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I did not think to message her again until the evening of the next day – which, of course, shows my fundamentally callow attitude. Now I was sure of her, there was no need to woo. Sending messages to a woman you’re unsure you’ll charm to bed is stimulating, spicy; the need to bat messages back and forth, to tease and maneuver, keeps the thumb active, keeps the mind ticking over on what the next reply will be, and the response to it. But once you’re sure of the woman, all that dies down.

And so (as I might have expected if I had really bothered to think about her at all) she replied to my message that she was unhappy.

‘Why?,’ I asked.

‘Because you didn’t send sms to me, Ha ha, do you believe it?’

She followed this by texting, ‘I’m really waiting for your sms all day. I know u r busy but I still feel unhappy. Ha ha.’

And so I replied to say I was sorry about that, but that I had been very busy. I had not, of course.

‘I know ~ I’m happy now~ I want to be your girlfriend now~ ha ha ha ha only making a joke but I really like you.’

Then she asked, ‘you have been kissing many girls, right?,’ to which I made some glib reply.

‘Oh my heart is broken.. :-) 你真的是华心大萝卜啊。。’

Now I did not bother save my messages, so all I have is a record of hers. But my replies can be pretty much guessed from the pattern of what she says.

‘what do you mean? You will kiss me for a long time?’

‘why? You change your heart quickly or love other girls fast?’

‘which kind of woman do you like best?’

‘you’re like a playboy.. But I still like you. You have special charm. I wanna say goodbye to my bf’

‘together with him I can’t learn anything and I found I lost a lot of time’

‘my mood is complex now. I don’t know whether meeting you is a good thing or a bad thing.’

‘Let me think about it.. Well this Sunday I will get away from my parents and stay with you all day, OK?’ (I’d asked if she’d spend a night with me)

‘Or you unwilling to stay with me?’

‘It’s very exciting~ Just like you say, I’ll let my youth be colourful~ Don’t cheat me any more’

‘If any girl told you she wanna be your gf would you agree with her?’

‘I love you, I wanna be your gf.’

‘Ha ha Don’t mind only sound out you~’

‘昏.. I know you like see me become a bad girl’

‘You wanna see me have many many boyfriends?’

‘Very well!! I miss you all night until now~ :-) How about you?’

‘Sorry’ (I had not said anything to make her say sorry; the reason she said it is clear from the following message.)

‘Maybe you don’t like to hear I say I miss you.. So I say sorry.’

‘:-) You say you dreamed of me, tell me something about that’ (I’d told her I dreamed of her. I had not. But telling a woman this is an effective gauge of where she sees the relationship going. It is a shallow and obvious thing to say, and would not work on a Western woman, but of such flimflam is my box of tricks made.)

‘Maybe it will be interesting! Don’t worry, tell me’

‘Are you sure you tell me the truth?’ (I’d told her it was a sexy dream – that’s part two of the routine.)

‘I understand what’s in your thoughts’

‘Tell you later!’ (I’d wanted to know what she though of my dreaming about her so.)

‘Take care of yourself. I like it that you regard me as an adult~~~ You can tell me everything you thought, about sex…’

The next day we met again, but just for an afternoon. And while we spent it in bed, we did not make love. As we idled together, talking, she worried out loud that, if we made love, I’d then lose interest; and so I likely would, I thought to myself.

But yet… as I lay there, just cuddling, it was rather sweet, and I felt whispers of emotion. She fitted in my arms snug and light; cool against my body, even under the duvet, light, sweet. Slender as she is, her body lies against mine nice. When I’d carried her into the bedroom it was as a scrap of silk – she is featherweight, 45 kilos or so. With a bulkier woman it takes each body a few hours to adjust to each other, and so cuddling soon becomes too warm, sticky, under the duvet, after lights out, until the cooler small hours and the body’s adjustment. But she was just right, and it was good. She’d be fun in bed, I was sure, and promises of it percolated through the afternoon, how she straddled me, pressed into me.

I could see that she’d take a little more persuasion before she gave herself to me wholly, but I knew I’d be able to persuade her to yield, and that she had the potential to be a fine lover. She would not be a great lover to start with, of course. Women here, I have often found, are cautious lovers at first, having been raised to suppress their sexual side. I was well aware, for example, that when I went down on her it would cause her to squirm at first. She’d find it dirty, wrong, product of this society as she cannot help but be. Mona, for example, in telling me about a new local boyfriend, said ‘But I will have to hide how experienced I am with him. He wouldn’t like that at all. He has to feel like he’s in charge and I don’t know anything.’

But I was pleased Simone felt I saw her as a woman – that too would help bring her to me, for her parents and sap of a boyfriend only make her feel like a child. Perhaps if I was a bit more honorable she would be child in my eyes too, for, when I first got to know her, she had not quite turned 20. But that youth fired me rather than cooled me, and so I carried on with my pursuit.

