The Artist as a Young Man

I was introduced to Guo at the age of twelve.  My mother was hired into the Guo’s family as the housekeeper.  Guo’s mother was a well-known classical vocalist; his father a respected college professor.  Guo was their only son, living a pampered life of princeling, destined for a brilliant career of his choice.

I remember him as a young man of great beauty, even though he often dressed in casual rags, with face half hidden behind his shaggy thick hair.  His angular crisp face, his pale skin, and his willowy stature were blended perfectly to inspire fantasy.  Everything about him was deliberately artistic: his works, his instrument, his outfit and his looks.  I was charmed instantly.  And he kindly included me in his circle for a few years.  I followed him around like an adoring little brother, carrying his camera bags, setting up tripods, trudging to remote places for good shots.

He wasn’t a great student at math or science; but he had the rare talent for visual arts.  In the earlier days, he painted; later, he moved on to photography.  By the time I met him, he was a community-college student already with a reputation as a budding art photographer.

He worked slowly and deliberately.  I didn’t see much of his production, but the few I did made a huge impression on me.  They were works of sentimentality, whether black and white photographs of scenery or people, or paintings of abstraction.  The subject almost didn’t matter; the surrounding emitted grey tranquility punctured with bloody redness.  They were beautiful, poetic, intriguing, and they told stories. You couldn’t help but wonder if the artist was a melancholy man looking for ways to communicate his explosive loneliness.  Although you question if the photographs were somehow staged, the effect was undeniably powerful.

But in real life, he wasn’t as thoughtful as his photographs.  He had a sense of entitlement that he should be treated differently because he was an artist.  He could be as gentle and charming as he could be cruel and selfish.  I felt sorry for the series of young women whose hearts he had broken.  They were his muse and nourishment, to be desired and discarded at will.  His appetite for them was so insatiable yet he tired of them so easily.  Such a flawed man could produce such great art – I just don’t understand it.     

Eventually we parted ways, secretively because I could no longer suffer the knowledge of his mistreatment of the very people who had loved him.  The artist in him somehow destroyed the lover or friend in him.  That might explain the allure of his loneliness.

Years later, I heard that he had married and divorced twice, spent a long time overseas, learning and establishing himself to be a world-class art photographer.

The Great and Good Man is My Father

Ms. Ho’s memory of her father was vague, who died in his mid-40s suddenly when she was three.  She was raised by her mother alone on her meager salaries as a teacher in a city elementary school.  All she had of her father was a dusty box of old pictures and literary writings, and fleeting stories from her older relatives about him: He was a great man, they told her; he was the first native son from a back-water village in JianXi province gone golden, climbing high up in the political ladder of the ruling party at the time to become the provisional governor of a southern metropolis; he was, against all odds, an incorruptible politician leading an honorable rebellion against the Japanese invasion during World War II; he was a gentleman scholar who loved poetry and books, while he was wielding the big sword over the invading enemies; most of all, he never forgot his root in the impoverished village of JianXi, and generously opened his door at the height of his power to his friends and relatives from his remote native village, housing them, feeding them, clothing them, giving them money to help their ways into the world.  All these great deeds failed to impress her - They happened long ago; and in light of what she had to live through in her daily struggles of growing up, they meant very little.

Growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution, when your deceased father had been actually on the wrong side of the Communist government, meant that you hunkered down, not showing off your impeccable yet problematic lineage.  “Your father would never know what to do in this life.  Nobody could save you except for your own grit and steel,” her mother told her.

Until one day in January, seventy odd years later, she got an invitation in the mail, “You are invited to attend the 70th memorial celebration of the Doolittle Rescue Mission to be held in Toledo, Ohio, as the sole surviving daughter of the great General Ho.”  It turned out that her father spearheaded the effort rescuing the fallen American pilots of the first US trial mission to air bomb the Japan cities after the Pearl Harbor.  She was not born yet.  Her mother had never mentioned the story when she was growing up.  She only connected the dots from old tales told by her relatives defying the Communist repression, the few surviving American pilots (in their 90s) whom she kept in touch with, and the faded diary left behind by her father.  The Americans haven’t forgotten the Chinese general who had saved their lives, while her Chinese countrymen had all but wiped out her father’s record of war-time achievements.

