Harry Ugly with His Millions

 - To Buddhism -

Harry walked out of his agent’s building onto the street, smiling secretly as he felt the check in his pocket – eighty five thousand dollars. He was almost resentful of having to pay his agent Sam the fifteen percent commission of fifteen thousand dollars. But he let the thought pass, as he realized that his newest play after a long draught was a tough sell. People had forgotten how good he once was, and Sam had to work extra hard to find a buyer for his production this time.

Eighty five thousand dollars was still a sizable haul for a dried-up artist, for a piece of work that he knew in his heart was nothing but a hack job. He lost his flames long ago after a string of blockbuster successes. He made millions but lost his soul, the soul that had sustained him through all those lean years as a struggling playwright trying to make it onto the big stage. For that reason, he held on tight to the check in his pocket, ashamed and yet happy. Who knows? This could be his last paycheck, he thought. Spreading this money over the next ten years would still afford him the luxuries he had grown used to over the years.

He paused by the window of an upscale jewelry store. I could buy that pearl necklace for my wife, or for my girlfriend! In fact, I could buy the whole window, or even the store! Suddenly the pearl necklace lost its luster, seemed worthless. He saw in the glass his round and sagging face, his balding head, his sloping shoulders, his pudgy figure, his wrinkled pants, and his sad eyes. After all the successes, he thought, you still look like a failure. He moved on without looking back.

A few steps down, a good-looking woman smiled at him as he passed, “You wouldn’t be Harry See?”
“No.” He kept going, did not turn, fearing that she might stop him and begin the conversation that would be unbearable for him by now.

What would he reply to these people, who after all, at least some of them, might be his fans? “This new play is the smartest, funniest play I have ever written…” “Don’t you dare to steal from me, my money or my ideas…”

The fame and millions had taken a toll on him. The freedom to have every wish fulfilled by the millions thrown at him was not freedom at all. For a while, he tried to sneak into a movie theater in the neighborhood only after the movie had already begun to avoid public attention. That was a huge sacrifice, considering how much he would have enjoyed watching a good movie on the big screen among his fellow movie buffs. Now he could afford to buy the whole movie house all to himself; but what fun was that to watch a movie in loneliness? So he stopped going to the movie theater altogether.

Still, the temptation of fame was too alluring to resist. He remembered scouring obsessively the magazine racks in the corner newsstand for any news and pictures about him or his plays; wondering at all the airplane terminals, train stations, kitchen tables, and dental offices where people would be staring at his face on the magazine covers. He thought of growing his hair long, wearing a beard, putting on a rumpled pair of corduroy jeans to fit his artistic image, or maybe having plastic surgery to look younger to the public. But then, he thought, they won’t recognize me. Anyway, he was hooked, hooked to the trappings of public eyes.

Occasionally in his morose honesty, Harry remembered those years when he was young but not famous, sitting beside his lovely ex-girlfriend’s naked body, his notebooks spreading on the bed they shared in a summer cottage as he frantically constructed play after play about this beautiful woman of his desire. So fresh, so pure, and so rich.

Do I have anything that I really treasured that just sort of vanished? I used to have her, but now she’s gone somewhere. Where did she go, I wonder?

Now that Harry’s plays succeeded, it was almost inconceivable to make a real connection with any women he knew.

He had married his wife for quite a long time. Admittedly she was a loyal wife, suffering through his long years of struggles and depression, and now thoroughly enjoying the fruit of her investment in a theatrical genius. Yet he wished he had never married her! It was no joy to come home to the old wife who had simply grown fatter, sloppier and greedier over the years.

He had tried to seek pleasures elsewhere. Why not? He had a lot of money to burn, and boredom to kill. So he went around buying girls who would jolt his senses. At high prices, they provided him temporary releases and companionship, and they whetted his appetite for ever more exotic sexual games in the name of stimulating his senses. It worked for a while; then all the sensations became dull and even unpleasant. He tried to remember the pretty faces of the girls who had entertained him, and in each he saw nothing but calculation and look of starstruck emptiness. The whole thing was exhausting him, and he had hardly written a single note from those episodes.

