Naked City

[joe]

The Russian.

There's, like, seven or eight stories in the naked city. There's always a blonde. This blonde was a hooker with expensive hair. It would have been black otherwise.

4.am. Wednesday. Two Chinese guys walk into a bar. Stop me if you've heard this one, but two Chinese guys walk in. They zero in on the blonde and want to know how much, and then they think the price is too high. "We're not foreigners," one says. "She is," says Mama behind the bar, "E luo si de." A Russian.

Now this girl has brown eyes, but they're big and wide, and her hair is expensive, a professional dye job. She always looks a little surprised but incurious. She talks slowly, except when gossiping. The two guys peered closely at her. Right up close, like, five centimeters from her face, looking at, not in, her eyes. They tested her with some Chinese. Mama said she could speak Chinese.

I hadn't known what hookers would find funny, but they loved this. Everyone watched, and shushed whistleblowers, laughing behind their hands. The girl sat through the inspection. One of the guys discussed something with Mama. The girl stood up and looked a little vacant. All three went upstairs. Hilarity.

A minute or two later all three came downstairs. Maybe what they say is true.

In fact, I think the two guys were just checking out the upstairs. When they came downstairs they stood around for a minute and then left, and I guess one had been squiring the other around, because the guy who hadn't done any of the talking came back a little later. He took the Russian upstairs and didn't come back.



This is only a test.

[Mr Nobody]

Ok, then; 7 1/2 out of ten.

[woza17]

Joe where is the punchline? Is this a joke? I understand most jokes. Are you having a go at blondes? My blondes sisters won't put up with this any longer?
Anyway m'kay it I am hungry I going off to have Chinese lasagne

[MK]

Joes just pissed 'cos they didn't pick him.

[Norbert Radd]

How much Chinese does a woman have to know to turn a trick? Or maybe the question I want to ask is
How do you ask for full service
at a Shenzhen massage parlor

[joe]

Big City, Bigger City.

This isn't the provincial capital, it's a tourist town. But they say the capital's police control the late night bars around here, and it used to be that the Army wanted a look in.

The Army, you ask? There's more military installations in this area than I have been aware of in other places. Riding a bike one or two corners off the main roads outside the city has several times found me looking at a sign declaring a Restricted Area that may not be entered without permission. So they're here, at least. But the capital is the capital. Maybe it makes a difference.

It seems to make sense. A member of Team America regaled a crowd with a story one night. He'd been in a fight with a local right over there on the street. He said the police did nothing, though they did all go to the station. He said his Chinese buddy, the guy who managed the bar, was there in the station and talked to the Chinese protagonist and made him cry.



This is only a test.

[gengrant]

Norbert...not that I know from experience, mind you...but you ask them "how much?" and give them a wanker gesture...

in Party Central, you can expect to pay at least 200...probably a little more

again, not talking from personal experience...

[woza17]

Hey GG
I have found this a really funny and friendly website. It's called How much is a handjob in your country? Now it is actually very interesting cause it gives a lot of insight in to many different cultures. People just say how much their friend paid for a handjob and after that is over, the converstion moves on. I was quite atonished at some of the prices but I suppose you have to take in to account the cost of living . If I was a bloke though, in some of those countries, I would take the job in hand.

[cheekygal]

[woza17]

Gee Whiz cheekygirl what is that look supposed to mean. I try to join in on every thread and if I have nothing to contribute I just make it up.

[Norbert Radd]

I am just trying to take matters in hand and stay healthy. Like I heard on the spoon, sex workers are like a box of chocolates, you never know what STDs you'll get

[Norbert Radd]

when I googled how much is a handjob in your country, I didn't find that sight but did find this:

A husband and wife were having difficulty surviving financially so they decided that the wife should try prostitution as an extra source of income. The husband drove her out to a popular corner and informed her he would be at the side of the building if she had any questions or problems. A gentlemen pulled up shortly after and asked her how much to go all the way. She told him to wait a minute and ran around the corner to ask her husband. The husband told her to tell the client $100. She went back and informed the client at which he cried "That was too much!" He then asked "How much for a handjob?" She asked him to wait a minute and ran to ask her husband how much. The husband said "Ask for $40". The woman ran back and informed the client. He felt that this was an agreeable price and began to remove his pants and underwear. Upon the removal of his clothing the woman noticed that the man had an enormous penis. She asked him once more to wait a moment. She ran around the corner again at which her husband asked "Now what?" The wife replied "Can I borrow $60?"

