Love Like Hate (30 page)

“Fuck you!”

“Ah, your English is good!”

She scrutinized his face: It was round and smooth like an egg, interrupted suddenly by a prominent nose, thin lips and pointy ears. He sat down beside her. “You are drinking too fast, I notice. You have an attitude toward me because you think I’m American, but I’m not American. I’m French.”

She finished her drink and stared at him blankly. He continued, “Everywhere I go in Saigon, I see signs of nostalgia for French culture. I see people eating croissants and baguettes. I see nightclubs called Brodard and Givral. The other day I even saw a pathetic little café called Paris by Night—it’s very depressing. But the truth is I hate French culture, I see no future at all for French culture. May I buy you the next Jameson?”

Hearing no answer, he ordered two more and continued, “There
is something touchingly pathetic about Vietnam. The people here are so poor, yet everyone seems happy. That’s because they haven’t lost touch with their bodies. They squat on the ground and piss on the street and everyone fucks happily outside of marriage. That’s why everyone here smiles all the time.”

“Have you seen Vietnamese dance?”

He paused and grinned. He wasn’t sure if the question was a trick or a proposal. He tried to tease a clue from her eyes, but saw nothing. “Of course. I was at Apocalypse Now just last night. There were many Vietnamese dancing on the floor.”

“If you’ve seen Vietnamese dance, then you cannot say that they are in touch with their bodies.”

“Ah,” he laughed. “You are an observant one, aren’t you? And a bit difficult too. But I really don’t know what you’re talking about because I thought they danced very well.”

Seeing her empty glass, he downed his, ordered two more, then continued, “In France, the only sex that’s available anymore is masturbation. I masturbated compulsively when I lived in Paris. I masturbated at home, in public, at the park and in the Métro. I masturbated underground, above ground and in the air. Once I even masturbated at the zoo. In the nocturama, I did it. You know what that is? It’s where they keep these shy, nighttime animals with huge eyes. But I can’t imagine a Vietnamese masturbating at all. There’s no need to masturbate here. There’s always a whorehouse within walking distance and it costs next to nothing to get laid.”

He paused to order two more, then continued, “Most Westerners only get to fuck a machine or a gadget nowadays. You don’t know how humiliating it is to screw a vibrating donut. I’ve tried everything from glow-in-the-dark vaginal facsimiles to lifelike, full-length Lolitas. Western cunts prefer clit stimulators and vibrators to a real prick on a real man like myself. A clit stimulator has five speeds—vibrate, pulsate, surge, escalate and armageddon—whereas a real man only has two: desperate and dire. Westerners prefer sex toys so they
can avoid playing mind games with each other. Conditioned by capitalism, they cannot share anything. They must hoard everything from their sins to their thoughts to their genitals. The sexual situation in the West is sorrowful nowadays, and that’s why a country like Vietnam is the answer.”

He paused to order two more, then continued, “Another thing I like about Vietnam is the absence of mosques. Since Bush started his war, I no longer feel safe traveling, but I feel perfectly safe in Vietnam. I see no veiled women on the streets and there are no Hameds to blow me up as I sit in a bar having a quiet drink. Muslims like to drink too, by the way. I was just in Bangkok and saw a million of them getting trashed and going to the whorehouses. There’s nothing wrong with that. Getting trashed is a sacred right and should be recognized as such. If Muslims drank more, they wouldn’t be so hostile to the rest of us. Actually, they do drink more, they just don’t want to admit it. Anyway, when the entire world is finally destroyed, Vietnam will be the only country left standing. That’s because there are no Muslims here.”

He paused to order two more, then continued, “That’s why I’ve come to Vietnam to do business. I develop resorts—sun, sand and sex, that sort of thing. For a country with no industries, that doesn’t know how to make anything, peddling sex is a great start-up racket, but one must aspire to selling sex on a massive scale, not in these dinky little cafés with the dim lights and the half-dressed hostesses.”

After a certain point, she could no longer hear this guy talking. She could barely make out his face. The whiskey burned her stomach and her head was pounding. She felt like throwing up and maybe she did throw up. She wasn’t sure what happened next.

Waking up in the middle of the night, she found herself lying under a comforter with him next to her. The room was cold and they were naked. She vaguely remembered peeing on the toilet, his hands on her, her hands on him, and then a taxi ride. She felt extremely thirsty, but was too weak to go find herself a glass of
water. She assumed they had had sex, but she didn’t care. All she cared about was getting over a massive hangover—the worst she had ever experienced.