She made the first-ever overseas trip to attend the memorial ceremony.  It was a happy occasion, a happy ending of her long search of an undefined character in her life: the daughter has overcome her fear of knowing who her father truly was; the daughter has found a sort of peace having drawn closer to the inner world of her father through time.  There were only five American pilots remained from the original seventy.  But they have done a great job keeping the memories alive, uniting the America’s actions during World War II with her father’s courageous rescue effort.

Returning home, she got an email from someone she has never met, “Hi, my name is Qing from Huei-chow.  I read about your trip to America from my local newspaper.  I believe that your father had adopted my mother Huei-ling, who was orphaned when young, from the JianXi village, and put her through school.  My mother passed away three years ago, and in her lifetime, she had never stopped looking for you, for an opportunity to give back what your father had done for her.”  It made her cry, almost.

Ode to America - A Life in a Poem, free-verse stanza from a non-poet

In her fifties, her face is a well-rested, smooth composure of Asian refinements -
Delicate round face shined through a cascade of dark long hair,
Brown grey eyes, smallish nose and luscious lips, well placed  
No need for makeup.  Her elegance speaks for her do,

All supported on a firm frame of litheness.

This is a life well-lived, perfectly fine,
Undistinguished to others, content within herself.
She has been faithful to: be productive, be responsible, and a lifelong learner.
Along the way, she picked up good friends of trust and respect,
A caring husband and loving kids.


For an average person with average talent,
above-average intelligence and education -
And a bit of hard-earned luck, this is good enough.
All this made for her ability to observe, reflect and renew hopes.
And she knows it.


Past was but a series of broad strokes, blurred memories.
Vivid is when coming to America, 1977, the turning point.
Legally stamped “immigrant”,
Before that, she was a child, she barely existed.
Vivid is the realization that she entered into a grown-up world, child no more.


Before that, it was noise and passion, montage of trysts.
Wide interests, news, films, art, reading a book, watching TV, boys, school,
Be a personality, try glamour, try charisma, try ephemeral looks and appearance.
Everyone loves a young woman,
But every young woman gets old.


Youth was blissful, shifty, blinks, blanks.
She remembers pressures to impress others,
Living her mother’s high code of dead Confucian value.
Consumed by standing out in a small pond of toads,
Who hardly knew their ugliness.


She spent too much time studying to be number 1 in the class,
Precious little time to look at a painting, or a tree, or a building,
or to write poems, or to make music, which brought her alive.
Confucius dead for thousands of years, but still the grand social arbiter,
Rewarding the mediocre, the compliant; frowning on the independent spirit.


Her heart was burst with love of the impractical and beautiful,
Her mind was weighted down by books, tests, theories that elders dictated.
The soul was wandering, searching, rebelling, regretting.
Who am I?  What do I want?
Just a brainy, dreamy child, going nowhere.


Coming to America was a blind leap, meant building a life from scratch -
No more privilege, no name, no mother, no friends, no back up, no nothing special.
America is immense - Open country with open heart.
Eclectic mix of cultures, electric personalities, more of most of everything.
A giant stage of brilliant lives against the tiny stage where she came from.


In America, you are free to be who you are, who you want to be.
You can go any direction you choose, to Minnesota, to California, or to nowhere.
Excited, to be free from the old traditions,
Daunted, to be the fiercest critic of her developing independence.  
She felt the joy and pangs of a grown-up.


She knew a lot of things then, but little of herself.
Initially she was terribly homesick, “Am I nothing without home?”
But she could also see the shabby sides of her home better, from afar.
She was, sigh, lost  - giving up was so easy, building up so hard.
Where to start?


Then the thought, “A woman going through life without learning the simplest lesson that
she has only one life, if she fails to do what she wants with it, no one else would care.”
She had an immediate choice to make:
Hiding in the Chinese communities, living the village life of old China , or
Embracing the new culture surrounding her.


There is comfort and familiarity in the old,
And, there is growth and fear of being slain in the new.
Her decision was not swift.
There was but one guiding principle -
Must lead to a richer individual world than a shallow existence for others.


In spirit an experimentalist, in life an empiricist.
She quietly measured her success as wife, companion, and weekend writer.
Writing is her way to communicate with herself, and with others.
She would write her thank-you note to America by depicting
The lives loved and lost, the dreams pursued and broken, in America.


