The afternoon before Kiwi left for America, he casually dropped by to say good-bye to Apple, and for Apple the summer day seemed suddenly dark. As Kiwi descended the stairs, Apple felt an urge to be dramatic, and he stood by the window, watching Kiwi’s receding form as if he were in a movie. And he willed a melancholy expression into his eyes, a look that was at once longing, distressed, faintly disappointed, and lost. And as if touched by telepathy, Kiwi did turn and look back at him. This proved to Apple that this was his first love. All of these years, Apple had never stopped thinking about Kiwi.
Kiwi said he didn’t remember any of the things that had happened in the past. He only remembered that he and Apple had played a kind of game. He said, I felt as if we were acting like we were in love. He said, It was all a big joke. But now when he saw Apple, he felt excited.
This is basically what the two of them told me on the phone after our second meeting.
After I got off the phone with Kiwi, I went over to his place. In a flash we were caressing each other, but I started to feel bored because there was always something missing from the pleasure I got from sex.
I asked Kiwi, What is a climax?
Kiwi said, A climax is the climax you’ve never experienced.
14.
After his long separation and final reunion with Apple, Kiwi started calling me every night in the middle of the night and asking me to come over. So every night I found myself traversing those few broad midnight avenues to get to his apartment. I wanted to see how far, and how long, the two of us could walk together.
Kiwi liked to read magazines and drink endless cups of coffee. Every sculpture he made was spontaneous, a moment’s inspiration. He didn’t care about women’s souls. When he made a woman’s body, he created a perfect soul and a perfect life. I was mesmerized by the intensely focused expression in his eyes when he worked. He would always wear a little makeup, just to please himself, because although he was satisfied that he was quite handsome, he felt he needed just a few touches of the brush to make himself perfect. He was always making me up in new and different ways too, using every color trick of the makeup artist’s trade. He burst into my life and became completely wrapped up in it. I was his Cinderella, and he was my glass slipper.
He seemed to need me more and more. He treated me with tenderness and sensitivity. I loved it, but it also worried me. I was afraid to bring up the subject of Apple, but at the same time I wished I could steal a glimpse of one of their assignations.
Ultimately I learned that Kiwi frequented certain discos and gay bars, although he sometimes went out of town to pick up a pretty boy, whom he would bring back with him. He would either pay the boy up front or else buy him things.
I felt as if I’d plunged into the ocean; I felt in constant danger. I started going to the supermarket to buy scotch, and I knew what I was doing was very risky, but I’d lost the desire to control myself. I spent the hours between midnight and four-thirty in the morning slowly drinking, and I was often touchy. I knew that what I was doing was extremely bad for me, but I had to answer some questions for myself, and this was the only way I could think to do it.
It became increasingly clear to me that Kiwi was much more interested in men than he was in women. There was nothing I could do about it; there was no way I could even begin to compete with those pretty boys with their tight little asses. But I can’t describe the gay world with any authority. I said to myself, It’s over; you’re finished. The problem with you is that you’re a woman.
Unlimited quantities of alcohol and chocolate put my blood sugar on a roller coaster, I got infections in my eyes and my tonsils, and my asthma came back to haunt me yet again. That’s how things work: if you don’t behave, you have to pay the price. I knew that another vicious circle had begun.
The day for the videotaping finally arrived. As Apple had wanted, we rented a hotel room. I felt that each of us knew that the filming could never actually take place, but it was as though we all felt compelled to take things to a certain point in order for it to be over.
I got there first. A little while later, the two of them arrived together.
The three of us sat on the big bed.
Kiwi upbraided me for drinking. He said, I haven’t been drinking, and I don’t particularly feel like drinking right now. But you had to go and get drunk, and now the two of us aren’t on the same wavelength.
I said, I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking you want this man to see the parts of you that you usually keep the most hidden; but that’s not a desire I can satisfy. Do what you want. You’re on your own! This video project is cancelled.
Neither of them said anything.
