It's hard to make a stand
Friday, I spent the day hydrating off the effects of the prior night's Martini Night, and only shlepped out belatedly for a BizArt opening, which by the time my taxi driver had sliced through the weekend traffic, it was so late that I decided to "Eh, fuck it," with apologies to Big Bean, who I really want and need a long talk with about arts promotion stuff. Instead, I told the driver to continue on to Fuzhou Lu, for a Dior coctail. I was dreading it: it was at one of [Diamond Ho]'s spaces, the queen of Hongky tack who believes herself an "Artiste!" and "art"-collector, and surrounds herself with fashistas and PR flaks who reinforce her delusions.
It was a new space of hers, and gorgeous building - in an old deco office building behind the Bund - with a floor hideously transformed. Oh, why can't *I* be a shit-rich Hongkong Taitai?! I at least would use my power for good, rather than evil! (Of course, every time I date wealthy men, I quickly dump them because I detest sexual colonization. Ethics and humanism suck!)
But, I walked in to an empty place. "Yeah, they set up, said there was an event, but then no one came," the doorman shrugged. I felt rather punked - they'd sent me the invite that very morning. Dior's PR companies go from shit to worse - although their thing this weekend is the one competent fashion PR company in town. At the same time, I was relieved. Dior, plus [flaky PR co], plus [Diamond Ho] and attendent sycophantic tacky Hongkies are a pretty hellish gathering in my book, the crap I put up with for free champaigne and a well-paying job; I had tried to drag Yaya along to have balancing good conversation (sigh, so good!), but it was his girlfriend's birthday (he glumly informed).
I was a bit miffed at having shlepped pointlessly to the Bund - it is a long haul from my Sugawei digs - but since I was already there I decided to make the most of it. I got two tins of beer (hadn't packed my pocket knife/bottle opener), and carted them to the Bund. Slurping, watching, thinking, reminiscing, hoping. Being gawked at by all the Xiawuning tourists, being amused at their amusement with me as the outsider despite my being so Sanghaining I'm practically part of the plaster - but harder to tear down. (By the way, the fastest way to get a Shanghainese guy to try to kiss you is by being a caucasian who can speak some Sangheiwu - as both Friday and last night, I have no idea who he is but: cute! showed. Strategically mafan to even bother with the TBA.)
Waitan memories: eight years ago to the day of Thursday's martini night with Yaya was Jifu's 23rd birthday, our first of his together. I was working in an office on Fuzhou Lu, had splured for a bottle of champaigne (100 RMB was a lot back when I made 2000 RMB a month) and some 20 kuai of fruit - the first time I ever ate a kiwi - and met him after work on the Bund. I had also bought him a boquet of 23 roses, for his 23 years. Jifu found it quite mortifying for a girl to give a man flowers, that is/was just not done! And made me carry them all night. We found this grungy little open air cafe, which for the price of a plate of fries let us consume our brought consumables unmolested. That cafe of course has since been gentrified into some fancy schmancy place I would never go to - unless bribed with free drinks for journos. We then [TMI] and then went for zidong sushi and sake for the first time ever (the second time, our one year anniversary, we got kicked out for eating/drinking too much!), and after we went home to Xinkezhan took a slew more pictures with San Wei and Mr. Wonderful. Fond, wonderful memories. I miss them all, not as we are now but as we were then. Innocent, delirious. Not that I'm not still.
After that, for several years on our monthly anniversaries, and a couple of years of birthdays, Jifu and I would meet up for a walk and a drink on the Bund. I have had many a memory there since...the Hugo Boss launch, which was big enough to have real people and so I reconnected with several long lost friends. The Shiatzy Chen launch, with general awkwardness with the male model I'd made out with (bad vixen! bad!) the week before. Taking many a friend there to share a beer, most recently last fall my lovely adopted brother in law Mark.
After reflecting, finishing my beer, smiling patiently at the xiawuning hecklage, I decided to walk home. I traversed Beijing Lu, past many more memory markers - there I once took the bus after work in 1999 to Lao Cheng on a rather demeaning mission for Jifu, long story, involving deceiving his then "real" girlfriend it took him another year to break up with (wait, why do I like Chinese men?!); - here I photographed the oldest water hydrant in Shanghai, a month before it was removed and put into the historical archives where no one will ever see it again; - there was once Shanghai's first Synagoge, but I was a decade too late to see it. So much is gone; but so much remains, but for how long? I so detest globalization, gentrification.
I walked and walked, rueing the absence of camera but also enjoying the simple seeing through my own eyes. Wandering into buildings, chatting with old men, visiting ghosts my own and not. Contemplating my life; where it has gone and where it is going, my hopes and my fears. I don't believe in gods but I like to believe in ghosts; I like to think that just as innumerable places exist in a time, so many times coexist in a place. All the things these walls have seen are etched into them, as definitely as if less tangibly than all my loves and losses are burned into lines in my heart and on my face. My own home, I feel has many ghosts, some resident, some adopted with the spare chairs rescued from demolition sites; I feel my ghosts, or perhaps the memories of our collective past, help to embrace and sustain me.
In American college, we get condoms waved menacingly at us with the reminder that when we fuck someone, we also fuck all of their past fucks. Fun with fluids. In a similar but less squicky vein, I feel that when we love someone, we also love all of their past loves. When I love, I love reluctantly and absolutely. If my brakes work, it means I don't love you.
Post title: I have a Sheryl Crow tune of that name on heavy rotation right now, interspersed with Regina Spector and perennial fav Paul Simon. Making a stand, of course, applies to so very much. The opening, about the homeless man handing out flowers, reminds me of my Gege, who was the scary scruffy crazy homeless guy in the years before his death. I have been thinking about my Gege a lot lately, going through old photographs, wondering who he was really, wanting to start a book that would involve interviewing people in Indian ashrams and US cults who knew him, but I cannot handle the intensely traumatic emotion of that until I have found a supportive partner. I cannot afford to collapse until I have someone there to catch me, slap me back into shape.
Ever since Mr. Wonderful died, I have wanted to tattoo a cartoon I draw of him onto my shoulder, and I think I shall buck up the courage to do so in July, when Guangguang - a tattooed lady and old friend and fan's of Mr. Wonderful's - returns. Or, perhaps with the very tattooed Yaya, or while on my birthday trip with Peaceful Peasant. The sentiment behind the Mr. Wondeful tattoo, beyond remembering a wonderful friend and feline companion who purred me through many difficult but amazing years, is the sentiment at the end of Amores Perros, I think it was: Somos tambien lo que hamos perdido, we are also what we have lost. My grandfather, my brother, Mr. Wonderful, Jifu, Bjoston - Franzi and Yaya I still have as didis despite losing as lovers - moments, hopes, dreams, even the inane and unformed ambitions I had during high school and college, even the friends who have drifted hopefully temporarily out of my life. You tambien y siempre soy tu - you are also, always part of me.