It is near the end of the school day. The teacher has turned in her grades and there is really nothing to do. All the kids are restless because they have nothing to do and it is near the end of the school year. The teacher says to her class, "Whoever is the first to answer the questions I ask can go home early."
Little Johnny says to himself, "Good, I want to get outta here. I'm smart and I'll be first to answer the question." The teacher asked, "Who said four Score and Seven Years Ago?" Before johnny could open his mouth, Susie said,?"Abraham Lincoln." The teacher said, "That's right Susie. You can go."
Johnny was mad. Susie answered first. The teacher asked, "Who said, I Have a Dream?" But before Johnny could open his mouth, Mary said, "Martin Luther King." The teacher said, "That's right Mary. You can go."
Johnny was even madder than before. Mary answered first. The teacher asked, "Who said ask not, what your country can do for you..." Just as Johnny was about to answer, Nancy said, "John F. Kennedy." The teacher said, "That's right Nancy. You can go." Johnny was boiling mad. Nancy answered first. Then the teacher turned her back to write something on the board, and Johnny said, "I wish these bitches would keep their mouths shut!" The teacher, obviously angry, turns around quickly and asks, "WHO SAID THAT?"
Johnny said, "BILL CLINTON, CAN I GO NOW?"

There was a Russian ambassordor and an African ambassadaor. One day the African visited Russia. When the two ambassadors were walking down the streets they saw 5 guys playing rush-n-rulet. The last guy that tried to get into the gang blew his head off. The African was quite impressed with this new dangerous game. The Russian didn't respond. So about two years later the Afrian invited the russian over to visit his country. The African was so exicted that the russian was coming because he had invented a new more dangerous game. When the Russian got there the African showed him his new game. Here's how it went; there was five girls in a room, one man walks in and gets to pick which lady had to give him a blowjob. Now, the Russinan was thinking this game wasn't so bad. He asked the African,"What's the danger in that game? It isn't so bad." The African replied,"one of the ladies is a canibal."

There was a Mouse walking through the forest, and hs suddenly heard a huge cry for help off to his left. It was an Elephant stuck way down in a pit. The Elephant asked the mouse to help him out, reminding him of his wonderful memory, and that he could be a good friend when the mouse was in need. Well, the mouse liked that idea, so he went and got his Corvette, hooked it up to the elephant, and pulled him out of the pit. They didn't see each other for a few weeks, but then the elephant was walking through the forest, and he heard the mouse crying for help! Wouldn't you know it, the poor little thing was stuck in a pit, Corvette nowhere in sight. The elephant told the mouse not to worry, that he'd get him out in a flash. He stuck his trunk down into the pit, but try as the mouse might, he couldn't reach it. Then the elephant got an idea. He sat down, and started to think about his favorite girlfriend elephant, and promptly got a raging hard-on. He stuck that down into the pit, the mouse grabbed hold, and the elephant pulled him out. Do you know what the moral of this story is? *If your dick's big enough, you don't need a Corvette.

[cheekygal]

woza, I was just perplexed why hooker in every story has to be Russian?

[joe]

Oh, do I have to explain? She wasn't Russian. She was Chinese. Still is. And everyone thinks she looks foreign.

[cheekygal]

[DollyODear]

woza17 said:

Hey GG
I have found this a really funny and friendly website. It's called How much is a handjob in your country? Now it is actually very interesting cause If I was a bloke though, in some of those countries, I would take the job in hand.

I googled for that site. Couldn't find it. Could you post a link woza?

[woza17]

DD it was a joke. I hope you haven't wasted a lot of time looking for the website, which begs the question why were you

[DollyODear]

Here it is a couple o weeks later and I still haven't found the site.

Oh, it was a joke.

;D

[joe]

All Souls Tequila Night.

This is not a true story. These events never took place. Stack o'Bibles.

Halloween. I had thought me and my box of beer would be going it alone. I don't know when the guys turned up, but I think it was about 8. I was already five beers to the wind when they unveiled a new enemy, Jose Cuervo Gold. The guys had been to Walmart.

Their plans had been a bust too. Michael ate 360 yuan worth of Holiday Inn Costume Extravaganza tickets when his girlfriend had a crisis with her son--he hates middle school and he'd just run away. Sam and his girlfriend gave up their plans because they always do and rolled up to Michael's place instead.

First album off the rank was Black Sabbath. Sam set about carving the watermelon. Walmart hadn't had pumpkin. He said he wanted his Jack-O-melon done before drinking made handling knives too much fun. Lemon. Salt. Tequila. Lemon's a bad choice.

My phone hummed in my pocket. SMS. "你在干什么老大". I'd been waiting for her to make contact. I get whiny and mean when relationships take a wrong turn and I'd deleted her number the day before. And I'd been deleting messages as she sent them.

I said I was doing nothing and was she okay to come over.

She turned up some time later. The drinking had been going on in earnest for a while. The Jack-o-melon was flickering in the corner on a box of beer. I couldn't tell you what we were listening to, but someone decided it was time for System Of A Down. I had the CD.