Who’s responsible for this unhappy mess? We’re all broken. I can’t be with you anymore. I love you, Apple, and I used to love you—I know it. And maybe you loved Kiwi once, but he was in love with Lingzi, and maybe Lingzi was in love with Kiwi too, but she died, so who really knows? And what is love, anyway? None of us knows the answer to that question. What kind of passion do you think was in her eyes? Nobody knew but her, and she’s dead. So no one will ever know. She wasn’t crazy, I’m sure of it. She died of contentment; she felt that she had the power to attract you, that she had proof that you loved her. Her period was late, and she got upset because she was overexcited. Your bouquet of flowers didn’t kill her; it was youth that killed her, it was fate that killed her, and no one else will ever be able to describe the happiness that she felt—I’m certain of this. In the end, will you ever be able to forget it, no matter how hard you try? I don’t know. She died, and because of that, you’ll always love her. You say you love me, but if I hadn’t sat beside her in school, would you still love me? Don’t answer! I don’t want to know. What really happened when you went to see her? Why is it that the reflection of my back moves you so much? I don’t know. Maybe you’re in love with
him
now, and maybe you don’t know. Apple knows, but he says he can’t possibly be in love with you now, so who knows? What image is it that you want him to make for you? My back in the mirror, my back! What really happened in that bathroom? I don’t know. And I don’t want to know. What would have happened if you hadn’t come out of the bathroom together? None of us knows. Apple, why did you kiss me back then? You say you don’t know? Why can’t you answer? I don’t know the answer. And Kiwi, why am I always feeling miserable over you? Why don’t I refuse you? Why are your tears so attractive to me? Why are you always teasing me and tasting me? If you didn’t know how to make love to me so well, would I still be in love with you? You can’t answer that. When do the words
I love you
become real? None of us knows.
I said I wanted to give Apple an introduction to female anatomy!
I cried, Men and women go together, like heaven and earth; it’s heaven’s will. But now I was surrounded by homosexuality, surrounded!
I started to take off my clothes. I said, These are my breasts, this is my vulva, and there are many parts, each with its own function. This is your chance, Apple, I said. So listen carefully to what I’m telling you. The world is like a garden filled with infinite variety, and you need to understand every blade of grass, every tree. I think that, like me, you sometimes make mistakes.
I hadn’t planned any of this, but they seemed to have been expecting it. Neither of them appeared to be the least bit upset. Suddenly I felt that there was nothing to argue about. So I took a bath. When I came out of the bathroom, I said to them, We’re always complaining about how unhappy our lives are, and now I know why. It’s because what we ask of love has become increasingly technical. I’ve come to the conclusion that love is just a matter of personal preference.
We left the hotel together and went out for Hunanese food, and then we went together to that unbelievably stupid Hard Rock Cafe, where each of us ran into people we knew.
And suddenly I thought of Saining and a nightmare he’d once told me about, where he was on a bus, and everyone on the bus was wearing uniforms from McDonald’s, KFC, TGI Friday’s, or the Hard Rock Cafe.
That night, nobody got drunk. That night nobody called me. That night I fell quickly to sleep.
We are smoke, and smoke can only dissipate, but it cannot wither.
15.
When I’m feeling low, I almost always go to Tribes, this run-down club that’s the only place in Shanghai where underground bands play live.
Today I didn’t feel like listening to rock and roll, and today the songs I asked the DJ to play for me were songs like “Flowers for You,” “The Street,” “Whenever I Walk Past That Café,” “Love Me Tender,” “Running My Hands through Your Black Hair,” “Blue Skies,” “Applause,” “A Small Town on Deer Harbor,” “Winter Rain,” “Heart of Glass,” “Johnny Come Lately,” “Sugar Pie Honeybunch,” “A Kind of Moonlight,” “Love in the Autumn,” “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Comrade Lover,” “Clouds in My Hometown,” and “Stormy Night.”
These were the pop songs we’d listened to in the mid-
1980
s. A lot of them were from Taiwan, or oldies from the West. I would never have thought I’d hear them here in this rock and roll bar.
16.
I finally published my first story, in a literary magazine. I gave my first commission to my parents, and while it didn’t even come close to covering the cost of one week’s room and board, it made them very happy.
My story had been published, but there was already a pair of black scissors poised in my mind. I used to think that publication was power, you had to publish, you had to publish, and so I cut as I wrote.
As a result, the day my story came out, I was all fucked up because I couldn’t get rid of that pair of black scissors.
