Waiting for Love Child Novel Excerpt Chapter One The Adored Object(s) I'm a bad boy, but also adorable. No matter what happens today, that's a statement I can be confident about, Sandra. Being an adorable bad boy is my nature, and if it isn't fixed by genetics or fate, it's at least not a nature that I'm going to change. I've got to work with this. I'm trying to work with this. But, also, no matter what happens today, I can't leave Lan. Not just because she's my wife, and because I've sworn repeatedly to her (and to her parents) that I'd honor her and never again stray—and I abhor breaking my word—but because I can't live without the love I feel for her. In her generosity, her patience, her hard work, her sufferance of the frustration I cause her, she's a martyr. I do not deserve the woman. The gratitude that I feel for her, in dedicating her life to as confirmed a sub-par specimen as I am—I have cried for her and her squandered chances at finding a worthy husband. Because Lan is gorgeous! One of the great beauties of our species. If Shakespeare were writing today, he'd need only cast his eye upon Lan for inspiration to describe Juliet, Cleopatra, Hermia, all the hotties. Before Lan was on my arm, I'd never experienced rapturous pride, but I have watched men reduced to tears when they catch sight of Lan's wedding ring, a response that emboldens me so that I've practically shouted, This is my wife, people! The mother of my son, P.J.! And I love her! As for Lisa, as I've learned—tortuously—over the last nine months, I can't live without her. Especially now, when I've discovered that she might be the mother of my love child. However contrary to logic, however impossible to fathom—given her odd personal appearance and her lacerating artist's temperament—Lisa controls my whatever you call it, my vital essence. Absent her scathing rebukes and their depraved sexual corollaries, without her animal presence for company in the cage of my life, my days are too dull to endure. The love I feel for her is as reflexive and uncompromising as fearing death. I couldn't purge myself of my Lisa love any more than I could resign myself sensibly to mortality. And now that she and I, like Lan and I, are yoked together irrevocably in the genetic make-up of our love child, asking me to abide by my promise never to see her again is as ridiculous as expecting me to be anything other than an adorable bad boy. So how can I choose? Falling in love isn't like buying a cell phone. I didn't choose Lan or Lisa; comparison-shopping wasn't an option. No, love mugged me, took my heart like that hoodlum who grabbed the second-hand pogo stick that I'd found in the junk shop on Dongsi Bei Da Jie—a treasure of Americana incongruously thrown in among Cultural Revolution-era mugs and posters—snatched from me after I rested it against the wall when I was taking a leak in the public bathroom (an event that once and for all has taught me that the true gift of the Y-chromosome is the ability to pee one-handed, and I squandered it). I tell you, with both hands wrapped around my diao, I was as helpless to stop that thief from swiping my pogo stick, as I was to resist love claiming me for its own on a repeat basis. I can't choose. "Choosing" isn't in the "adorable bad boy" script. I'm just supposed to do my bad boy thing, and Lan and Lisa are still supposed to love me because I'm adorable, and I'll love them both. Besides, I have tried choosing these past nine months, and the result has shown the absurdity of the exercise: I have not lived these past nine months so much as passed the time in a state of vapidity, boredom and dreariness. And because I can't choose, I have to be here right now. Really, I have asked myself—and am asking myself again now—Do you have to do this, Dean? Sitting here in this maternity ward waiting room, the best I can expect is calamity, I know that. Lan might divorce me! Lisa might marry me! Sun Yan might kill me! But the answer is, yes, I have to do this. I missed P.J.'s birth, and I regret that. If there's any chance that the baby that Lisa's laboring to deliver right now is mine—and the chances are almost 100%, if not greater—then I have to be here when my love child is born. If Love Child is mine, that will answer the terrible question that's been hanging over my head like a noose: nine months ago, when I returned to Lan and swore that I'd never see Lisa again, how badly did I fuck up? Chapter Two A Monologue like Hamlet Might Have Performed for his Drama Therapist On reflection, I'm sorry we're missing our session today. I know you're practically at term, but I don't see why you took the day off. My mother always told me that she was at work when her water broke. And notwithstanding what I told your receptionist, I do need therapy, so I'm going to improvise a make-shift session, right here in the Beijing International Harmony Hospital maternity ward waiting room, where I, as usual, will play the role of the patient, and this mp3 player will play the role of you, Sandra. And since you're not here to assign me a monologue—I mean, I know that in our session today we were supposed to use The Little Foxes as a point of departure for discussing materially-exploitative family relations, but I hardly think that's relevant right now—I'm going to perform a monologue from my life. So, while I'm waiting for Love Child, I'm going to tell you everything that happened with Lan, Lisa, Sun Yan, Billy, Jing and everyone else. I've been wanting to tell you all for, well, the whole time I've been seeing you; I guess we haven't had time with all the monologues. Also, what I did tell you wasn't always true. And, since I'm being honest, I should say that I've always thought your enthusiasm for drama therapy was dippy. "Emoting conquers emotion"—I don't think so. Because here I am, pacing the maternity ward waiting room, "emoting" into an mp3 recording device, and you know what? I'm more emotional than I've ever been in my life! How