Beijing Comrades (13 page)

The truth was, Lan Yu was much more sensitive than I. He was certainly more fastidious, picky even—this was an aspect of his personality that intensified more and more each day. If I so much as spoke to an attractive young man or woman, he would become so sullen and quiet that I couldn't help but tease him a little bit. Anytime I fooled around on the side, I was always cautious to make sure he didn't find out.

Although Lan Yu and I entered into a new period of stability in our relationship, I didn't completely stop sleeping with women. I went to bed with them not because of any physiological need, nor even because I liked them, but because of a need that was entirely psychological: I wanted to prove to myself that I was a normal man.

One night we went to a drag show in Bangkok. Lan Yu asked me to explain the difference between the performers and
women. I told him that drag queens were men, and that while most of them had kept their male parts, some of them had cut them off. Lan Yu said he thought it was disgusting. When I asked him if he wanted to hook up with one of them, he gave me a shocked look. “Are you sick in the head?” he asked.

In many respects, Lan Yu was actually a very conservative and traditional person. What I didn't know was whether or not he struggled with internal battles over his relationship with me. We never had a conversation about it, but my gut feeling was that he and I felt the same way: that what we were doing was ultimately abnormal.

China was much more closed off in those days, and its people were much less aware than they are today. On the one hand, we lacked the knowledge and information we needed to understand what we were feeling. And at the same time each of us was unconsciously doing his best not to understand.

Twelve

Soon after returning to Beijing from Southeast Asia, I was invited to accompany a government business delegation on a trip to the United States. We were supposed to go in August. At first I was adamant about not going—to Lan Yu, at least, who patiently listened to my long list of objections to the impending trip. The biggest issue was that I had virtually no business ties with America, so my participation in the group was largely symbolic. But there was also the fact that I was exhausted from the trip to Southeast Asia—which had, incidentally, done little to dispel my fear of flying.

In late July, however, I unexpectedly picked up a new buyer, a major American importer, to whom I began exporting textiles. All at once I was eager to join the delegation. I was determined to win the American over and develop what promised to be a lucrative relationship. When the Yankee asked me about quotas at our meeting in Seattle, I told him I would more than meet his expectations.

“Quotas are the easy part, a side dish compared to the
main course,” I said to the interpreter with confidence. “I'll take care of it.”

I had only the most rudimentary English, but knew enough to laugh when the interpreter turned to the American and said, “Quotas are peanuts!”

When the business leg of the trip was over, I considered staying on a few days to visit Los Angeles and Las Vegas with the rest of the delegation for the fun part of the trip. But I decided not to, in part because I had already been to both of those places, but mainly because I missed Lan Yu. So I ended the trip and returned to China on my own.

Stepping out of the gate at Beijing Capital International Airport, I saw Lan Yu in the distance. As always, the summer sun had darkened his skin, but by that point in our relationship I thought he was even sexier that way. There he stood at the arrivals gate next to a grumpy-looking female quarantine officer in drab military garb. His face bubbled over with excitement and shone through the sea of dark heads bobbing in front of me. He wore dark blue shorts and a loose-fitting gray T-shirt with a short vertical slit at the neck. The slit was unbuttoned, forcing the flaps of cotton to fall open so that the golden glisten of his chest was revealed. A single glimpse of his radiant, smooth body, so healthy and full of youthful vitality, and my heart began pounding hot and violent in my chest. His hair was longer than usual, but it was the same haircut I always asked him to get. Parted in the middle, it fell against his forehead loose and disheveled. He hated it—he said it made him look Taiwanese—but with these sorts of things, he had always more or less done what I asked.

I wasn't the only person in the terminal who thought he
was gorgeous. Two teenage girls exiting the plane cast googly eyes at him as all the passengers made their way toward the waiting area. Their four eyes stared fixedly at him, but it was me he was waiting for. Just seeing him was enough to make my heart pound and my dick get hard. He saw me and waved.

I was barely able to hide my excitement as we walked out of the glass door and into the parking lot. Since we were in public I was unable to grab him the way I would have liked to, so I compensated by glancing at him again and again, flashing him my dreamiest bedroom eyes and going over in my mind what I was going to do to him the minute we were alone. I stood next to him as close as possible while putting my suitcase in the car, at one point intentionally and playfully rubbing my cheek against his arm then looking up at him lovingly. I could hear his breathing getting heavier; he was getting turned on. In the car, he gripped the steering wheel firmly and looked straight ahead in silence, but I knew his heart was racing out of control. My eyes darted from his face to his crotch and back again. I put my hand on his thigh, but only for a moment. My real target was the bulge swelling between his legs, which I soon began rubbing through his shorts.

