When I had taken off my T-shirt and before I had time to get my dress from its hanger, the bedroom door groaned as it was pushed open.
With a hopeless look on his face, Ti stood at the door, breathing hard, with tears welling up in his eyes and streaming down his face. His tall, strong frame looked like a crumbling stone monument that was about to collapse in ruins.
I was so stunned I didn't know what to do or say.
He walked unsteadily toward me, and without uttering a word he wrapped his arms tightly around me.
Locked firmly in his arms, I whispered desperately, "Don't do this, don't do this," as I twisted angrily in an attempt to get away. But his arms were like fetters, and the more I struggled, the tighter they became.
His body, as hot as a stove, was all over mine. He cried out softly, "Niuniu, Niuniu, I beg you, stay in my arms." Because he was so tense, the sound of his voice had changed.
"No. I don't like you." And again I tried to get away from him. "I have always, always loved you, Niuniu. I swear it." His lips were trembling so much that he could hardly speak.
"You're lying!" I answered angrily. "I've always hated you." I was gasping for breath from my struggle to get away.
Ti's tears were spotting my shoulder like rain. Unable to speak, he clasped me even tighter in his arms, pumping his groin hard against mine, as if he were suffering muscle spasms.
Staring at him with hostile intensity, all I could see was that his usually arrogant face was as pale as a girl's, and that a seemingly uncontrollable and dangerous grief and longing shot from his eyes and from every pore on his body. It was as if this apparently sturdy, handsome male had crumpled into a great heap of garbage around my shoulders.
This made me recall the scene on the army cot in the inner room at Yi Qiu's and the sudden spurt of lightning from between Xi Dawang's legs.
I began to feel a bit frightened.
His rapid and heavy breathing gave an indication of how long he had been tormented with desire. There seemed to be a deep hurt lurking beneath his expression of sexual passion.
Gripping me tightly by the shoulders, he murmured brokenly, "Niuniu, you're a very seductive girl. Do you know that? Everything about you, your body, your face, has a special attraction. You're like a garden filled with exotic flowers and grasses that allows me no exit, that tortures me. Why can't you see how I…"
My shoulders hurt in his grip. Tears were streaming down his face and he was sobbing uncontrollably.
This was the first time I had ever received praise from a male. And what stunned me was that it came from a male whom I had detested for many years.
Only after living through many different experiences did I discover that women (including myself at that time) are highly susceptible to praise. Such praise is an ingenious weapon that can make women lose their sense of judgment and their sense of place, reducing them to mindless little girls, to the point where they are nothing more than female animals who subserviently do what they are told, becoming praise's willing prisoners and slaves, the spoils of battle. It is only the most mature of women who can remain cool and rational in the face of this invincible weapon.
That day Ti's sobbing frightened and disgusted me, but at the same time I felt an obscure kind of pity for him. His intense grief, in fact, placed a restraint on my own feelings, suppressing my resistance to his pleas.
Twisting this way and that way around the bedroom, with me trying to get away from him, we looked like a pair of combatants in a mixed-sex wrestling match.
I was gradually losing strength in my struggle to get away.
His tears of despair fell without cease on my face, and I could feel their coolness penetrating into my body, where wondrously it was transformed into a feeling of languor, which in turn passed outward through my skin, to be drawn in by the intense heat of his body.
Eventually, I stopped resisting him.
All the time I was touching him, I kept seeing animated images of Yi Qiu and Xi Dawang's entwined bodies, which further stimulated my imagination and my senses. I felt a delicate shuddering spreading outward through my body to my skin, leaving me feeling faint.
So I closed my eyes.
Then in the darkness behind my eyelids I dimly saw that the image of Yi Qiu and Xi Dawang entwined together had suddenly changed. The stage properties and the set were still the same. It was still the inner room of Yi Qiu's house, and the same old army cot was still there in the semidarkness. But it was not their bodies twined together on it. Hand in hand, Yi Qiu and Xi Dawang had risen from the bed, and, smiling slyly, Xi Dawang was saying, "It's your turn on stage. What a beautiful thing it is!" Yi Qiu turned to me and said, "Don't be afraid. You have to step onto this stage sooner or later anyway." Then the two bodies on the cot turned into Ti and me.
When this cartoon image in my mind changed, something even stranger happened. As if I had been hypnotized, my body suddenly possessed a demonic strength. The terrible fatigue that I felt as a result of the struggle to free myself was suddenly transformed into a new and opposing strength, and I pressed myself rigidly against Ti…
In the twilight of that summer evening in August, as the light in the room slowly faded, the passionately hot body of Mr. Ti, a mature male, was grinding against the almost naked body of his female student, his chest pressed helplessly against her breasts. It seemed that an agonizing pain was mounting in his lower groin. The warmth of his hot breath washed past her cheek, over her neck, down her spine, and into her loins, where she started to feel a tingling sensation.
He held her tightly by the waist so that they were pressed as close together as possible. She felt what seemed to be something like a hand increasing in size in the front of his trousers. This "third hand" was vigorously and wildly probing, as if trying to find a way to reach within her body. The student was straining her upper body away from him as much as possible, trying to leave a little space between them. But he inclined his head toward her to press the tip of his tongue in her ear and into the hollow of her neck. Then he buried his face between her breasts and began kissing and sucking their nipples and marble-white skin. Her eyes slowly closed as she lay there, unable to resist.
Then she felt him thrusting violently as something hot seeped through his trousers, soaking her groin…
It was twilight outside, and the last warmth of the day flowed languidly into the room through the open window. Ti and I, soaked with perspiration, could both hear our hearts beating as fast as the second hand of my watch.
When I extracted myself from his embrace, I saw that the crotch of his trousers was all wet, and that my stomach too was all sticky. It was disgusting.
I was angry and at the same time embarrassed by my own behavior.
I said to Ti, "Please go. I want to have a bath."
His face was filled with shame, guilt, and loving tenderness, all at the same time. Looking rather awkward, he said, "Niuniu, Niuniu, I'm not a playboy who chases after women for the fun of it. I'll be good to you, I'll take care of you."
I said, "Please go. I want to have a bath."
"Why don't we go out for dinner?" he suggested.
I said, "No. I'm having dinner with my mother. Some other time, perhaps. I have to think about it."
"Niuniu, please don't think badly of me. I've always yearned for you, hoping that someday maybe you and I…"
"Nonsense." The moment he started to talk this way, my anger flared and, heedless of everything, I confronted him. "You have always made life difficult for me, always criticizing me, making me feel embarrassed!"