long does it take to birth a baby? And why can't I get an epidural? I'm serious. I need something. Awaiting a moment of truth is too, too nerve-wracking. Whenever Love Child is born, I'll know whether I'll be waking up next to Lan or Lisa for the rest of my days. Which, admittedly, might be few in number because, if Lisa gives birth to a white baby, Sun Yan is going to storm out here and kill me. In fact, maybe I should move my monologue operation to just outside the Emergency Room; that way, when Sun Yan rushes at me, I'll be in an optimal location for resuscitation and rescue. Assuming there's anything left to resuscitate, in light of the fact that Sun Yan is a muscle-bound man with knife scars on his torso and a history of strangling pit bulls. (While I'm a bad boy myself, I'm not the kind of bad boy who can fend off a knife attack with an mp3 player—those guys aren't so adorable). And, maybe, if the Emergency Room staff see me loitering, they'll give me an epidural. How am I supposed to face this without a painkiller? Scratch that. Boys—P.J. and Love Child—you father's no wuss. Whether death or decision looms, your father's a man who stands his ground. But please remember: Sun Yan, that despicable carny Lisa married, is the man to target for a revenge killing if you two end up growing up without your real dad. I know what that's like. The thought of you two having a fatherless childhood, boys, savages me. I don't want Sun Yan to kill me, obviously, for selfish reasons, but also to spare you both the loneliness and aimlessness that I experienced as a boy without his dad. If my mp3 player is useless against Sun Yan's knife, it at least provides consolation that my story will be preserved. Every boy wants to know his dad, so with this mp3 recording I'm going to make sure that you two boys will be able to know me, even from beyond the grave. Sons, I'm Dean Cannon. I was born in 1974, the Year of the Tiger. When I was just a couple of months old, my father was killed by a stray bullet fired when our next-door neighbor attempted, and failed, to commit suicide. This was in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where I grew up. My mom raised me by herself, and I could tell she really missed my dad. She's remarried now, but mercifully she waited until I was in college to do it, and when I grew up, it was just the two of us. She was a biology teacher at Provincetown High School. I was her student in 10th grade and, boys, you're very lucky that you will never know such profound humiliation in your own lives. Also, Sandra, I'm sorry to tell you this, but we've now arrived at the first of some of those facts I lied about. I told you my mom gave me an F—you know, like, that was a cause of deep-rooted conflict and all—but she really gave me a C-. I don't think my mother and I have any deep-rooted conflict, honestly, other than her getting remarried to a man who won't let her visit me in China and whose most impressive contribution to humanity will be his death. So I don't know why I told you that my mom failed me in Biology; I guess it sounds more interesting than a C-. Notwithstanding my totally respectable academic record, I was rejected from Brown, Princeton and UC-Santa Cruz, so I went to college at the State University of New York, in Albany. I studied Chinese because Bruce Lee was cool. Also, because Chinese girls are hot. I did ok in my studies, and college was all right, I guess, but I was a skinny geek. (It's hard to believe, looking at me now—success has really filled me out, I know—but, back then, think Christian Slater circa Heathers.) Even worse, I had a permanent hard-on. And you can't be a geek with a sex drive in the U.S.; it's illegal apparently. Luckily, college had prepared me—however inadvertently—to escape to a society with more humane rules (and least with respect to who can sate his sex drive). Because if you're an American geek in your early 20's, and you want to get laid, regularly, with hot women—in other words, if you want to live out the fantasy that every single man in the world has (boys, don't let them tell you otherwise, that's a 100% normal fantasy)—you have to move to China. I had an inkling about the true score when I was in college, but it wasn't until 1996, when I moved to Beijing to improve my Chinese before getting a Master's in Chinese Studies (for lack of any other idea about what to do), that I realized how right I was. Back then, I'd saunter into Poachers, and every Chinese girl in that bar had graduated from college with a degree in being arm candy. And they weren't picky. It was like, "You're white. Where's the bed?" And so easy to satisfy! No Chinese girl has ever whined to me about 45-minutes-of-foreplay-and-still-waiting-for-high-tide. I don't mean to sound insensitive, but what's "foreplay"? Those girls were all straight-to-business. (Christ, I can't do this. What if Love Child is a girl? I just can't be honest talking to a daughter. And then how's P.J. going to know the truth?) Ok, ok, ok, look Sandra, I started this out as a therapy session monologue, playing the lead in the Hamlet of my life. So let's do this. I'll give you the mp3 recorder, and then you deliver it to my sons (or son and daughter—kids!) when they're 13, no 17, 21. Let's say 21. But I'll tell it to you, Sandra. I'll tell it to you because I need to correct the record with you anyway, and I should've been scrupulously honest with you from the beginning, so I'll be honest now. And I'll tell you what I should be telling my kids, but I won't be telling it to them, so I won't be self-conscious. Why the hell does everything have to be so complicated? Alright. So I'm in Poachers, in 1996, and it's hump city. And let's just fast-forward through the rest of that time period: I was studying Chinese at Beijing Language and Culture University (like every other expat), and then I dropped out after two months (like every other expat), and then I taught English (like ...well, ok, I wasn't