“Don't, Handong. I'm driving!” he pleaded in frustration. I responded by rubbing even more at the rapidly growing oval-shaped tent. Lan Yu commanded a great deal of self-control, and I knew he would have no trouble driving. But I wanted to torture him until he couldn't take it anymore. Finally, he exited the highway and turned into a hotel parking lot.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He parked the car. “How am I supposed to drive with you grabbing me everywhere?” he pouted, leaning back into the seat and pulling the key out of the ignition before looking at me with an impish grin. “Wanna go in?” This was all I needed.
We went into the lobby of the hotel and got a room. The guy at the registration desk, I knew, would think nothing of two men getting a room together. It was common enough among businessmen, even if only to nap for a few hours.

Lan Yu grabbed me the instant the door shut and pressed his lips against mine in a long, deep kiss. I put my hand under his shirt to feel his broad chest, his neck, and both of his nipples, but quickly lost patience with the idea of foreplay and threw him onto the bed to literally rip off his clothes, or at least his T-shirt, which I actually did tear apart. Starting at the little slit at the neckline of his T-shirt that had been taunting me since I saw him at the airport, I ripped the entire thing straight down the middle until it fell open around him. He was surprised by this, but had little time to protest since I immediately pulled him into my arms, holding him around the waist with my left arm while using my right hand to unbuckle his belt, which lashed against his skin as it tore out of the loops. It was a good thing I had luggage in the car since I would have to give him a shirt to wear afterward.

He was beautiful. His body was that of a grown man, but he still retained so much of the charm and allure of youth with his big, sad eyes, pouty lips, and long locks of hair hanging in his eyes. I looked at his face, but only for a moment before continuing to undress him, taking off his shoes and socks then pulling his shorts around his feet. He's mine, I thought. All mine. That boy, standing in the airport only an hour ago, now in front of me naked, lying on the bed, raising his arms above his head, leaning his head to one side and looking at me, waiting for me to take him, hold him, kiss him, make love to him. I had given so much and it was all for him. He was mine!

I ravaged Lan Yu's body, kissing and biting him roughly until I pulled him on top of me, gripped his jet-black hair,
and pushed the crown of his head downward to make him go down on me. I must have pushed too deeply, though, because he suddenly gagged so hard that for a moment I was afraid he was going to throw up. Still, he kept gazing up at me with that look of blind love I had seen so many times. That's when I grabbed a fistful of hair, lifted his head up, and rolled him onto his stomach. With no foreplay whatsoever, I entered him, making him inhale sharply through his tightly clenched teeth. I came almost immediately.

I collapsed onto the bed and Lan Yu nuzzled into my arms. He hadn't come yet.

“That
hurt
!” he said accusingly. “That hurt more than it's ever hurt before. It hurt so bad I broke into a sweat!” He touched my hand to his forehead, which was in fact quite damp. I drew him closer and kissed him on the nose.

“I'm sorry!” I said. “I just missed you so much that I couldn't control myself.”

I had never been penetrated so I couldn't fully understand the experience, but seeing him anguished made me feel terrible.

“I thought you were trying to kill me!” His voice was sulky, but I knew him well enough to know he wasn't actually angry. I kissed his sweaty forehead, then his lips, then pushed him off of me and laid him on his back. I scaled downward with his cock in my hand, kissing every stop along the way until finally he was in my mouth. The whole thing went in until it hit the back of my throat and the soapy smell of his dark pubes crushed against my nose. Then I had an idea.

“
Hoo haha hi huhhee hee?
” I mumbled, his dick still in my mouth.

“What?” Lan Yu looked down at me in confusion.

His cock popped out of my mouth. “You wanna try fucking me?”

“What?!” he exclaimed, taken aback by the suggestion. “I've never done that before!”

“Neither have I,” I said, before rolling his balls one by one in my mouth. “I want you to be the first.” Whatever it took to make him happy, I was willing to do.

I got on my knees and Lan Yu positioned his cock against me. But no sooner was he about to enter me when he hesitated, seemingly unsure of what to do. I had no choice but to reach back and guide it in. It made me recall with amusement the first girl I slept with, who'd done the same thing for me so many years ago. With adequate spit and verbal instruction, he finally entered me, but with so much force that the entire length went in all at once.

“Ow! Fuck!” I cried. “Go slow, it hurts.” I winced and bit my arm. I didn't like it, not one bit. I simply couldn't believe anyone could derive pleasure from such a painful onslaught. But I was determined to stick it out. If he could endure it for me, I could endure it for him.

After a while, Lan Yu got the rhythm of things and started to enjoy it.

