Jackhammer Nights
Photo by Christopher DeWolf
I had trouble finding the bar. Street after street flashed into focus and flashed out again, all looking more or less like each other. The same crowds, the same intense and overexposed light. The same unreal feeling, as if the city never ended or altered but ran this way forever. To have realized what a desire is is not to realize a desire. The lengthening night baffled me, hiding landmarks, adding new ones in blazes of light, making every street run backwards, disappearing behind neon.
When I turned onto a sidestreet the only difference I could notice came in the form of a lessening, a few minor pen-tick alterations, lowered shop grates, more shadow swathed, visibly rotting concrete. I don’t doubt that the differences take time to notice: all lost in that first great big head charge of difference. I finally did find my way, after what seemed like hours of searching, dodging, doubling back, trying to remember storefronts for future reference. I finally did—the windowless walls covered over in posters advertising NASCAR, down a quiet block across from the train tracks. A hoodie-clad bar girl smiling. Lin Na chilling behind the bar. I swung my shoulders, said “excuse me,” turned, and arrived.
“Hey, where were you?”
“Lost,” I answered simply.
“Can I have a drink?” I smiled, like before. Winning.
“Yeah, do you want a cocktail? I not have to work no… we can go over there.” She threw her arm out, bare, it shone yellow in the ceiling light, long and sinowy, snake-like, ending in a red nail. Her face laughing. The glow, now purple, now green, transformed her, ran across her, almost made her hyper human, a respository more than a soul.
Reaching the table was typically difficult. A hot blooded mess of thrown limbs, spilling beers, quickened breath. No word really agrees or applies. I hooked my hand into my jeans half way against my sex and could feel the dice game, pounding, literally jacking away inside my head. She followed a minute or two later, cocktail in each hand. The taste was unsurprising—and unfamiliar. Lin Na pulled herself into the table, rocking it off balance, grinned, and took a sip. When her face swam back down she followed my eyes to the dice cup, blue and heavy. Along with the karikoe, it seemed the perfect symbol for all that was real, all that I could understand if I wanted to get there. And at that particular moment I did.
“You want to learn, Yan?”
“Sure.” I shrugged gamely.
“Ok-a. It’s a game of—how—bullshit. You need at least three people.”
“We only have two.” I wanted to keep it that way.
“We’ll find three. Don’t worry.” She spoke differnetly than earlier, looser. A hard flirt on the street. A soft flirt in the bar. And this made it less safe, I suppose. But who gives a fuck about that? The flatness of Lin Na’s voice drew out the “don’t,” giving it a kind of half-advertised acidity as come-on—the probable vulgarity stripped by exocitism. I was glad, suddenly more than ever, that I did not speak her language. She’s a little drunk, I heard myself thinking for the first time. The light spiraled over us, bathing us in fuzzed colors and shadows, making us beautiful. And outside the taxis still grinding by, the street churning on.
In deadly earnest, I have no illusions that there was anything remotely authentic about this, my life. But that’s not the point. I sat at the table noncomprehending and smiled. A man came over. A man left. Lin Na licked her lips, swallowing a touch of red. I crossed my legs, kicking the table. Like montage—but with sensations, the burn of liquor, the brush of a leg—at least I remember it like this. We slammed the dice cups down on the table. Were my thoughts so unfluid? Got over it. My thoughts were simple. I tried to avoid screwing up and sending the dice flying across the floor. Easily quantifiable. The rest of my neurons orbited the corners of her lips—eyes watching to see which way they turned—in or out, up or down, open or closed. When she rose my ears lighted on the tone of “bye-bye.” Occosional detour to follow back, smoothed and churning, her legs, a touch of white skin between snipped skirt and white boots, her open mouth and hearing—when rammed through her—hoping to take some of that “Her” with me. But I went there fullest only when she left to use the W.C. It felt presumptious. I spilled the dice again, and I had to dive under another table, where a red jacketed tough and a businesssuited man, balding, sang K together. I got up with beer stains on my jeans, Lin Na laughing, placing and running her nail along my shoulder.