She spent all of that day in bed while the guy was away. She had to go to the bathroom repeatedly to throw up. She found grapefruit juice in the fridge and drank gallons of it. Toward evening he came back. Seeing that she was sick, he slept next to her that night, but didn’t touch her. The truth was, he was just waiting for her to get well so he could get rid of her. There were so many girls on the streets, he didn’t need a sick one.

The next morning she felt a little better. She stayed with him three days altogether and never got dressed the entire time she was there. She lived like an animal. Walking around naked, she even wandered out into the hallway. On the last night they fucked for several hours. On his third revival, unprecedented, inspired, he risked death and procreation and forwent a condom. In the morning they had breakfast naked on a balcony suspended twenty-eight floors above street level.

Saigon had never seemed so beautiful. Standing high above the city, she no longer felt a part of its filth and depravity. The Saigon River, scummy and black up close, shined a silver blue from that height in the morning sunlight. Leafy, majestic trees sprung up from the sidewalks. The streets straightened themselves out, the mad traffic flowed in a more orderly way. Nothing smelled from up there. Leaning against the concrete edge, she felt so weightless, a breeze could have tipped her over.

As they ate croissants and drank café au lait, she said, “Too bad I’m not a virgin, huh?”

“Ah, but you were good, my dear. You have just the right combination of experience and innocence.”

“I’m only eighteen!”

“That means you’re legal!”

“What do you mean, ‘legal’?”

“It means I won’t go to jail.”

“Go to jail for what?”

“Go to jail for being myself, you know, go to jail for fucking!” The guy laughed at his own witticism. “How many men have you had?”

“Two.”

“I don’t believe it.”

She noticed that his dick stiffened as soon as he said, “Fucking!” He had huge balls but a modest member. She had always assumed that white people had blond pubic hair and was surprised to see this guy’s black thicket.

“Actually I’m only seventeen,” she continued. “I don’t turn eighteen until tomorrow. Tomorrow is my birthday.”

“So you want me to buy you a birthday cake, is that it? Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’ll buy you one.”
This is the second time a Vietnamese whore has claimed her birthday is coming up
, the guy thought with amusement.
They’re all the same
.

As if reading his mind, she said, “Did you think I was a whore when you saw me at the bar?”

“No, of course not, I thought you were an intellectual. That’s why I expounded to you my philosophy of life.”

“I think you’re an asshole.”

“Say that again! I love how you say that!”

After breakfast, he escorted her to the elevator. As they kissed good-bye, he handed her a wad of money.
It’s only fair compensation for what he did to me
, Hoa reflected on the way down. As she walked defiantly down the street, cleaving the crowd and bumping people out of the way, Hoa thought,
I’m a fuckwad with a wad of money. Don’t fuck with me if you don’t want to fuck me!

Hoa’s hair was totally punk; she didn’t even have her baseball cap on. She felt exposed yet not vulnerable, she felt free. Maybe relieved was a better word.

They had spent three days together without even knowing each
other’s names. It didn’t matter to Hoa. All she cared to remember from the experience was one magnificent view from a balcony high up in the sky. From there she could see the future. She was the future. Now that she had money, she could check into a hotel on Pham Ngu Lao Street. That very night she went out to make more money. The next day Hoa turned eighteen.

THE END

A recipient of the Pew Fellowship, the David T. Wong Fellowship, and the Asian American Literary Award, LINH DINH is the author of two collections of stories,
Fake House
and
Blood and Soap;
and five books of poems,
All Around What Empties Out, American Tatts, Borderless Bodies, Jam Alerts
and
Some Kind of Cheese Orgy
. He is editor of the anthologies
Night, Again
and
Three Vietnamese Poets. Love Like Hate
is his first novel.

SEVEN STORIES PRESS is an independent book publisher based in New York City, with distribution throughout the United States, Canada, England, and Australia. We publish works of the imagination by such writers as Nelson Algren, Russell Banks, Octavia E. Butler, Ani DiFranco, Assia Djebar, Ariel Dorfman, Coco Fusco, Barry Gifford, Hwang Sok-yong, Lee Stringer, and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few, together with political titles by voices of conscience, including the Boston Women’s Health Collective, Noam Chomsky, Angela Y. Davis, Human Rights Watch, Derrick Jensen, Ralph Nader, Gary Null, Project Censored, Barbara Seaman, Gary Webb, and Howard Zinn, among many others. Seven Stories Press believes publishers have a special responsibility to defend free speech and human rights, and to celebrate the gifts of the human imagination, wherever we can. For additional information, visit
www.sevenstories.com
.