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| Photo by Inder Salim |
Now, with your temporary elopement drawing to an end, every minute spent together was, for the both of you, “worth as much as one thousand gold coins,” as an ancient Chinese poet once said.
When you woke up around five o’clock, you were on cloud nine to find yourself in the middle of morning wood, a rare experience at your age. Without waiting a single second, you climbed on Hua before she had enough time to take off her underwear. As your pecker was no longer as thick, long and hard as in your youthful years, you had to take the classic position each time without any change. You told her that if you had had more sexual energy, you would have preferred to penetrate her either from behind or beneath her. After discharging all your remaining manhood into her body, you engaged in an endless round of after-play. While kissing and fondling her, you felt inspired to write a poem about yourself as a rain sparrow, as you had found Hua’s little garden to be the ideal nest for your soul and selfhood at the same time. While you kept wondering about the close interrelationship between sex and spirituality at the back of your mind, you couldn’t help wanting to share with her your most special sexual experience with your wife, which took place right before you moved to Canada as an international student.
“When was that?” asked Hua.
“In 1989. I was thirty-two then,” you replied. “When Helen and I were treading water in Beidaihe, the most popular seaside holiday resort in northern China, I walked her far away from all others and put my dick inside her from behind in the sea without anyone noticing us.”
“That’s nothing if not crazy!” Hua remarked. “Ping would never have done anything like that.”
“I know he’s far less ‘crazy’ than me,” you observed. “So, which sexual experiences with me you enjoyed the most?”
After doing some thinking about this question, which was apparently intriguing to her, Hua began by telling you that she felt extremely excited when she took a joint shower with you, something she had never done before with Ping. As you caressed her slowly and softly from her neck to her feet, she produced so much juice that it felt as if it were dripping together with the water. Another very pleasurable thing you did to her, she said, was to search for her G-spot and keep stimulating it with your middle finger. Though Ping had once attempted to finger-fuck her in the past, she refused him resolutely, because she felt dirty and disgusted about his fingers. Also, she found it profoundly comforting and delightful to remain naked in your arms, saying that even on her wedding night, she slept under her own comforter after sex. Besides, all her life, she must wear a pajama during sleep. Each time after sex, she would put her underwear and her pajama back on, or she could never fall asleep, but sleeping totally naked with you turned out to be something not only possible but preferable.
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Photo by Inder Salim
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“What’s your most enjoyable experience with me?” you asked.
“The sex itself of course,” Hua said. “Except that I wish you would sometimes do it a bit more slowly.”
You knew that you had done the pushing and pulling too fast, especially when you found it difficult to work up and maintain the hardness. You simply had to; otherwise, your waning sexual power would not allow you to retain your thrust. Now, in your late sixties, you might be a big sexual nuisance or burden to your wife because of her complete loss of libido, but with your little remaining sexuality, you could never satisfy Hua, because she was still perfectly functional like a full-fledged young woman.
“Sorry, like every other male in the animal world, I cannot really satisfy a female, especially a super libidinous woman like you,” you said, trying to give yourself a universally valid excuse. “How about Ping?”
“He’s got nothing on you!” Hua said, her words sounding more like a condolence or encouragement than a real or well-grounded correction. “What are the different things you’ve done with me that you found most enjoyable?” she asked.
In reviewing your sexual experiences with her, you recalled the fact that Hua was the only woman who had made you feel totally melted in the depth of feminine warmth and tenderness. Though you had slept with a few women before, you had never had such an experience. Nor had you ever kissed or bitten a woman’s bud before her. While this was something you had never even thought of doing to a woman, you were truly surprised to find that Hua’s hidden face was a beautiful sight to behold.
“You mentioned this to me on our second night together, remember?”
“Of course, but I want to reiterate it, because this is my biggest discovery not only about you, but about all women in general. Probably it is this secret feature that has made you so special, and so extremely attractive to me.”
“You’re kidding! How could you tell before you slept with me?”
