Father, do you think that there is the possibility of luck or fate involved, or is it always divine intervention?I tripped over Professor Yang one afternoon at the vegetable market. Not 'I met', not 'I saw', no, I tripped over Professor Yang at the vegetable market.
I was trying to get my vegetables - the usual story of the maximum amount of food value for the minimum of money. It was a weekly struggle. I had part-time work, and I wasn't broke, but I was after the best bargain I could get. So was the rest of the multi-ethnic crowd. Indian grandmothers in saris jostled with Greek grandfathers in leather jackets, Japanese students waited politely for British matrons to complain about the weather, and little black kids played with Chinese kids amongst the bok choi and oranges. The crowds and the noise was overwhelming. I stumbled over Professor Yang, and fell, catching my head against a plastic fruit bin.
I don't think I was knocked out but I was seeing stars and blood was pouring out of the gash on my forehead. A kindly gentleman helped me up and sat me down on a bench. He looked at the wound and gave me a crisp white handkerchief to staunch the blood. He rounded up my escaped vegetables, and helped restore my dignity.
I didn't know he was a professor then, and actually, he wasn't. He had been a professor, back in China, but he'd had to give that up before he escaped the Revolution. Here, a stranger in a strange land, he'd become someone else. At least in public. Here he pretended to be a slightly stooped, slightly shuffling, old man who wore the colours of old moths and dead roses.
He said his home was nearby, and I accepted his offer of somewhere to clean up. He lived in a little apartment on the top floor of a decrepit building. By the time we got up to the eighth floor my view of the world was spinning again. Yang opened the louvred doors out on to the tiny balcony and made me some tea. It tasted disgusting, but gradually my headache vanished and I began to feel lighter.
We talked for hours like old friends about art and politics and food and writing. Movies - Yang loved movies. Yang had been a professor of literature back home, but his academic documents vanished while escaping from the Revolution, and so finding work in his field was too hard. Besides, as he said, "Fool bureaucrats everywhere. Even the Revolution couldn't kill the real rats."
Like so many migrants he'd earned a living working in restaurants during the day. He also tended bar at nights, and did some tutoring in between - teaching Chinese to business executives and people in the diplomatic set. He had retired as a result of some careful investments built from money scrimped and saved, and he also acted as the building manager which kept his rent down. He was able to spend his frugal days playing the erhu, and writing and translating poetry, which he published in little soft covered books, and sold through academic and special interest bookshops. I had a picture of his books on the shelf between the crystals and the cds of rainforest birds.
He was delighted to find I was a creative writing student, and he asked if he could read some of my work. I was embarrassed. I felt I couldn't write anything worth a damn, and I felt stupid. Even saying writer's block sounded like pretentious bullshit. I was on the point of giving it all away and looking for a job selling white paint in some building supplies superstore.
"Sure, Professor Yang, I can bring some for you."
I was lying. I wasn't about to have my pathetic efforts critiqued by some guru.
"Call me Yang, please, my professorial days are so long ago, I wonder who you talking about. Here, have this tea, it's different. Sweeter. Special camellia leaves picked by revolutionary virgins who have never been fucked." He laughed with a mischievous, flirty wriggle.
I sipped the tea. "Yes, much nicer than the tea from the revolutionary virgins who have been fucked."
Yang played LP records on an elderly stereo system. He had a particular liking for cello music, and I wondered where he walked in his mind when he got lost in the Bach concertos.
He invited me to stay for a meal. I was quick to accept - I liked him a lot, and I felt certain his cooking would be better than mine. He stir fried pork and noodles, and the bok choi from my shopping. We drank beer with the meal and he got a little drunk, a little bit giggly, a little bit louder. After eating I helped him with the dishes. He stepped up on a little stool to put some plates away, and missed his footing coming back down. He stumbled and bumped against me. I caught him, stood him upright, and patted him back into shape. He stared at me for a moment, and, for some reason, I hugged him. He hesitated and then hugged me too.
"I'm sorry," he said. He looked upset.
"It's ok, it's ok."
"Too much beer, I'm a drunk old man."
He fussed over changing a record. Elgar.
I reached out and touched his shoulder.
"Really, it's ok."
He shrugged me away as though I'd burned him, and then turned, with misty eyes.