This time, after she’d left (to hurry home for her 6pm curfew) I made sure to send messages after her:-

‘I miss you too. Tell you some good news. Maybe I can stay with you a whole night this Saturday.’

‘You can compare with superman! 快去吃饭！谁叫你中午不吃完上又不吃的！’

‘We must make love on Sunday?’ (I replied to say that it was totally up to her. And of course it was; I would respect whatever choice she made – but would do my best to persuade her to choose yes).

‘Oh I see! Thank you! You are very kind! I love you! Kiss~’

‘Do you have free time after 6 tomorrow?’

‘算了当我没说’

‘噢!Maybe I can stay with you all night. I’ll try my best.’

And so we met to spend the night together. She was a little early at the rendezvous, which seemed to me a measure of the keenness she had for the encounter. I suggested eating – was she hungry? She was, and she wanted to eat at McDonalds. This made my lip curl, rather – such trashy bland pap. It made me think less of her, though she did not quite see my distaste. But I pushed the feeling down – after all, she was only 19, and so it was no surprise she has the tastes of a teenager. And the more mercenary angle of it occurred to me too – junk food a cheap and quick precursor to sex. What need for candles and romance?

During that coffee with Simone I’d almost made a slip. She’d said something – I forget what – that made it unclear how she’d got my email, and gave the impression she’d got it from a friend. I half followed up this comment, but in doing so almost gave away that I did not recall where I’d met her. But by switching back to what I had thought to be the case (that she had got it from the university people) I was able to cover my error (something which was eased by her only moderate command of English) and thus hide from her the fact she was, to me, at that point, essentially wholly random.

The messages that we exchanged after that coffee soon came towards the point, and I asked if next time I could see her all night.

‘Ha ha, I think it’s impossible’ she replied. ‘But if you can come to Wuxi (the city where she studies) maybe we can stay all night’

That was a promising reply, yet she remained a little unsure (and that of course made her the easier to seduce) and followed it with another message to say, ‘You can laughing now. I’m silly, right?’

A week or so after that coffee, I found myself with a free day, due to a cancelled class, all the students having been packed off to learn the sparkling profundities of the Three Representatives. Or was it the ‘Seven Goods and Seven Bads’? Or the ‘Four Maybes, One Yes and Three Don’ts’? Some such specious dreck.

And so, suddenly free, I messaged her suggesting a meet. She accepted with alacrity, as I knew she would since her messages the intervening days had been green lights all the way. We met at a big mall near People’s Square, her clad in a white dress covered with dark polka dots which fluttered in the warm breeze, wrapping itself more closely around the contours of her body. But we did not linger, soon heading home so I could ‘show her my flat.’ This of course was a euphemism, and she showed she knew it by the tense, expectant way she sat in the cab. She knew it was sex, I knew it was sex. But I also knew that this was no easy green light. She would still need persuading, cajoling. And indeed she then seemed to set up a get-out, telling me ‘My stomach aches.’ This, of course, meant she had her period, at which I felt a brief surge of chagrin. So maybe I was wrong, I thought, and we would not be lovers today. But then I thought again; she was, after all, coming back with me. Whatever happened, this was most surely not merely a matter of ‘showing her my flat.’

Her nervousness increased once we got back to my flat, but I did not let that stop me too long, clipping her in my arms and angling for a kiss. She tensed, but did not pull away; let me kiss, but did not respond. And in this she was just like when I was seducing Tingting; bursts of passion mixed with stretches of reluctance. She’d kiss back for a moment or two, then withdraw again. Yet clearly she was interested, not murmuring for me to stop as I caressed her body.

I was sitting on the dining room table as this took place, her in my arms, her body held between my knees. I wanted to take her to the bedroom – which of course met with much protest from her, ‘No, no, I can’t, I am not a bad girl..’ Yet even so she let me lead her there. At the threshold she stopped; so I just picked her up – she is light, lithe -- and carried her to the bed.

It took a while, her passive and active by turns; a battle between what she wanted to do, and what she was conditioned to do. Again like Tingting, she wanted to be persuaded, wanted to be talked round. And some sweet words, some whispered ‘darlings’ and my assurance that she was not at all a bad girl allowed me to begin to undress her.

And now her reluctance showed for what it was, a mere veneer, for she began to return kiss for kiss, and now with interest, with passion, none of the perfunctory, cool response of before. Now she willingly let me unzip her zip, slip her cute white skirt up over her head, to reveal her smooth body, her bra, which, unusually, was not a padded one, for her breasts did not need it.

Indeed, she even worried out loud to me that her breasts were too big – a rare worry for a woman here to have. More than this, she was actively apologetic about the size of her breasts, telling me, ‘I hope you don’t mind… I don’t like it..’ And while I tried to convince her that they were wonderful, exciting, sexy, well-shaped, she was reluctant to believe me.

