Shanghai Vixen

Visiting here again, it is distant, blurry view of a lost era, of lost innocence.  March, the glory days, and then everything ended.

What is the term, linchpin? The small thing that holds a world together. I lost my Silver Lining, and everything crumbled. I start to climb back up, and there is another landslide. I have been doing better, despite the latest deluge, but then I come on here, and do not recognize or remember who that person before was.

I came on to tell of recent hopes and feelings, only to realize how much is lost.

I am older now, and humbler. I hope to get it back, but it is a moon landing, if not further. I have overcome worse, but this year has gutted me.

3.17

I somnambulate through the daytime. A morning of fussy emails, the iron worm over to Pudding, up through the wasteland that is the IFC.

In a place where in an incessant surge, my own peace is itself an insult. But the empty fortress that is IFC is no comfort.

Lunch of champagne and poshy food, soured by the table of Shanghainese and Taiwanese girly gals swapping utterly unfounded diet advice. I have lost a lot of weight recently, but am still fat so the girly girls won’t listen to me. Two words: exercise, calories. Obsession is not a nice plan.

Tomorrow is the big day. Well, another The Big Day. Two within five days. Little wonder I wax sleepy over the girly chatter and bubbly. Platypus will probably come, bless him, there for both big days.

He slouched in late Sunday, and I thought I had flopped until more talks taught that I did well for not going on and on about myself. Nice walk, nice lunch, times with our loose group of losers after.

At points, Platypus’ hand sneaks onto mine. It could be accidental, until it stays. Again.

I do nothing, just tolerate, wait, and start to hope. Despite myself, I like him. It is simple. Like. El me gusta. 我喜欢他. The moments I love language, with its possibilities of precision.

Then comes night, with its messy cast of other crushes and hmms, tables and subways full of hot Chinese men making the dweeby American pale so roundly. The moments I hate language, when its promised precision proves impossible.

5 March 2011

The Silver Lining has plopped his absurdly furry self on the floor by my bed, where I sit writing; on his face is an expression of intense contemplation. It bears equal parts adoration and disdain, as he surveys me, his goddess and slave. In a moment he will leap awkwardly up, he is a cat as uncoordinated as is his goddess-slave, to colonize my lap. After patting my face with a paw, and thrusting his wet little nose a millimeter from my eyeball to sniffingly assess my current health, I will scratch his head so hard that his eyes roll back and his tongue waggles out in bliss.

We have our differences and spats, but overall we know each other well, our sweet spots and patterns and peeves. 

It is a Saturday night, I am home, and I am tired. I yesterday came off a longish spell of not drinking, and even that gentle knell of inebriation wiped me out; today I embrace the mellow. Dinner with novel, gym, coffee, gallery opening near my home; catch up with a favorite Chinese gay, and with the cool-as-cats Korean-American girl he introduced me to two weeks ago. Sharp in smarts and sensibilities, she immediately struck me as one of “my people”, and we continue to riff with an improvisational elegance. A fast friend.

Not all of “my people” are so immediately evident. That was the case with The Platypus.

At any given time, there are a lot of noobs running around. Kids who may or may not speak any Mandarin but who have great aspirations to become a famous writer in Shanghai. Most have no clue what a long, hard road it is, that it took more than one man to make me Shanghai Vixen – so to speak. They all, and especially the language nerd subset, start out with crushes not on me but on “[Shanghai Vixen]” – the public character loosely based on me. I try not to take it personally.

I try to be nice, but invariably have more people buzzing about like flattery mosquitoes wanting my attention and friendship than I have time to indulge. I know that sounds snobby, and I regret that; just I am shy and private and jealous of my time, and am already socially overextended. My heaven was last weekend; I wasn’t drinking, I biked to an RAS talk, met up with Brilly, we biked – me on 申天, her on 阿Q  - to dinner then to several art events, followed by a quiet coffee where we did our respective work, then window shopping, then to Cloudy’s birthday party. The rare people one can just be with.