“I’ve got a third eye, which allows me to see the dialectical relationship between a woman’s two faces.”
“I’m listening.”
“Well, if a woman looks radiant or much younger than her real age as you do, that’s because she’s got a high libido and been well nourished by sexual love like a flower. Alternatively, if a woman has a handsome hidden face and is well-irrigated by sexual love like a root, she is bound to have much better looks than others or than her real age.”
“Another bunch of baloney! But I would say you’re a true-blue visual creature!”
“Yep, just as you’re a true blue auditory one!”
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| Painting (Untitled) by Harshh Kumar |
After your last turtle brunch, you helped Hua wash all the bedsheets and clothes, clean the whole condo suite room by room, and pack up her big suitcases mostly with toys for her two grandchildren and traditional herbal supplements for her husband. In the evening, you ate out in a small but busy restaurant adjacent to Fuhua Square and took a long walk around the area, where Hua used to do grocery shopping or run household errands before immigrating to Australia. Around nine o’clock, you visited Sugar Tang, a very popular food outlet selling all kinds of sweet soups. Knowing Zhujiaojiang to be the most nutritious soup for breast-feeding mothers as well as Hua’s most favorite local Cantonese dish, you asked her to order a big bowl for the two of you. While eating, Hua told you in detail how to cook it.
“It’s very simple. First, soak a well-cleansed pig’s foot in red sweet vinegar overnight, then stew it with ginger and boiled eggs in the vinegar for two hours.”
“I’ll pass this recipe to Helen.”
“But no one could really learn it well. The taste here is unique.”
“Probably they have some special extra ingredient.”
After returning home, you shut every curtain and have a long last joint shower. Before going to bed, you wanted Hua to perform a naked dance for you in her large well-lighted living room, but she shook her head firmly, saying it would be disgusting for a crone to do such a crazy thing. Besides, she had forgotten most of the movements. You insisted on her putting on minimum clothing and trying “the Blue Sky Dream,” a beautiful Tibetan dance which she had liked and performed best. Without any musical instrument available to you, you sang the song aloud in tune with her movements. When you entered the bedroom, she asked you to read a couple of poems you had written for her.
To give her a sense of how it sounded in English, you selected two pieces from your published collection Limerence. The first is what you consider your best love poem, which reads:
Missing in Missed Moments
Each time I miss you
A bud begins to bloom
So you are surrounded by flowers
Everywhere you go
Each time I miss you
A dot of light pops up
So you are illuminated by a whole sky
Of stars through the night
After you paraphrased the two stanzas in Chinese for her, Hua said that though English poetry sounded Greek to her, she could nevertheless feel beauty and love flowing sweetly, slowly and softly between the lines as between the two of you. Then you read the following piece in a dramatic way:
To All That I’ve Lost Most Dearly
When I die at another antlike moment like this
No human crowds would gather to mourn my loss
Nor would anybody really notice my departure
Much less shed tears, even if because of the wind
I am sure trees will shake off their leaves; horses
Will stampede, raindrops will taste somewhat salty
Hills & mountains will all murmur in a muted voice
Above all, Zhuhai will weep under sagging clouds
For it well knows there will be no more human soul
On this planet trying to connect with the city as far
As from beyond the Pacific, so closely & constantly
With its myriad spirited fingers caressing every
Synapse of the neighborhood, the very building
Where you dwell, while poetry cannot help feeling
Empty as if its heart were hollowed by my absence
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| Painting (Untitled) by Harshh Kumar |
Hearing your explanation of what you tried to express in the poem, Hua felt quite saddened. When you told her how the chief editor of a longstanding California-based poetry magazine actually cried after reading this piece, Hua shared her feelings, calling it “deeply touching.”