But she was still not fully ready, for she would not let me take her panties off, though I very much wanted to see her naked. But she was pretty sure about keeping her panties (tight fitting white cotton sporty type) on, and I accepted it was as a result of having her period rather than fear of fucking, for by this time I knew she was not a virgin. And so I did not push the matter. Why should I? I now knew that getting was I wanted was just a matter of time. There was no hurry – indeed, the anticipation made it all the more interesting.

I, naturally, was already naked, and at first she refused to look at my cock. And for our whole time abed she was not quite comfortable with it. She half wanted to look, half was afraid to. So I had to ease her hand down there, and then she did caress me a little, but nervously, unsure.

She did gratify me with murmurs as to its size – which murmurs, given her general innocence, could not have been calculated enough to be flattery. ‘It’s so much bigger than my boyfriend’s...His is just…’ and here she tailed off.

Ah, her boyfriend, who she mentioned to me before as something of a playboy, a handsome guy, runner after women. This is palpably rubbish, for what she went on to tell me shows he was no sort of lover. Kissing, caressing, I asked her if she enjoyed sex. ‘Sometimes..’ she said, with not much enthusiasm. In our resulting conversation I learned that she has been with him two years. And in this two years they have made love …six times. So few that it is easy for her to remember each time – each time, I tell myself (with little risk of being wrong) brief and unimaginative. I could easily imagine his technique – brief, hasty, furtive, bumbling; taking, not giving. Six times in two years! I knew that next time we met I would show her more than she’d dreamt of.

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Some months ago – never mind how long precisely – a new contact popped up online, greeting me with what have become very standard words - ‘Hi, do you remember me?’

Quite how a student expects me to remember them when they first contact me I do not know, given that all I see of them is their sign-in name which, even if it is a variation of their real name and not a more creative handle, gives no clue to their identity since I seldom teach any one group of students for long enough to get to know their names. And yet, after every class wraps up, four or five students will begin a conversation with those very words.

But given that in this case the sign-in name of this new interlocutor, Simone, was clearly female, I judged it best to make it seem as if I did recall her, and so I gave my catch-all answer, ‘I taught you English, right?’

She told me that this was right, and she was glad I remembered her.

By dint of asking open-ended questions I established she was a student who’d come to one of the universities I work at for an oral exam, and that she got my email from the website information form used. But still I was unable to remember anything specific about her. However, given my penchant for the Lucky Dip, I let the conversation grow and unfold, and, by its end, had agreed to meet her for coffee during the following few days. For even though I was not quite sure who she was, I liked the pot luck of going to meet her. The anticipation of who will be waiting for me in the coffee shop (or wherever the rendezvous is) is always stimulating.

Now it so happens – with a dash of the chance, the pattern, the echo that I so relish in life – that this very same day that I met the (at that point) random woman was the day Clarissa flew overseas to her new life. I thought of Clarissa all that morning and particularly at 2pm when, me amid a class of guppies, she flew out. I knew I would miss her a lot, and so I did, for I was falling in love with her.

But this did not make me any bit more reflective, for I still kept the appointment I had made to have coffee with this woman who I remembered nothing about. And thus even as one woman left, a woman I cared greatly about, I was off questing after another.

Yet even as I was going to meet Simone, I ran into Alice. Alice was a staffer who worked in the accounts firm that’s in the same building I live in. I’d got to know her a little, and had come to the conclusion she was pretty certain, and passably cute with it. She’d emailed me once or twice to tell me the sense of frustration she felt in her life, asking if I thought she should take the risk to change to a new job. Naturally I urged her to do so; but more to the point, in the email in which she asked that she also referred to her ‘husband.’

She had mentioned this guy to me before, when we’d shared a coffee. But that time she’d told me he was her boyfriend. Either in the present email that use of ‘husband’ was a mere slip, or, last time, she’d lied to me; and if she had, it was a fine sign indeed. There’s but one reason a woman downgrades a husband to a boyfriend, and it is the same reason that she airbrushes her other lovers out of her life altogether when meeting a new guy.

But at that time I was busy with other women and other classes, and so I decided merely to put her on pause and maybe apply myself to her a little later on. Fundamentally she was dull; but dull and cute, and a fuck’s a fuck.

And so keeping matters brief with Alice, I headed off to the rendezvous with Simone.

If there was a moral plan to the world it would have been just deserts for my scoundrelly ways if she had turned out to be a fright – but not so; the woman who arrived to greet me was young, sexy, snappily dressed and, I was sure within a very few moments, almost certainly a cinch to seduce. And I did now remember her from the interview, and remembered being rather struck with her.

She was young, just 20 – which, in this culture often means more like 15 in emotional outlook -- and she was indeed 15 in some ways, a little timid, and most certainly corralled and controlled by her parents.

