Without raising his head or looking at me, he said, You’ve cut your hair. Only a little bit, I said. Your hair used to be longer than mine, he said. Now our hair is about the same length. I said, I’m hungry; can I have something to eat? Sure, he said. I’ll make you some fried rice, how about that? I make really good fried rice.
He fried up some rice for me, with lots of different things in it, even apples. He insisted on feeding it to me himself, and looking at his eyes so close up, his soft eyelashes moving up and down, all of a sudden I felt my body get moist, and I wanted to touch his eyes, but I didn’t dare. He knew I was looking at him, but he didn’t look at me. He was feeding me more and more slowly, and my breathing was becoming ragged, and he knelt in front of me, stroking my sex with his hand. His fingertips were cold. This was his hand, and I loved his hand, the feel of his hand.
When he put his mouth on me, I was startled. I cried out. I didn’t know you could do this. He was in such a strange mood, and the sensations I felt were so vague that I thought this was the most exciting picture I had ever seen, and like nothing I’d seen before. Because of this tableau, this man would live forever. I listened to the wet sounds of fluids mingling, sounds that made me think this man loved me. I called these vague feelings “love.”
I spent the long afternoon playing a role that I didn’t really understand, but I loved the way he made love to me. This is lovemaking, I thought. From then on, we made love in this way anytime and anywhere we pleased, and I felt that my body liked only his hands, his mouth, and that they were full of feeling. I didn’t want anything more.
Once he said, This ought to be the most pleasurable spot for you. It’s called the “little cherry,” but you’re not responding.
I said, Maybe I wore it out by playing with it too much when I was young.
He ate me, never asking for anything else, saying that he didn’t care, that my sex had a nice scent. This didn’t make sense to me. How could he think that I smelled good? I asked him, What is my scent? He said, It smells like your body, the smell of a body that has lots of secrets. I said, What does my body smell like? He answered, No one can know what their own body smells like. But I know your scent, and you know mine. I like your scent.
Sometimes he played guitar or violin for me. I always tried hard to understand his music. He said, Your brain is filled with too much crap; you need to wash it out. Music doesn’t need to be understood; music is the closest thing to your body.
I moved out of my father’s friend’s house and rented a run-down little apartment. My landlord was like all of the local men, always eyeing me rapaciously and leering at me maliciously. He came right out and asked me directly if I was a prostitute. He said that all girls who came there from the provinces were “chickens”—whores. I said that honestly, I wasn’t one, and that besides, I was from Shanghai. He said, Shanghai girls are smart—they all find married men to keep them as mistresses. They’re even worse than chickens.
This was the first time I had chosen what kind of place I would live in, and how I would dress and look, and I wrote a letter to my father telling him that I needed to stay in this town. He sent me some money and told me that he had left his work unit to go into business for himself as an engineer. He said that it was extremely hard to do business on one’s own, but he’d worked hard all his life and he was still poor, so he decided it was high time he made money for himself, and at the end he said he hoped that I would be able to find myself in this town. I remember it very clearly; he used the popular expression “find yourself.”
I bought a CD player and had Saining get me some Western rock and roll CDs when he went to visit Hong Kong. All I knew about then was Cui Jian, and I still thought that the Madonna CD my father had sent me was rock and roll.
Saining brought me some marijuana, and I felt as though I were experiencing a mysterious freedom. It was the symbol of another kind of life, and I loved lying in bed with Saining, smoking grass and listening to music. The music in his room had a purity, and the music and the grass together were like keys that opened up my soul. It was good for me. Little by little, the huge stones blocking my ears were moved away. My hands began circling in the air, and our fingers moved with the music as if we were making this music ourselves. It was such a rush!
I felt really lucky. I listened to rock and roll and smoked marijuana, all in the company of this temperamental, beautiful boy. Wasn’t this what I’d always wanted?
