Beijing - Week 1

Day 1 of my captivity. Impending doom looms over my head. My oppressors, henceforth referred to as Mother and Father, have kept me in a cell, in a foreign land known to the locals as Beijing, with a bed so thin you can feel each individual metal rail beneath. Such utter cruelty, but my thin hide will have to weather the harsh conditions for now. My sentence was to infiltrate a Beijing law firm while keeping up the pretense that I could make heads or tails of their Chinese documents. I prayed for salvation at night, prayed for free WiFi, prayed for the children without fresh water or tamagochis, for the transvestites without the proper parts and the gays without Grindr.

Day 2. Like a common criminal, I was transported by car to the legal facilities under close supervision of two female guards. I was brought before the reigning supreme ruler of Lawyer Kingdom, and he decreed that I was to shadow their best lawyer and absorb her essential life-forces. She looked suspiciously like my previous boss from the hospital at UW, and for a brief moment I wondered if they were long-lost siblings, then wondered if asphyxiating from choking on bubble-tea pearls would be a tasty tapioca-filled experience. I was assigned a work-space, where all of my slavely duties were to be performed. I sneakily befriended the receptionist and received the WiFi-password to their facilities. Tumblr is making my life here slightly more bearable. God bless memes, and god bless kittens that haven't mastered typing.

I am to make my own way back to my cell, which is simply cruelty at its very finest. Navigating the public transport in Beijing is like rape - if you don't use some force, you'll never enter. The city of tens of millions are all mobilized during peak hours, and buses are a cesspool of inadvertent groping and awkward butt-to-butt/crotch-to-butt touching. After a few transfers, I am dropped off at the wrong gate by the zoo (which I live next to), and I had to flag an illegal taxi to bring me back to my quarters. I wave goodbye to the unscrupulous woman who charged me 25 yuan for a 5 min trip but she was already gone, leaving me amidst the ripe smells of monkey feces.

Day 4 finds me making my way towards the law firm once again by bus. Nobody looks good on a bus. The most dressed up, dignified looking gentleman can get on a bus and within a few stops, get reduced to a seating, frazzled and irritable chump. Something about the combined effect of closed quarters at high heat and engine vibrations, mixed with the foul temperaments of every other passenger nudging and shoving each other just breaks you. In my heat-induced semi-coma, I wondered if bus drivers regularly have love affairs with their dumpy conductors in the dark corners of bus-parking-lots, and if they use sexual bus-terminology like 'beep beep the bus is pulling into the station'. Before I could finish a compilation list of all the bus-puns they could use, however, my attention was unfortunately diverted across the aisle to the man persistently digging his nose with only his pinkie, because he's classy like that. He then used said pinkie to swipe across the screen of his white iPhone, and I wept for the hard work of all the Chinese children in Apple sweatshops.

I was summoned to King Lawyer's office, where I was told that they were slightly disappointed in my proficiency in Chinese. Their original plan for me to read cases and discuss them with my mentor is falling apart because I was pretty much only able to read Chinese take-out menus. As usual, Father had lied to me. When I expressed my concern about not being able to handle documents in Chinese, he assured me that my disabilities in deciphering ancient hieroglyphic-codes would be conveyed to the firm, but apparently they were expecting a student that grew up in China. The game-plan was changed, and I was now to study Chinese procedural law (if they can find the English versions) and go observe cases at court (if they'd allow non Chinese citizens in).

Hands

Madison at night, where the drunks emerge to sway to their tipsy tango, where hobos cuddle outside shopfronts for warmth in the sub zero winter. We avoided the busy main street to avoid the rowdiness, choosing instead a quieter, parallel street. On the way to your car, we talked about your work but I wasn't really listening, for you reached over and commented on how cold my hands were. That's the way it is, I said, freezing hands run in my family. In astonishment you rubbed my fingers between your own toasty palms, and I let you. Then I stopped you by interlacing my fingers with yours and we were holding hands for the first time, and you let me.

Greater Context

I had resolved to write you off as one of those types. The type that promises but never fulfills, that keeps you waiting but never delivers, the type that disappoints. I’d seen my fair share and I was tired-no, exhausted of them. I keep flying back and forth across the world always expecting it to be different on the other side of the world, but of course it never is. I was resolved to be strong, to be able to say that this was it and I’d be finally to move on without putting you on a pedestal that nobody else could ever reach. 

As fate would have it, I came face to face with you as I was rounding the corner by the waffle store. A flash of surprise, recognition, then panic, coursed through my mind simultaneously. For a split second I considered making a run for it. I had already taken a step in that direction but then turned back, for I was simply not capable of taking another step away from you, from the one person that I hadn’t been able to stop dreaming bout. I thanked the heavens for my foresight in doing up my hair, thanked the lord for not yet killing my will to look presentable while making my mid-day lunch run. I kept my composure as you asked if you could make up for standing me up previously, and somehow I kept my voice unwavering as I said you could come over that night. I only noticed how fast my heart was racing as I nodded and nonchalantly walked away. All the way home I couldn’t keep that stupid silly grin off my face.

That night, when you were here, I asked if you noticed we were sitting in the exact same positions on my bed as the day we first met. In the past year, I had forgotten how easy our repertoire was, how absolutely perfect our conversation and laughs flowed. I tried dating in Madison but no one came close to replicating this undeniable magic we could create. At that moment I knew that I still loved you, that I hadn’t managed to stop loving you despite how hard I tried, and maybe in a romance drama set in the mid-1800s it would mean something but apparently not today. In a better state of mind, I would perhaps ask myself if I had any idea what I was jumping back into, but then again, would they call it love if it didn’t drive you crazy?

“Come here,” I said as I lied down on the pillow by you. You were hesitant, halting, and I asked why you were so scared of me. You didn’t want us to do something we’d end up regretting, but aren’t we perhaps a year late for that conversation? I placed my hand on your face, then on the back of your neck, pulling you forward. You moved closer, closer till our lips were an inch apart, with only our breaths colliding. We were still for a moment, and it seemed as though all the heartbreak we had inflicted upon each other was lingering in the space between our lips and to seal them was to say that it had been all worth it and that the impending pain would be ours to willingly bear. When my lips finally met yours, I felt a sense of homecoming. I was back where I had been longing to, afraid to, but needed to. 

The following morning I woke up with a start, like that kind of awakening one gets as if remembering someone’s supposed to be in bed with you. Except you’re not, and that sense of grief I had felt a year ago came unwelcomingly back. I had been ready to do more that night, but you wanted to wait till I returned from my trip to Beijing. Was this what my love life boiled down to? The only one I could connect with lives in the one place I couldn’t even legally reside anymore, and instead of moving on I had only managed to reaffirm in my mind how fantastic we were together. 

How could two people that were perfect everywhere else be so fucked in the grand context?