striking out on my own back then), and then I did do something original: I sold advertising for Beijing's very first expatriate listings magazine, Imperialist Playbook. Those were heady days. It was all dope, dick and dollars. The Uighers had started arriving in Beijing, selling their crap-quality hash from Xinjiang—an option that highlighted how heavenly "crap-quality" is when compared to "no availability." The Chinese women—after years of being forced to wear "Mao" suits and get permission from their "work units" to lose their virginity—finally had access to American movies, so they were developing some idea of how to dress and tongue-kiss. (Whew, did they like to practice! My bottom lip is still sore.) And I was sweet-talking every Western restaurant, expat bar, and international hotel in Beijing to place ads in Imperialist Playbook. For a while, we were the only game in town, no competition, the most reliable way to reach the wealthy expat market. Commissions, baby! Ka-ching! Mwah! Bong! Predictably enough, like every coke high I've ever had, it was over before I was ready for it to end. First, competition eventually arrived in the form of Foreign Devil Monthly, and they were ruthless sons-of-bitches. They paid off the General Administration of Press and Publications to shut us down, which was so unfair because we'd paid off GAPP first, and those two-timing, corrupt bastards didn't give our bribe priority. Then, once we started operations again after delivering a hefty box of Mid-Autumn Festival "moon cakes" (cash, of course) to GAPP, there was the management implosion. Toby, the founder of Imperialist Playbook, was "retrieved" by representatives of the California Department of Corrections Playa del Sol Facility for the Criminally Insane, from which he'd apparently been on a self-help leave-of-absence. (Which only proves how thin the line is between entrepreneurial genius and criminal insanity.) Coco, the graphic designer and Toby's on-again-off-again girlfriend—who would've been our office staff's candidate for an escapee-from-an-insane-asylum—revealed herself to be an undercover FBI agent assigned to track Toby across the Pacific; and she promptly disappeared after being demoted for having spent months boffing Toby without alerting her law-enforcement colleagues to his whereabouts. (Which proves what I've long known to be true: that when a man beds a woman, his freedom is always at stake.) As for Souse, the magazine's editor-in-chief, he embezzled the last $10,000 of the magazine's investment capital and spent the next month on the floor of Poachers, sleeping off his hangover and refreshing his binge upon waking. (Which proves that a nickname like "Souse" is the kind of hint to which you should pay attention.) For myself, I went legit. I told myself that going legit was the mature course, that I was now parting ways with my childish fancies; but going legit was at least as problematic as what Toby, Coco and Souse did, if for no other reason than it was so easy. Going legit was like, well, getting laid in Poachers in 1996. By the time the last issue of Imperialist Playbook was adorning coffee tables in the front rooms of Beijing's opium dens, the year was 2001. China had just joined the WTO, international businesses were flocking to Beijing, and guys like me—the scrawny, geeky guys who'd had enough foresight to move to China early and build our confidence and Chinese-language skills through years of devotion at the altar of Chinese womanhood—were in demand. Going legit was what guys like me did if we were too lazy to go back to graduate school and too indecisive to know what we really wanted to do with our lives. I've since wondered whether going legit wasn't the very step that got me on the wrong track. If going legit hadn't been so lucrative and so painless, wouldn't I have returned home in 2001, instead of staying in Beijing to marry, sire children, and betray my wife and mistress? If I'd been out of work after Imperialist Playbook folded, unable to find another job, hustling to get a visa to stay in Beijing, borrowing money for weekend partying, wouldn't I have enrolled in an M.B.A. program? In other words, it's not my fault, but the fault of circumstances, that I squandered this critical, natural and logical moment to change course and avert calamity. You yu bu jue, as the Chinese say: partying makes you put off decision making. And going legit in 2001 kept the party going. "You need someone who knows how to get things done in China, who speaks Chinese, who has experience dealing with businesses and regulators, and you can't afford not to hire me," is what I said Jimbo Clothhammer, who'd been sent—without training, staff or Chinese-language skills—to open Probity & Prurience's Beijing office. Pro & Pru was a media-buying agency and, thanks to Clothhammer's cloth-headedness, I was its de facto general manager for the next five years. The work—if media buying can be called "work," rather than "a fig leaf for people who need white-collar jobs for reasons of class, race or ego, but who lack any skills"—was just my speed. Pro & Pru provided "strategic consulting services," proposing "media campaigns" for clients and buying the media slots to execute the campaign. But the business as I've just described it had nothing to do with my day-to-day "work." As de facto general manager, I was in charge of client relations, which meant one thing: party all the time. We're talking dope, we're talking coke, we're talking booze (of course), banquets, xiaojie lady friends, massages, karaoke, all-night clubbing and a chauffeured drive home in a black, Audi A6 sedan to a kitted-out penthouse kept clean by on-staff maids. If my life had been a movie from the 80's, my Pro & Pru years would've been depicted in a montage sequence, during which you would witness my transformation from skinny geek into adorable bad boy, with Chaz Jankel's classic "Number One" on the soundtrack: "Don't give/a damn/what