Putting more white cabbages into the hotpot, I can’t help thinking about those womans waking up early every morning to make vibrators. I am seeing them leaving behind their unemployed bad-temper husbands and poor children to sit on production lines and make vibrators. And those peasant womans will never use the vibrator in this life. All they want to know is how much they will earn today and how much money they can save for the family.
I put back this plastic cucumber into the box. When I leave it on the oily table, I see the warning from the side of the box: Clean with washcloth and mild soap.
migraine
migraine n. a severe headache, often with nausea and visual disturbances.
Another hot day. You left home in the morning with your old white van. I went to school and I had an exam on vocabulary. The exam went OK. I think I gain more English words since I have been lived with you. Mrs. Margaret praises me. She said I a fast learner. She doesn’t know I have been living with an English man every day and night. Soon school will end for summer holidays. My parents not expect there be so many holidays when they paid this school.
I come back home in the evening and switch on BBC Radio 4. I know my listening comprehension still bad. I hear Six O’clock News, then The Party Line: comedy about a frustrated MP. I don’t understand English comedy.
I am waiting for you to be back.
You come back home almost ten. You hug me with a cold wind. You look so frail. You look painful. You say you got two parking tickets today, one is forty pounds, another one is sixty pounds. You say you were fighting with the traffic policeman who is a black. You say why black people they are so kind and friendly in Africa, but are so rude as long as they live in London. You say London is a place sucks. You say London is the place making everybody aggressive.
You say you got strong headache again, and your whole body aches as well.
I make you some tea. Your favourite peppermint tea. (On the tea bag it says: produce of Egypt. I thought English people they produce their own tea.) I poured the boiled water into the pot. It is an old teapot in brown colour. It is ugly. You say you used this teapot for almost ten years. Ten years, you never break it. Is unbelievabal.
You drink the tea and you stare at the steam from cup.
I give you a painkiller pill. You take it. But you look worse. You move your body to the bathroom. You throw yourself up.
It is unbearable. I hear your pains, through the closed bathroom. It feels like you are throwing up all the dirts from your body, all the dirts from the sick world.
The running tap is being switched off. You come out from the bathroom, with a pale face.
“I never had headaches before I came to London. My body was so healthy when I lived in the country with my goats, and I was just planting potatoes. Since I moved here I’m struggling all the time. My body is in misery. That’s why I hate London. Not only London, all big cities. Big cities are like huge international airports. You can’t have one moment of peace here, and you can’t find love and keep it.”
But what about the love between you and me? It happen in the big city, a very big city, London, a very international place, like airport. Can you keep that love? Can we keep it? I ask myself, in my heart, touching your hair. There is something shaking inside me.
Now you lie down on the bed, your body is hidden in quilt. Your quilt is so heavy, and the texture feels very rough. Not right for this hot weathers. It must be with you for many many years, and it must be from somebody else-you never buy beddings. When I saw your quilt and sheets the first time, I just know you lived long time on your own without a woman. A house has a woman will definitely have a soft and cosy beddings.
Feeling your body is shivering in pain, I can’t leave you there. I take off my clothes, and I lie beside you.
“Will you have sex with me?” you ask me, with a weak voice.
“Why? Do you want?” I am very surprised.
“Hmm.”
Your hand still presses your head where is the pain from.
“If I come it helps me forget about the pain and fall asleep,” you say.
“But what if nobody beside you or you don’t have a lover when you are very ill?” I am shocked.
“Then I would do it with my hand. Like I did before you came into my life.”
I don’t know what to say anymore.
Touching gently your little bird, I move my fingers. I can feel your pain directly. Your pains is like electric current transfer into my finger, then my palm, then my body, then my head. I become shivering with my anticipation, for that I want cure your pain.
You face look relieved, but your breath becoming much heavier. Your little bird gets harder in my fist. I don’t feel sexy at all; all I wish is to stop you suffering.
“Are you ready to come?” I am holding you.
“Yes…” you say, enduring the great pain of climax.
Your body is shaking. Then the sperm comes. My hand is completely wet. It jets, again and again. The milk. It must be bitter milk when a person is suffering. It is the milk of love, my love to you, but it is also the milk of pain, your pain in your life.
Your breath calms down. You are leaving your pain.
We lie still, without moving even for one centimetre. We are just like your still statue. The sperm on my palm is drying. You fall into sleep. I can feel every single pulse on your wrist. I can feel every single beat from your heart. I breathe in your breath. I inhale your exhale. It is being so long that we lie here like two statues. I look at your face, for so long. I even can see your death. The shape of your death.
August
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equal
equal adj. 1. identical in size, quantity, degree, etc.; 2. having identical rights or status; 3. evenly balanced-n. person or thing equal to another.
Rupert Street, fish restaurant. Saturday evening. Large lobster placed on the window is so seductive that I can’t move my feet away. We get in. You order goat cheese, and extra vegetables. I order fish soup and squid BBQ in wine. We agree having two glasses white wine as well. Later, when waiter gives the bill it forty pounds all together. Expensive.
You take out twenty pounds, put on the bill book. I don’t move. I look at you, wondering.
“Half!” you say.
“Why? I don’t have twenty pounds with me!” I say.
“You’ve got a debit card.”
“But why?”
“I’m always paying for you. In the West, men and women are equal. We should split food and rent.”
“But I thought we lovers!” Loudly, I argue.
The old couple next table stops eating, look at me with strange face.
“It’s not about that. You are from China, the country with the most equal relationship between men and women. I’d have thought you’d understand what I’m talking about. Why should I pay for everything?”
I say: “Of course you have to pay. You are man. If I pay too, then why I need to be with you?”
Now you are angry: “Are you really saying you’re only with me to pay your living costs?”
“No, not that! You are man and I am woman, and we are live together. When couple is live together, woman loses social life automatically. She only stays at home do cooking and washing. And after she have kids, even worse. So woman can’t have any social position at all. She loses…what is that word…financial independence?” These are what I learned from Radio Four Woman’s Hour every morning ten o’clock.