She told me she could only stay for two hours, since her parents had told her to be back home by half past six. She also told me her mother had, at first, wanted to come with her but had settled for getting my phone number from her. Such parents! They give her the curfew of a ten year old.

I told her she had partly herself to blame for accepting this. She said she had tried to change her parents’ minds… but obviously had not tried hard enough.

As we talked, I assessed her. Attractive, and rather a trim body. I felt it would not be too hard to charm her to bed; indeed, as, later, I walked back with her to the tube, my arm guiding her from time to time, I was sure I was home; and had the train not been quite so crowded, I’d have kissed her as we parted. I sent a follow up message saying I had enjoyed meeting her, and that she was cute. She replied in kind, and we exchanged a couple more messages in the same vein during the rest of the evening.

But I was sure Simone was not quite the wholesale innocent she appeared, for she had a boyfriend (at the time; he is long since gone). ‘Do your parents know?’ I asked of this boyfriend – expecting and getting the too-common look of amused horror on her face – ‘Of course not! They would kill me!’

It is an old story; parents here seldom know the truth of their daughters’ lives. Sara, my full-time girlfriend, for example, has to lie to her mother every time she stays with me. No matter that she is 25, and, in a few days, flying off to begin her postgraduate studies in Canada, she must still tell her mother that she is going to stay with a girlfriend. As with Sara, so too with Ellen, Jingjing, Mona; again and again women here pull the wool over their parents’ eyes wholesale, a lie necessitated by the older generation’s failure to see what life is today.

Sure, Simone looked and acted the virgin, but while I was not so gross as to ask, I suspected she was not; she told me her guy was a bit of a rogue so I concluded he had put her to it – opening a path for me, I hope.

Clarissa was bright, vibrant, electric when we met. She’d been at an office party and had clearly had a couple of drinks, a tinge of flush to her face, animation in her manner, eyes sparkling. She was, in short, even more stimulating than I remembered her from class.

As we drank and listened to the jazz naturally my words (and hands) became wider, more expansive.

‘You’re leading me along, like a fox’ she said -- but didn’t stop me. And indeed her talk was sexual and her body language mirrored mine. So we had a good evening of it. She enjoyed my flattery and attentions, and it seemed to be going well to me, though several times she told me she was faithful to her husband. Now the mere fact she said this was a clear enough sign she knew what was in the offing. And when she went on to tell me that she let her husband think she was a virgin on their wedding night, my hopes rose.

Letting him think this was not a lie, she said, since he did not ask and she did not, thus, deny. But still it was a crack into which I felt I might drive a wedge.

Smart as she is, of course she knew this when she told me.

Later, the more I thought it over, the more I was inclined to wonder if I had not been played, and played with some expertise at that. If I was, it is no matter, for after all I was playing a role too, and if she was indeed playing me, I was content to be played.

Yes, she was good. ‘I’m going to go home, have a bath, and wait for my husband to come home in the morning.. and maybe fuck me.’ Now there’s a rare thing to hear – such verbal directness is rather rare in Chinese women. Yes, they will be emotionally direct, but even then their words are often couched in more delicate terms.

I played along with Clarissa’s provocativeness in, I guess, a pretty obvious way – ‘How about some pix?’

‘No way!’ she said, before telling me that they had taken pix, and a film, of their lovemaking. A sexy woman altogether! But even with this fire she tried to bank and ebb my ardor, telling me she was happy with this husband, and that they were good together in bed. I asked why she had married so young – she is around 24 – she said, sexy smiling, ‘To save the cost of going to hotels all the time!’

As the jazz wound down and the crowd thinned I noticed a hooker trying to close a fat Westerner on the table next to me. She was past her prime and I doubt he had ever been in it; and her play-acting, now loving, now cold, now happy, now hurt, was pretty risible.

But she saw me looking and flashed me a smile of complicity –‘Yeah, this fat slob ain’t much, is he?,’ her glance said. And I was briefly taken in, briefly felt a sympathy for her in her unhappy lot, before the clarity of the corollary meaning of her glance stuck me in all its obvious truth – she was trying to establish a tie with me in case it did not work out with fat guy, for then I might be her night’s fee.

When it was time to go, Clarissa at first wanted to go alone, but I said I would drop her home and then go on my way. ‘I know what you want’ she said, and of course she was right.

By chance her home is near Gloria’s, and, as we headed there in the cab, past the familiar buildings and territories of my relationship with Gloria’s, this restaurant, that coffee bar, I did feel a slight sense of melancholy at the upset I caused in her life and the messy, astonishing way our relationship ended (I shall write it up in due course.)

But of course I did not stay melancholy for long. Saying ‘Come here,’ to Clarissa, I drew her to me for a cuddle, which she allowed, gladly. Naturally I caressed her, and this too was okay. As also were one or two kisses, but not too much of that, for she pulled away. I eased her back and she lay in my lap. Then I erred, blowing in her ear. Earlier, in the bar I had caressed her earlobe and the effect was strong.. she arched, and said ‘Don’t.. that makes me…’ These words of course had the opposite effect, making me all the more keen to caress her there.