else/I am./I am/the man/in the making." I'm not the man who'll lie by saying that I wasn't elated to be passing my time in the most debauched and hedonistic means known to mankind. But despite my enthusiasm for my sensual excesses, I was nonetheless aware of a void in my life, an absence that stubbornly remained, impervious to my narcotic highs and overstuffed belly and exhaustion from dancing and sex—it was always there. It was the absence of love. I, Dean Cannon, need love, and—after years of therapy—I'm not ashamed to say it. It's my nature, as an adorable bad boy, to love passionately, obsessively, romantically, inappropriately even—and to be thought adorable for doing it. And I always knew, no matter how wowed I was by that night's xiaojie's facility with my diao, that my swinging bachelor's loveless lifestyle was not the highest expression of my potential. Perhaps it's because I spent so many years squandering my love potential that I've now fallen so hard for two women—making up for lost time perhaps. Or maybe it's because I wasted formative years partying boyishly instead of refining mature amorous passions. Or maybe it's because Jimbo Clothhammer pushed me into confronting my potential before I was ready. Because, in truth, falling in love is scary. I hate the loss of control, the emotions running amok and the concomitant humiliating, sentimental and gag-worthy behavior. Everyone says, "Not me," and then everyone does it anyway. And you might object that for a man who's indulged in the amount of mind-altering substances that I've snorted, inhaled, gulped, shot or otherwise ingested to say that he finds loss of control scary is straining credibility. Fair enough, but at least when I'm on drugs, I control the intake of the narcotic. If I don't want to lose control, I don't take it. When I fall in love, I've got no control over the mind-altering substance: I can't stop the object of my affections from driving me crazy. And then, once I've lost my mind, there's the consequences. Falling in love is serious business. By comparison, boozing is fun and games; you wake up with a headache and thirsty as hell. Falling in love? I awoke with the kind of hangover that has a wife, in-laws, kids, a business, and a mistress associated with it. You can't be a "man-in-the-making" and survive shock on that scale: you've got to be a man. And I wasn't there yet, not even by December 2005, when Jimbo Clothhammer did me the unforgivable wrong of writing the kind of glowing 5-year evaluation ("Admirably responsive to client demands, Cannon is particularly adept at pioneering creative solutions to client development and retention challenges") that, ready-or-not, gets men promoted. Having proved myself at the outpost, I was summoned to central command: Pro & Pru offered me a job States-side, as Jimbo Clothhammer's boss. Call me shallow, but I would've been happy to have remained in my 80's montage indefinitely. Ok, that's a joke. I know I'm being unrealistic. Even in the 80's movies, the "man in the making" eventually has to ask himself: when am I made? But I hated the question, and I didn't want to deal with it in December 2005. I didn't know how to answer it. If I looked at the U.S. bench marks that I would've applied before coming to China, I was on the fast-track to success: I had a prestigious job, I had a high salary and—after five years of movie-star extravagance and fun—I had the chance to return home in glory and catapult up the corporate ladder. If I wanted to be "made," all I needed to do was accept this promotion. Then I could return to the States, find myself a healthy, capable, cosmopolitan, professional American woman with a steady job and a gym membership, get married and carry on with life. But I wasn't in the U.S.; I was in China, where millionaire entrepreneur geniuses like Jack Ma and Pan Shiyi were harvesting cash from fields of newfound economic opportunity. And by Chinese standards, I wasn't making the grade. At best, I was a foreign interloper, an uncultured trader making small sums on the margins. In addition to epitomizing all the worst excesses of Western barbarism, my time at Pro & Pru was useless for infiltrating the real Chinese economic treasure chamber. I reported to foreign bosses and wooed foreign clients; I barely had any Chinese guanxi—the relationships that drive the Chinese economy, and without which I had no hope of reaping the rewards that my elite Chinese counter-parts were enjoying. All around me Chinese nouveau riche were flaunting their wealth: status-enhancing wives and plump children; scrolls of Tang dynasty poetry, artfully rendered in unreadable calligraphy; rarefied teas so costly that savoring them amounted to imbibing gold. These Chinese arrivistes hired trucks to cart their cash from the bank to the shopping mall (and to chauffeur their purchases home), but I was an outsider, forever stalled in the emergency lane beside China's cash highway. To solve all these failings in an elegant, life-redeeming move, I, Dean Cannon, needed to stay in China and marry a Chinese woman: a fertile, cultured Chinese woman with a well-connected family. If listening to this, you're wondering how the Pro & Pru offer could have prompted a disquisition on marriage—wondering, in other words, if it precipitated a pre-mid-life crisis: it did! I berated myself that I was making life too complicated. I tried to convince myself that the question was really simple: do I want the job or not? But I couldn't begin to figure out what I wanted. Now I don't like making decisions, especially hard ones. Making tough decisions isn't one of those areas in life where I'm, say, efficient. You can't blame me. It took Hamlet hours to answer the question, "To be or not to be?" and that's a no-brainer: do I want to live? Hell, yeah! I assure you, if Hamlet had to answer, "How am I supposed to figure out what I want be doing with my life?" the play would've been days longer! The only aspect of this decision-making