In addition to being excruciating, it was also a strange experience. Lan Yu was completely different from his usual submissive self. Holding my waist with both hands, he entered me again and again.

“I didn't know you were such a wild little beast!” I said, turning around to look at his blissed-out face. This made him laugh, but within moments the look of concentration returned. I, on the other hand, derived no pleasure whatsoever from what he was doing and didn't even have any desire left at that
point. My cock was limp and I felt nauseous. Still, I continued enduring the assault, an alien discomfort so great that Lan Yu may as well have been an oil drill. It was the emotional element that kept me going. The feeling of devotion. Of giving myself to him.

Finally, Lan Yu came. To me the feeling was mainly reminiscent of wanting to take a crap.

“Did you like it?” I asked him after we'd gotten cleaned up.

“It was okay, but I like it better when you blow me or jerk me off.”

Perfect! That was the first and only time I'd ever been penetrated. I didn't like it, but I don't regret trying it.

How many times we had sex that night, I myself don't know. All I know is that there came a point in the evening when we both realized we were starving. But we were also gripped by a paralyzing, sex-induced lassitude, and by the time the food we ordered had arrived, we were already asleep.

The textile deal with the American was going exceptionally well. I was planning on buying a luxury home—a “villa,” they called it—in the Northern Suburbs, a wealthy residential area on the outskirts of Beijing. I still hadn't decided whether the house would be a home for Lan Yu and myself, or if I would just give the property to him for him to do with it as he pleased. At that point in our relationship, there was nothing I would have hesitated to give him.

Thirteen

One weekend in October Lan Yu and I went to an indoor swimming pool, a recreational place called the Labyrinth. I liked it because only Chinese people went there, and only wealthy ones at that. It wasn't like all the big hotels and restaurants, where you were thrown in with a bunch of foreigners. Being around too many foreigners had always made me uncomfortable.

Bowling wasn't the only thing Lan Yu couldn't do when we first met. He couldn't swim either. Most people from the landlocked part of China he came from couldn't, he explained. But after we started going to the Labyrinth, he gradually learned under my patient coaching.

I was reclining on a bright green-and-yellow lawn chair near the edge of the pool, sipping an iced tea and watching Lan Yu demonstrate his newly acquired aquatic moves, when out of nowhere I heard a voice.

“Hey, Handong! What are you doing here?” It was Cai Ming, the professor friend who had called me the day Lan Yu had acted so heroically at Tian'anmen. Cai Ming walked
toward me, his teeth flashing in a wide smile. That's when I noticed a second guy trailing behind him. Fuck, I thought, it's Wang Yonghong.

Yonghong was a real prick. Barely twenty, he had already accumulated enough rottenness for several lifetimes.

“Just getting some R & R,” I replied nonchalantly, lifting my glass to my lips. “Been pretty busy lately.”

“Busy what? Fucking chicks? Look at you, hanging out here all by yourself. What's up?” Cai Ming may have been a professor, but he had the mouth of a hoodlum. Not your typical scholar type at all.

The two of them sat down. Yonghong flicked his cigarette butt into a puddle next to the pool.

Cai Ming was a good friend and a good guy, but I sometimes questioned the company he kept. Same with Zhang Jie. She had been in the same high school class as Yonghong and knew him well. I had no idea what these friends of mine saw in him.

“Not fucking as many as you are! What's shakin'?” I had the feeling they wanted something.

“You know, I was just thinking about you.” Yonghong said before Cai Ming could answer my question, which was largely just for show anyway. Yonghong was apparently speaking to me, but his eyes were fixed on the pool as if he hadn't even noticed I was there. Cai Ming got up to go take a dip and Yonghong turned to me with a confrontational air.

“I got a batch of steel,” he said. “And I'm selling it at a damn good price. You interested?”

I never would have said it out loud, but I was impressed. Steel was hard to come by. You'd need a gang of pirates to get that into China.

“Sure,” I said with an air of disinterest, “but what am I
going to buy it with? I'm still waiting for this goddamn American to pay me for his shipment.” I took a sip of tea and a drag off my cigarette. I was pleased with my story about the American, which I'd come up with off the top of my head to get Yonghong out of my face. Foreigners were easy scapegoats.

Even if I'd really been interested in the steel, I wouldn't have wanted to have any business transactions with Yonghong or anyone else from the Wang family. He was the kind of guy who couldn't tie a shoelace without assistance from the great reserve of personal resources he commanded. His grandfather had political connections reaching into the highest levels of power, his father was a high-ranking military officer, and his older brother was a filthy-rich businessman sleeping in the same rotten bed as his dad and granddad. I did my best to stay out of the entire family's way.