Platypus was long here and around. I never remembered his name, and I mixed him up with several others. He was to me “What’s his face who has a crush on me”. Platypus is good friends with a few of my secondary friends, so he was here and he was around. One night we finally swapped cards, so I learned his name and he got my email – and the bombardment began, weird and wacky. That same night, I joined for dinner with him and a mutual friend, and then subwayed to his flat, near to mine, for drinks. Our friends went out for supplies, leaving Platypus and I alone together at his place over the dregs of some semi-cheap wine.

I was recovering from the flu, tired, and out for the first time in weeks. Everything in his body language suggested that he was working up the courage to try to kiss me. I was bored enough to not mind, maybe, if he did. He didn’t, not before our friends returned.

Platypus is young. Less young than the fifteen he looks, “just” seven years younger than I. He is cute but not hot, and is odd and at times a bit “off”. He is smart and weird. He is Caucasian-Hispanic, but culturally more Asian; whatever a “coconut” plus “egg” comes out as. (“Coconut crème”?) His blurred ethno-cultural edges make him quickly fond and familiar. Mi gente. 我的民族.

Emails ensued, him bombarding and me ignoring. A few of them left me drop-jawed, what the what? Weirdo! But appreciatively so. An FCC event resulted in a gaggle of us, Brilly included, out for late-night hotpot. Walking there, Platypus cut me away from the group, getting too close; and at dinner he put his hand casually over mine, which I took my time in extricating.

That night we got into a long discussion of orthopedics; I have plantar issues, he has flat feet. That is when I mentally nicknamed him Platypus. A flat-footed oddball, perfect in his incongruities.

I invited him to a friend’s cocktail a few days later. Then, it got weird. Lots of messages in the lead-up, but at the thing he avoided me, rather frantically. Each time I joined a group he was part of, he extricated immediately.

By then. I had gone from indifference to annoyance to amusement to affection. I went from going “shoo!” to his flirtations to anticipating and missing them. And, as it goes, as soon as I started to reciprocate, he backed off.

Two weeks now since that night, and I haven’t seen him, just more emails. He has applied for and been offered a job I had almost ten years ago, nothing like it to remind of our different ages and stages. Superficialities, like fuck all I care.

He has also been offered a job in Malaysia. Of course, an impending departure could make for a good, safe fling – we could snog without the awkward social aftermath a la The Worm.

I do not, though, want a good, safe fling – as if such a thing existed.  I want a friend and lover who will be part of my 日常生活 even after/if we break up. And I want Platypus to stay. Having the Platypus in my life, he might be what I did not know I was missing. His hyper, bouncy his-ness, it has not been so long but I am growing used to having him around. I care for him, that is all, and all is that.

I want him to stay.  The thought of his leaving puts me in a state, itchy and unhappy, what can I do? I would not want him to stay for me, even if he would. I write in my diary, that Platypus is a “?” with a quiet dash of “!”. Aka ?(!). He is the last person I could have ever expected to care for, to fall for? (!) but there he is. And may not be for long.

I do not want to be the cougar, the clichéd predatory older woman. I just want a person to be my person, and that is hard enough to find, so damn the details.

____

My home phone rings, but I cannot catch it in time. 11pm, I worry, is my grandma alright?

Moments later, the mobile follows. It is Brilly. Last night, she on 阿Q was hit by a drunk driver of a Fiat, in her compound, and after knocking her over the driver and his girlfriend got out and started beating her up.

She had her dorky bike helmet on, and that protected her; and she had the wherewithal to scream loudly so the Bao’an came over.

The police were too lazy to take a breathalyzer. It was all a mess of a mishandling.

I so want to go out and kick some belated ass. I think about it, the people in the world that I truly could not live without, whose lives I would readily swap mine for: Brilly, Peaceful Dragon, Kaoru, Smackling, and Camus.

I tell Brilly about the time Ahmulin, Jifu and I got beaten up. This a lifetime ago, before I knew her. In many ways Brilly has replaced the vanished Ahmulin. Us birds, the lifetime ago that I first met Brilly and Bee. And a lifetime before that, with Jifu and Ahmulin. The best friend who moved away, physically and emotionally. The best friend who became a stranger; even Cloudy cannot offend.