process that I was confident about was my conviction that I'd need years to make up my mind. Or, at least, one year. If I could have just one more year of stasis, I thought, I'd be happy. Let the 80's montage sequence run another 365 days; let me postpone and delay and linger in "man in the making" limbo until the upcoming Year of the Dog has been chased out by the following Year of the Pig; and then, at that far off future time (which would no doubt come, but not today), I'd decide. Chapter Three Lan Makes the Man Four weeks after Jimbo Clothhammer had left me in charge of the Beijing office and returned to the U.S. to accept his promotion (that Pro & Pru had initially offered to me), I was feeling like I needed to do something nice for myself. It was Thursday, January 26, 2006. I remember the date because Sunday, the 29th, was Chinese New Year and, since cutting your hair in the first lunar month of the Chinese calendar is bad luck, I was among hordes of people rushing to the barbershops before New Year's. Of course, I was getting a hand-job, not a haircut. Can anything endear Beijing to a man's heart more than the fact that most barbershops are cheap fronts for brothels? But here, Sandra, I'm embarrassed to say it again, we've come to another of the lies I told you. If you want a hand-job in a hair salon, you should tell the girl to "da feiji": hit the airplane. For reasons that I can't explain—maybe I felt like the phrase was a code for men only, an "open sesame" kind of secret—I told you that you should tell the girl to "mo fo": rub the Buddha. That's wrong. And since you're going to convey this vital information to my sons (and possibly your own son, if you have a boy), I want to make sure that you have accurate information, assuming that the slang won't have changed by the time they're old enough to need their Buddhas rubbed. The barbershop in question was a seedy storefront on Dongsi Ba Tiao, in a row of seedy barbershops. Outside was a red and white revolving barber's pole and a sign that said, "Mei Fa": Beauty Shop. These exterior details are universal among Beijing's handiest (if not finest) hair salon/hand-job shacks, and to this day they exert a suitably Pavlovian power over me: I see them, and I salivate. In its external enticements, the shop I entered was identical to its surrounding competitors. What had distinguished this Mei Fa from the crowd was the fact that the xiaojie visible through the window was non-Chinese. I'd never before seen a foreign xiaojie in China, and I couldn't fathom what she was doing there. She was a red head, and the skin on her bare arms was as white as the fleece of sheep in Irish pastures. Stepping into the shop, my eyes traced a line from her pink, rhinestone-encrusted stilettos, past her boney ankle, up her emaciated calves and thighs, over her green jersey dress, across the flat chest, along the length of her delicious neck, around her thin lips, and to her double-lidded, red eyes. I yelped in shock. A second glance at her eyelids confirmed my conclusion: she was an albino. She was ethnically Chinese, but her skin was chalk white. Her hair she'd dyed red. Once I'd stopped panting, I asked her to hit the airplane. "Fuck you," she said in carefully rehearsed English. Don't you know that's when my diao swelled to its full abundance, lodging itself uncomfortably between my belt buckle and my belly button. I didn't bother arguing with her. These xiaojie are tough. If she was serious, then no amount of pleading on my part could change her mind. On the other hand, in her line of work, she could not be unfamiliar with the phenomenon of a man rising to the occasion of a stern rebuke. One unambiguous gesture would bring clarity to the situation: I removed 100 kuai from my wallet and, bowing my head, held it out to her. I peeked at her contemplating the bill, from which Mao Zedong's face stared up benignly, admonishing her to "Serve the People." She swiped the bill from my outstretched hand. I bowed more deeply in gratitude, and then I flopped into the barber's chair, unbuckling my belt. I whimpered with relief when her sweaty hand encircled my diao. Her surly pout, her manifest dislike of me, heightened my pleasure. I warmed to her honesty. Why should a xiaojie pretend that every client is special? I didn't even mind when she pulled the hair on my balls "accidentally." My breath quickened, my cries became more pathetic, my hips ricocheted around the seat of the barber's chair...and that's when she stopped. The last thing I saw before my eyes rolled up in their sockets was the image of her lips curling back to reveal crooked, grey teeth. My testicles cramped, my abdominal muscles contracted, and somewhere behind my diao, a crushing sensation signaled the words "blue balls" to flash through my head. I've been in China for ten years, I realized in the next moment. I was 22 when I came here, and I never expected to be doing this a decade later. This was supposed to be a lad lark, not a way of life. I don't want to die a crusty, old playboy! I met Lan the next night. Billy Yang and I were at Brown's, which had just opened. The bar was laid out like a train station. It was long and cavernous, and crowds were standing at tables arranged on tiered platforms; the lighting was dull and clouded further by cigarette smoke. Foot traffic was heavy, and I spied a dwarf, dancing alone at the base of the bar, his cap thrown on the floor like he was busking. Billy and I were leaning back against the railings, separating the second tier from the third, drinking "Long Sex Island Beach T's." Billy ran a small graphic design firm called Picasso & Yang. (Picasso was a non-existent partner in Billy's sole proprietorship, but Pablo's name-recognition was very high among Chinese people, and lots of business came through Billy's door on the strength of "Picasso" in the business' name.) I'd met Billy when we'd worked together on a Pro & Pru campaign for which we'd hired Picasso & Yang as contractors, and Billy had become my best friend (or, if that's too "high school girl" for a man in his 30's, my most reliable drinking companion). Brown's was running a two-for-one drink special, which was doing wonders for the willingness of willowy-young-things to get up on the bar and dance, and Billy and I were enjoying watching the amateurs grind. The DJ was generally cooperative, spinning 80's classics that girls love. "Kiss," by Prince, was blaring when I noticed her. How I could've failed to notice her before, I cannot explain. I felt like I was dreaming—that I was in the midst of a collective dream because surely every man in the bar was fixated on her: her face had the sharp angles and full lips of a super model, and her long, dark hair was beckoning as it swayed to the beat of the music. She was wearing a scrumptious-short red sweater dress, long-sleeved, with lacey thigh-high, black stockings, and black, patent leather, stiletto Mary Jane pumps. Incredibly (really, was I dreaming?), her garter belt was visible under the hem of her dress. That strip of bare flesh on her thighs between the hem of her dress and the lace on her stockings—a stretch of creamy, smooth mocha—made me wish I'd been born Chinese, participated in the Young Pioneers, distinguished myself in the Young Communist League, graduated first in my class from Beijing University, joined the Party, and taken an entry-level position at the State Council Information Office: she'd have been impressed by me then! Open-mouthed, I gaped as she danced on the bar with her girl friend, a fetching female with a tomboy haircut who'd doubled over in an exceptionally suggestive position. "Is she humping that dyke?" I asked, fascinated. "They're probably high school classmates," Billy said dejectedly. An American-born Chinese, Billy knew nothing more acutely than that Chinese-born Chinese women were a disappointment. "And that one's drunk," he said, pointing to the tomboy, who was rapidly approaching having all fours on the bar. "No way," I objected. "Check it." As Prince sang, "Women, not girls/rule my world," the woman who would become my wife was joyously thrusting her pelvis into the arched (and receptive-looking) hind-parts of her shorthaired friend. "I think she's wearing a strap-on," I insisted. "What are you smoking?" Billy demanded, belligerently. "Gimme." "Nothing," I swore, swatting away his outstretched hand. "Seriously, check out that humping." "She's helping her up!" I finished my drink. I handed the glass to Billy. "It's all or nothing, Billy. What do you bet me?" Billy is a tall man, 6' something, with spiky black hair. (In fact, we have the same hair, owing to a mutual affinity for Dipp gel.) Billy's eyebrows are thick, and his face often conveys a sense of gravity that ill befits a person under 60. Now he pursed his full lips and directed a sympathetic gaze at the ground. "I bet she lays your soul to waste," he said somberly. "As long as she saves my body from rotting in the mass grave of bachelorhood," I retorted, wrenching his Long Sex Island Beach T from his grasp and finishing it in a gulp. I walked to the bar. I stood directly beneath her supple legs, planted in the world's most-enticing upside-down V-formation. "Mei nü," I called out, addressing her as "Beautiful woman." "You need a confident man," I said in Mandarin. "I don't think it's cheating if you have sex with women. I will marry you and never question your fidelity." "What?" she screamed in English, scrunching her face at me. "I'm in love with you!" I hollered back in Mandarin, determined to shout down Prince. "What a weird Chinese name! What are you called in English?" she yelled. "Dean!" I bellowed. "What's your's?" "Ding?" "Dean!" I shouted. She bent her lips close to my ear. "'Ding' is good-sounding." "Call me Ding. What's your name?" "Lan." "Kiss me, Lan." Just then her dyke friend tackled me. Jealousy is so unattractive, I thought, as I collapsed under her weight. As this devotee of Sappho flailed on top of me—her enraged tremors complicating the task of extricating myself—I realized how tough it was going to be for this muff-diver to accept that her bi (or, even better, bi-curious hetero) friend Lan needs a man, needs diao in the flesh, and not just in the outsized, motorized, plasticized mode that lesbos can offer. Not that I'd object to this gal-boy continuing to enjoy Lan à la mode, as it were, as long as I could watch, of course—and I'd achieved a shaky hold on the dyke's wrists, when I heard Lan's voice calling, "Jiiiiiiiiinnnnng!" Then another thump, centered right on my sternum. I tasted Long Sex Island Beach T, bubbling up from my esophagus, but I managed to repress an all-out vomit. "Jing, oh Jing!" Lan cried, and the weight was suddenly gone. Struggling, burping, I raised myself onto my right side, in time to witness Lan and Jing rolling on the floor like a couple of ...well, like a couple. In what was no doubt a reversal, Lan was attempting to play the "butch" role, trying to pin down the "femme" Jing, who was convulsing in the throes of one of the most intense orgasms I'd ever witnessed, on- or off-line. I grinned. Billy Yang's legs were suddenly in my field of vision. I looked up and saw his old man's face staring down at me, concerned. "Lezzies," I giggled. "You idiot," he retorted. "She's an epileptic." I have, from time-to-time, wondered whether Lan would've married me if I hadn't gone to the hospital with her and Jing that night. Wondered whether prosperity is a cosmic accident, whether I just as easily could've ended up destitute, whether luck is just that: unearned. Or whether, like Romeo, I'm fortune's fool, and that it was destiny that I should meet and marry Lan; that regardless of whether I'd gone to the hospital that night, Lan and I would've entered into the U.S.