inner thigh, something rock-hard.

  I said, I think this is where your lymph glands are. They seem to be swollen.

  Bug stood there without moving. I looked between his legs and then back at his face. He was holding his neck very straight, with his head tilted up, but his eyes were looking down at me, and his gaze seemed to bore right through me. Then he looked away from me, straight ahead, and he said, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I’ve gone through all the possibilities. I think I have AIDS. I had a lot of friends with AIDS when I was in America, and I remember thinking that if my neck ever started to swell up, it would mean that I was going to die.

  Just then, Bug’s beeper went off, and he started hunting around for it.

  I said, Who paged you?

  He said, It isn’t mine; I don’t wear a beeper.

  I said, Then what was that sound we just heard?

  He thought for a moment and then said, Oh, yeah! That’s right! Now, where did I leave it?

  I said, Getting high all the time has really messed you up!