But now in the cab that soft puff of air in her ear was too much, and she pulled away, a scalded and no longer sexy cat; and indeed was quite irate, for when I put my arm to her again, it was ‘NO!’ and ‘DON’T’ in tones increasing peremptory and strident.

I let her cool awhile and tried again. She had not cooled. The opposite. So this riled me a bit – no one shouts at me, I thought, in my semi-drunk choler (for I can be a dyspeptic, arrogant fuck when the beer takes me a certain way and my pride is dented) – and so I became insouciant, detached (a mistake I was later to make with Tingting, though that mistake is now healed, forgotten, and she is back in my life).

My cool goodnight to Clarissa was met with, ‘Now I’ll see what you’re really like.’ In saying that, she was referring to conversation earlier in the evening.

In that conversation, she had told me she had avoided meeting me in person thus far, preferring to keep our acquaintance net based. Why? I asked. ‘Because if we met, I knew what you would want.’

Quite right. And I admitted it; ‘Yes, to be truthful, I do want that..’

‘You admit it?!’

‘Yes, but that’s not all I want.. I like you a lot and enjoy your company even if we don’t…’

She was doubtful.

‘Well, you will be able to tell … if nothing happens tonight and I never call you again,’ I said.

Hence her parting shot, hence that ‘We’ll see what you’re really like.’ She meant that if fuck was all I wanted, she would not expect to hear from me again, but that if my claim of liking her company was true, I would keep in touch.

I remember as I rode home in the cab thinking, What am I really like? I could not decide for sure. That night, I blocked her chat profile and was inclined to leave it so, for I felt she was playing me and wanted an admirer, preferably rich and definitely hands off; which was no role for me.

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So Clarissa, a woman who has the most powerful effect on me – intoxicating, captivating, maddening.

As are they all, she was a student in class; but she was, is, nothing like the average student. I’d written up a bunch of adjectives on the board (or ‘abjectives’ as I now think of them, after Tingting’s neologism – Tingting who, to my surprise and delight, is now back in my life again) one of which I’d misspelled. Now this happens fairly frequently (not because I am illiterate but rather because I tend to talk and write at the same time, and thus my concentration lapses) and students almost never point it out, even when the error is egregious, at which point I’ll turn it into a little homily, telling them this passive approach will not do in the West. But Clarissa, bold and confident, raised her hand and pointed it out.

And thus began my admiration for her.

Among the hundreds – thousands – of students who have come and gone, she stands out with total clarity. Even the word I spelled wrong – ‘choas’ for ‘chaos’ -- glitters bright in my mind, burnished by memories of her, and each time I write it in a class she is uppermost on my mind. Equally vivid in my mind is how, at the end of the second class, she stayed behind after to ask me some vocabulary, wondering how to say ‘小便’ (‘to piss’)

Perhaps these foundations to our relationship have shaped the edifice we have created together; bold, straightforward, honest – but also sexy, secret, intimate.

Both these elements were right there at the beginning -- the sex so much so that even that first time she talked with me after class I had to pull down my jumper. Hoping to get to know her outside the class, she was one of the rare few (like Deedee) to whom I gave my card.

Sometime later, when she messaged me online from Guilin, I failed to recognize it was her. But the next time she did so, I worked it out… and our conversation rose from the polite to the excitable – stoked in part by her, asking me if I had heard of the term ‘MBA.’

‘Master of Business Administration…?’

‘Married but Available.’

And from there our conversation grew more open. She is an adventurous sort, having had an older, richer, married lover before she got married. This is unusual, even with all China’s much-touted modernity. Many people here still marry their first boyfriend or girlfriend, and a sizeable proportion are virgins when they marry.

Clarissa told me how she had felt deeply for this guy, but how their relationship had come to nothing, he unable to be anything more than a lover, his social position ruling out any possibility of something more permanent between them.

This is something I have found time and again in Chinese women; their great openness – even need – to talk about their emotional lives; to talk of love, sex, of romance and passion, of affairs and cheating, of desires hidden and hopes quelled.

