Another Evening

He held my head, tilted, so he could examine me. Then he pulled my hair up, and pulled me closer, and he stared at my face, turning me from left to right, so he could look at my face, up close and personal, as if I was a sculpture, he needed the view, the 3-dimentional view, and he turned me. I asked, “Why, why are you doing that?” “Because you are so different from the white faces I’ve seen. Your face is softer, less of a contour. I had not been seeing this kind of face for a long time.

“You have a nice nose. Straight, narrow, not wide, or flat, like the others.” He continued to observe and examine me.

I was getting self-conscious and I wanted him to stop. But he wouldn’t. He had laid out the camera, with zoom lens and he started to take photos of me. Me smoking, me checking the phone, me staring at the camera, me smiling or me pouting. He took photos of me in varies angles. He took detailed design notes for his projects, hand written notes in his meticulous writing, left handed writing, he wrote his ideas and thoughts, and he taped photos of his women in the note book. I insisted not to be in his notebooks, But I changed my mind, I wanted a picture of me, faceless, only my boobs, and my torso, in it. So that when he was dead, and famous, they’d look at those books and wonder who I was. I was one of the women he had been with, and I was faceless.

He made slow rhythmic moves to and on me. He called me Sweet Pea. He gave me nicknames as if I were food. When I was putting make up on or when I was doing something that did not involve him, he’d peak over the kitchen window and look at me, curiously and passionately.

The most incredible thing happened to us. The most unusual sexual experience, took place last night, when he took me missionary style, for four hours and counting he took me and I came violently as he fucked me. It reminded me the sex I had once had with a Swedish man, the only man in my twenties who wanted me so completely, offered to take me away to Sweden, to be with him, his business, his four Mercedes, to be his wife. I would not have been whom I was today, if I agreed with him, I’d be living in Sweden, raise little half Swedish babies, married to a man who’s 6’4”, and loved me. I had to kiss many many frogs before realizing that he would have been a prince. But I said no, broke his heart, his eyes filled with tears, he loved me, and I came the same way I did with him, slow rhythmic moves, Missionary style, I came and I saw God. And I saw that Swedish man who once loved me and promised to rescue me from the mundane. I had a different path to embark, I never kept in touch after I broke his heart, his eyes filled with tears were the only thing I’d remember about him, I was twenty-two and he was twenty-seven at the time. We’d had made it. He was the reason why I could not get away from Scandinavia, he was the reason that my boyfriends in my twenties after him, were either Swedish or Danish. He was my imprint. Now this man was able to accomplish the same.

He called me the Windup Doll. After Sweet Pea, Windup Doll sounded suggestive and dirty. He spanked me and I was creaming. It was within seconds that my body changed. My body changed to respond to his behavior, he noticed the way I reacted and called me a dirty slut. I can’t help what got me to turn on. I got turned on by things that were not considered “normal”. I liked being tied up and spanked and I liked to be degraded. That was how I was and how I would be. 

Only one man understood me completely. He was my soul mate, the love of my half-spent life, and then he left me there, crying and asking for him to call me back, when the world crumbled, when all I had left was for him to return my affection, he disappeared. He fell off the face of the earth, he was cruel and unforgiving, he was calculating and manipulative, and he broke me. But strangely when that happened, I broke free also. Perhaps the old me needed to die before the new me was to be reborn.

He pulled my hair up; he wanted to see my face. My wrinkleless youngish looking face. Without make up I looked non-eventful, but my skin remained soft and smooth, my body curvy; I was not young but I was womanly.

I told him a story. A story I’d never told anyone before. About my journey as a five year old, to a village in the middle of Yangzi river, across Wuhan, onto a river boat, traveled through the Three Gorges before they took them down, the three-day journey on a slow moving passenger boat on the Yangzi river, that took people from the southern part of the Yangzi river to the middle part of the river, ending in Shanghai. The train that first took me from Changsha to Wuhai, in the summer heat, and without mosquitoes net, people camped on the street, in the evening, in the small farmed bamboo med in the summer heat of forty-plus Celsius. The small food vendors lined up by each train station, selling pickled vegetables and fermented eggs. Fermented thousand year eggs were no different than Hakarl, the fermented shark meat in Iceland, which I liked, both times. Upon arrival in An Hui, we made our journey into the village, where my grandma killed the family goose to feed us tired travelers. There were more pickled vegetables and tea leaves soaked eggs.

“I’d never make it in China. I'd die of starvation.” He said after. I came from an exotic land. I was not whom he’s used to.

“I grew up in suburban United States. When we were teenagers, we drove car really fast, drank terrible drinks, acted stupid, and threw eggs to houses we vandalized. We threw out raw eggs, not eating them, not fermenting them, not soaking them in soy source or tea leaves.”

“We have nothing in common.” He concluded.

I was vastly disappointed. “Nothing? Nothing at all?” I asked.

“No, not a thing.” With that he wrapped his arms around me.

“That’s a good thing. How would you like being with someone who’s exactly the same?” He was right, to certain degree. Opposites did attract.

But I liked to think he and I had something in common.

“You are very funny. Pretty, smart, and funny.” He complimented me, as if that was going to make me feel better.

Maybe a little. I decided.

I closed my eyes. Satisfied and tired. The clock showed 1:15 AM when I woke up. It was late and I needed to find an alternate parking spot. No parking from 7 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday until June 18^th. Repavement of the road outside of his house.

He and I both got up, groggy and disoriented. Out we went, looking for parking, in the middle of the night.  After circling for twenty minutes, we found a spot. We parked and walked back. On the way home, he said, “Kate used to look for parking, sometimes for half an hour.” Kate was his ex, the German woman, the serious relationship. I was curious why he compared my searching of parking to his ex's activity. I was not going to be his woman, therefore, never his ex either.  But in his subconscious mind, I had started to become a regular encounter. Someone he had gotten used to, someone he had developed feelings for.

I encouraged him to see other women. I’d offer him up to other girlfriends who were in need of getting laid. I didn’t mind his fucking other women. So that I could continue my own extracurricular activities.  

We fell asleep again, this time I had rested my head on his chest. He turned me around and wrapped me like a burrito in the middle of the night, I remained in that position until the next morning. The dehumidifier fan on the floor hummed all night.