A bit of a ditherer, she took time to figure out what jobs to take on.
With freedom comes responsibility.  There is no place for idle women in America.
Some jobs she would like to do, but she was too late.
Some jobs she could do, but she lacked depth.
She gambled on a practical but sure craft, which paid her good dividend in old age.  


In solitude, she would ask - you work like a devil and earthly monotony drinks you dry.
Were you after things you don’t want, building a life you don’t care a rap about?
Being an optimist, she was never negative for too long.
But there was always something never quite settled in her.  
Could it be her younger years that she yearned for?  It was a pleasant kind of loneliness.


Her love of New York defined her -
A simple-minded immigrant was welcome to a culture of dazzling diversity.
An easy playground for adults making things up like youngsters.
It may take her a lifetime to find her soul and care for it.
But here, New York has her heart pulsating with all things American and beautiful.


She is grateful for a life well lived, in America.
Her love, family and work, realized on this sacred ground.
Her conscience clear;
Her eyes, ears, heart, mind open to the cacophony of music, words, arts and sciences.

At last, she is free.

Dreaming

Out of the world beyond mundane human concerns, happiness or sadness, momentary successes or failures, there is a place called Bone Valley.  It really doesn’t matter what it is called, since it is a place I made up to tell the story of Kaylee, the Horse Woman.  Pay attention, it is about Kaylee, although I rule the Bone Valley.

People come to Bone Valley not because they want to, but because they are desperate.  They come for all sorts of reasons: drug or alcohol addiction, job loss, love loss, disappointments, depression, you name it.  They come because they heard from someone that I, and my people, can help them fight their destitute destiny.   I do my best to fix them up, repair their dreams, restore their hopes, and send them back on their feet to the world where they came from.  I stick to the usual therapeutic rule book: distractions, empathy, counseling, coaching, escapes, denial, even threats and punishments, depending on the severity of the cases.  Since I am God, I try to offer maximum support and minimum intervention, that means staying away from giving feel-good antidote, and letting them pull themselves out of their own nightmares as much as possible.

Some people stopped by once or twice, and they were well enough on their ways to healthier lives.  Some kept coming back, month after month, year after year, thanks to the defective genes from somebody, somewhere, along their long lines of defective ancestry.  I don’t do this work by choice.  It is my God’s duty to serve.  But, over the years (I’m talking about thousands upon thousands of years), I’ve developed a knack for it, and my reputation has grown.  My kingdom is prosperous, and I truly enjoy my work. 

I have a queen named Sheila.  She is beautiful, of course, in the way of a queen, but she has changed from the young woman I had married a long time ago.  It is not that she had more beauty then; it is that she seems to have spent her spirits, her simplicity, her joy for life, and for anything true and good.  She was such a sweet maiden, ripe on the verge of an adult womanhood when we first met.  She didn’t know much about how to behave queenly in the beginning, but she soon learned the role well: to be fiercely loyal to her husband, and completely devoted to her subjects.  There was a wholesome radiance about her that every walk she took, every swing of her hair, or every movement of her dress would wake the entire kingdom up from its dreams.  People would call her lovingly as “Our Lady Joy of Life”, I would simply call her “My Lady of Life”.

I am a hard-working man, somber in nature, and like to dress in black.  Although I possess the super-power I cannot explain, I live and act as normally as any mortal being.  Inside me, I believe deeply that, if I think and feel more for the suffering folks I try to save, I may be more successful.  For my queen Sheila, I may not be too romantic, not too debonair, not particularly handsome, nor a dapper dresser (I am very tall, gaunt and pale with a mop head of hair, and a slight limp from birth).  Truth is that I admire Sheila from the bottom of my heart, always.  I adore her vitality, her zest for life.

My work is demanding, and being a conscientious healer and leader, I put in extremely long hours at the mending factory when our marriage was still young.  My queen would occasionally complain when I showed up late at the palace chamber, “Look, it’s very late and I’m sleepy.  Can you come home earlier tomorrow?”  I apologized.  “There is nothing romantic about me waiting alone here while you go mending someone else’s broken dreams?” she sighed.  But soon, she stopped her grumbling, seeing that I wasn’t about to slow down my noble work.  Day by day, and year by year, her mood got gradually cooler and her light dimmed, despite all the flowers, gifts, and love notes I had sent her on our anniversaries or special days.  One day, she simply decided to move out of our chamber to her own private palace.  Nowadays, she hardly comes by my palace or my mending factory anymore, content to spend her days in her gardens or traveling to meet her spiritual sisters from a celestial cult group, “The Dream Weavers’ Wives”.

