Diary of a Naked Official (2 page)

While he was squatting there in public, everyone was watching. I was made to feel very embarrassed. This upset me so much I decided to go, leaving him there. Tomorrow, I'll come early to work and won't bother with him anymore.

As she talked, I found it hard to keep my eyes open, her young body having exhausted me. She wore an eye-hitting
pair of Christian Louboutin shoes, with brightred soles, called Declic, which I thought was Derelict; I rather liked my mistaken shoe identity. As I entered her, I said: You are so dry. Her response came from below that it was because she was youthfully tight.

I can't keep writing this because, for one thing, I'm getting an erection, and, for another, I feel as if someone is watching over my shoulder. I must find a way to keep this in a safe place.

Another detail: While she was licking me, one of her false lashes half fell. She attempted to put it back a few times, but in vain. I watched that half-fallen thing, looking like the broken piece of a black toothbrush, moving up and down as she nodded her head above me.

A line, ‘your eyes/close upon the gift of life/that without cease I give you', emerged, as if from the depths of my loins, and mind, as I finish today's entry.

5/6

Early this morning, someone touched my hand and I woke up. It was Y, Yummy, who put a finger over her mouth and said ‘shush' as she saw terror in my eyes, because my wife was lying next to me on my left, sleeping without a sound.

Now the size of a Barbie, she crept in, nestling against my chest and whispering into my left ear, ‘I love you', in a voice as beautiful as before, as when she had decided to break up with me. In my semi-confused mind I thought I was dreaming a dream but she was there, her tongue out in search of mine. I was reluctant, knowing that my mouth stank after a night's accumulation of stagnancies but she insisted, like in the old days when we would touch tongue any time of the day or night, regardless. I gave it to her and she took it as if it were her own, in a way that hurt. I ‘ah'ed and she let go. My wife turned in her sleep, muttering something about my disturbing her.

When I woke up I realized with bitterness that it
was
a dream and that once gone she would never return. I would categorize her as my nth wife, gone but palpable.

In this morning's meeting I wasn't happy with B, head of our publishing house and the Party secretary, as he was making a suggestion about publishing quickies – books that made quick money but had no values. As I was new to this job I kept silent; I had to see what role he assigned me.

To do him justice, he
does
have values, ones that the Party wants him to adhere to, that is, the socialist core values putting the emphasis on
yi ren wei ben
, an expression that defies translation but could roughly turn into something like this: with human beings as the
roots. To achieve that purpose, books published should contain no sex, little violence, and nothing that might hurt the harmonious relationship between the Han and other ethnic minorities. In a word, books are published to serve the people and to serve socialism by making people feel happy, not otherwise.

Something to remind myself: Have to remit the first lot of money to John towards the purchase of an incense shop and get ready for Wife's visa.

6/6

Celibacy for a whole day, which is rare these days, but memory makes it worse, so I suppressed it, its assault.

W, short for Wife, was unhappy. She didn't like me going out too frequently even though I said it was all work related. ‘I feel so lonely sometimes,' she said. ‘You can go to Australia, then,' I said. ‘I'm organizing everything for you and it'll be pretty soon that you'll live riding on the sheep's back.' ‘I'd rather live off a man's back than a sheep's back,' she said, in her forthright manner. ‘And what about her, our daughter?'

‘She'll definitely go with you,' I said, remembering what has happened recently, involving the principal of
a middle school molesting a number of teenage girls. ‘I wouldn't want our girl to be eye-raped,' I said, using a new word I've learnt from the Weibo.

I could see why she cheered up when she heard the word ‘Australia', coupled with the fact about the molestation. She can't stand China. Too many people. Too much chemical-infested food, with a sky that is never blue or never entirely blue, shrouded in a constant haze that refuses to lift. She daydreams of living overseas. Which she thinks is her destiny. With D, short for our daughter, she'll enjoy it even more. University matriculation examination is hell that both of us want her to avoid, at any cost. Unlike some parents who stick to their gun or gunho (I'll have to check if this is the right expression) by waiting and working hard till their kids pass the exam, when they then divorce, we'll save the trouble and go elsewhere and live in a divorce-like situation of marriage. Where else but Australia, which lots of people have come back from and reported as the last
jingtu
in the world,
jingtu
, literally, clean earth, being Sukhavati, Pure Land or Paradise of the West?