In the hollow part of his heart, he questioned: Is it possible to write another play with the passion and fire that I had when I was young? And the answer was always: Thankfully I don’t have to. I have already made my millions…

As he headed downtown, he passed by the Peking Duck restaurant, an inelegant place where he had dined with Sam years ago. It would probably be empty at this hour. (No one would recognize me.) He pushed opened the red front door and saw that the bar was empty and there were two customers sitting in the restaurant part. So he took a stool at the bar. The bartender took his order without showing a sign of recognizing him.

After downing the second drink of Scotch into his empty stomach, he stood up, propped his head up, staring into the mirror behind the bar, hanging his trunk over by the neck: Harry Ugly, but a millionaire with plays running in three continents. Isn’t anybody noticing?

The Chinese bartender came over, “Excuse me. Are you okay?”
“I am Harry See.”
“I know. I recognized you. On Good Morning America, right?”
“Right.”
The bartender looked past Harry’s shoulder nodding wildly at someone behind him; then turned to Harry, “The boss invited you to have a drink on the house!”

Harry looked around and saw a Chinaman sitting behind the cash register, bowing to him lavishly. Harry smiled, and nodded back with some aristocratic satisfaction. (How refined these people are! How they love their artists! This is a great country!) He then quickly finished the drink in his hand, and ordered another Scotch.

“Excuse me,” a small round man sitting down next to him on the stool, “Are you Harry?”
“Yes,” the alcohol made him reply.
“Do you remember me? Ben Johnson.”
He must have met this fellow somewhere, sometime. “I am sorry, Ben. I can’t recall where I knew you?”
“I was your college classmate in English department.”
Harry had shut off all his college connections. But the name sounded familiar. “I have a terrible memory. I remember your name, though.”
“Come on, we were best friends for four years.”
“I believe you. I mean, I just can’t place you at this moment.”
Ben seemed a bit more at ease, “Well, you don’t look much different, except for the beard and hair. I could tell it was you in a minute.”
“What do you do?” still feeling guilty of forgetting, Harry was prepared to listen to a tale of successes.
“I run my own import-export clothing business with the Taiwanese.”
“That’s great,” Harry felt a relief. At least he was not a total failure, which could be awkward for him. “I’m glad that you’ve done well.”
“What do you do?” Ben asked.
 “I’m a writer.” He could see the pity in Ben’s eyes.
“What kind of writing do you do?” Harry’s resentment was palpable. If only I could shake off this weasel from my back, he thought.
“I write plays.”
“Really?” He still kept the pity in his eyes.
“I wrote Good Bye Plum Blossom Pavilion.”
Ben’s jaws dropped, and his skin turned red.
“And Shanghai Moon.”
The two smash hits that cracked open Ben’s face like thunderbolt. “Are you…Harry See?” he whispers.
“Yes.” Harry felt an instant gratification at seeing this poor man’s pity look turning into awe. It gave him a perverse pleasure to smother a weasel.
“I…I’ve enjoyed your shows…”

Harry stood up, closed up his coat jacket, and quickly exited the front door into the street.

A Tribute from a Fan

JinLung liked to take a stroll in Chinatown during his lunch break from his workshop in SoHo, a habit he had formed over the past year.  It wasn't that he had a particular thing to buy or place to see in Chinatown.  It was about the air, the smell, and the looks of the Chinese faces on the street, earthy, timeless, and familiar to him.

He had lived in New York City for over two decades.  He liked the city, although he still felt a little foreign here.  It was bigger and filthier than any other city he had lived before.  But it is also a unique city in the States in the sense that it is interesting and intense; a city on edge, a city that never sleeps, a city of men on foot (not in cars), a city with a big heart, a city so secure in its marginality, a city of global villages, a city so rich in its people.  To outside tourists, the New Yorkers seem to be into the world of their own, ignoring the rest of the world.  JinLung saw them differently, more or less real people living real lives, minding their own businesses, crossing each other because they had to, and occasionally losing tempers, just like the Chinese he had grown up with.  Unromantic perhaps, but real – life can be unromantic, but rich.  Where else can you observe lives more vividly than in New York? 