In my busy life, burdened with the pains of the rescued souls, and the late-night loneliness, I, like many other healers, suffer from occasional burnouts.  I grew wary of my job, got resentful of the few ungrateful people I have helped.  I didn’t think being a god, with all its glory and respectability, was worth the price of being all alone.  There were times I thought I might need a therapist myself.  And, who else was in a better position to heal me than those I have healed?  This is one of those unforgettable stories.

***

We took turns answering the phones at the crisis center at the mending factory.  I was on call that night, with a skeleton crew of three.  It was a quiet night, and nothing much was happening.  At 2:00 am, the phone burst out ringing.  My staff Sarah picked up the phone in another room.  In no time, she ran toward me, pointing frantically at the phone on my desk, signaling me to pick up the blinking red line while whispering, “Suicide!  Suicide!”

I immediately put down the coffee I’d been seeping and answered the call, voicing the professional greeting that I had used for the thousandth time, “Bone Valley hotline.  Can I help you?”

The raspy sound from the other end was a female voice, low and deliberate, “I don’t know.  I can’t live like this any longer.  It’s too painful.”

“Who are you?”  No answer.  “Are you thinking of killing yourself?”  I asked again.

“Maybe.  I don’t know,” she answered slowly.  It didn’t sound like she had taken the pills yet.  That was a relief.

“What’s your name?”

“The Horse Woman,” she said.

“The Horse Woman from Heavenly Valley?”

“Yes.”

Heavenly Valley is a far-away kingdom where exotic half-human half-animal beings live in peace among themselves, happily isolated from outsiders.  The twelve animals in co-existence are: rats, cows, tigers, rabbits, dragons, snakes, horses, sheep, monkeys, chickens, dogs, pigs; each of them born with a set role to play, and a destiny befitting its animal nature.  With the exception of the rare dragons, which are deemed the universal Sons of Heaven, and are treated above the rest, all the other animals are created equal, with their flaws and strengths well represented, well complemented, mostly carved in stone in their individual characters.  Life is easy in Heavenly Valley, where there is no need to fight his or her destiny, all bowing contently to the nature’s order of conquer and surrender.  That’s what I heard from the few people who had visited the mythical kingdom.

“Can you tell me why you want to kill yourself?”  I asked.

“Yes, I--think so,” she whispered.

My mind was racing as well.  It wasn’t likely that I had a quick solution to her problem, not at this late hour anyway.  But, if she had not already taken the pills, then it wasn’t an emergency yet.  Perhaps, all she needed was a sympathetic ear.  By morning, I could then send for the medics to pick her up.  As I was plotting out the details of my plan, I told myself to sit back and settle in for a long night of listening.

“Hello?  I’m listening.” I reminded her gently.

“I fell to earth five years ago, lost in a horseplay of hunt-and-chase with my siblings.  It was a dark night, and the clouded moon blinded my vision.  I got lost, fell behind, fell to earth, and broke my ankle.  A hunter named Jacob saved me.  He stayed with me, took care of my wound, despite my feisty resistance trying to escape.  Once I got a little better, he brought me down to his village.  After a while, he asked me to marry him.”

“Were you a horse or a woman on earth?  Just curious!”  I said.

“While I was on earth, I was an earthly woman.”

“Is that what you are now, in the form of a woman?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you marry Jacob?”

“At first, I couldn’t believe his marriage proposal.  How could I marry him, an earthling, a totally different species from I?  But little by little, I was won over by his kindness.  I couldn’t bear seeing his feelings hurt, so I agreed to marry him.  He was a gentleman, but his people weren’t – they bickered in the open and gossiped in the dark, sons turning against fathers, daughters against mothers, friends against neighbors.  Just one species and two sexes, these humans don’t ever have peace or freedom: the rich suppress the poor; the men enslave the women, the fair-skin prosecute the dark-skin.  They hide behind their cultural skins to commit crimes.  It is so different from Heavenly Valley where I came from – We may be born different, but we show ourselves bare, and we live in peace and harmony.”