I'll organize payment for the purchase of a house for them in Melbourne or Sydney, perhaps Sydney because it's been nominated the most liveable city, better than Melbourne as there is the Opera House where photographs of her would do her proud when sent home.
Once they are there, all my money will be tucked away in an Australian bank, safe from official scrutiny here.

It'll be good for me, too. I love to have the freedom of being totally alone, totally free, like an emperor, among my many and varied imperial, no, new-age, concubines. Some time ago, this vulgar man who came to my party in the Green Teahouse with Peter and Samuel proclaimed that he had slept with over 500 women! I tried to picture how that must have felt but I can't stand the thought of coming into contact with the smell of so many mouths! The guy looked no older than someone in his mid-thirties. How did he manage that? I noticed that neither Peter nor Samuel said a thing. They kept sipping their tea, looking at the man expressionlessly. I couldn't tell whether they were impressed or not. An absurd thought came to me: Maybe they've also done that many themselves?

7/6

The boys are heard talking on a construction site. One of them, the thin one with the long lashes like those of a girl, is telling them a story:

They are doing that, you know, when they find they cannot separate themselves. Whatever they do the man cannot pull his thing out and the girl cannot push him away either. Soon, the girl's parents will come home. What to do? They cannot do anything till they are discovered. They are discovered eventually. So they are carried to the hospital where they have to be operated on. It soon transpires that to separate them one has to die, either the man or the woman.

I woke up from the dream and found it oddly familiar. It seems to have a significance beyond the simple dilemma. These days the women who come into contact with me are as naked and slippery as fish, and as easily separable. C, who I went to see earlier this evening with them, was one such girl. Afterwards, when we sat on the sofas in the semi-darkness of the hall, watching overhead TV and smoking, H said: I've given it to her three times! I rather doubted his prowess. Q smiled feebly, shaking his head, as if he did not believe his own doubts. I pretended I did not hear that. Because I had done someone else earlier, I wasn't able to ejaculate with C and had to get her to help me out with her hands. Afterwards, I lay in her arms and heard her story or part of her story.

She told me that she had a boyfriend whom she suspected had affairs in her absence. ‘If he does that, I am not much concerned because I can also do it,' she
said. Then she told me that she had another boyfriend in her hometown, a nice fellow who was prepared to wait till she came home. ‘He is a nice one. It is beneath his contempt to make advances to other women; it's not like him to do that. He'll wait for me.'

This is a woman who, to excite my taste for the wild or perhaps just to perform one of her duties, tore her black fishnet stockings to pieces before she allowed me the entry. I had to excuse myself by saying that I was not used to the condom. She laughed and said: You don't know how quickly these other men come. I said: How? She said: The other day I had a young man come in. The minute he saw me his thing stood up to attention and I had scarcely touched him when he ejaculated,
pong pah
, just like that! I found myself laughing out loud uncontrollably.

I must say she seemed to enjoy her work a lot but I am not one to comment on the morality or values of whatever she does or how she relates to other people. I am more concerned with B as he always must have his own way. I get the feeling that he'll probably assign me something negligible to do. As Old Sheng, editor of self-published poetry books, is leaving, I might be asked to succeed him. Fingers crossed.

I'll write about M – short for Metamorphosis – tomorrow as I now am really tired.

8/6

Done a few books, including
Pale Fire
by Nabokov. The poem is okay, but too designed. In fact, that's what the whole book is. Can't finish the rest of the notes and stuff. Too pretentious for my liking.