I spent my days hanging out, listening to music, smoking grass, and snacking. There was nothing else I wanted to do. I was nearly out of money, and it occurred to me that I might have to think about finding some sort of job, but Saining seemed to have plenty of money. Whenever we were together, it was his money we spent, and although I felt a little embarrassed by this, these were still happy times for me. One day Saining said, Do you know why I like you so much? Why? I asked. Because, he said, you’re as lazy as I am.
Once, when I came to Saining’s door, I heard the sound of lovemaking coming from inside. I couldn’t tell if the woman with him was crying out in pleasure or in pain, but Saining’s voice sounded entirely different from the way it did when he was with me. I had an intense desire to see them right then, but I didn’t know what to do, so I ran.
I ran blindly down the street, back to my place, and up the stairs. As soon as I stepped inside my apartment, I called him up. There was no answer. I kept calling, and finally Saining came to the phone. I heard everything, I said. I want to see you right now or I’m going to die. I’ll be there in ten minutes.
I set off again at a run, sprinting as fast as I could all the way to Saining’s place.
He didn’t open the door all the way but instead took me downstairs. We got into a taxi.
He still hadn’t said a word, and the anger in his face frightened me. We rode to the place where his band practiced, at a peasant’s house out in the country. Saining introduced me to his good friend Sanmao.
So you’re the girl who wants to figure out the meaning of life, Sanmao said. Who told you that? I asked. Saining, he answered. So, I asked, does Saining have a lot of girlfriends? Sanmao said, Not all that many. I asked, Why is it that men always have several girlfriends at a time? Sanmao said, Because we get bored easily.
I turned to Saining and said, I want to be with you. He said, Aren’t we together right now? I said, I want to know your secrets. I want your secrets to become my secrets too. I want to know everything there is to know about you, I want to see you making love with other women, I want to see all of the different ways you are, I want to become one of those women who know everything.
You’re only nineteen years old, Saining said, but you want to become a woman of the world. It’s going to take some time.
Saining, you’re only two years older than I am. You need to give me a chance to catch up with you.
He looked at me, and I looked at him looking at me. I started to cry.
Can’t you do anything but cry? he said.
I said, I want to make love like that, I want you to be completely yourself, and I want to be with you totally. I want us to be together, really together.
I wanted to do things with him, and I wanted to hear him make those sounds; I wanted it so much I could hardly stand it. But I didn’t know where to start, so I sat down on the floor, and the more I cried, the sadder I felt. Saining ignored me.
At dusk we went back to Saining’s and listened to music together. Saining translated the Doors’ lyrics for me.
Girl, you gotta love your man.
Girl, you gotta love your man.
Take him by the hand
Make him understand
The world on you depends.
Our life will never end.
Girl, you gotta love your man
Riders on the storm.
Riders on the storm.
Into this house we’re born
Into this world we’re thrown.
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan.
Riders on the storm.
It was so smooth and supple, Jim Morrison’s voice, and his spirit drew us in, his soul caressing me, merging with me, quickening me, drawing me on.
That day we didn’t make love. Saining just held me, and we spun into each other’s dreams with the music. When we awoke, we felt wonderful.
He never really talked to me about love. He was exactly what I’d been waiting for all this time. I was naked before him, he exposed me, and I felt close to him, but he couldn’t make me easygoing, couldn’t calm me down.
I said, Saining, what’s a climax?
You’ll know when it happens, he said.
He just wanted something light and sexy, a little fling, I thought, and I was the least sexy woman around, but I couldn’t help that, could I?
Saining and Sanmao started a band of their own. Rock concerts were still rare, and the band often played the warm-up for other singers. They were usually booed offstage, but they didn’t let it bother them. Saining said that he never turned down a chance to perform. As long as he got to play, he was happy. I always tagged along with them, although I wasn’t sure what their music was about. I was only aware of their deep sadness, and I was in love with that melancholy.
