Beijing Comrades (15 page)

“Go to sleep,” he said sternly, though he was struggling to force back a smile. We were face-to-face, but his eyes remained closed.

“But I
want
some,” I said in a saccharine and slightly high-pitched voice.

“Want
some!” he said as his eyes popped open. “You come
home this late and you
want
some? No way, go to sleep.” He looked at me in annoyance, a barely perceptible smile dancing on his lips.

“But I've been so
very
busy,” I said in an exaggeratedly sweet voice. Lan Yu groaned and pushed me off of him.

Unable to bear the game any longer, we burst into laughter. We often played with this kind of role reversal, teasing each other until the whole thing became so silly that we had no choice but to start laughing and rolling on the bed together, giggling through the kisses.

“Man, what made
you
so grumpy tonight?” I asked after we had settled down from the fun. I was still on top of him, enjoying the sensation of his fingers running through my hair.

Instead of answering, Lan Yu pulled his hand away from the back of my head and looked at me straight in the eye. “Handong,” he began soberly. “Were you out sleeping around tonight?”

“And what if I was?” I quipped cheerfully. “You wouldn't want me anymore?”

Lan Yu sighed. “I just worry that it's
you
who doesn't want
me
anymore,” he said, looking wistfully at the ceiling. I studied his face. His smile was gone, and his eyes were full of that kind of anxiety I knew so well, that deep distress that made me want him so badly when we first met and that still ignited my passion even now. At that moment, however, the distress he displayed provoked not desire—or not only desire—but a combination of sadness and guilt. Under the soft glow of the headboard light, my heart was flooded with so much passion for him, so much devotion to what we had, that my eyes filled with tears.

“Are you crazy?” I asked, burying my face in his neck. “How could I not want you?”

I didn't talk to Lin Ping for two months after that. The truth was, I did have some guilty feelings about “sleeping around.”

In the end, it was Lin Ping who called me. Twice. The first time, her voice was calm and steady, as if there were nothing at all awkward about the long period of silence that had transpired between us. She was brief, though, saying little more than to ask how I was doing, then hanging up before the conversation went too far. Just enough, I noted with a vague sense of sudden frustration, to give me a taste of what I had been missing. Whether she intended it or not, her manner on the phone did something to me. My blood started racing the moment I heard her voice, and I felt the sharp stab of disappointment when she said goodbye. At twenty-five, she was five years Lan Yu's senior. She had accumulated a kind of feminine maturity that oozed through the telephone. Women were sexiest at that age.

The second time she called, we made plans to get together. I told her I was going to a cocktail party on Friday night and asked her if she would like to come. Her answer—“Sure!”—got me excited, but worried. I hung up the phone, repeatedly telling myself not to do it. It wasn't because Lan Yu and I had legal ties—I knew we didn't. It was because I didn't want to betray him.

And yet, in my gut I knew that when Friday night came it was going to happen. Lin Ping and I were going to sleep together.

Sixteen

The cocktail party was at the home of a boring, pompous, and utterly officious bureaucrat. The setting was informal, but nearly all the attendees were government officials and their spouses, so the social and career stakes were just as high as at any other event. I knew all the major players in attendance and, as expected, the evening went off without a hitch.

When the event was over, Lin Ping said she wanted to get some air, so we hit the streets of Beijing for a walk. Together we strolled through a quiet, dimly lit neighborhood. Arm in arm we passed the occasional shop or restaurant, just as cozy and natural as if we'd been a couple deeply in love for years. No matter where we went or what we did, I always took every opportunity to display my affection for Lin Ping. How much affection I actually felt was beside the point. With women, even the tiniest trace of tenderness could be expressed as if it were the greatest love in the world. But with men—with Lan Yu—it was the exact opposite. No matter how much love I felt for him, I couldn't show even the slightest trace in public.

After our walk I took Lin Ping to Country Brothers. For
the first half hour we sat on opposite sides of the couch, just making small talk. The bellboy brought some champagne and we drank a toast. “To friendship!” we shouted, clinking our glasses together. Her directness excited me. The male desire for conquest raced through my veins as I moved closer to her side of the couch. I had had my suspicions about what was going to transpire that night, but when she held up her champagne and looked me in the eye—that's when I knew for sure: I was going to fuck her.

We kissed. I pushed my tongue into her mouth and she gasped, clutching first my shoulders, then the back of my head. Impatiently I advanced, wrapping my arms around her until finally I grabbed her by the waist and, in one quick motion, lifted her and carried her to the bed, where, item by item, I slowly began removing her clothes. Her demeanor was completely different from what I had observed thus far. She was usually so confident, elegant, self-assured. All this slipped away and in my arms she became shy, submissive, obedient. She untied her hair and it fell to the bed in a heavy cascade. Unable to wait any longer, I tore open her blouse and grabbed her left breast with one hand while prying her legs open with the other. I pressed up against her, kissing her lips, then her neck, then moved down to her chest, sucking her breasts one by one while moving my hand toward her pussy. I fingered her for a while, then pushed down my pants, raised her legs, and entered her in one solid motion.