Brilly says she’s alright, but I want to hug her. I want to take her to a martial arts gym and pound the crap out of a bag. I want to take the name and number of the jerk who beat her up and make him a new Li Gang. Make him hurt.

I admit to her my feelings about Platypus, who she has known longer than I. Platypus seems suddenly very incidental. Brilly tells of his newly ex-gf, describing her as insufferably insipid, and muses that Platypus is an expat man-whore a la Ah Ren. Perhaps, and perhaps; Brilly calls things too well, at times. 

Then, last week. Precisely. After a fashion event, horrific from the zombified old building to the violation of my ears by the bad 明星 pop performance, I proceeded to Yi’s music business event. It was not an oasis of rockers, more a morass and mess of more pop. Bleh.

I texted Unmilitary to ask if he was coming. No response. Who can blame him, after my outburst.

Yet, he showed, with his usual sausage party in tow. He had just shaved his head, and once the initial visual shock and amusement wore off, I was stunned: it extenuated his already ridiculous, indifferent hotness.

At least we said hi, and I ”You cut your hair!” grasp of the obvious, bitch, before avoiding each other apart from furtive glances across the room. I had skipped dinner, damn diet, and already ingested a small pond’s worth of champaigne at the fashion event, so that’s all I recall of the evening. I don’t want to know whether I made an ass of myself; I probably did, but probably still avoided Him.

Today, the opening of Fashion Week. Back in that saddle, ambivalently. Yi had a concert tonight, and I arrive guiltily late, missing Jifu’s band, my dears. I haven’t seen him in a while, beloved friend him, and them. Usual goofage with my favorite colleague and rocker, a delightfully and deliciously if dangerously flirty friendship with an engaged man. He is silly, and his outfit today rendered him classic unfuckable, which I do not hesitate to tell him.

I scan the crowd for Unmilitary, and do not see him, with some relief. Early today, at the opening presser of fashion week, I saw his ex, schmoozing aggressively in her slightly off-putting brassy way. I am prettier than her; she works it harder than me. He is vastly prettier than the both of us put together.

Hanging out with Happy Fish and other members of my – our – rocker family, I suddenly notice Him. (I hate my blog name for Him, such the easy pun, but it came easily back when he, unavailably, did too.) Oh. Oh! Where did he come from? Must have been our backstage room, or fading into the crowd. I glance towards him, he looks away; he glances towards me, I also avert.

We stand there, classics in poses, for an eternal moment.

I so remember, late last year, or early this: I was at that precise spot as tonight at the Cathouse where I work, looking out on the crowd, wondering if my future Mr. Me was out there in the crowd. Moments later, I brushed by Him, in the same place as tonight, swapping fond old “Heys” and “Heeeeeys” and “Nong na nengs”. And I had an “Oh!” An “Oh Maybe…WTF?!?” Yet I was running even before that.

Tonight. He quickly rushes into the backstage room, grabs his lent equipment, bustles off. He goes through the mosh pit so as to avoid brushing past me. I notice. As he goes, I think, There is no one who, at this precise moment, who matters to me as much as Him.

And we can’t even talk to each other. Ten years of friendship, and…this.

He sees me and flees.

I don’t know what it means to him, but I know now what it means to me. I have fought it for a year, and then some. Not only since that night, since the moment I learned he was single, available. And, feelings, long before that, that I squished because he was engaged, unavailable, and I’m not an asshole. And…everything else.

I am in love with Him.

It hit me, tonight, in crescending waves.

I have been, or have I?, for ages? Does it take acknowleging to make something true? Where does appreciation turn into admiration, admiration into affection, affection into love, and love into in love?

The way one drifts from the anonymity of billions to the periphery of the 万 to the acquaintance of thousands to the friendship of the hundreds to the intimacy of the tens to the precision of oneness. How many people in your life do you ever see as a one? Friends, family, the more significant lovers. Not always even positive, as bad breakups attest to. The people you truly see, you think about, you care about. How many ones do we get? Is it finite? Does my richness of close friends detract from my possibilities of love? Does my devotion to extended family detract from my prospects of creating the immediate family I am so desperate for?