That girl is tall. Not overly high, but she's usually taller than the girls around her. Slim. Shoulder length golden hair with a black crown. High cheek bones. Dance music makes her move and when she's around people she doesn't know she goes into overdrive. No English. I originally met her by accident. One night I was sitting in a place I know, reeling in my chair, talking to the Black Dress Boss. The Black Dress Boss was always called that because the first time I met her I hadn't the sense to ask her name but she had been wearing a black cocktail dress. Mei strolled up from a few doors down. I don't have the Black Dress Boss' number anymore, and she doesn't know my new number either. Only Mei has my number.

The Holiday Inn deal must have wound up fairly early because the guy from downstairs come up to say hi, along with his girlfriend. They had their faces painted green and black. The girl took off after a minute, and the guy told us about the buffet.

Two cycles of the cd and dancing later it was time for food. Also somewhere in their I'd asked Chen Mei, the overdrive girl, to call up a friend. We went out to pick up barbecue and the new girl. On duty Chen Mei doesn't drink so she could walk in a straight line.

I never did eat that food. We bought it, met the girl, walked back, and found the party had broken up. Sam had suddenly hit the Tequila wall. He'd stood up and said it was time to go home, so they left, he and his girlfriend. The guy from downstairs was long gone. That left one guy sitting by himself when I walk in with two strange girls. So Mei and I turned around and walked this new girl back out to the gate to catch a taxi. The two girls talked a lot on the way out there. Turns out they came from the same province, and the new girl had a boyfriend somewhere in town. When we got to the taxi Mei said she was going with the other girl to see if her boyfriend was handsome or not. These days that kind of crap is starting to be par for the course in this heavily photocopied facsimile of a relationship I have with this girl. Think about it. Whoring isn't random liason. There's a whole pretend relationship to consider. I'd deleted her number last time because she'd come over and we'd watched a movie, and when it was done she said, okay, I have to go back now.

So she left with the new girl. I walked back to my house. I spent some time on drunken MSN messaging. Good for a giggle, all those randomly placed capital letters, and stream of barely consciousness rubbish. I can recreate what happened by looking at my cell phone. There are messages sent and received. Mei was gone for at least three hours. Maybe more. I don't know for sure because at some point I hit the wall. Tequila Slammed it. Passed out on the couch with the front door wide open and the security door downstairs unlatched. I'd been up since 6am, and I'd forgotten, as you do, how spirits sneak up on you. I came to in my clothes on the couch with the door closed. I showered, shaved, went to bed. Mei was alseep.

Next day I woke up angry. She had a job to do, and she was dogged about it, but I was trying to work out what I should do, even what i should say, about the silly crap she'd pulled the night before. But she'd just been being herself. How interesting can it be sitting around watching a bunch of guys get drunk? It's not like she's anyone's wife.

She had a sore on the inside of her lip. She said she'd been brushing her teeth and the other girl had been talking. Mei'd turned to say something and caught her lip with the brush.

After a while we got up. She'd asked so I'd said, "Shi, wo yao ni, danshi bu yao ni." It was ridiculous so she left.

[Lotus Eater]

Life.

[joe]

Yes, Jim. But not as we know it.

The Hunan Shuffle.

AM

6:00. Rose, shone. Coughed. It's getting too cold to go outside for a smoke.

6:15. Watched the old woman jog. She goes out every morning: scuff-scuff, scuff-scuff.

Shaved, showered, snorted daily medications. I'm thinner now that I don't eat chocolate.

7:45. In the classroom early. It makes a good impression. Warm from the walk over.

8:00. Last class of the week. "Ladies and Gentlemen...." Essay day. First period: fables, and the idea of moral of the story. Sets up an essay. A modern Chinese-American fable to be deconstructed and essayed upon.

9:35. "Write your last words, class is over."

10:00. Snacks outside with the sun on my neck.

11:00. Celebrating another day older: haircut.

PM

12:30. Lunch. After the rush. Students fill up the restaurants from 11.

I've discovered combinations: carrot strips, pickled vegetables and meat. Poor man's sweet and sour.

1:30. Home. Considered a text book. Eventually opened it. Planning a lesson for next week.

3:00. Unexpectedly fell asleep earlier. Lesson plans remain conceptual.

3:30. Gird loins. The sun is out and it's a good day for a bike ride.

Ride uneventful. Several near misses, and one hard thump over a pot hole I couldn't miss. I saw the sun in the lake by the docks.

5:30. Beer.

6:30. Shower. Dress for walking outside.

Walking outside is a way of not going crazy. My four walls begin closing in around 7, and it's better to have something else to do. I go out, hang out and talk. Sometimes it works. Other times no one knows why I'm hanging around.

Last night was an English Party. A class had been doing this a few times each year since they were first together. In their first year they had no foreign teacher to come along and they got used to doing for themselves. Maybe that's why they're one of the most cohesive and active classes I teach. The other foreign teacher and I were participants rather then teachers. It worked well.