“Tell me about your life in Heavenly Valley.  What was you personality like in Heavenly Valley?” I was interested in her prior life.

“I am the Horse Woman.  My name is Kaylee.  Wild, free, alive, restless, roaming just like a horse, self-reliant yet searching for stability.  I am a born performer - arts and shows are in my blood.  I like to look good, dress well, with the flair and style that money can’t buy.  Friendship and love come easily for me, but they go away easily too.  When I’m in love, I’d give it all of myself; and when love is no more, I’m sad but soon would move on with my life.  Loyalty is my strength, and insecurity my flaw.  I am a good friend to many people.  But I’m also a loner prone to drifting from one crowd to another, partly because I don’t want to get hurt, and partly because I’m afraid to be exposed as a fraud.  I may be acting on a whim, or I may be stubborn about my belief, or I may be impatient with tedium or housework.  I may have half-finished projects and broken relationships, but I may also look forward to an accomplished career, love and family.  I hope someday I’ll be at peace with myself, settle down and stop looking around for the next green pasture, and start appreciating what I have in my own backyard.  That one day may come late; but no matter, it is my destiny to get there.”  She was breathless, excited.

“Wow, what a great story!  What a way of life!”

“I thought so too.  Until I met Jacob, I thought that was the only life for me.”  Her voice started to break.

“What happened after the marriage?  Your life had changed, I suppose.”

“Oh, much too much.  I tried to be a good wife, I really did.  I worked hard to cook, to wash, to clean and to sew, which I thought was the human way expected of me.  My husband treated me well.  But something in me was dying.  Life became unbearable, meaningless, confined, and hopeless.  People thought I was melancholy because I had no children.  How could I tell them that I was different from them, and that I yearned for freedom, not children?” 

“Is that why you called?”  I asked.

“Yes.  I’m going mad.  I cannot fully inhabit Jacob’s world.  What am I anyway?  A horse or a human?  For five years, I have denied myself.  Now, I think I can never be the perfect wife for Jacob.”

“If life, as you said it, has no meaning, then shouldn’t you create one?  Would you rather live for yourself, or for Jacob?”  I know that people from Heavenly Valley don’t live very long, not like those humans.  My concern for her was urgent and sincere.

“I don’t know…Tell me what I should do.  Am I in serious trouble?  I feel so trapped.”

After a long pause, I delivered my final analysis with practiced authority, “Kaylee, I’ve seen many women like you, middle-aged, scared, frustrated, going nowhere, trapped between imagined debt.  They keep frittering away their time in indecision and excuses, and ultimately they are bitter and disappointed for not walking away, through no fault of others but their own.  Do whatever you want, but remember that you only have one life to live, not a minute to waste, and you do have a choice.  You sound like a nice woman, and probably a wonderful horse too.  What you need is a bit of confidence.”  I knew that for certain clients, at a certain point, all they needed was a firm push, not a vague feeling.  And, I was intending to do just that for this woman.

“But, what about Jacob?  What about the five years we’ve spent together?”

“What about it?  He’ll adjust, he’ll be fine.  See, you are putting up walls for yourself already.  Go to sleep now, and call me back tomorrow morning.”  I knew it was time for me to end this conversation.

I dosed off.  Morning came.  The phone rang.  I literally jumped up to pick it up.

“I still feel suicidal…” The thin voice quavered on the other end.

“Now go for a walk, go read a book, watch TV, do something.  Call me back when you stop feeling like a victim and start wanting to be good to yourself.”  I hung up again, feeling slightly guilty about my gruff insistence.

The stretch of silence felt forever.  But, really, it wasn’t long before the phone rang, again.

“Hello, I think I made up my mind.”  The small voice said.

“What are you going to do?”  I sat up, all drowsiness gone.

“You are right.  I must strive for my own freedom - that’s the only way.  Or else, I’ll die.  I have to go home.”

I sighed with relief, secretly glad that she was bold enough to call me back, “Think of it as an insurance of your own survival.”  I sounded as gentle as I could.

“You were quite tough with me,” she said, “These answers may seem straightforward to you, but they were not so for me.” 

“In your heart you know what you stand to lose.  You know that it would be a lot less work to act than to stand around.  I’m just here to help you see the way, lady?”