I walked home, music seeping into my soul as only it and love ever does. I realized that, what ever else I buck up to or wimp out on, I need to call Him tomorrow. I need to apologize for calling him a flake then avoiding him, I need to explain why I am so afraid of dating another musician, another member of our family.

My fear is because: 1. This is my family, my most intimate community, the most of a home I have ever had. I don’t want to screw it up. (Yet I already have, with him.) 2. I like being me, not such-n-such’s girfriend, in our community. Much though it also annoys me to be the girded loins, the staff nun, I do appreciate being desexualized, one of the guys, in our music world. Hitting on someone within, let alone dating, screws with that. 3. Much though the rock scene is my foundation and home, I don’t want it to be my life. I like it at a healthy 25%, and I don’t want it to get back to 70-90% of my life. Which it was in my time with Jifu.

These are the real reasons, not the catty ones I cited to him before. (Okay, 1 & 2 implied.) It is my own fear, all of these things plus the blue collar guy, the non-English speaking guy, the etc bullshit. But I know him, and I know what bullshit it is.

Yet: This is why I have fled, and have burned the bridges behind me. Then I look back at him, through the smoke, and realize, I love him. Fuck it, damn it, I love you, my dear old friend, I love you.

Last night, after a busy day of work and workout, I made my way over to Yuyintang for the first time in, to my shame, months. Yuyintang is one of my favorite places in the world, but lately my energy and time for concerts has been occupied elsewhere. Playing were Puppet Mastaz, a chunky mix of the weird and the wonderful.

I arrived, parked up front to the side of the stage, and surveyed obsessively. I told myself it was to look for the friends I was meeting there, Queen Bee and Ginger Cat. Yeah, right. I was on the lookout for Unmilitary.

I was not sure if I hoped or feared that he would appear.

Unmilitary: rocker boy, old friend. Very cool, very hot. And very coupled – until last year. Thing is, much though I love him as a friend, and appreciate the aesthetics of his tall, hunky frame and cheekbones that could blind diamonds, we have in between us as mutual friends his ex long-term girlfriend, my ex-partner Jifu and my last big love Yaya. Not to mention dozens of friends without romantic baggage.

So, I have restrained – combined with the fear of rock’n’roll taking over my life again completely, and of my own standing within the rock scene being again demoted to “girlfriend”. Although Unmilitary’s ex, also a journalist, has always held her own, which speaks volumes of him on two levels: that he appreciates strong women, and that he is fine with his girl having her own repute even within his social and professional crowd.

I restrained, but in some moment of distraction I admitted to Yi that I had the hots for our favorite sound man. She approved. She goaded me. “If you don’t hit on him, I will!” she threatened.

Alright. Getting over Blondie, in midsummer I attended a music venue opening where he was on sound check duty. Not hard core working, but lurking to make sure all went well. We hung out for several hours, mostly in the tiny sound room; sipping beers, telling the stories behind our physical scars and respective breakups, and getting pretty damn touchy.

I could have kissed him then. Coulda shoulda woulda. But – the voice of reluctance, of dating another musician, of the many messy associations, kept sounding in my head. And as I contended with those, over and over again the moment of possibility passed as I paused, as he excused to deal with a faulty cord, a wonky wawa pedal. And we both got sucked in than spit out by the social whorl, before returning to the equipment-crowded little sound room where our knees and arms pressed cautiously, coquettishly together.

I determined, finally, that I would kiss him. But things were closing up, I couldn’t lurk without it seeming weird, and my whole scheme to leave with him and walk home together – we live nearby – collapsed as the venue closed and I could not find him. He was inside somewhere turning off speakers, and so I just texted him a fond good night.

The next day, I was wired, with anticipation and anxiety. It had been a wonderful night, a great flirt, and so fond. And then – nothing. I have supposed his ambivalence parallels mine.

Fuck it, I thought. I love him, but we won’t and probably shouldn’t be together.

We continued to encounter periodically, and the element of the awkward was there. At Jifu’s album release in August, we shared several long hard gazes across the crowds, eyes met and held. Yet, the conversation always freezes, and we flee.