Returning. She made a quick fold of her skirt before settling in. Her eyes going 1,000 vaults. I watched the music videos on the TV screens, trying to follow the characters. Not judging the singers, all songs, all dances unknown.
“A lot.”
I only nodded, I couldn’t hear the rest. Canto canto canto. A terrible onrush of cutened girls and grinning men with jagged hair. Songs of cell phones and busses. Back and forth with tears. One young man, tuxedod, huddled over a grand piano, playing to an empty room. He places his cell phone on end, so the receiver “hears,” he pulls in over the keys. I guess what goes over the air will be compressed, tinny, but it will BE, that is the idea. Even a piano without timbre is a piano, if it is played with love. The speakers in the bar, the recording equipment used, they also distort, but the bar sings along. Lin Na begins speaking again. Barely audible. A man bellows into the microphone, seady looking, overweight and badly dressed in a red jacket, emoting. I pulled my cell phone, the poor damaged phone, from my pocket, and placed it on the table, dodging a puddle of spilled beer.
“Ever played ‘spin the cell phone?’”
“What?”
“You spin the phone and whoever it ends up pointing at you have to kiss.”
“Oh.”
“Want to play?”
“You just want to kiss me.”
I laughed.
“Embarressed? I’m… not.” She drew the ‘not’ so long it was almost a question.
“Really?”
“Chinese girls are good liars.” At least I think she said that.
But I never did kiss her, and I put the phone away. I could feel a million little disconnects coming on. Expections and reality, fear and possibility, possibilty and desire, desire, possibly, and their imagined counterparts. The fun house mirror of a noodle shop, a Bruce Lee movie reflecting back, forth, slight distortion, back, forth, again, back, forth, until whatever, eternaty or dissolution. I had to repress the sudden urge to puke.
But I did not want to hear Lin Na’s story. That was the last thing I wanted to know. We stopped talking. We continued drinking, trading beer for mixes and back, finally stumbling free. I had a little ephinay as we crossed the door line, back into the heat. I was not going to get any tonight. The sky was black and high, rising way over the towers, and I had unbuttoned the top of my shirt. Lin Na stumbled out allongsides me.
“Do you feel safe, Yan, in cities in the USA?”
“How… maybe.” I tried to focus on her. To imprint her image. Missed a beat.
“I can walk home by myself.” She spoke differently.
“Do you live close by?”
Uncomprehending. She leaned against a light pole.
“We should go to Lan Kwai Fong sometime.” She dropped her voice slightly, mumbled something in Canto, closed her eyes breifly and reopened them. On the open street, patches of newspaper and dusty water, some of the fire dissipated. I tried to stand still, straight, still for a moment. It was difficult. I put my hand on her shoulder, she brushed it off.
“There’s another girl you should meet.”
“What?”
She spoke in Canto, straight at me, leaving me slouching and unknowing. She stopped, I kept my silence and, hands on her hips, she tried to translate herself. Or at least, that’s what I think she was doing. I waited. Terribly aware of my own hard, ragged breathing.
“I’ll give you the name of this other bar. Close. Another girl.”
“We just had a great night, why are you trying to hook me up with your friend?”
She hadn’t really understood me, I could tell by the way she stared, lips parted, but she answered well.
“Her English is better than mine. Can you find your home?”
“From here? Yes.”
And she turned away. I watched as long as I could, which, in memory, isn’t long. A fleeting little shot of her passing by a cab, a tofu place, drunks milling about, a street light, and out. Maybe one sound—the chiming of the traffic lights, and that’s it. I began to feel cold. The walk home didn’t take long. The elevator ride no longer. My dad was awake, reading The Economist on the couch.
“Hey Dad.”
He continued staring at the paper.
“I would prefer it, seeing as you just got here, that you tell me when you go out. You’re still young, and living at home.”