“Okay, enough of high romance, let’s get down to our low business,” you suggested as you carried her into the bed, where you began by fondling her breasts. A few minutes later, you reached down and massaged her vagina in a playful way. Before becoming hard enough, you kissed her bud, gave it a good farewell bite and used your scissors to cut a lock of hair respectively from her head and secret garden. After you put them into a red envelop, which you planned to bring with you back to Canada, Hua kissed your birdie in return. Fortunately, it put up a good show as if to accommodate the occasion by flapping right into her nest, where you wished to perch forever.
“Now,” you said in a soft voice, “I understand why in Junichi Watanabe’s bestselling autobiographical novel A Paradise Lost, the narrator and his partner designed carefully to die together at the peak of their intercourse. Though their intertwisted bodies looked embarrassing to their undertakers, it was unquestionably their best time and the best way to leave this world.”
“Why?”
“Because death is the only way to eternalize their happiest moment.”
“But I don’t want to die that way.”
“Now I also understand, finally,” you continued, “why lovers in east Asian countries often commit double suicides when they lose all their hope of living together.”
“How do you account for this tradition?”
“Because death is the ultimate way to live together ever after.”
“You want us two to die together to eternalize our happy love?”
“Yes and no, but let’s enjoy it while we’re still alive and capable.”
After plenty of horizontal refreshments, you put your new silk underpants on her instead of yourself and asked her to sleep in it for the night.
“What for? I’ve never even tried a guy’s pants,” Hua said.
“Just to consecrate it, like a grand Buddhist master.”
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| Painting (Untitled) by Harshh Kumar |
Thinking that you had only 12 hours left before leaving each other, you felt both sad and grateful. Sad that you would have to wait for another whole year before you could find the chance for a physical reunion; grateful that despite your old age and difficult circumstances, you managed to have not only spent almost sixteen whole days together but enjoyed as many as nine soul-melting moments, chatting about everything without any reservation, making love with each other ad libitum.
“Like you say,” Hua said. “I also feel as if I am falling in love for the first time in my life.”
“Indeed, each time I fuck you, I feel like I’ve never fucked a woman before.”
“Have some decency!”
“But to you, and to you alone, I’ve lost all my decency and dignity as a man.”
“You’d better keep some for me, if not for yourself.”
“People say a wise man does not fall in love, and only a fool is trapped by his feelings. If this is true, I’m really a big fool, a pre-ordained and incorrigible one.”
“But you are a wise fool, since you’re a PhD holder, a thoughtful writer and a widely published poet. Aren’t you happy to be such a wise fool?”
Of course you were. You didn’t know why, but together with Hua, you felt foolish and happy, just as you had done doing hard labor. While you brain seemed to have stopped functioning, your whole being was controlled by feelings, which allowed you to sense nothing else except happiness in love. Often you felt so happy so as to want to die at the moment of ejaculation. This way, you could immortalize your ecstasy, but now the impending departure from her overwhelmed you with a sense of sadness. Despite your plan to honeymoon on a yearly basis, you found the wait unbearable.
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| Photo by Inder Salim |
“I’m a migratory rain sparrow,” you said to Hua, as you interpreted for her the following poem titled “Swift” you had just finished:
Above this wild wild world covered
With layers and layers and layers
Of red dust, my selfhood
Has long been tired
Tired of flying
Flying alone
Day & night
But where can I perch?
Do I have a nest at all?
for a solid
Respite before
Continuing my lonely
Flight, snuggling my inner-
Most being in the heart of your
Soul, and settling my weathered body
Right at the A-spot of your tenderness
Yes, you had found your permanent sexual-spiritual nest in Hua, but you had to keep yourself away from it for most of the time and accept the fact of her husband occupying your nest. Even though you could accept the fact that Ping was able to fuck her any moment and spend time with her openly anywhere, you were afraid that another rival could pop up from nowhere. Hua told you that she felt exactly the same. She could cope with the fact of you living together with Helen day and night, but she would never tolerate the idea of another woman playing a part in your life. To both of you, separation was a torture.
“But that’s the predestination for all extramarital relationships,” you thought aloud.
***
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