Three weeks ago, Yi started to goad me again. I admitted my Blondie flirtation. She scoffed, as many have at that admission. “I still like [Unmilitary] for you.” And that – got me thinking about him again.

Two weeks ago. A concert by yet more of our mutual friends. I see him in the entrance, we shoulder thwap fondly, I precede him inside. He follows, we stand together for a bit, but conversation eludes – as it has since…that night.

Yet we again gaze at each other – appraisingly? fondly? sexily? – across the concert pit.

After, I see him heading out, ask if he’s going home – this all really started during one touchy taxi share with my favorite neighbor. No, out with friends. I have yet to see his new studio, he is now two blocks away from me instead of visible from my window, so I suggest I finally come see it. We have, I suspect, procrastinated that visit because of the UST. We schedule for the following night, Friday, at 7ish.

I head out to a midnight dinner with the band, some colleagues and some other friends at the back gate of Huashida. It is great fun, and like old times, but I am fading fast at the 1am hour, past my pumpkin-turning time. I smile and listen, mostly, enjoying the company and the amazing people I am lucky to have as friends. An hour in, Unmilitary’s ex-girlfriend pops in for a bit, says hi to us all, “Oh even [Vixen] is here!” slightly cattily. I feel stupendously awkward at seeing her, given the dirty thoughts I’d been entertaining all night about a man I resisted said dirty thoughts of for so long because ofher. She has an ugly, tank-built guy in tow, presumably a new boyfriend.

After they breeze out again, I ask my accompanying rocker legends who that was, does she have a boyfriend already? “Husband,” one answers. “No, fiancé.” He is a head security guard, they clarify. Wow, talk about a downgrade.

“So…” I ask what my bad influence Yi has been unable to ascertain, “Does [Unmilitary] have a new partner…?” They don’t know either. I try to make it sound like innocent gossip, but Seafresh drunkenly translates my meaning. “He’s a good guy. You know someone this long, you know what sort of person they are.” I distract with a round of beers and toasts at the decade plus we have all known each other.

The following day. Nervous, I doll up; cleaned and lotioned but minimal fussy, casual clothing. I head to the gym, texting Unmilitary to see if 7:30 is alright since I got a late start.

No answer.

“喂?” I text an hour later as I finish at the gym. At this point I am out and I hate noisy cellphone calls, and I have already texted so calling just seems sad.

No answer.

I wait an hour, getting increasingly hurt and annoyed.

“Never mind, it’s too late now and I have something soon,” I finally texted, pissily. That something being a crappy gallery opening that I didn’t even want to go to.

But it was better than stewing in my stood-up-ness.

It was lame, miserable; I spent five minutes there then two hours walking around Jing’an, processing. I had so psyched myself into doing something about my feelings for Unmilitary, only to be stood up, for whatever reason. It stung, I felt such a sense of loss – but also relief.

I saw him that night on MSM, but ignored him and signed out. The next day, I bucked up. “What happened last night?”

“Oh, it’s embarrassing, I fell asleep.” Yeah, we were both out late, but it was still really rude and inconsiderate. And he did not apologize.

I thought. At first, relieved, it was not a rejection, a sign of his ambivalence. Or? If he really wanted to see me, he would have gotten up, or at least texted or messaged as soon as he did.

I felt a different wave of relief. “Ah, you musicians are such flakes,” I started. “That is why I haven’t dated another one. Actually…I have always liked you, and when you guys broke up, I thought, ‘Oh crap – what should I do?’ but always talked myself out of it. It is too complicated. Until yesterday. I was determined to bring it up with you. And then. Now I feel like it is for the best. I will not bring this up again.”

No answer. I signed out, and have largely avoided MSM since.

My intent was to say that I won’t do anything more about it, but that the feelings are there. I do not know how he took it. I do not know whether or not he is still single. I do know that he has a spark of something towards me, but not whether it is enough to overcome the complicatedness of it all. Probably – not.

Unmilitary did not show last night, just several others of our group, dooming me to a late night, and Ginger Cat had a visiting friend to park on my sofa, which ensured an additional round of sleepy beers. Today, I had to work a lot, but was crampy and lethargic and lurked behind on everything.