-China bilateral agreement that ends in death—and, if so, then what consequences might stem for interfering with the plan of fate? But that's another monologue, a truly theatrical one, in the sense that it would be all artifice. Because what really happened is that I did go to the hospital. Upon hearing Billy's diagnosis, I stood up like a knight errant, and I pulled my wallet from my back pocket. "Put this in her mouth," I instructed Lan in Mandarin. "What?" Lan looked frightened. "Now. Immediately. Put it in her mouth so she doesn't choke on her tongue." My arm protectively circled Lan's shoulder as she delicately attempted—and, after receiving a bite on the index finger, forcefully achieved—the goal of inserting the wallet between Jing's fierce teeth. Once Jing's jaws were locked thus, I scooped her twitching body in my arms and saw that, beneath her flickering lids, Jing's eyes were terrified. I looked back at Lan, who was standing by my left shoulder. Her chin was almost brushing against my bicep. Her lips were moist and parted. I would have done anything for the right to kiss them. With a nod towards Jing, I asked: "Is this her first, I don't know how to say," I switched to English: "epileptic fit?" Lan placed one hand on my left shoulder. She looked beseechingly into my eyes. "What is this?" she asked in Mandarin. "Let's go," I replied, turning my head swiftly towards the door. "She needs a hospital. The two of us will take her." Outside, the winter sky was cloudy and starless, and the air smelled of burning coal from nearby houses. In the distance, the sound of explosions foreshadowed the fireworks extravaganza that would welcome the New Year on the following night; inevitably, people were jumping the gun. A blast of Siberian wind reminded me that my coat was inside with Billy. Seeing that Lan was carrying Jing's puffy, blue winter coat over her arm, I began, "My coat --" But then I noticed that Lan was wearing a short, white rabbit fur jacket. Her stocking-ed legs—with their naked thigh flesh that put the lie to the Chinese government's claim that there is no God—were totally exposed. Despite the below-freezing temperature and her near-bare legs, Lan didn't appear to register the cold; which might explain why she didn't acknowledge the chivalry in my statement, "Forget it, Billy can return my coat tomorrow." My arms occupied cradling Jing, I flagged down a cab with a kick of my leg. "You first," I said to Lan, straining to prevent my teeth from chattering. I followed her into the warm cab, sitting beside her; Jing I laid across our laps. Jing seemed to have stopped convulsing, and I helped Lan spread the puffy blue coat over Jing's limp body. Then I blew on my icy hands to hide my smile: Lan's naked thigh flesh was rubbing against my pants leg. As cold as I was, I wished I were wearing shorts. Lan seemed to be waiting expectantly, so I told the driver, "Beijing Guoji Hemu Yiyuan." Beijing International Harmony Hospital. The foreigners' hospital. "Guoji Hemu Yiyuan!" Lan exclaimed, scandalized. "That place is so expensive!" "Don't worry," I assured her. "I'll pay." I met Lan's eyes, and she stared back at me with an expression that combined rapture with astonishment. "You're so ...rich," she murmured. "What can money matter when the health of someone you love is in danger?" I asked. "But you don't even know Jing!" Lan protested. "But I already love you," I replied earnestly. Lan flushed and busied herself brushing Jing's bangs off her forehead, but I saw that she was smiling. When she next raised her head, she was giving me a sidelong glance. "Ni tai ke ai le," she admonished. You're too adorable. I ask you, should I have known, in that moment, to run away? Should I have said to myself, Dean Cannon, you know for a fact that a woman who thinks you're adorable is not going to rein you in. You, Dean Cannon, have been on a ten-year wild oat-sewing spree, and it's going to take a fascist to turn you into Mr. Quaker Oats. The fascist dictionary, Dean Cannon, doesn't contain the word "adorable." Should I have said that to myself, or is that the kind of insight that emerges during an extended duration in a maternity ward waiting room while your mistress is in labor? On the other hand, what does it matter? Had I asked myself the question, would I have run away? Not a chance. Not with that atheism-defeating strip of bare thigh pressed against my leg. "Guoji Hemu Yiyuan," I ordered the driver, and we were on our way to Beijing International Harmony Hospital. Much overlooked as a pick-up joint, a hospital is in fact a brilliant place to have that "getting to know you" talk with your future wife. Every conversation in a hospital is imbued with a depth and significance that the same conversation—played out in a bar, for example—cannot have; because in the next room, people are dying and people are being born and here we are talking and, just by virtue of our proximity to the profundity of human entrances and exits from this world and the struggles they entail, what we say means something. "I'm going to the toilet," Lan said, as soon as the emergency room doctors had finished berating me for the wallet in Jing's mouth (wrong, apparently) and sent Jing off with an internist for a battery of tests. Considering Lan's remark, I realized that in our intense dash to the emergency room, Lan's physical needs had gone unmet. Lan had physical needs that needed to be met. "I hate hospitals, I hope this doesn't take too long," Lan said, taking the chair next to me upon her return from the bathroom. I was moved that Lan felt safe enough with me to confide her fear of hospitals, and I felt admiration for this woman who had challenged herself to come to the hospital despite the stress it caused her. My breath quickened with excitement as I reflected that she'd done so for the opportunity to spend time with me. "I told Jing that, since she was drunk, it was a bad idea to dance on the bar," Lan sighed, looking at me. "She was my high school classmate, so I must look out for her, but she's too much trouble!" And here I saw that Lan was crying out for help, that