“Oh, I’ll do my best.”

“Drop me a note when you are settled.  I would like to hear from you.”

***


For a while, I missed that horse woman, strangely.  I remembered that soft, thin voice of hers, evolving, slowly but surely, into a voice of iron will in a matter of hours.  I wondered what she has become, and how she looked like in person.

I was quietly concerned about her fate, for my odds of solving cases like hers remained poor: Periodically I had women coming to me whose marriages, at some point, had crises.  But despite my gentle guidance, they never seemed to find their courage to leave their husbands, or to give themselves space, to think for themselves, what they want for themselves.  Here she was: loving her husband, yet deciding to leave, to save herself.  I wished her the best of luck.  I even dreamed once that I witnessed a winged horse soaring into a sunny valley. 


***

In the meantime, my domestic existence was turning bleaker.  There was no end to my self-imprisonment.  There were times I didn’t want to get out of my bed, so much pain to be so lonely, to be misunderstood, like the world was scoffing at my impotence to please my beloved queen.  What have I done to blow out the lovely candle?  Was I too closed?  Was I too selfish?  What could I do to bring her back?  Does she even want me back?  But wait a minute; do I want her too?  Is she still the women I was in love with?  How could she treat me like this?  Is it even possible to have an everlasting love?  These questions haunted me, and I was so tired, tired of my wretched condition, tired of the confines of my high status, my responsibility, and my hideous solitude. 

Sometime, something shivered inside me.  I began to hallucinate about a magical creature, sometimes naked, sometimes woman, sometimes horse, before me, as innocent and beautiful as my lady queen once was.  Her face was radiant, ageless, refined, her skin light-brown, her jet black hair cascading down her shoulders covering her dainty bare breasts, her curvaceous body resting on a majestic trunk of a horse.  She was what I wanted and needed…a woman of a certain grace and free spirit to roam and love a man like me, a woman who was not afraid to explore the boundary of pleasure, a woman who would free me from my wounded manhood.  I seemed to have known her from somewhere, so I yelled out, “Come back.  Come back.  You are mine.  My creation.  My mistress, come and save me, right now.”

***

For a long time, three or four years at least, I carried on my business like a mortuary director, organized, efficient, stern, without a life, with a heavy heart.

One early morning in bed, I was awakened by a light touch on my shoulder.  I groaned and rolled over, unwilling to wake up.  “Hi,” a small, vaguely familiar voice whispered into my ear.  Through my disoriented eyes, I turned to see a shrouded female figure standing before me, draped in long flowing sarong, with a face of honey brown.  I sat up, shook my head, cleared my eyes and my foggy head. 

“Who are you?”  Standing in front of me was an exotic beauty with an unsure expression.

“I’m Kaylee, coming from Heavenly Valley to pay you a tribute.  We’ve talked once a long time ago.  I’m the Horse Woman.”  She said it tentatively, without looking at me.

“Oh, the Horse Woman from Heavenly Valley.”  I yelled to myself.

“Yes, thank you for remembering me.  You had made an impression on me four years ago, and I have made a few changes subsequently, gone home to my people.  It has worked out nicely for me, thanks to your inspiration.  Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about you, wondering how things are with you, your business, and your well-being.”

So this must be real - My dream had come true after all, and I could hardly believe my luck: She was gorgeous, with a delicate childlike innocence about her in a petit grown woman’s body.  She was more than what I had hoped for.  But presently my somber mood would prevent me from revealing my satisfaction.  I maintained my dignity, “I am doing quite well, and the business has been good.  I remember a great conversation with the Horse Woman, and I think about it with great affection.  What has happened to your earthly husband?”

“We maintain a cordial friendship.  It is a lot easier to be friendly when we don’t live together.  I heard he is going to remarry soon, his own kind this time.”

“Why did you come back?”

“I admire you.  I always wondered what you must be like, and wanted to see you and thank you in person,” she was as cunning as she was forward, “Men like you deserve a better woman.”

Something needed no explanation: She came to offer herself as a gift.  Sensing my power over this woman and her compelling beauty, I became proud and confident of my next demand, “Will I be able to do anything I want with you?” as if she already consented.

“I am your creation, your dream, now your slave.  Let me be your perfect woman, beyond possibilities and past imperfections,” said the childlike woman in her total submission,  “But you must teach me how to please you.”