After the gym, I scuttled, scruffy, to a preview screening of a friend’s music documentary. I arrived late, perched on a bar stool shoved into the only remaining space by the door; they put in an extra next to me. Ten minutes after me, who should roll in but Unmilitary. We see each other, register the *Awkward!* and also that the only remaining chair is next to me. We nod hello.

We are centimeters apart. I can feel his warmth, smell his skin. We do not touch. We face away. I fidget with a water bottle, he with his cellphone. I smile at him and try to connect when he comes onto the screen, an interview that I introduced, but – no response. After, he avoids me, and leaves quickly. He lingers outside while I talk to friends, but does not look at me. Then, he is gone. I do not follow him.

I am thinking about him now.

I met a hot boy tonight.

This is my first real week back on the fashion beat. I had been avoiding it for a while, oh, since I got my ass fired late last year. I have been to a few things here and there, but this is my first bout on assignment and hitting several. Re-hitting my stride. I am surprised to discover, after all this time away: one, how improbably good I am at being a fashion reporter, and two, how improbably many friends I have in that world.

Yesterday and today were Shangxia, the re-baptism by champaigne. Ah, sweet-bitter champaigne. I fled early. Today started with Harry Potter at Shanghai Tang, it’s own social reconnections. It was a rather half-hearted event, with a weird DJ interlude and running out of booze early. Harry Potter then coaxed me to continue to the Cartier party at Rock Bund, reluctantly. Partly because he knew I could get him and his friend in.

Harry Potter is one of my young gay Shanghainese boyfriends. He is an amusing mix of sweet and catty, insecure and cocky. He is great fun, and greatly exasperating. I love him like a little brother, enjoy bopping around together, and sometimes want to smack him for being such a self-attacking idiot – if only because I see that part of myself in him.

At Shanghai Tang, in the show was Last Year’s Model, the ridiculous but hot hookup that launched this blog. He looks good: has filled out in a good way, no longer so scrawny but rather more muscular, and has gotten rid of the silly Korean pop star hair for a butch buzz. The effect is mature, but not too mature. LYM works it, scanning crowd and cameras with a knowing half-smile – he probably has made out with half of the room, and enjoys our eyes and memories trained upon him. Good for him – he seems well, and I am glad.

So, at Cartier my dear fashion PR friend and I greet with a big hug, it has been a while, and introduces me around. All are various brand directors, important and interesting people. One of them talks in American English with an almost perfect accent, just that faint “hint of Asia” there. I guess him as Canadian-Cantonese, but with parents who don’t speak English and schooling back and forth. So my surprise when my friend starts talking to him in Wu. Oh! How can such English come from a Sangheining? And he marvels that such Wu can come from an Anglo-American.

We natter pleasantly; a lot of shop talk, but also the personal. For half an hour, and I excuse myself hopefully before boring him. Cute, interesting, age appropriate and straight, and seemed to find my quirky blather engaging. A hmm.

It probably will go nowhere, launch at best a professional friendship. But, I have the reward: that I went out reluctantly, and managed to meet a maybe.

Following our big bad un-breakup in Spring/Summer 2009, Worm and I have this year gradually drifted into detante and tentative friendship. I have resisted seeking him out, but when we encounter we have amiable chats sometimes followed by dinner.  “I see you’re still pissing off the white boyz,” he observes with a sly, approving half smile, which from him is a heaping dose of moral support. I’ll take it.

He is now, finally, off on the big trip that he has been pining over for years. I enjoy reading his dispatches, chuckle over how he travels halfway around the world just to…take goofy pictures with the cats there like he is always doing in Shanghai. Oh, Worm – I will always love you.

Worm while traveling is back to blogging, describing his pictures and emotions, and reminds me of what I fell for in him: his soul, his brain, his language, all so beautiful despite and because of his strangeness and remoteness. He writes of a couple he has met on his travels,

They rented this blanket because it gets a bit cold up there with the wind. Again, it makes me envious–but even as I wait or try to figure out how to make it happen in my life, I try to celebrate it through others. OK, having said that i am going to spit the sour grapes and rinse my mouth.