It had always struck me as odd that I was able to hold out much longer before coming with women than with men. Sex with Lin Ping was enjoyable enough, but the truth was it lacked the magical fireworks I had hoped for. It was exciting, but the excitement I felt was more about psychological conquest than about the physical act itself. It didn't matter though. When I
saw the way I made her come again and again—that was exhilarating, intensely so, to the point that I very nearly cried.

“Handong!” she screamed, digging her nails into my back and kissing my neck. “Oh god . . . oh . . . oh . . . oh . . . oh,” she moaned as she wrapped her legs around me. It took some time, but I eventually managed to climax too.

With women, you have to hold them for a while after sex or they're not going to get the ultimate satisfaction they're looking for. Lin Ping nuzzled into my chest, clutching one of my thick, strong hands while I stroked her neck with the other.

“I feel so stupid,” she said, shaking her head and looking down with a laugh.

“Why?” I asked. “You're the most intelligent woman I've ever known.”

She laughed. “I bet you've said that to a million girls!”

“Actually, I used to—” I started to speak, but Lin Ping cut me off by blocking my mouth first with one finger, then with a kiss.

“Handong,” she said, turning to look me in the eye. “I don't care about the past. I don't even need to know what's going on with you now. All you have to know is that there's a girl right here named Lin Ping who loves you very much. As long as you know that, everything else is okay.”

She shifted her body and sunk into my arms again. Eyes open in a wide stare, her gaze focused on some vague location on the other side of the room. The scent of her shampoo hit my nose. She continued:

“If there ever comes a day when you no longer care for her, just tell her to go away. It will be hard for her because she loves you very much, but she will do it. She'll just quietly disappear.” Lin Ping turned to look at me again, a sad smile stretching its way across a face that was by now completely red. No one with a heart could have failed to be moved.

The sudden appearance of Lin Ping in my life forced me to confront a crucial question: whether or not to get married. My mother had been pestering me to do so for some time, particularly after my father's death. I was beginning to feel the heat.

I had no doubt that Lin Ping—an ordinary girl from an ordinary family—would make a suitable wife. Though born poor, she was the kind of woman who strove endlessly to reach greater and greater successes in life. I needed her. For my life and for my career.

And what about Lan Yu? I asked myself. What would I do with him? Let things stay as they are? Retain him as my “kept” boy? Would he even go along with that?

After hours of agonizing over these questions, another option crossed my mind: just call it quits and break up with him. But no matter how many times I imagined this scenario, I didn't think I could do it.

I've always believed there are no coincidences in life. Even if you don't understand it at the time, everything happens for a reason. Thus I felt certain it was no coincidence that at the very moment I started to think about marriage, I met Dr. Shi. Dr. Shi was a psychiatrist, a professor at the university where Cai Ming taught, and he had devoted a good part of his career to the study of homosexuality. He was the first expert on the issue I had ever met. Talking with him was the first time I began to gain knowledge on the subject.

After a lengthy four-hour discussion, Dr. Shi gave me his diagnosis. First, he assured me, I was a completely normal man who just happened to have slight homosexual tendencies. All I needed to do was break things off with Lan Yu and getting married would be no problem at all. The real problem, he said, originated with Lan Yu, who was a true homosexual and who, Dr. Shi suspected, suffered from severe paranoia. With
therapy, he reasoned, Lan Yu would be cured of the disorder, thus allowing me to extricate myself from the relationship and move on with my life.

I burst through the door when I got home that night, beside myself with excitement about sharing my big “scientific discovery” with Lan Yu. Armed with the doctor's encouragement, I was determined to convince Lan Yu to take aggressive steps to enter into therapy and get cured. It would be a difficult discussion, but I had to do it. For him. For us.

Neither Lan Yu nor I could cook, so we either ate out or ordered in almost every night. When I told him about the conversation with Dr. Shi, we were in the car coming back from dinner at Beijing's finest Peking roast-duck restaurant. Lan Yu was in the driver's seat talking animatedly about school stuff while trying to concentrate on the road ahead. With great zeal he described everything that was going on in his department: the various activities of the student affairs office, the teachers' office, and the dean's office; where his classmates would be assigned jobs after graduation, including how many would stay and work in Beijing; his recent job interview at the Institute of Design; etc. On and on I listened to him ramble, feeling impatient and increasingly annoyed. When he was finished, I told him that if they tried to make him leave Beijing after graduation, I would buy him a household registration card for Beijing so that he could stay in the capital. Then I quickly changed the subject before he could keep talking.

“Listen, Lan Yu,” I began. “Have you ever thought about what we're going to do in the future?”

He turned his gaze from the asphalt and looked at me. “What are you talking about?”