I talked to Saining on the phone every day. I wanted very badly to see him alone, and I tried everything I could think of to please him. But he seemed unmoved. He might decide to take my clothes off, having me feel the rhythm of the music with my body, and he taught me how to move with the music and give him pleasure with my mouth. The scent of his penis was a secret we shared. I had no choice: I had to learn, I had to think of a way to make him need me. I think that every girl is like this the first time she falls in love.
Once, he was playing guitar and singing for me, and I was dancing around on his bed, and as he looked at me he sang me this question: Tell me, what do you want for your birthday? I said, I want you to be my boyfriend; I want something called love. His face darkened and he said, Boyfriends are for little girls. What women have is something else.
I started crying. He softened and came over and rested his head on my shoulder. There are many kinds of love, he said. If you only want one kind, you’ll always be disappointed.
I said, Saining, didn’t you once tell me that a woman who had never made love was a green apple, one who had made love was a red apple, and one who had made love too much was a worm-eaten apple, but that the last kind touched you with a special kind of beauty, a broken beauty? Right now I think you’re a bastard! I don’t want to be one of your apples! If you don’t love me, then I don’t want to see you anymore. I mean it.
Saining thought about this for a while and then said, OK, fine! Get out of here! I don’t want you falling in love with me, especially not so fast. Get lost! I don’t think I love you.
And just like that, without ceremony, that mean son of a bitch kicked me out.
4.
I stayed in town. In time, I found a job singing at a nightclub. I took to wearing cheap, low-cut, supershiny micromini “cocktail dresses” and singing Cantonese love songs.
I started cooking for myself and keeping my apartment clean. Every day I concentrated hard on trying to communicate with Saining by telepathy, calling his name in my head, calling him back to me. I wanted him because he knew how to make me love him.
And on an otherwise unremarkable night, my eternally baffling Saining appeared at my door. He pulled me to him quickly, saying, Baby, you’ve gotten so thin.
That was all he had to say. I felt weak all over.
Hand in hand, we went down to the street together—hand in hand like a couple of melancholy friends.
There were a lot of newly minted millionaires in town, and plenty of other people who were doing whatever they could just to get by. It seemed that everyone had come to this strange city to make money. It was hot and muggy, and the streets were always full of distraught people. Prostitutes were everywhere. They always wore black.
We went into the bar where we’d first met. When I ordered myself a cola, Saining said, You’ve got to stop drinking cola all the time. Women should drink alcohol.
A breath of moonlight drifted over Saining’s face, and at this moment he became so peaceful and calm that he even seemed vulnerable. He looked down at the glass in his hand, and he looked as if he were dreaming.
I missed you so much, he said. You have that power. I used to be so depressed, before I met you. I want to give myself a chance, a chance to see if I can make something beautiful.
I was speechless. I just sat there, not believing my ears. I had never heard him say anything like this before. I was hearing the words of my first love. I said, I don’t really know who you are, but I love you anyway. That must be what love is.
We called Saining’s band mates up on the phone and asked them to join us. Saining told everyone that he had never thought he was capable of love, that he used to have trouble trusting women, and that he had assumed love must be something that would have to wait until he was middle-aged.
For the first time, Saining talked about himself. He had been bullied terribly as a child. Both of his parents were what was then known as “artistic political criminals.” They had met at a labor farm somewhere in the Northwest, where they had both been sent for “Reform through Labor.” His mother was a passionate admirer of the Soviet poet Sergei Esenin, so she named him Saining, which was the Chinese equivalent of Sergei. He was born at the labor camp. When he was nine, his parents were rehabilitated. They divorced soon thereafter. Saining said, Chinese marriages can withstand hardship and disaster, but they can’t survive the good times. Sometime later, his mother remarried and moved to Japan. When he was twelve, Saining immigrated to England with his father. When I met him, he had been back in China for only a year.
His father had stubbornly hoped that Saining would become a violin prodigy. His first violin had been made for him by his father, out of bamboo, and the violin tunes of his childhood had all been hummed to him by his father. Saining said, Maybe this is why I got into the bad habit of always running away from things.