A few days before, on a similar note,

Here I am, at the top of Mt. Moses as they call it, Mt. Sinai, where Moses received the ten commandments. If, however, there was only one rule to live by, it would have to be this: love someone, and love them well. Love them with everything you’ve got. The rest really doesn’t matter. I’ve not done that yet. I hope to remedy this before I die–so that one day I can climb up the mountain in the dark for a strenuous, seemingly interminable two hours, to reach the top in time for the sunrise. Burke used to Sinai to viscerally delineate the difference between the sublime and the beautiful. I definitely see his point. But I would have loved to know what he might of thought of sharing a vision or view of the sublime–with someone that you love. How sweet it must be.

I had so wanted to be that to him, with him. I tried my hardest, even doing the most difficult thing of all – letting go, walking away, hoping he would follow. He didn’t. I blow a kiss to the universe, may Worm find what he is looking for, dear soul

Now I find myself wanting that again with another precise someone, the first time in that year since Worm. It is so hard to pry open the bruised clam of my own heart enough to let myself even want to love again, but the next step, of opening enough, risking enough to show that, to pursue, to pursuade the fellow bruised clam in my sights to do likewise – I am not there yet.

But I have something on Worm: I have loved someone, loved them well, and loved them with everything I’ve got. Twice, with Jifu and Bjoston, those someones loved me the same way. It didn’t last, but while I had it it was exquisite; and it still is exquisite. And then I think to Franzi and Yaya, who I also loved to similar absoluteness, just they loved me back in different ways – as a friend and sister in the former, as an idealization in the latter.

In the half year since Bjoston dive-bombed into my Shanghai life, I have been mulling how much that heartbreak changed me. Six years ago I risked everything, opened myself up entirely, no guard no safety no parachute – and it exploded in my face. Yes, I fell in love with Yaya a few years later, but I was so cautious with that, and with Worm I did not even let myself fall. I built up an armor, physical in a surrounding inch of flab, emotional in my hardened and cracked habit of total independence.

People who need people, Vixen. My friends, my community, my family biological and adopted, are my everything.  Accepting help and hugs is hard for this rock, but something I am learning again to do.

In his absence, I decided I was over Blondie, or at most I wanted to shag him and then avoid him. Hard, indifferent, independent Vixen. Now that he’s back, I am forced to laugh at myself – I can fool myself, but I do a crappy job of it.

Heart versus head, instinct versus logic, I have resisted the idea and actuality of Blondie: not my type, a bad idea, just another one of those guys. But my gut, from the time I first really saw him, was that there is a lot more to him than he superficially conveys. I have caught glimmers of it, and I continue to excavate him for the rare additional sparkles, a slow process as he evades personal questions.

Yesterday I discovered far more about him than I have any right to know – the equivalent of someone interested in me finding this blog, just his ends quite abruptly in the summer of 2007. The person I see there is such a different man than the one I care for but have never claimed to particularly know. That one: happy and open, whimsical, hard-working and ambitious, and devotedly and giddily in love. This one: a self-proclaimed immature slacker, adverse to the slightest entanglement but who tries to come off as a man-whore that flirts in a calculatedly uncomittal succession with every woman in the room, and presents himself as cynical and superficial. I have long since seen through Blondie’s image, I would not be drawn to him even for a fuck’n'run if I thought the facade was his all, but his blog and photo TMI that I feel quite inappropriate having plumbed have shown me so much more.

The best armor is the one that appears as its opposite, as openness. The social ADD allows personal privacy and image crafting; everytime I have asked him a follow-up question about himself – basic things like prior jobs, where he’s lived, where and what he studied, how was his trip - he changes the subject, notes that my drink needs a topper, or otherwise flees.  His traveling in The Pack also deflects substantative personal conversation. His way of flirting with everyone is a good way to ensure that no one gets to attached to him, as he plays up what a free-range chicken he is.