Writing came to me on the doctor’s orders. Really I was writing simply to gain a clearer understanding of myself. I wrote for myself, for my good friends, and sometimes for men with whom I’d once been close. As I wrote, I became more ambitious, and I wanted lots of people to read what I wrote—I wanted the whole world to see what I’d written. After the writing was done, I wanted to become famous, but was there really anything that great about being famous? I’d already imagined what that would be like. I’d set myself on this path, the path of a writer, and only now did I realize that it wasn’t necessarily going to bring me peace.
If I died, where would my soul find a home? My soul is certain to remain after I’ve died, and the soul will follow the spider’s web to heaven. But I used to think that writing was a ladder that would take me to heaven.
Lately I’ve been seized with the feeling that I’m going out of my mind, because I haven’t been able to keep bringing the world a kind of heat, and I feel as though the writing I’ve done until now has already become meaningless. Without the warmth of the sun, how can I write? My phone is ringing, and I don’t have the ability to become a professional writer, and I think that this is fate.
17.
Dusk, Kiwi’s bedroom. Cold tones, his mirror, an oval on four wheels. We bared our upper bodies, his left hand grasping my shoulder, and we leaned into each other, squarely facing the mirror. The setting sun and the rising moon touched us with gray beams of light as we sat together in front of the mirror, naked from the waist up.
Our heads were the same size, our hair the same medium length, lustrous, perfectly straight, neither too thin nor too full. We had the same long, thin faces. The same large, shining eyes, the same unstable blood sugar, the same ugly nose, the same full lips, dry and curved. The same skin tone, the same height and weight, the same prominent collarbone, the same black hair.
We swayed together in the mirror, straining our necks and staring at our expressions in the mirror, until night fell, until we could no longer discern the expressions in our own eyes when we looked in the mirror.
The year before, red had been my key makeup color, and I blended together all kinds of reds. Red represented to me the confusion of youth; it represented extremity, desire, crazy love, menace, and romance. But what would today’s theme be?
Kiwi was about to say good-bye to me. He wanted to go back to America to recharge, he said, and when he came back he’d bring some new work with him.
I said, I like you best when you’re naked and wet, but I never want to be with you again. I don’t ever want to feel that pressure and uncertainty again. So go. And I hope to God that everything will have changed by the time you get back.
We held each other. From the moment he’d first appeared, and then every time I saw him thereafter, I always had a strong desire to hold him. We often had our arms around each other. The rest of the world seemed to have gone into hiding, every pleasure seemed stale, and the two of us sat in the gloom, not speaking. I had the sense that he could see all of me, and I could see him in his beautiful but fatal flight. And it seemed that if we only held each other close, the rest of the world would be lost to us, but at least we would always have each other.
18.
I called Apple on the telephone. He said that he and Kiwi had gone back and taken a walk on that street. He said that the flower shop was no longer there, but that the little street itself was still there, and that things hadn’t changed all that much.
Whenever any of the three of us got together, the conversation always took a beautiful but melancholy turn, as if everyone was a poet. Apple always said that I was beautiful, and having a beautiful man praise me as beautiful invariably gave my spirits a lift. He fed my narcissism, gave me a new persona. It was a wonderful feeling, like being onstage. I thought that the force of this dream could put me on playbills all over Shanghai. I thought that he could transform my life into something new and beautiful. He fixed my awful “heroin complexion,” but he couldn’t do anything about my mouthful of stained teeth. Saining said that he actually liked my tetracycline teeth because they let him know that I was still me. My new life had lost its freshness, and my body fell into an even worse state than before. My heart was burning hot but it was dark; my love was empty. I turned on all the lights, but I couldn’t put the danger far enough away. I also wanted to get out of Shanghai for a while. What could be more wonderful than a change of scene? The day I left, I would try my best to leave my worries behind. Saining was in Japan visiting his mother, and I’d be able to stay at his little place. I wanted to go to Beijing. Shanghai was no fun anymore. Frankly, Shanghai had always been too phony, but Kiwi had a way of making pretentiousness something beautiful. My father agreed to give me money for the trip to Beijing. Maybe I would gain some new insight, and then again maybe every day would be the same. It didn’t matter. I was a woman who could never decide what to wear to parties, which sometimes reduced me to hiding behind the door in tears. But I was unafraid.