JinLung’s mind wandered to other metropolises’ Chinatowns he had been to.  New York Chinatown was definitely older and more content with itself: San Francisco Chinatown was fastidiously neat, new, and sterile; Paris Chinatown was barely there; Los Angeles Chinatown was too spread out, like Los Angeles.  How interesting!   Chinatowns everywhere took on the persona of the towns they inhabited.  As such, JinLung rather liked the New York Chinatown, because it reminded him the most of the cities in China – unpretentious, noisy, filthy, chaotic, colorful, warm and happy.  Just like the Chinese people in them. 

He would be lying if he weren’t hungry for the street foods while there, or he’d never been tempted by the useless junk.  Old storybooks and not-so-old antiques were among his favorites.

One afternoon in early August, during one of his treasure hunts, he spotted a faded tin plate in the back of a small junk shop near the community park.  He knew immediately what it was: a 1950s’ promotional material for household appliances.  It was a stylish thing to do then, a bit quaint now, but still charming: You put images of pretty women, movie stars, singers, models on the ugliest array of clanking pots and pans, bathtubs, or batteries to entice buyers.  They still do that today, beautiful women selling irrelevant things, cars, computers, cigarettes, except they do it more artfully now.  The plate women were from the earlier days, when the faces could be so lovely and goods so cheap (oh, what a contrast.)  It was this unusual looking woman on this ordinary looking plate that caught JinLung’s eyes: Did I know her from somewhere?  She wore a high-up chicken-nest hairdo, with paint chipped off at the hair’s edges.  Phoenix wide eyes plastered with massive black makeup, smiling ever slightly as if she knew all life’s secrets.  She stood upright in a low-cut chiffon dress showing a slim white neck.  She looked serene, mature, warm but not too flirtatious.  Isn’t she the woman of my dreams when I was a teenager, JinLung thought.  HongNan was her name.

JinLung was unsure, so he approached the shopkeeper.  “Who is this woman?  Do you know her?”

“Nobody special.  She’s been around the shop for quite some time.”  The old man answered impatiently, like a typical bored shop owner.  “You want it?  I give you for $10.”

$10 for a dream, not a bad bargain, he thought.  So he bought the plate, hoping that he was right about the woman.  HongNan - born 1932; dead 1966 from suicide; she was the biggest movie star in the 60s from Hong Kong.  She had played a lot of beauties in Chinese fairy-tale movies.  

She was all woman - grownup, mysterious, seductive, knowingly sophisticated: she wore womanhood in her sleeves like perfume, like yellow silk.  In his teens, JinLung was never impressed by the young stars of his age – they were girly, grisly, silly.  In HongNan, he discovered the high womanhood, her sultry glances and understanding smiles.  The day she died, he felt a part of him died with her.  She was real to him, adored by most as star, but worshipped by him as goddess, his very beloved lady.

It had been more than thirty years since she passed away.

That night, it was full moon.  In his tiny apartment, JinLung dozed off on the couch.  The wind was blowing cold outside.  He had the window wide open.

Past midnight, he heard someone knocking on the door, once, twice, faintly.  He got up to answer the door.  It was a petite woman standing outside.  She had lovely big eyes, and bobbed hair.  She was dressed in knee-length silk qipao, a high-neck tight-fitting Chinese costume that you don’t see many modern Chinese women wearing these days.  "Can I come in, JinLung?"  She asked in Cantonese, a southern Chinese dialect.  He hesitated for a moment, then let her in.

“You probably don’t remember who I am?”  She walked in the apartment, looking around.

"Sorry, I don’t.”

“I’m HongNan.  You bought a picture of me this afternoon.”  She turned toward him.

He couldn’t believe what he heard.  Yet, he recognized those phoenix-like wide eyes.

“Oh yes.  It was really you.  That’s incredible.” 

“Yes, it’s been a long time sitting in that musty shop.”  She sighed.

