Last time with Lucy

Lovers like Lucy, who are only temporary, I tend to keep cordoned off from my other friends. This is expediency; if I introduce one to my circle, they will assume she is my girlfriend. And then, when she disappears and is replaced, my wolvish behavior would begin to be suspected.

Naturally enough I want to retain some sort of good image in the eyes of my friends. And so while when I am with a group of these friends, laughing, drinking and relaxing over dinner, I am happy to admit to them I love to chase women, I seldom go into any detail, keeping it all light and amusing.

There are two exceptions to this; Clarissa, and Tulip. To these two women, I am more or less honest; and it is with Clarissa in particular that I have no secrets. Neither of them have been my lover, though I very much want them to be. Tulip is married, and Clarissa alas, has emigrated. In due course I will write about her; more than any other woman in China, she is the one I wanted most. Of course, the fact that she resisted me while always being willing to flirt with me just made me want her all the more – after all, it is what you cannot have that you want most.

I remember the very first time I met her, a couple of years ago; though she was not tall nor had the looks of an international model there was something instantly sexy about her. I remember the clothes she wore – that skirt, those black tights! – and how she came up at the end of the class to ask various words, how she’d had the confidence to point out, in front of the whole class, a word I’d carelessly misspelled on the board (that’s something 99% of students will never do)…. She’s married too, having got married at a young age, which is quite common here. Yet there is nothing common about her, and nothing traditional. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about her in the past couple of years, and have much more to write about her. But more of her later, and of Tulip too.

The other reason I keep my lovers away from my friends is that they simply do not mix. This is something I learned with Lucy. After one rendezvous with her, at a time I was already getting bored with her, I took her along to a meeting I’d arranged with intriguing Laura at People’s Square. I was amused by Lucy’s reaction when I mentioned this – ‘我吃醋.’ I laughed at this, and when, later, she smiled and perked up as I told her Laura was not as cute as her, I laughed a belly laugh that shook the corridor.

When we met, Lucy did not know what to make of Laura, and so it was a pretty frosty affair, the cold front mostly from Lucy. Silence hung, part because of Lucy’s mood, part because Laura is not one for endless chatter (which virtue I regard highly), and is withal coolish anyway. In my bag I had a gift for Laura, a novel by Ishiguro; but I knew if I gave it to her the weather would become Arctic. So instead we three checked out the Biennale, which was in part good and in part vapid.

But as we proceeded, Lucy thawed, her behavior becoming more lively and warm than Laura’s. It occurred to me this might have been strategy on her part. Perhaps she saw it was the wiser move, saw that being cold and irritated was a sure way to turn me off; perhaps hoped that by playing a livelier role than Laura, she could eclipse her in my regard.

I’d also arranged to meet another friend in the early evening for dinner. This was Lena, a kindergarten teacher who I chat to online from time to time; rather an ample woman, but with some interesting opinions. Laura, somewhat moodily, refused to come along (I have more to say about this later) so Lucy, Lena and I went to the Jiangxi restaurant to which Gloria introduced me a few weeks ago; the meal was good but not as good as that which Gloria, a Jiangxi native, had ordered. (Gloria is a previous lover, and one regarding whom I do feel some guilt: more of her tomorrow or so.)

But we had fun and Lucy, seeing clearly there was nothing in my feelings beyond friendship for Lena, was chirpy and cheerful. It amused me to see how totally Lucy’s character changed according to how she judged the situation – defensive with Laura, relaxed with Lena. Territorial towards me, in a word; but really she was wasting her energy, for though she did not know it, our liaison was almost over at that time.

But though I was tired of her, pussy is pussy, and so I kept her on a little longer for fuck fun. And so a week or so later we booked into a hotel again, but I got her to go in and make the booking, since the place is not foreigner friendly (partly I think because it seems to be reserved for minor party type guys – it’s in the part of town is where the city mayor and all the other government gangsters live).

Anyhow, once in the room (en route to which the hotel staff had half-heartedly tried to stop me) we got down to it. But of course nothing is as exciting as the first time, so while I remember the first time I fucked Lucy with great clarity, I recall much less about this bout.

Two things stick out from that meeting. The first is a comment she made after we’d fucked. She was talking about her life back home. She’s from a wealthy family up in the north of the country, and while she has never wanted for money (her parents bought her a house here, for example) she has been very much emotionally neglected. She’s a daughter – a most undesired gender in China. Her parents, rich, were able to ignore the one-child policy (for money here is power, just like anywhere else – though at least other countries generally acknowledge it, while China maintains the absurd fiction it is a ‘socialist’ society) and have a second kid. This kid was a son; and the moment he was born, they wholly forgot about Lucy. No affection, no attention, no care, no love; she was more like a member of staff than a member of the family. The son, currently 10 or 12, gets it all – and what a little monster he will no doubt turn out to be.

The perfunctory upbringing Lucy received naturally shaped her character. She told me about the family maid, and told me how cheap such maids were, and how she would spend in an hour what her parents paid this maid in a month. But the most striking remark, the remark which made me remember all the rest, was ‘We spend more on our dog than we do on her.’ The level of inequality in China – socialist China, worker’s paradise China, we are all equal China – is astonishing. The rural poor are becoming restive, with around 80,000 protests a year. So far they are pretty well kept in line, by baton-wielding police and brutish public security guys, conspiring with the state to keep their country and their people under control, but I see a day when they will fight back beyond containment. And then, of course, the first people to be blamed will be the foreigners in the country (or maybe the Japanese in general, a favorite target) rather than the real criminals who are, of course, other Chinese people – the government, the state apparatus, the millions well-fed and watered in the cities who are too idle to ever try to understand their nation and their history.

But never mind. More sex, less politics.

The second thing I recall from this day is when my head was between Lucy’s legs and I was eating her.

Now the first time I go down on a woman is the very best time – the first look at her pussy, its unique shape, the trim of the hair, the taste. And since so many men in China are rather squeamish about oral sex, it doesn’t take much to do a good job, to drive the woman wild. Making her buck and writhe and come explosively is extremely rewarding – for the first few times. The first few times, I want the woman to feel like she has never felt before. I want her to think I am a fantastic lover. I want it to be the best.

But after that, as I begin to get used to her body, as I become an established lover, as the suspense of will-she-fuck won’t-she-fuck passes, then this desire passes too. I no longer feel the need to make such a strong impression. Sure, I still want her to come, but this is out of duty, rather than to make me feel like a champion lover. And so, with my head between her legs, sucking and licking and kissing away, and her getting close but not quite there, I began to think ‘Just fake it!’

That was enough of a sign – time to end the relationship. But I have never been good at breaking relationships clearly, preferring to let them drift out of focus. And that is what I did with Lucy; though we chatted a few times online after that, that was the last time I saw her.