the responsibility of dealing with Jing was wearing her thin. Lan, poor woman, needed the support of a partner to fulfill her burdens of duty and obligation. "The world is full of trouble," I observed, "so those closest to you must be a refuge of stability and harmoniousness." "You sound like my mother. She's always trying to get me to take Jesus into my heart." "I disapprove of celibate stability and harmoniousness," I clarified. "A family should be prosperous in the number of its descendants." "You sound like my father," Lan commented. "He's always lamenting the impact of the one-child policy on the People's Liberation Army's recruitment options." "I think militarism is inappropriate in today's world," I hastened, "since globalization makes us all one family. Strategic alliance is the better approach, I think." "My parents agree with you. They want me to marry a foreigner." What did she just say? "For Harvard," she explained. "They want their grandchild to go to Harvard, and they think the chances are better if my husband is an alumni." "I went to Harvard," I lied immediately and without regret. "You are too much perfect, Ding," Lan smiled warmly. "Adorable, and a Harvard graduate." And with that, she unburdened her life's story. I listened patiently, focusing on ensuring that I was obviously and demonstrably "actively" listening to her, so that she'd know what a great listener I am. Nothing impresses a woman more (or convinces her more resolutely of his conversational skills) than a man who sits in silent admiration while she prattles on. I was therefore prepared to listen to a tale that rivaled The Romance of the Three Kingdoms in length, but Lan—my sumptuous orchid, my enchanted sparrow—was as efficient as a Lu Xun short story: "If I'd been born in the United States, I would've gone to Harvard because I was born in 1980, the Year of the Monkey, so I'm smart, and a problem-solver. Harvard likes monkeys. And I have always pleased my parents. Even though I'm a girl, and their only child, I am not a disappointment to them. So if we'd been in the United States, I would've gone to Harvard, like you, Ding. "Growing up in Beijing, I have no opportunity to go to Harvard, but I had a very civilized upbringing. My parents are from old Beijing families, very well connected and very cultured. My father was Bo Xilai's roommate at Beijing University. You know Bo Xilai? He's the Minister of Commerce. My father worked many years in the Ministry of Construction and now in real estate development. He was an original investor in Pan Shiyi's SOHO New Town project. You know Pan Shiyi? His IPO raised 1.65 billion U.S. dollars. "My mother's mother was Mao Zedong's ballroom dancing instructor. You know Chairman Mao? He said, 'Serve the People.' My mother danced with Chairman Mao when she was 6 years old. After that my mother grew up to teach economics at Tsinghua University, except for the time in 1987 when she taught at the Hangzhou Teacher's Institute, when Jack Ma was her student. You know Jack Ma? He founded Alibaba.com. "My parents strongly emphasized Chinese culture so I would grow up to continue my family's civilized tradition. When I was little, I learned to write calligraphy from my grandfather. As a child, I memorized Tang Dynasty poetry to recite during the many afternoons that my family spent together, drinking delicious Chinese tea. "In school, I was always the top student. I spoke English fluently by the time I was 11. When we sang karaoke, I always choose English-language songs. I bought English-language counterfeit movies to watch, and I translate them for my parents. From these movies, I learned how to dress and kiss and how to eat with a knife and fork and not spit melon seeds on the floor. "When we took the gaokao, I tested into Beijing University, where I studied business administration. I graduated eighteenth in my class. My first job was in the public relations department at Motorola. Last year, I switched to a public relations job at Microsoft. The work is ok, but I want to be CEO of my own company and CEO of my life. I want to marry a foreigner, have one child, and be rich, like you. I want my baby to be born from a C-section because it's civilized, and expensive, and the foreign standard." I have heard that men tend to be more visually stimulated than women, and also that men fall in love faster than women do. And I promise you that, if you were a man, looking upon Lan's frangipani-blossom beauty, listening to her describe herself in such appealingly plainspoken language, you—like me—would be in love. That night, my love for Lan was fresh and immature; I admit it, there were aspects of selfishness in it. It was a superficial love at best; a vanity-fueled love at worst. In any event, it was a humble forerunner of the crushingly powerful and compassion-fired love that I was to feel for Lan in the aftermath of my sexual betrayal of her, of the love for Lan that I now tend as a devotee tends an eternal flame. But my point is that, on that night, January 27, 2006, I was already in love with Lan, that a variety of love for her already infused the blood in my veins. And that mad consequence of love, marriage, was already in my mind. My first response to her revelation of her biography was to elicit information about how I could best position myself to be her husband: "People born in the Year of the Monkey are compatible with --" "—the dragon and the rat—" "—I'm a dragon," I lied again, immediately and without regret. And thus I became forever in the eyes of my wife and in-laws two years younger than I am (tigers are born in 1974; dragons in 1976). Lan's eyes sparkled, and she grabbed my hand excitedly. "I hope you are free to join my family's dinner tomorrow night to celebrate the new year. I want you to meet my parents. Adorable, a Harvard graduate, rich and born in the Year of the Dragon: you really are perfect, Ding." "No man could be perfect," I replied, "unless he had you for his wife."