“You were a sensational actress.”  He didn’t know what else to say.  This was all a bit strange...can I be dreaming?  He thought.

“Thank you.  But fans are forgetting me,” she sighed again.  “It was my fault.  I shouldn't have left them so soon.  I was headstrong and selfish.  I want to make up…”

“How?”  How many die-hard fans like him were still around thirty years later?

“I came because I knew you still care, when you bought my picture.” 

“But why did you commit suicide in the first place?  It is still a huge mystery.”  He mustered his courage to ask.

“I’ll tell you some other time.”  She replied.  “I must go now."

"No, no.  Please stay a little longer," he pleaded.

"Would you like me to come back?”  She winked at him in her beautiful eyes.

“Yes, please do.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll be here at 5 o’clock.”

"Sure.”

HongNan exited, vanished into the nightly air, leaving JinLung dazed, disbelieving all what had happened.  "Is this my longing or my loneliness?  I need to think."  But he was too tired to think, and soon fell asleep.  In his deepest dream, he was again the young boy of sixteen, extremely shy and sensitive; and HongNan was the far-away superstar, alive, untouchable, and picture-perfect.  In those days, he would be content just staring at her pictures, drawing her slender figure, and imagining meeting her in person.  His infatuation was only revealed to Harry, another boy in his school.  The two lads would talk all day about their favorite subject, the older movie-star leading ladies with experience, intelligence, and a lust for younger men, and the willingness to let go.  He still kept in contact with Harry who now worked in the West Coast as a game software engineer.  They were both single.

In the morning, JinLung went to the office, a small company that specialized in website design.  He did a few layouts for a website he was working on.  He left work at 4:30.  On his way back to his apartment, he picked up a tin of jasmine tea, and a small fruitcake from the nearby Chinese bakery.  When he got home, HongNan was already waiting in his room.  He did not know how she got in, and didn’t want to ask.  She had a different qipao on, knee-length in indigo blue this time.

“How are you?  So glad to see you here,” he greeted her.  “I thought I had lost you.”

They talked late into the night.  HongNan told JinLung about her growing up in the fishing village of New Territory in Hong Kong; and how she was poor and the oldest of six brothers and sisters; and how she started acting in the Cantonese theater to support her family.  She told him how she was discovered during a street performance by a movie scout, and catapulted to superstardom after the release of “The Beauty of the Mountains and Rivers” in 1957, an opera featuring the southern Chinese “yellow-plum” style of folk singing; and how she had met her husband Chen Cheng during the filming of “the Dancing Millionaire”, the movie was a flop but she fell in love with her co-star.

JinLung told her about his two older brothers, both single like him, quiet, reserved and well-mannered; and of his mother who had had a hard life living through the Japanese occupation, losing her husband at a young age, and was devoted to the rearing of her three sons; and of his happy, normal childhood reading comics, watching movies, drawing cartoons and creatures, and imagining to be an artist someday; and of being painfully shy about girls, and craving for them like a lonely minstrel in search of fairies who would never love him.  He didn’t dare to tell her how crazy he was about her.

After they finished their tea and their stories, she said, “You are a sweet man.  A lot of men can be rather cruel.  You don’t seem to have a rough bone in you.  Have you ever had an affair?”

“Oh, no.  I am too shy with women.  But I would like to serve a lady someday. I just don’t see how men can be rough with the women they love.”

Then she turned toward him, stood up, balanced herself, and kissed him lightly on the cheek.  “Take care of yourself.  I’ll be back again.”  He tried to pull her closer, but she quickly slipped away, disappearing out the door. 

After she left, he poured himself another cup of tea, feeling the energy drained off him, loneliness seeping in.

She didn’t show up for a couple of days.  Then one evening, she appeared again at the apartment, this time with a paper bag of stuff.  She was radiant and elegant in another gorgeous qipao.  And, he knew he wasn’t dreaming because the hair on his neck did not stand up on seeing her. 

“I’m back, and I brought you a present.”  She was flushed with excitement.