Before Yonghong could counter my move, Lan Yu jumped out of the pool and walked toward us. He ran his towel over his soaking wet hair, shaking his head as he walked. When he got closer and saw that I was talking with someone he had never met before, he threw me a smile and plopped down at a different table.

Lan Yu's skimpy black bathing suit showed off his legs, stomach, and ass generously: dark, sexy, sunbaked skin peppered with tiny beads of water. The way Yonghong devoured him with his eyes hadn't escaped me. He was perceptive, too, as he had clearly noticed Lan Yu smiling in my direction.

“Who's that?” he asked. “How come I've never seen him before?”

“Just someone I'm hanging out with.”

“New piece of ass, huh?” Yonghong laughed. “You lucky bastard!”

“No big,” I said, dropping my cigarette butt to the ground
and trying to sound like I didn't give a fuck. Until that moment, I hadn't been sure if Yonghong was into guys, too, but I guess I had my answer now. Cai Ming must have said something. Otherwise, how could Yonghong have known about me?

A few minutes later, Lan Yu returned to the water and Yonghong suddenly lost interest in the batch of steel he was trying to peddle. The moment Cai Ming came back to the table and started talking to me, Yonghong stood up and sauntered toward the swimming pool.

“So, I take it Yonghong is into this kind of stuff, too?” I asked Cai Ming. My eyes were glued to Yonghong, who splashed around in the water with Lan Yu, trying to strike up conversation.

“
Into
? Into isn't even the right word. He's addicted to it!” Cai Ming laughed, gesticulating with his hands. “He himself says it's a problem! You didn't know that?” Cai Ming bellowed with laughter. I smiled to act like everything was fine, but it was a weak performance. Given this new revelation about Yonghong, there was something about the way he spoke to Lan Yu that made me more than a little uncomfortable.

Eventually, I managed to ditch Cai Ming and Yonghong by pulling Lan Yu into the massage room. As we lay there getting worked on, I asked him whom he had been talking to in the pool.

“What are you asking me for?” he laughed. “He's your friend, isn't he?”

“Well, what did he say?”

“He said he was a friend of yours. Then he asked me where I worked.”

“Did you tell him?”

“I said I was in school.”

“Well, don't talk to people like him anymore. You have to
be careful. You don't know what kind of person he is. I know he seems all right, but he's a cad. Believe me.”

“Okay, but why are you mad at me about it? What did I do?”

I was annoyed by the whole thing, but decided to drop the subject. I didn't want any drama with Lan Yu, or worse, with Yonghong, who, frankly, I knew had friends I couldn't afford to piss off. A few days later I asked Lan Yu if Yonghong had tried to contact him and he said no. This was good news to me. I was more than happy to let the episode stay in the past.

At that point in our relationship, Lan Yu almost never slept on campus. By the time students hit their third or fourth year, he told me, their personal lives were not regulated so closely by the university administration, and a fair number of his classmates lived off campus. He drove his white Lexus to school every day, but was cautious to make sure nobody found out about it. He always parked either just outside the campus or in the university residential area reserved for professors and their families, then rode his bicycle to his classes or dorm room. Despite his efforts at discretion, however, just about everyone in his department knew about his “rich older brother.”

One Wednesday in November, I came home late in the evening because I had been caught up with a pressing business negotiation. It was dark and quiet when I stepped into my place at Ephemeros. Lan Yu wasn't home yet. I recalled that earlier in the day he had said he needed to be in the sketch room of his department until seven and that he would be home by eight. He was usually very punctual, so I paged him—after the events at Tian'anmen, he had finally broken down and allowed me to get him a cell phone and pager—but he didn't reply. I tried calling him, but his cell phone was turned off. I didn't think
he could have been in his car. By eleven o'clock I was worried. Then the phone rang.

“Is this Shen—I mean Chen? Chen Handong?” A man with a very heavy Beijing accent hollered into the phone. “You know a Lan Yu?”

I froze. “Yes. What is it?” I felt as though my heart would rise upward and get caught in my throat.

“All right,” he said. “I'll take him there. You pay the—” He yelled something I couldn't make out, apparently to someone he was with. “You pay for the cab fare and medicine when I get there.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“He got hurt. Mugged. Nothing serious. Just his arm.” The man hung up and I sat there in disbelief. How did this guy manage to cause me so much worry?

When the cab driver arrived with Lan Yu, I gave him ¥300—more than enough to cover the cab fare and the bandages and disinfectant he had bought for Lan Yu.

“Hey, thanks brother!” The driver grinned before driving off.

I helped Lan Yu get inside. He looked bad. His color was off and he was extremely weak.