It’s not because I am especially sensitive, or profound (and certainly not trustworthy) – it is rather that there is just no outlet for this in their Chinese life; they cannot talk about it with Chinese men. (On which note: I do tend to make these sweeping statements about Chinese men, and such generalizations are often unwise. But while I do not mean to say that all Chinese guys are alike (far from it) I do still feel there are traits that many have in common. And this rather limp approach to love and passion is one of them, as is a rather antediluvian attitude to women. Frequently in class I ask my male students, ‘If in the future, when you were married, your wife earned more than you, how would you feel?’ About 70% of them tell me they would feel uneasy, or humiliated, and that it is the man’s duty to earn more than the woman. I will then ask the women what they think of that, and their most general answer is something along the lines of ‘It’s an absurd attitude but that is what guys are like.’ I will also often ask, ‘If your wife had a better job than you, and asked you to stay home to look after your child, would you?’ Utter shock unrolls across the student’s face at the thought of this, at its (to him) sheer absurdity. (It is as ludicrous a proposition to him as if I said ‘Taiwan is not part of China.’ Taiwan is of course part of China, just as it is a woman who should raise the kids. That there could be any other truth to the matter is simply inconceivable.) The women students generally roar with laughter too, at the idea that a Chinese guy could ever be relaxed enough about himself to do this. As with money, so with education. A Chinese guy, in general, will not be comfortable with a woman who has a higher education than him. Thus the saying current here, ‘In China there are three genders – men, women, and women with PhDs.’)

And thus, later, when Clarissa and I met face to face (a meeting she suggested, to my deep joy) our conversation soon dived beyond the trivial, down into these emotional depths, the truths she needed to tell. She’d suggested meeting near Shanghai’s Donghu Hotel, a venue in which, just a few weeks before, I had been running down another unhappily married woman, Carole. She too is one I never got (for in truth my hits are more than my misses) and has since dropped out of sight wholly. This Carole was, at the time, on the verge of initiating divorce and, later, sent me semi-cryptic text messages suggesting she had initiated it. But despite my replies I never saw her again.

No great matter for that (though I still think of her, for, having not got her, she is more stuck in my mind than she would be if I had). To my wolvish pleasure, the Donghu Hotel was, at that time, just near the very bar for my plans, JZ, a jazz club which has since relocated (and which is mentioned here. This rather good site clued me into the fact they had a new singer for Monday nights and thus, last week, when Kay (a woman worth an entry who I will get round to soon) wanted me to take her out for an evening, to cheer her in her misery (caused by her married lover’s casual treatment of her) that was where I chose. JZ is a sexy sort of place, good for a seduction, and as there is a sexual thing between Kay and me, it was a fine choice.)

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Dinner with Mona was as I was sure it would be.

We’d met, and first she’d shown me her dorm, which she had to keep on so that she could pretend to be living there – for if the university found she had rented her own apartment she would be expelled. The dorm was not quite so spartan as others I have seen, such as those at Shang Wai, though was still mostly a big poured concrete box, with correctional facility overtones.

And then to the wet market, where we made the film I had planned, a large crowd of onlookers staring as we did so. That done, it was still early, so we returned to her flat and watched a couple of episodes of some sexy American sitcom which she’d heard about but never seen. A good choice of viewing, given my plans for the evening.

I said she would soon have to pay what we’d agreed for me bringing her these DVDs – the pay being a kiss, which we had teased about on MSN. She was still a little nervous, not yet warmed, so she blushed and murmured, and I did not press for the kiss. There would be time for it later, and I knew that the sexy language of the show we were watching would help change the mood. Finding it for her was easy; the DVD pirates are one of the city’s many wonders. Just today, for example, I found a copy of ‘Le Comte Ory,’ one of my favorite operas. Rossini suits my essentially ephemeral character.

And so when we were cooking I took the kiss, holding her under the chin and tilting her lips towards me. Still a little shy, she did not meet me with her eyes, but the response of her lips was quite enough to show how the evening would end. This kiss was spiced by the loose, shapeless housecoat thing she’d put on while cooking, having modestly closed her door as she changed out of the showy dress she’d worn to meet me. Even though this garment would well become a 50 year old Shanghai housewife with big hair, on her slender body it fell forward enough to reveal that she was naked under but for panties.

And after eating and washing up (more romantic than you might think, with its chances for caresses, warm water, suds) we made love. Kissing first, gently nibbling and caressing her; and like Tulip, like Lucy, soft breath in her ear made her wilder.

Blowing in a woman’s ear, kissing and caressing her there, feels cheesy to me; feels like the kind of thing the guy who has read his ‘Guide to a Woman’s Erogenous Zones’ would do. It does not feel authentic – it is too clichéd, too obvious. But it works.

I eased my shirt over my head and then slipped the hem of her dress upward, first to see pink latticed and bowed panties, clearly chosen for their look; and then over her belly up to her breasts. Petite, and, thus, for me, most erotic. Big, broad aureoles, wide enough indeed to be out of proportion to the size of the breast. But cute, cute. So I played there a while before kissing back down; then she took off the dress and I the rest of my clothes – then her panties for the first glimpse of her pussy. Compact, tight, needed a trim on top. And so the oral, which I dearly love, as did she – but far more controlled, restrained than Lucy. Her passion was deeper, more locked, sighs and sips.

This country, this society being what it is, I had wondered if she too was a virgin, and while her control here, lack of nervousness, made me think not, that opinion was balanced by some seeming inexperience elsewhere as we cavorted. And while I was sure she enjoyed it, I was not sure I made her come.