She sat down by the table and took out a large headdress from the bag.  It was very fancy, water-crystals of peonies and rose petals fanning out to long, frilly strips of tiny pearls.  “This is what I used to wear for my movie role in ‘The Beauty of the Mountains and Rivers’.  Do you remember the story?  It was about the charming emperor stealing the heart of a poor country girl on his day out about town in plain clothes.  When she later learned of his true identity, she decorated herself to the hilt waiting for him to pick her up as bride.  But he never came.  In the end, she killed herself in shame, heartbroken, and pregnant with his child.”

“It must be very heavy, this headdress,” he was curious.

“Not really.  But it was complicated to put it on.  It used to take the makeup artist two whole hours to put up my hair and fasten the headdress.”

“You’d look splendid in that.”

“Last time I was here, I saw the Hong Kong movie catalogue book on your coffee table.  It showed me in this very headdress.  So I thought you would enjoy seeing this.”  Oh, yes, it was the book “The Movie History of Hong Kong, Hollywood of the East, 1920-1970”.

He lifted the headdress.  It was deceptively light.  Then, all of a sudden, he felt dizzy, engulfed by the glitters for one split second, as if beaming him back to her movie days.  In his mind’s eyes, he could almost see the grand movie studio and hear her singing the opera.

Whoa, this was spooky.  He put down the headdress, and came back to himself as quickly as he had left.

“How did you like it?” She asked mischievously, “You know, if you hold it long enough, it would take you back in time.”

“I see.”

“Do you like to keep this headdress?”  She was serious.

He looked at her, forever so lovely, not a day older, sitting right next to him.  He felt the urge to be young again, to live forever.  He wanted to attend to his goddess like a devout servant; to make sure that no one comes to her harm, and that she would never be forgotten; to share in her joy and sorrow; to please her and enjoy her beauty in eternity.

But he let the thought pass, “I can’t.  I don’t think I should.”  She seemed disappointed.

“However, I would like to have one of your qipaos, with the smell of your perfume.”  He uttered, barely audible, his boldest request.

She heard it, and her eyes lit up like a happy child, “That would be a deal.  You shall have it the next time,” as she cheerfully put the headdress back into the bag.

That night, she told him about her husband, Chen Cheng: How he used her and lied to her.  She was his pawn for bigger roles and larger payments in the movie world, yet he made her emotionally deprived, isolated from her loyal fans.  He was not a nice man, demanding, manipulative, controlling and seductive.  Freshly escaped from the hardships of her earlier life, she was looking for the safe harbor of love.  Alas, her choice was a deadly one, and the refuge was but a mirage - She gave pleasures to millions, but she was in pain alone by herself.  Maybe in death, she would be beyond his reach.  May be in death, she would be free.

JinLung showed her his latest artwork.  One of them was a sketch of her, from his memory of their last meeting (She appeared as a muse lost in thoughts.  The drawing was spare, sharp, and full of feelings.)

“This is lovely.”  She marveled.

“Would you accept this as a token of my thanks, for your coming by?”

She picked up the drawing and kissed him on the cheek, “Yes, I would.”  He felt her warm breath, and nothing else mattered.

That night and many nights afterwards, she kept him company.  She always came on Tuesday nights.  At first, he was as nervous as a young lad carrying a flower to his lover on the other side of the schoolyard, his hands shaking and feet unsteady.  Yet he was polite and thoughtful, always attentive to his lady's smallest wants.  His flair for aesthetics and art charmed his lady.  She brought him her old qiapo and other souvenirs, posed for his drawings, and told him stories about the stars back then - their intrigues, their comings and goings, their successes and failures, some amusing, some moving, and some quite tragic.  She knew he was fascinated with movie stars of yester years.  They gossiped about the changes in popular taste for movies and stars: Half a century ago, tall, grown women ruled the silver screens; today, unimaginably young vixens strutted their stuff on screen.

The more he learned of her, the more he liked her, her vitality and gentle kindness, and the more he was convinced of her presence (not just his wishful thinking.)