She was like my wife only in that I admired her like I admired a younger queen; she was like my child only in that I was sure of her respect and devotion whenever she looked at me.  I lifted my arms, drawing her into my chest.  With her tiny body tightly under my possessive spell, my heart began to expand with a warm feeling, and with something grander, darker and richer.  An idea came to me, a wild and driven idea, with blood and wine and pain, with all the markings of a powerful cure.

“Would you let me pet you, pose you, and take you, my precious jewel, no questions asked.  And, you can never betray me.”

She looked puzzled.  I knew what she was thinking: I may be a god outside, but a self-loathing man inside, scornful of others but with plenty of inner demons.  I had been through all the battles, fears, desires and fulfillments, and now nothing was left for me to conquer.  Life was empty, my body aching and my spirit cold.  Since status had not brought me more happiness, it would now take a volcano to light up my fires, maybe. 

I could feel her shrinking from me, wondering what was behind this sophisticated, elusive, moral authority seemingly with a flair for game and fantasy, doubting what troubles she was getting herself into.  I was not going to explain anymore.  “Total trust, loyalty, and sworn secrecy,” I said, “No pressure.  You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.  Then we’ll just stay friends.” 

She bit her lips, unable to resist her thrill, “I didn’t come here to be just your friend.  I adore you.” 

“Then you’ll do exactly as I tell you to do, and you won’t ask any questions.”  I said it without mercy.

So she allowed herself to be led, closed a blind eye to her inquisitive mind.  I unleashed my wisdom to nurture this silk and rose of a child-woman into a dark lace courtesan of my wildest imagination.  We danced a vampire’s dance where I advanced and she retreated, but always came back to me a little bolder than before.  My ego was patched up and fired up by her willingness to open to my whims no matter how strange, and by her show of efforts to please me at every turn.  At a point I ordered her to peel me like a wild onion, slowly, exposing me raw, making me naked, helpless and hideous, a powerful god victimized by its own creation.  She didn't have a great instinct for being mean in the beginning, but she worked hard at it.  Eventually she learned to make me cry, put me on knife, make me confess to my sins.  It was incredible, this alternating sensations of being in control and letting go.

I didn’t know where the experiment should lead, only with a vague idea of finding fresh new ways to liberate her, and perhaps me along the way.  Well, together, over rounds and rounds of adaptation, practice and patience, we found that elusive freedom for both of us, the freedom to let loose our burdened souls, the freedom to consummate her hidden self.  And I thought I could no longer love.  But, in fact, I loved her ferociously, I feared her tremulously, and I felt myself revived.  In my muted way, I could hardly forget the time we spent together, every nugget of our togetherness edged in my mind like permanent scars. 

I hoped that I had given her the pleasures she well deserved.  Her gracious understanding, gallant cooperation, and unflinching trust in me, made it all possible for us to explore the mysterious beyond hand-in-hand.  One day in our regular, unscheduled rendezvous, I asked her how she felt.

“If I used my body for a damn good cause, I should have no regrets.  You’ve been a great mentor, as in the past, as for now, as forever.”

***

This is the end of my tale.  As for what happened to the Horse Woman, she was a figment of my imagination.  To invent her so perfectly was to avoid the pain and failure of having to deal with the real people in my life.  As she made up my dreams and aspirations, she was too perfect for my imperfect world.  Consider her dead.  Consider my dream dead.

Fly Away, Mona

I knew her first as Hsu Hai Meng. It was my second year in college, history department, and she was my classmate. I came from the capital city, she from a rural town down south. I only learned of her English nickname as Mona later from her American boyfriend. It was an unusual nickname, not like Suzie or Stephanie. Anyway, I quite liked the sound of it.