It was a fine night with her, sexy and wholly satisfying, though not quite so wild as Lucy was the first time. Mona was not so unreservedly passionate and, a little to my irritation, told me, ‘It’s my special time of the month.’ I was prepared for this at least, clued into it in part by the lengthy amount of time she spent in the bathroom before we made love but more by the bloodied towel I saw hidden half around the u-bend. Later, when we were talking, I leveraged this into an accolade. When she’d said it was her ‘special time’ I’d said I knew; after we’d made love, passion spent, she now wanted to know how. So I told her she had seemed tired and a little pale yesterday, and even that she had walked a little wearily – which was true, indeed, though at the time I did not draw the conclusion that she had her period. But anyhow, the tale I now told her made me think me ‘很厉害.’

The next morning, she had to get up at 6 for the mandatory exercise her martinet university insists on, and then a lecture at 8.20. Her university day was over at 9.30 a.m, an hour when it should not even have begun.

It’s little wonder China is still a third-rate country. It will never be anything more than the world’s service shop until it stops treating its people as commodities.

I dozed until about 9 and then sat on her pink-covered bed in her pink-walled Pudong apartment typing what was the original of this entry until she came home. Having just been going over the night before in my mind, I was feeling ready and horny, and keen to see her lovely body again, those cute breasts. I put her in my lap, kissed and caressed, undressed and ate her… as before, I was not sure if she quite orgasmed; for tho’ she sure enjoyed it, there was no clear peak, no obvious climax, no pushing away of my head as with Gloria or other lovers; and so either my skill lacking or she is still an ingénue that way.

However, after that, she did not really want me to penetrate her, telling me she was tired. But I guessed that more likely she meant sore, for, physically, she was the slightest women I had been with. Maybe half the bulk of me, at most. And while this made her a great lover, easy to position, lithe and responsive, it also meant that now, the next morning, she somewhat ached.

And so I made no fuss over it, was polite and understanding. ‘You’re a very gentleman’ she said – and I did not correct her either on the sentiment or the grammar, though both were wrong.

We dozed an hour, 90 minutes, and then I got dressed and she walked me to the bus stop.

Now going to the bus stop might seem the action of a cheapskate. But that is a too-hasty interpretation. Taking the bus here is, in fact, a rather positive thing to do. In general, Chinese people are often surprised when a foreigner can talk Chinese, and even more surprised if he or she can read it. Locals thus expect foreigners to travel almost exclusively by cab, in part because of the language problems (overcome by the Chinese person telling the cabbie where to go) and in part because they believe money is no object to expats. Taking a bus, therefore, shows a certain familiarity and ease with Chinese society, and that goes down very well. For while the moneyed life of many expats is a matter of aspiration and envy to local society, it is also a slight sticking point, an angle of envy, contention. Showing respect for the culture, being willing to live like a local, and able to speak and read Chinese some – all this helps.

And so taking the bus by oneself is a good thing; it shows that one is willing to make oneself a part of society. Naturally, when with the woman in question, one takes a cab.

Once on the bus I turned on my mobile. I’d left it off the night after it rang when I was between her thighs. That time, we both ignored it, and I then turned it off when we were lying prone on the bed after making love.

And now, on the bus, as I turned it back on, an sms from Tulip arrived, saying she had called me but I was turned off or engaged, and asking was I busy this afternoon, how about lunch?

This was most convenient, as right then I was heading to Lujiazui, right near her office. And so I arranged to wait for her by the Orient Pearl Tower, a hideous monstrosity of a building, all communist boasting and ugliness, with the touts and tourists peering at me as at a strange fish.

I remember thinking as I sat waiting for her of what to tell her. Should I explain my switched-off phone by saying, ‘I was in a class?’ Or should I say, ‘I was seeing a friend’? Or should I say ‘I was seeing a ‘friend.’”? Now, sure, to let her know I was seeing her right after another woman could be taken as an insult. But also she is a little intrigued by this free and open sexuality of mine, and I think hearing about it gives her a charge, a thrill, and that’s something worth aiming for. And so some measure of honesty might have been fruitful.

But one must not plan these things too carefully. And so I simply decided to wait and see, play it by ear.

Right on time she rolled up, at our usual meeting spot, in her cute car; a sigh and catch in my heart as she did so, as I stood to walk toward her, open the door, take in the scent of the car’s perfumed interior, sight of her lovely profile…

And such chances there were. Mona showed herself quite a good player, giving me several opportunities to suggest seeing her, rather than asking directly (for that would make her seem too forward.)

Mona. hi, how r u?

Me. fine.and u? do anything exciting since i chatted to u? busy today, or i would have called u and come over to help u move

Mona. it is ok .some of my classmates came and helped me.ty all the same:).and i am wondering if u could visit my new apartment when u have time.(mp) ,in ur last class,u asked us to describe a film.what tense should i use to describe it.past simple or present tense?