But it unnerved me. Everyone had a new character, different from their class character. According to my culture at least three of them were coming on to me. I still don't know what it means according to their culture.

The other guy pulled a Ba'hai stunt at the end. He said the Party had been great, you did well, and next time you could invite a first-year class too!

I walked back with one of the organisers. She was being coquettish, but I'm not that silly. A senior happened by and asked, may I join your talking? I said, maybe, who are you? She said, what? and then said she was a senior.

Then a first-year kid happened by. If we'd have had a third-year boy, it would have been the Languages Department writ small except that they were speaking English, boom boom. They all felt like they had something urguent, and they wanted clear times and dates for future meetings.

I was really tired by then. An English Corner that works is still an exercise in maintaining a high spirit. But I would have liked to talk more. If one keeps ones principles in mind, simple human contact like that is rewarding for its very simplicity.

That was last night. Tonight I didn't meet anyone.

10:00. Home. Beer. Muddled through a many times muddled through pile of bought and unwatched dvds. Turned the tv on instead. I've read all of the books I've cared to borrow.

I stay away from the computer. That welter of porn and the temptation of failed communication.

11:00. Gave a sigh and put in a dvd anyway.

AM

1:30. Bed.

2:30. The pig starts squealing, down in the trees in the old stone buildings by the lake.

The first time I heard the pig was Mid-Autumn Night, 3am. I thought someone was being killed and ran to the window to fix a location. There had been a crowd of men's voices too.

[joe]

Huaiyun.

TTG Bird Girl complained. She wanted a name. So, Sam and TTG Bird Girl. Always flip 'em the bird.

She said Mei was dangerous. Not like Fang. Fang was a nice girl. Fang was pregnant for a short while, and she said it was "waiguoren de". Mei told me. Aside from it being the next best thing to a physical impossibility, whose else would she say it was? This story has become too cruel.

I've been feeling it for a while now. There is a built in meanness dealing with a prostitute you see too many times. The pretend relationship is severed anew each day, and never really built into anything in the meantime, but it's there.

Walking around town last night drinking beer I started to get a sense of how many pink light houses there were. Literally hundreds. Some with curtains, some without. Several tea houses. A few KTVs. One pink light place was a meat market. No, really--it was a butcher shop with pink neon. That was a good joke.

The cruelty didn't used to bother me. I relied on it.

Last night while dark-alley urinating, up against a wall, I was berated by a guy for waving my willy at his sister. It was pointing at the wall and hadn't been waved. I talked to him over my shoulder. But I'm sure I just mumbled something meaningless. Wasn't that a scene from a movie?

In another city at another time I used to watch foreigners hauling themselves down the bar street, clutching bottle necks in their fists just like dragging their knuckles on the ground.

I've got calluses on my callousness.

And this should be the last of these stories, I think. The Naked City can pull up its pants and stay away from my sister.

[George61]

Not to worry, Joe. Lotsa fishes in the Naked City sea.

[MK]

Hey...that's my life, only a bit....darker.

I also ran to the window one night thinking someone was being murdered outside only to see a truck full of pigs had broken down below on its way to the slaughterhouse.

[joe]

Fang.

Fang was a good girl. Not short, not tall. Off the job she dressed well. At work she wore blue Adidas shorts, a dark T-shirt and plastic scuffs, but I only saw her at work in summer. Off work she liked loose fitted slacks, off-white, close at the hip and ankle. Or she liked T-shirts with obscure messages and lots of applique: small shiny half shells of metal making a pattern. Blue, and blue jeans.

The last time I saw her she had changed her hair. I think it was her. I saw her on the street, and I rode past on my bicycle. She watched me ride past, and I watched over my shoulder. I thought about turning around, but I remembered she had said she was pregnant. On the street her face was impassive. If it was her, she'd lightenend and straightened her hair. If it was her, her face laid blame that she said everyone could ignore.

Before, her hair was black and to her shoulder, a little longer, no special style, a simple cut. Her stock in trade was being a little smaller than others and looking up with simple wide eyes. For her height, others would envy her figure. A wide face.

Was she sad? In my house she was content to watch tv uncomplaining. Her hometown is near here, four hours on the bus. She said she was 22 and she had been to zhong juan, technical school. Or did she? I forget.

The last time she was here she had said she was pregnant. I ignored it because I was drunk, and because the first girl I knew in China had said the same thing. She hadn't been, but as it turns out Fang was. She isn't now.

That first girl had tried to make something of being pregnant. It lasted for five minutes, and she hadn't been, anyway. As I recall. She'd said it over the phone from two provinces away. Fang said it once and I never heard it from her again. Others told me it had been true. Others told me she had said it was me. It wasn't. She had suffered through some things from me, but that wasn't one.

But if her face the last time I saw her was testimony then she had been betrayed and that was nothing new. Proud, in her own way.