“Don't you think it's abnormal for two men to be together?”

He returned his eyes to the road and fell silent.

“Actually,” I continued, “it's a psychological problem. You
see, sometimes people develop a kind of—like, an illusion or misrecognition. People like you—I mean, like us—it's a kind of . . . like a sexual perversion.” I did my best to parrot the words I had heard Dr. Shi say, but they failed to convey exactly what I meant.

To my great surprise, Lan Yu was more than prepared to tackle the subject. “Well,” he began, “I've read a lot of literature about this, and they don't think it's an illness anymore, at least not outside China. It's just—I mean, I can't remember exactly what they call it—it's just, some people like women and some people like men. They're just two different choices. That's all.”

His words astonished me. Never would I have imagined he'd read any materials about such matters. “When did you read this stuff?” I asked.

“I've been following this kind of research ever since you and I met. It's all foreign literature.”

“Oh, okay,
foreign
literature,” I retorted. “So what? They have
pornography
in foreign countries too, don't they? They have
sexual liberation
in foreign countries, don't they?”

“It was a science journal, okay? It was legit.”

“Well, whatever you might have read—listen, Lan Yu, this is a psychological disorder!” Though rapidly losing hope of convincing him, I wasn't giving up yet.

“So you're actually saying you think we have a mental illness?” He forced out a fake and deeply unhappy laugh.

“Not
we
!
You
! At least I still like sex with women. What about you?”

“I've never done it before. You know that.” His voice was defensive.

“Have you ever even liked a girl? You don't even like magazines like
Playboy
!”

Silence. This was my cue to continue, to cut deeper.

“What I'm trying to say, Lan Yu, is that you basically see yourself as a girl.”

“I do not!” he retorted angrily, hands trembling against the steering wheel.

“Be careful, you're driving! Listen, if you don't see yourself as a girl, then why do you like men?”

He didn't have a ready answer to that, but a few minutes later he spoke again. “Handong, I don't . . . what I mean is . . . it's
you
that I like.”

By the time we got home we weren't speaking to each other. Unwilling to let the subject drop and die, though, I told Lan Yu about Dr. Shi, adding that I wanted him to go into therapy right away to get cured.

“No!” he said resolutely. “I'm not going!”

“But Lan Yu—you have to get married one day! It's important for you!”

“I'm not getting married!”

“Not getting married!” I scoffed. “Listen, Lan Yu, you're twenty now. What happens when you're thirty, forty? How are you going to establish yourself in a society like this one?” The more I spoke, the more I sounded like a nagging parent, or perhaps like I thought I was Dr. Shi himself.

“Besides,” I continued, “don't you want children? Men have a responsibility to continue the family line! You'll have to face this pressure one day!”

“What pressure, Handong? Nobody in my family cares about the family line and I don't care, either! What pressure do I have?” He buried his head in his hands.

I had forgotten that Lan Yu's family situation was different from my own. He didn't have the same obligation to marry and have kids as I did. I needed to work a different angle if I was going to convince him.

“Didn't your mom say—” The words were barely out when Lan Yu glared at me with contempt. This, I knew, was the dagger in his Achilles's heel. “Didn't she say she wanted you to be an honorable man with an invincible spirit? You have to try, Lan Yu!”

For the first time since the conversation began, he had nothing to say. This, I knew, was an admission of defeat. It meant he agreed with me. And yet, just as we were about to go to sleep he returned to the subject.

“Do you want to break up with me, Handong?”

“My god, Lan Yu!” I said. “Why do you take my good intentions and turn them against me?” I pulled him into my arms and held him close. “Can't you see I'm trying to help? If you think I want to break up with you, it's all in your imagination.”

Lan Yu was in a bad mood in the weeks that followed, but finally agreed to make an appointment with Dr. Shi. He never vocalized it, but I knew he hated me for pushing him into therapy. He began coming home late every night and even slept periodically at his university dorm. On returning home from his first visit to Dr. Shi's office, he entered the house and proceeded straight upstairs without so much as a greeting.

“Hey!” I stopped him. “How did it go? What did you guys do?”

Lan Yu halted halfway up the stairs and looked at me over the banister. “We talked, okay? He showed me pictures. Tried to make me think about stuff.”

“What else?”

“If you're that interested, why don't you go see him yourself!” he said angrily before storming up the stairs.

Life with Lan Yu was difficult during that period. If I wanted sex, he went along with it, but his lack of interest was
plain, and most nights he just jerked me off before rolling over and going to sleep. Often, I would wake up in the middle of the night to the restless sound of night talk. I could never make out what he said, though, just inaudible mumbling punctuated by loud, sorrowful moaning.

“Lan Yu, wake up!” I would say, nudging his shoulder. Each time he awoke he would sit up in bed, trying to calm himself before going back to sleep.

Things were even worse in the daytime. Tired and sluggish because of poor sleep, he was also rapidly losing weight because he had lost his appetite.