Yet somehow I got attached, and this feral cat sees through it. Pushing him on it, to get acquainted and actually be friends? Backfired, despite his demanding the same from me, projecting his facade and exoskeleton onto mine. I think the only thing I can do is to be soft and open and try to make him feel safe with me. If I open my clam to him – oh shit, that so comes out the wrong way…If I am just myself, shed my exoskeleton, so hard to do around a boy I like, perhaps he will feel comfortable enough with me to do likewise. I will take either kind of nakedness, but both are preferable – and the hardest.

What does it mean when a boy who you like, who flirts with you and who you like, wraps his arm around your waist, says hello, then flees? When he spends a long ramble elicidating to the mutual friend who introduced you that he is, despite his flirtiness, passive towards women: that he likes for us to make the moves, take the effort. As he explicates, he looks over her head, and down into my eyes.

Blondie, I have missed you. I wish you had stayed gone. Or do I?

There was the recent time, out at some trendy new bar with Blondie and his clique, that I discovered their chairs: able to spin but not as height adjustments. Dizzy friendly.

I twirl. I love the dizziness, the loss of equilibrium. It resembles how Blondie makes me feel, and how my whole life feels now. The physical I can embrace; the emotional so frightens me.

To spin versus to twirl. Physically identical, but their meaning so disparate. Which was I doing, either or both, that sardonic Sunday, along with lugging and panicking?

It takes a chair. To twirl. A chair and a certain level of inebriation. Then I spin. I used to, in yards and parks wherever I could, tempting brain damage more than half a bottle of gin.

Now I normally feel unable to spin. Too many breakables, at home. Too much risk of falling, or seen as crazy, in public. I want to have a garden, or a suitable chair, just…

So I can spin, spin, spin.

I also want a swing, so I can fly again. But flying and dizziness, are oh so different.

As I twirled, I further embarrassed my friends by, upon successive revolutions, reaching out to softly smack at Blondie. It was partly anger at some of the things he had just said. It was more, how when you lose your equilibrium is when you most want to connect with and simply touch someone, no matter its cost to said equilibrium.

This was less a Lost Weekend than a lost week, albeit for less sodden reasons. I finished up the translation that kicked my ass (yet saved it) on Monday morning. In time, barely. Two all-nighters in three days. I don’t think I am a very good translater, but through brutally hard work I am getting better.

I somnabulated my way through Monday, and then, too tired to shop or cook, hunkered down for the Lost finale with an indulgence of kimchi instant noodles topped off with half a bag of actual kimchi. Good stuff. But. Not on an empty stomach when violently sleep deprived.

Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-day. They were all the same one day to me. Saturday, the event scuffle ending at Yuyintang with my Shanghai sister’s ex-husband, a good if odd friendship there. Coming on heels of a public trashing by bitchy bloggers on Friday. Sunday, up early, translating madly, then meeting my friend for a long Swedish day at expo. Bjoston did not show, it was great, he was great, and I returned home for the longest haul I’ve attempted since college. Jiayou.

Violent runs ensued, and bad sleep patterns with weird dreams. Thursday I was again to expo, again for work, other reasons and other friends, but a later departure at least. Perhaps more on that later. Perhaps not.

This morning, still sick and exhausted, I awoke and then proceeded with my usual phone email check-and-delete before getting sucked into the big screen versions. An unfamiliar email name called out fellow Cancer greetings. I had forgotten that about her.

Her: being my firstest first friend, since we were five or six. Raised in the same fundi christian madness, schooled together, our messed up parents were friends, our violent older brothers were friends. I escaped, she stayed. Studied housekeeping, married at 22, now has a crew of kids and a farm. We rediscovered each other on Crackbook, and found commonality in love of animals and interest in food policy.

Her message: that she misses me on the blocked websites, keeps track of me and my wacky career, thinks about me and sends love.

I am very moved. The origins I so wisely fled for this amazing life I have built still haunt me. The fear, the frailty, the violence and the helplessness of a small child, folding into herself as I struggle to not continue doing. Sleep deprivation revives the worst nightmares like nothing short jet-lag and pre-travel anxiety nightmares. That some good, some warmth, and friendship a survives from the shadows of that time: that gives me strength, and courage.