He had taken to sleeping with her qipao, and sniffing the faint, intoxicating scent, with the pleasure of a groom anticipating his bride.  “My beautiful flower, I feel your body upon me.  How can I be closer?” “I miss your soul, my long-ago love.  I don’t want to lose you again.”  While his heart was on fire, his footsteps became lighter than whimpers, afraid to scare her away.

Once, the conversations turned dark.

"How was it, dead at thirty?"  He asked her.  Her face sank.

"Death was agony.  Here I was, instantly a numb statistic.  When I first got there, I was overwhelmed with self-pity.  I expected to find sympathy, but I found none.  All I saw was thousands of others whose bodies were mangled and decayed.  They paid no attention to me - they were swept away by their own grief.  I was given a tag which read 'Suicide Victim' ". 

The day I died was an ordinary day.  It didn't matter how I took my life – The point is that I went too fast, and I took too big a chance.  All I thought was that I would be free from Chen Cheng.  The last thing I remembered I did was taking barbiturates and alcohol.  I felt a wrenching jolt inside my gut, and I heard myself screaming pain.

When I woke up, it was very quiet.  A police officer and a doctor were standing over me.  I was cold, and I couldn't feel anything.  Oh no, don't pull that sheet over my head.  I cannot be dead yet, I am only 30.  I have a show opening to go to, and I am supposed to have a baby someday.  I haven't lived yet.  I haven't loved yet.  How can I be dead?

Later I was placed in a coffin.  My parents came to identify me.  Why did they have to see me like this?  Why did I have to witness my old mommy facing my senseless death?  My poor dad, he turned to the coroner and said, 'Yes, she is our daughter.'

The funeral was the strangest experience.  I saw all my relatives and friends, and long lines of fans walking up to the casket.  They looked at me with the saddest eyes I had never seen before.  Did I mean that much to them?  I could hardly believe it.  Some fans touched the glass over my casket and sobbed as they walked by.

Oh please, wake me up!  I don't want to die!  Don't bury me.  Get me out of here.  I have a lot of living to do, people to love, movies to make, and fans to please.  I can't bear to see everyone in such pain.  No one can believe this, neither can I.

Please don't put me in the hole in the ground yet.  I promise you, Lord, if you give me one more chance, I will be the nicest person on earth.  All I want is one more chance.  Please, Lord, I am only 30."  Her voice was broken.  She was pleading to emptiness, all over again.

"You didn’t want to die after all."  He felt relieved.  "So I’m your one more chance to do it right - me, your loyal fan." 

She nodded, slightly embarrassed.

He screamed silently inside his heart, "But I don’t want to be your redemption.  I want to be your servant, to please you, to serve you.  I'm the most miserable man ever lived, for I'm in love."

On the 15^th day of the Eighth moon every year, Chinese all over the world would celebrate the end of summer with the Mid-autumn Moon Festival.  Farmers would take a break from their labor, drinking tea and snacking on moon cakes.  Poets would toast the words to the moon lady and drink themselves silly.  For centuries, Chinese told the story about the moon lady and her rabbit, working hard at pounding out a celestial concoction to bring them back to earth, to her proud, earthly husband.  If you should look closely at the moon on the magic date of lunar August 15^th, you may just catch the sight of the two shadows, the moon lady and her rabbit.

It was a special day for JinLung, because HongNan had been visiting him for one full year today.  He wanted to memorialize this special occasion.  So he came home with a box of the finest moon cakes, the kind with a yellow-yolk (a heart) in the middle surrounded by lotus-seed filling (the sweetest flesh).

She showed up at the appointed time in a black-lace floral qipao, with golden trim, ankle length, tight over her curves and slender waist, her stiletto feet strutting through the high side slits, a folded fan in one hand, and a small beaded purse under one arm. 

“You are stunning.”  He was breathless.  She smiled back in appreciation.

It was a night of brilliant stars and mother moon, tiny stories and feather-like laughs.  Finally he murmured something, “Would you share a fantasy with me - that I would be your unknown young escort who loves you simply?”