“How on earth did this happen?” I fretted, poring over each scratch and bruise to make sure he was okay. “The Huada campus is usually so safe. Especially that early! It was only eight at night.”

“I don't know how it happened, either,” he said sullenly, throwing himself onto the bed.

“Listen, Lan Yu, if someone tries to mug you and they want your money or your car or whatever, you just give it to them—it's not worth getting hurt over! You didn't try to fight back, did you?” I was angry at the mugger, but frustrated with Lan Yu, too.

He was silent. I took this to mean yes, he had fought back.

“Then you were part of the problem, Lan Yu!” I said imploringly. “You're too attached to money—you should have just given him whatever he wanted. People like that will kill you in a heartbeat. A lot of cab drivers have been killed that way.”

“Are you done yet?” he asked. His left arm was tied up in a bandage, hanging in front of his chest, and his right hand was wrapped in gauze. He had obviously tried to fight back or else he wouldn't have gotten hurt this way. I kneeled in front of the bed and gently took his right arm in my hand.

“Does it hurt?”

“It's fine,” he said grumpily.

I leaned in and kissed his lips. “Remember. It's not for nothing they say money is the root of all evil. What matters is life! I just worry that if you don't control your temper, something bad is going to happen to you.” I sounded like I was lecturing a child.

He gave me a cheerful smile. “Give me another kiss!” He hadn't listened to a word I had said.

A week later, Lan Yu's arm was improving. One afternoon he rushed into the house excitedly to tell me that because of his injury, there were two exams he didn't have to take. “Where there's a loss, there's always a gain,” he said, repeating the old adage. He jumped onto the couch and clicked on the TV with a giddy smile on his face, and it suddenly occurred to me that this guy, ten years my junior, really was still a kid.

Two weeks after the mugging incident, my secretary stepped into my office and dropped an envelope onto my desk. It had just arrived in the mail, but there was no return address. In fact, there was nothing inside the envelope at all except a check for ¥100,000 from a company called Wonderland. That, I knew,
was the company of Yonghong's older brother, Yongzhuan. Later in the day, Yongzhuan called me. He was nearly fifteen years older than his younger brother.

“Listen, Handong,” he said in a conciliatory voice. “You know what Yonghong is like. Don't fight him on this.” I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Oh, god, of course not!” I exclaimed, sounding like an idiot but unsure of what else to say. I didn't know what the phone call was about, but it obviously had something to do with Lan Yu. “Besides,” I continued, “you and I have our friendship to think about.”

“Exactly!” Yongzhuan said. “Anyway, the hundred grand is just a little something to help the kid forget about it.”

“Well, that's very kind of you,” I said. I had no idea what Lan Yu was supposed to “forget,” but I had to play along to save face. “You know, I never really thought much about this anyway,” I continued. “Yonghong isn't the kind of guy who gets out of line.” This was all I could think of to say.

After we hung up, I started thinking. I remembered the way Yonghong had tried to talk to Lan Yu in the swimming pool. I didn't know the details, but I figured what had probably happened was this: that bastard Yonghong had tried to hook up with Lan Yu on a number of occasions, and finally succeeded. When he saw I wasn't doing anything about it, he got the jitters and asked his older brother to pay me off—just in case I was silently plotting my revenge. Whether or not Yonghong had actually told Yongzhuan all of this, who knows? I suspected that all Yongzhuan knew was that something bad had gone down between Lan Yu and his brother, and that ¥100,000 might help clean up the mess.

I didn't say a word to Lan Yu about the check or the phone call. Instead, I called Zhang Jie. She knew Yonghong well and
wasn't averse to a little gossip. If there was anything to know, she would be the one to know it. She answered the phone and I told her I needed to come over to talk.

“You guys are too much!” Zhang Jie jeered with a big smile on her face while pouring me a drink. “Two guys fighting over a guy?” She was shocked, but obviously loved the drama.

“Wait—no, that's not what's going on at all,” I protested. “I don't even know what happened!”

“Quit bullshitting me!” she laughed.

“I'm not!” I insisted. “I truly have no idea. I can't read Yonghong's mind, and it's not like Lan Yu's my wife or something. He never told me what happened. Besides, I'm not even into that kind of stuff anymore!”

“Geez!” she exclaimed. “If that's the way you feel about it, then Lan Yu's really wasting his emotions on you, isn't he? I mean, why even bother being faithful? He should have just slept with Yonghong!” Zhang Jie rolled with peals of laughter.

“Well, did he?” I asked.

“No!” she shrieked. “God, I wish I'd been there. Apparently that little guy of yours is tough as nails. I heard he grabbed the knife right out of Yonghong's hand and told him he'd die before he'd sleep with him!”