Montaigne is different. The translation is a flawed one but Montaigne comes off as someone full of wit, of a violent kind, sometimes, such as this story he tells of an old man who succeeds in wooing the heart of a beautiful young lady, only to give up on his dick when he realizes that it is incapable of an erection. Totally frustrated, he cuts it off and chucks it away. It is good that, as yet, I do not have that problem. On one occasion, I remember, I did it no less than ten times in a day with J Ro, coming each time. Quite a waste, of body fluids and physical energy, in retrospect. I wonder why I have bothered keeping track of the times.

A bit more on Montaigne. He is a man of self-indulgences to the degree of verbosity, which I dislike. He repeats himself regarding his honesty, his poor memory, and his need to be outspoken, too. I told B that we should not put too much focus on the market but we need to build an aesthetic sense of appreciation. He didn't know what I was talking about. Instead, he said, a publishing house should be run like a mint, producing
books the way money is made, millions of copies worth tens of millions of dollars, as the market is the order of the day and dictates what to publish and what not to. That's right, I agreed but said to myself under my breath that it was all nonsense. I would rather be managing director of a book publishing house than that of a banknote printer! He had the sense to see that I wasn't agreeing although I pretended I did. He must have hated my guts, staring at me like I was a total stranger who had just trodden on his big toe without offering an apology. I could see that he also pretended that he didn't know what I was thinking. But, shortly after, his decision showed: I was to be responsible for looking after self-funded poetry and books of values deemed quite unpublishable unless I made convincing enough recommendations. ‘This is a very important job,' he said, with a knowing smile.

I consulted Old Sheng and found enough info about book numbers and how to use them. Despite the complexity of it, I've worked out that a book number, worth nothing in the international market, could be worth from 10k to 60k, for a mere book, all depending on an editor's whims.

Interesting, I thought to myself.

Then I thought of M. As long as she is there, hope is there, too. She's my woman, at my beck and call, even though I have to pay and have to wear the thing.

She came into my room and said she missed me. Without any preamble, we undressed and coupled. Unlike most of the girls in the business, she allowed me to mouth and tongue her, which was a bit scary. When I kissed other girls they turned their faces away, avoiding the kiss as if it were poisonous. I felt disappointed at the same time when I acquiesced in the act as it was a sensible one. With her, there was no problem, her mouth agape, swallowing mine up, my tongue pulled as it was being sucked into her depths, to breaking point.

Pretty soon, I made the entry, encountering no resistance from her as she did not stop to ask me to put it on as the likes of her would have instinctively done, reaching for their tiny bags of aids and tools. I was all the way in, as deeply as I could, her eyes closed as were mine, each probably seeing different pictures. I saw the goner, my eternal lover, as imperfect as lovable, and as unholy as lovely. I wonder why I have chosen to settle for loss, for the loss. When she was with me, clinging to me, loving me without giving me a break, I detested her, I found her sweet words nauseating and I even wished for someone else as I was deeply engaging in the act of lovemaking, hatemaking too in a way because I hated the goner, the misser, the person gone missing that I loved so much.

Afterwards, I lit a cigarette for her and for myself and, reclining against the bedstead, heard her story of how she had split up with her boyfriend.

It's the GPS, yes, the GPS on my mobile phone that helped me track him down to a nearby hotel. He was with a bought woman in a hotel room, a hotel that I was familiar with. I hailed a taxi and directly headed for it. I stormed into his room, catching them red-handed in bed, right in the act!

I looked at her face through the rising smoke that screened my face, wondering about the amazing power of modern gadgets. I looked around but did not see her mobile phone. I sighed with relief: She hasn't recorded a video of our lovemaking on it. I wouldn't want to see our photos on Weibo, no.

‘What?' she said, hearing my sigh.

‘Oh, nothing,' said I. Then I related a story I had heard, of how four men were eating and drinking while four women were underneath the table mouthing them, one of them having difficulty because she had a piece of vegetable caught in her teeth preventing her doing a smooth blow job.

She laughed as she said, ‘Did she manage to extract it?'