I thought Mona was most striking. She was not someone you could easily forget, her long dark eyes in the distinctive Chinese slant, gazing into your soul, not cold, not warm, but intensely, mysteriously. I had never seen eyes like that, so urgent, so deep, like she had a lifetime of stories to tell, yet holding them back just in time. She was a tender twenty-years old, elegantly tall by Chinese standards. She looked different, she walked differently, she stood out among all my Chinese girlfriends from the capital city, stooped by heavy books and stress of years of striving and working and doing the school thing. She was slender and casual - she could easily throw on anything, which she did frequently, and still looked so statuesquely stylish: like a pair of jeans, a plain oxford shirt, and sandals for the summer heat. Her effortless charm never ceased to amaze me, her secret fan. A whiff of her magic dust was more intoxicating than all the artificial fragrances put together. My other girlfriends were all too busy trying on the Bobbie-doll looks at the time, but Mona couldn't care (or didn't have the means for it). No matter, to me, she was in a class of her own, no one's slave and no one's fool. I was crazy about her, but I couldn't tell anyone, including her. I watched her in a distance, admiring, always hoping.

I didn't know her well. I wanted to, but she kept a distance. I had many many friends from high school going on to the same college. We'd known each other well, studying, playing and gossiping together all these years. Mona somehow was able to quietly and quickly take over my mind. I could think of no one but her: how I wanted to pry the secrets behind those enigmatic eyes, to protect her from hurt, to understand her, to earn her loyalty. And when I wasn't able to get any closer to her, I felt frustrated, rejected, jealous, and worse, wanting to be with her even more.

It was a visceral feeling, innocent, chaste, girl-to-girl. It was also the 70s. It could have easily turned into something else in today's hyper-sensitive world, two girls in one scene. But we lived in a subconsciously uptight society with rigid rules. Girls were born to marry boys and raise their children, despite their own education and higher intelligence. Choices were few for even the college girls, and life was supposed to be simple and orderly.

Mona lived with her older sister, a retiring Cathay Pacific airline stewardess, in Taipei. I heard that her sister, much older than she, practically raised her alone, since her parents passed away when she was little. When the older sister was flying, Mona would spend weeks on end by herself in the apartment, something ordinary Chinese girls would not do then. But, everything about her was special: the inside knowledge of the air hostess profession (a glamorous profession for young Asian college women who were pretty, tall to do for a few years, earn a lot of money, a ticket to see the world, or to seduce a rich husband and retire in her mid-30’s in prosperity. Not a bad life for a society with so few options for college-educated women, a little play mixed in with a little work), the passion for art history (an odd subject to study in a practical world), the elusive quality of her sexuality, and her perfect aloneness.

The two sisters had moved around a lot in Taipei. In my junior year, they moved to an apartment complex two blocks from me. I heard that her older sister just retired from Cathay Pacific, and this was the place she bought for her and her future husband - not the international rich dude she met on the plane, but the local boy she grew up with in southern Taiwan. When I visited Mona in her new place, her older sister was in the back room practicing typing, preparing for a career change to secretarial work.  I was hoping to get closer to Mona, now that she lived in my neighborhood. But she never allowed that to happen, still a big wall between us. I wondered if she was seeing somebody else, perhaps a ghost boy from the south, from her past, when no one else was around.

In my senior year, I was dating an American graduate student studying Taiwan in my college. Society gradually opened up after the Vietnam War. First waves of the American visitors were the vacationing G.I.'s, but they were mainly interested in the Taiwanese prostitutes in the capital city. Then came the American students and scholars, and they ventured further into local communities, universities and Taiwan countryside.  It was an exciting time to be modern women, partying with different people from all over the world, experimenting with each other’s cultures. We were avant-guarde, doing things forbidden to us by our ancestors. We were carefree and loose, lost children of the lost empire.

I was pretty much over Mona by then. I even introduced her to a friend of my boyfriend, another expat American boy. To my surprise, she agreed to go out with him. I felt a tinge of regret. What could I do? I could only secretly follow up on their affair. This was what I heard: She drove him crazy, emotionally and physically, then she dumped him a year later. She was a major hangover for him, much like the way she had put a spell on me.

Three months after graduation from college, I landed my first job as stenographer for a German chemical firm in Taipei. Mona was one of a handful Taiwanese girls from thousands of contestants chosen to become the next generation of Cathay Pacific air stewardesses. Her passion for art history must wait, I supposed. Before she departed for her new destination in Hong Kong, I went to bid her farewell. She had plastic surgery done on her eye lids, which were no longer slanted in a mysterious Oriental closed way; her eyes now a double-folded emptiness staring out to the open.


She was a perfect girl from my dream, the high goddess I had wished to pray and inhabit, whom I wonder till now how she is, in her beautiful, tortured, slanted China eyes.