Me. i would like to see ur apartment! maybe next week, when i have more free time. for the film, either tense is ok, and long as u use the same tense for the whole answer. but simple past is a little bit better

Mona ok and if u have more free time,i would like to meet u at the coffee. chatting to u ~

Mona. i see

Me. i'd like that... i think u'd be a lot of fun to spend time with

Me. u seem to be quite unusual in some ways

Mona. maybe i am.but why do u think so ?

B. firstly, u like to live alone. that shows maturity and independence, which most ppl ur age lack.

Me. then, u are very self confident... look how quickly we have become friends. that's also quite unusual

Me. say u are bold, strong willed, confident

Mona. thank you and u r a good man too.homurous and sexy.ur class is very interesting.and maybe u don't know how much we enjoy it. and by the way ,u have just given me some more words to describe a people(F)

Me. oh,ur too kind!

She's a modern woman, and she quite well knew what inviting me over to her apartment meant. Sure, it could have meant just friendship, or even that she wanted to test out her power; but by her demeanor in class and other actions I was confident it was more than that. And so this conversation was seduction mixed with schooling. I flattered her some, because everyone likes to hear they are unusual, unique, special (though even so there was much measure of truth in my words.) She is bolder than her peers. And her words to me, humorous and sexy? Of course she flattered me as much as I her – and, I guess with, the same goal in mind.

And so we set a date, a date I chose with some care, for though I had plenty of daytimes free, afternoons and mornings were not appropriate for my plans, which called for an overnight stay. Sure, we’d agreed I was going to see her flat; but really, I was going to see her bed, and her body. And also we agreed we would cook together, since at one point I mentioned how much I liked shopping at the city’s wet markets (one of the many pleasures of life here, being able to buy live fish, crabs and shrimp, chicken and duck, and being able to select from a vast array of vegetables.)

Sure, I could have taken her to a restaurant, but cooking together would, I knew, have its seductive qualities just as a restaurant has its. But also I had a wider goal here, which was to film our buying trip to the wet market, as part of the ‘this is my life’ film I was making for the folks back home.

Now at this point in my life I was still involved with Gloria, the woman I stole from her boyfriend, and she had been very keen to help me with this little project. But naturally I was not so keen on that, and did not want her too much on the tape, for just the same reason she wanted to be on it – that is, that it would show her a big part of my life.

I was getting rather bored of her, keen to end our relationship but not quite firm enough to do it, for doing so, I knew, would hurt her. So for example around this time she needed to go to hospital for some minor elective surgery, and I accompanied her there, arriving at around 9 a.m. Even though we’d arrived pretty early, the doctor had already gone to surgery, having begun his day (the one day a week he did operations) at half six. Chinese hospitals are not run efficiently enough to have an appointment system; the patient must just turn up and take pot luck.

Now Gloria had booked the day off from work, and her thought was that now we could spend it together, given that she was not going to get the operation. But I really did not want to spend a whole day with her, and so I got out of it by saying that while of course I did want to spend the day with her, she probably ought to go back to work. After all, I said, she would now need to book another day off to try to see the doctor the following week and her boss would wonder why, if she had not seen the doctor this day, she had not come back to work.

I remember this clearly because, later that day when I messaged her to say I felt bad about suggesting she go back to work, she replied that in fact she had been moved by the level of care this showed I had for her. And so what had been a ruse on my part to get out of spending the day with her appeared to her as a gesture of love. We see what we want to see.

This, at least, helped smooth the slightly ruffled mood I had caused in her when we’d met a few days before this. We had agreed to go swimming, and, as we walked to the tube, we met a German guy I knew. In general I prefer to move in the more local community, but this guy I met at the birthday party of another woman with whom I have developed a close relationship, Phoebe (Phoebe is a very Americanized woman, having spent many years in the country and having picked up many of its best qualities -- the confident, strong self-belief that can make Americans so admirable. She is one of my friends who gives me some minor confidence I do not purely see women as sex objects, for our relationship, though close (and though she is sexy) is platonic).

Anyhow, that night this German chap and I hit it off well, shared a good few beers and had a most enjoyable, relaxed evening with it. He was there with his longterm gf, also German (and, rarely for a white woman, I found her attractive).

But when I met him now, he was not with this gf, he was with a Chinese woman who was, of course, cuter, younger and sure more pliant than his German girlfriend. We talked a little while before going on our ways, and as I walked on I told Gloria a little about him, and that fact that his companion seemed to be an extra-curricular girlfriend. Gloria harrumphed, ‘I think that’s bad, I don’t like guys like that’ she said.

Of course I ought have ignored the hypocrisy, and was she a bit dearer to me I would have. But instead I said ‘Yeah, seeing two people at once, there’s no excuse for it.’ She got the point, it made her sulky, and she withdrew her hand.

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