“Yeah.” He looked up, head moving much too fast. I tried to focus.
“Have a good night’s sleep. Oh… you don’t feel sick, do you?”
“Not really.”
“Good night.”
“Night.”
I ate a wave of anger, like forcing back down vomit. He had moved back to Hong Kong to remake it in his professional image—law-abiding, free-speaking and good. In the wake of failure, I could only guess, in America. Thinks he, maybe in some small way, could save China. He even mentioned his hopes to my mom before he left America, and by that point they almost never talked. In the morning he had toast, buttered it himself, since he didn’t like having maids around, and tied his tie without a mirror. Our apartment was too small for the two of us. Even with his piano, the five rooms, the trappings of success, it was too small. He could afford it because the neighborhood wasn’t that good yet. I almost never saw him off to work, but I didn’t sleep well, and woke up early. I could not focus on the floor, rolling, when I stepped out of my room. I thought I could hear the elevator running, chiming and clinking, which was weird. I wasn’t supposed to hear it from the living quarters. My dad, collar open, was spooning bran into his waiting mouth, reading a Chinese newspaper. My hair sticking all directions, my face blotched and pasty, I sat down across from him. He had already shaved, he did every morning, and his hair lay soberly flat along the edge of his forehead.
“Are the Chinese papers any good?”
He nodded, smilingly thinly. “Sometimes. Just like English ones.”
“Fair enough.”
“You’re up too early, go back and get some more sleep. You look like Hell.”
“Like hell.”
“Your m—yes, you don’t look great. Whoever you were with last night would not be impressed.” He had finished, and placed his spoon heavily into the bowl. It was a Western-style spoon, stainless steel and flat. He pushed his chair back.
“You do know I have a purpose here, I hope.”
“Dad, please, don’t give me this talk.”
“I shouldn’t. Okay. But I, maybe it’s too much to ask of you, that you act as if you’re trying to accomplish anything. As if you might care to accomplish anything. You’re too young, so why bother. But try to understand how I feel. I do have a purpose here, this is my home. When something is going on at Legco, I respond. I vote. I am, we are, trying to build something here, and suddenly my son arrives and he has neither heard nor cares. He dances and drinks, even though he’d be illegal at home. He doesn’t speak my language, his mother’s language. He doesn’t want to see the relatives he still has in China…”
My dad kept talking, but I had already gotten up, walked to my room, and fallen limply back into bed. Outside, he knotted his tie, a lawyerly four in hand, put on his jacket, no pin stripes, and went out. He walked to the subway, a couple blocks, if it rained he took an umbrella, and then the subway to the island. I’d never bothered visiting his office. So building something, so fucking necessary. So outsized in sense of purpose. Heavily on my side, blanket pulled up to the shoulder, I fell back asleep.
I woke up again around 12:30. I fixed some cereal of my own and sat down to stare at the newspapers I couldn’t read, spread desperatly across the table. Finally, I showered, combed my hair, locked the door and left. So much time to kill, I walked south, stopping by a little park where some men were playing badmitton, and onward. I had lunch at a noodle place. I walked back to the apartment and decided to call one of the Korean bandits, but no-one was answering the phone. I decided to wait a night before checking out the other bar.
At this strange moment, a light tape of rejected admonitions playing in my head, I discovered, suddenly, that I was scared. Unprepared. The vastness of the city around me, the vastness of the humanity around me, suddenly frightened me to death. Lin Na, one moment wanting, it written all over lips, hard and soft, running through, and the next, on the empty shadowed walk, leaning drunkly against a pole. Still herself but no longer that self. And as of yet I knew nearly nothing about her, nothing I could trust. Paranoia picked the latch and stole back in. And I was not even safe amidst the strange oppulance of that apartment, cleaning ladies twice a week. I sat on my bed and watched the sky grow cloudy through the window, and I slowly undressed.
Montreal Apartments