“Fantasy?”  She raised her eyebrows, her beautiful eyes radiating anticipation.

“Uh, maybe more than a little fantasy.”  He said sheepishly.

“This makes me very happy." She was gracious.

Then she came before him, leaning over, and began to kiss him earnestly.  "You are the sweetest thing I’ve ever known,” she whispered.  Her lovely mouth, red and luscious and dainty, starting to grow wider and wider to lick and touch his; her tongue, a lover’s tongue, soft and wet, insistent and clinging, sticking deeper and deeper inside his mouth to search for his.  He fell unconscious to the spell of her great tongue.  He felt himself eaten up by her, swept away by her huge seas of love, into another world.  When he drifted back to consciousness, he opened his eyes and gasped at the power of her enormous mouth, now seemed normal and in human size again.  He was speechless. 

This must be a dream that he’d found this woman, a ghost that had all the silky deliciousness of the fairest earthly ladies.  Yet her kisses were so passionate, so ferocious, and so enormous.  He was exhausted, taken with her sweet invasion, left with a sense of bliss and satisfaction.

Later, she laid down on the bed next to him, “Good night, my dear.  I love you.”  “I love you too,” he said softly.  In the dark, he savored the incredibly peaceful feeling, yet he would be hungry for more when he woke, he thought. 

In the days that followed, his head was flooded with the images of her magical mouth, her great tongue, and her beautiful face.

She showed up a few days later, looking a bit distraught.  Meanwhile, he pleaded for his lover’s kisses and great tongue, like a hopeless addict agitating for more drug.  Without complaint, she gave him the hot flush of her blooming tongue, and that was enough to shoot him to heaven, and soothe his soul.  After he regained himself, he held her hands, “What’s the matter, my dear, you are sad.”

“I’ve cheated death for far too long, to hold on to you.  It’s time for me to go.”  She said.

“You can't leave me.  I need you.” 

“I can’t fight my destiny.  I can’t escape death forever.”

“Then perhaps I should come with you.”

“You won’t like it there, down in the underworld.  How about your mother and your brothers?”

“I’ve already said my thanks to them.  I can’t go back now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Death would be better than a life of loneliness.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

"Very well, I'll think about it."

Day by day, she came to visit him.  Day by day, she revealed her secrets of surviving the underworld, and the beauty of a different sort.  It wasn’t all death, silence and dread down there.  People went about forming their own families, building their circles of friends the way they would have hoped for when they were alive.  It was the second chance for most of them, to right the wrong, to be free from stereotypes, to get out and try something new.  So, most of them gave their best, got what they wanted, except for the few who had unfinished business on earth.

Before she left, she would always make sure to kiss him with her enchanted mouth.  It seemed that she was eating him a little bit at a time, like a piece of delicious desert.

On a moonless night one month later, he was waiting for her.  He had prepared himself as best as he could, giving his family and charities whatever possessions he owned, writing down instructions for disposing the remainder.

HongNan appeared as promised, delicately adorned in a long white floating qipao.  Tonight, her otherworldly loveliness was almost cathartic.  She smiled at him.  He was fixed on her glorious, bountiful mouth that he had returned to again and again.  He was excited to see her, like a hungry dog begging to be fed, trembling, panting as she drew near him.  “My dear, you have come.”  He said, as if he were destined for her all his life.

"Yes, I have come, for you.  This is the time, our time.  Are you ready?"  She held his hands.  Her voice was as soft as a breeze through the mid-summer night. 

"Then let's do it."  He said.

As she smiled at him, her mouth started to grow and expand and widen.  When it reached beyond the edge of her face, in came out the great lover's tongue, red and moist and gleaming.  The long tongue extended and stretched until it reached the floor, and then, it gently lifted him off the ground.  What happened next was too fast for him to recount.  He had only time to savor the last glance of her phoenix wide eyes, glowing enormously in the dark, before he was swept into her mouth and swallowed.  He died quickly and quietly, without a trace of pain.

In the following night, the sky in New York was lit so bright that it was like twin-moon rising.

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.