"No, it's not ok. It's not your fault, do nothing wrong. Nothing! Nothing!"
He slumped into a chair and held his face in his hands. I felt awkward - unwittingly I'd strayed across some personal boundary. I turned off the harsh kitchen fluorescent light and stepped back in the living room. The concerto finished and the player arm returned. The turntable slowed and stopped. Silence filled the room. I closed the doors to the balcony, leaving the city lights to the fog. A few tentative rain drops burst on the iron roof, loud against the city buzz.
Yang sighed and stood up. He pulled out a bottle of cognac and placed a couple of glasses on the table. He held up the bottle and waggled it. I nodded. Yang poured two glasses and handed one to me.
He put on a disk of haunting erhu music and, in the dimmed light, he told me his story. As a young academic in the early 60s he'd fallen in love with a student, a boy whose gift for music was second to none. They became lovers - an act dangerous enough before the Revolution, it became suicidal by the mid 60s, a time when even sex between married couples was seen as a bourgeois pastime, and, at times, even limited to 30 minute conjugal visits. Yang laughed when he told of some of the reckless adventures they had hiding from prying eyes, making mad love where they could. For a few moments they lived, they loved, they danced, and they cried. So much pain, and so much struggle. It was hard but it was so beautiful. He wept freely when he told how the boy, his lover, his soul mate, was ripped away from him - not for their forbidden love - but for his talent - someone in the cadre was threatened, words were whispered, he was criticised as being counter-revolutionary, and he was taken away to a countryside labour camp.
Just a boy, barely 18. Like a dragon fly, lives for only one day.
Lost.
Yang blinked and, shaking, took a gulp of his cognac. It burned him and he choked a little.
"When you caught me, touched my shoulder, is how Ming touched me. I felt him in you. The memory, feeling ... same." He looked down, and a single tear spilled down his cheek, shining in the dim light.
My chair creaked when I got up, and I knelt beside Yang and hugged him. He turned his head into me, his shoulders heaving as he sobbed silently. I stroked his back, soothing him and his broken heart.
"I'm sorry, foolish old man."
"Shhh, come on."
I stood and lifted him to his feet.
"Where are you going?"
"Come on. You know," I whispered.
He looked down and nodded. I gently pushed him. He took a faltering step, and I gently walked him, arm around his shoulders, dancing into the bedroom. The light from the living room was just a faint glow, but it was enough for me to see the outline of the bed. I sat Yang on the bed like a child, and I kissed him on the forehead. I slowly stroked my hands across his shoulders, and chest, and I undid the top button of his shirt. He breathed out. The shirt gaped open a little. My fingertips gently brushed his soft skin.
As I started to undo the second button he suddenly grabbed my wrists to stop me.
I hesitated, and then, feeling his grip slowly thaw, I carried on.
I fondled him, nuzzling him, calmly stripping him of every garment. I pulled the covers back, and eased him into bed.
Overhead, the rain was falling steadily on the roof. I shivered. I knew he was watching me in the darkness, waiting for me to lie next to him. He held back from me, shyly, until I took his hand and placed it on my cock. He caressed me, stroking me, worshipping the lines of my body.
I felt his beautiful smooth body, his cock hardening, his measured breathing.
He coughed a little, then spoke softly to me, first in Chinese, then in English...
| 简单地说， 我想你了。 带我 从后面 在没有受到挑衅的情况下。 带我 任何方式 你华丽的心灵 可以编造。 逼我 如果情绪 因此罢工。 或者引诱我 如果它适合你 更好的。 我想 感到惊讶。 我想 要参加。 我想你 因此，克服 有激情 它规定 你的行动。 我想你 要我。 如何更简单 这可能吗？ | Put simply, I want you. Take me From behind Without provocation. Take me Any way Your gorgeous mind Can concoct. Force me If the mood So strikes. Or lure me If it suits you Better. I want To be surprised. I want To be entered. I want you So overcome With passion That it dictates Your action. I want you To want me. How much simpler Could it be? -- |
curation: http://mydaddyold.tumblr.com
poem: 'Libidacoria: In a Plain Brown Wrapper'
by Kristie LeVangie ISBN-13: 978-0595486168
poem: 'Libidacoria: In a Plain Brown Wrapper'
by Kristie LeVangie ISBN-13: 978-0595486168
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