Diary of a Naked Official (6 page)

25/6

Nasturtium's story goes as follows. Oh, I must say she isn't that repulsive; she is just a bit too rich for me in the sense of cosmetics and decorative stuff. As someone put it, it's like a piece of meat a few days too old that needs dressing up.

She said that she had divorced her husband a few years earlier, having found out about his affairs. Because she initiated the divorce proceedings, it had to be a naked process in what people refer to as
luoli
, naked divorce, in which she walked away from her marriage a naked woman, without her daughter, without her husband and without her properties, not even her share of them. That's how determined she was: wanting absolutely nothing from her marriage. Instead, she set up her own company, selling children's clothes, at the same time
when she found a man, someone much younger than her. She wanted to keep him for her own pleasures.

I was fascinated by her story and was once again reminded of another friend's life story: Married but living apart from her husband, Ang, the film director, 40, lives with her son and a male artist, 60, from Paris. People don't worry about these things any more. They take their lives, or the law of their lives, into their own hands and their own minds.

Neverthelss, she has a secret agenda that she revealed to me: She wanted her daughter to get the job and needed my help through Sam, a middle-school classmate of hers. I was surprised at her daring and regretted losing control on account of her mighty killer heels and her overpowering perfume. But I suppose I can give her a bit of nudge here and there along the way when opportunities avail themselves.

26/6

While
My Love Lies Elsewhere
falls far short of my expectation, I admit it is a perfectly acceptable book for publication as long as its author can afford to subsidize it, not only to the publishing house but also to me;
forgettable books like that touch no one but can blow up the sense of contentment, even superiority, on the part of their authors. They serve as social lipstick and mascara, to be used when making up and dumped when removing it.

These days, bribing has become so rampant that an Australian businessman Sam knows said to me over dinner the other day that he'd play the Chinese game any way we wanted. By that he meant that he'd be willing to bribe his way to successful business deals. Because Sam's English wasn't good enough, I had to assist. I noticed that the Australian man was quite stingy. At the end of the dinner, he gave me a yellow kangaroo badge for my effort. I chucked it into a bin afterwards. The poet of
Love Lies
knew better; she'd already put her dough in my bank. Good on her. Love lies but money doesn't.

The Australian man was, after all, generous in his telling of lewd stories about scandalous stuff in Australia. One, in particular, caught my attention. According to him, the boss of a factory, one of his main suppliers, had slept with nearly all the pretty girls that worked there. ‘One was so pretty,' Doug said. ‘I had an immediate hard-on when I went there for a visit.' He went on so enthusiastically about this girl's looks and the way she walked that I found it irresistible and laughed out loud.
Sam took him to 1919 that night, an entertainment place with the ‘1919' figure that meant: Want to Fuck Want to Fuck, if pronounced in Cantonese, like this:
yao gao yao gao
. But, in Mandarin, it could also mean medicinal wine that has curing effects.

I've said the same to B. But it is books that speak the honest truth to a hurting degree that are denied the chance of publication because the comfort zone is out-stepped and our core values are challenged. One day, when I can set up my own publishing house, I'll publish things to my heart's content. But I hug that close to my heart, without ever voicing it to anyone, let alone B. For the moment, I'll let things be dictated by MM, money and market through B, Banker of Books. It's interesting how girls are referred to as MM these days, too.

On the other hand, this new poetry manuscript, titled,
Short when Shrunken
, from a poet who calls himself Daq Sogu, has got something to say. One poem goes, ‘What's the matter?/When I see a beautiful face/I see a banknote.' Another goes, ‘One of the differences/between the brains and the dick/is that/the former ejaculates poems/and/the latter, seeds'. A third, with the title, ‘Question/Answer', goes, ‘Question: what colour on a woman is the closest to that on a man?/The colour of her tongue is closest to that of a man's dick/and her own lips without lipstick.'

The absurdity of my position is that much as I love the prurient honesty of such poems I can't make the recommendation, not even when the poet is willing to pay. A publishing house, unlike a prostitute, can refuse to provide the service even when the clients want to pay although it is similar to a prostitute in that it offers products attractive enough to induce people to buy. Eventually, these poets will have to go underground by publishing their own stuff in bundles of bound pages without a book number, like masturbating in the dark, or just go naked online, like public exhibition to an invisible degree because no one will pay any attention. I'd have to lose my job to give them the satisfaction of coming out to wank in the open.

In the application, the girl has attached a photograph of herself, as they always do these days, but she is different in that she wears a military uniform over a white male-style shirt, with a red tie. Her hair is brownish, obviously dyed, in a way that doesn't actually add to her natural beauty and, I'd say, that is rather detrimental to it. Her legs and her hands, for my money, seem of the tenderest kinds, slender and slim. As I looked at her, I found myself going hot and hard underneath, which I really shouldn't have; it was only last night that her mother had it with me and now I was scared of the trajectory of my own thoughts and where they might lead.

Every day now I get smns from them. One from C says: I want to swallow you up! Another from W says: But I miss you so much. Still another from R says: Hubby, when are you coming back? I want you now. I immediately deleted them all. In this day and age such sweet nothings keep the levels of one's libido high and, from time to time, they make me want to quit my job and my marriage to lead a life of total abandon, something resembling de Sade's ‘libertine dementia', travelling from city to city and woman to woman, seeing the landscape of faces as one gets physical with them, with no more attachment than a mobile phone, which, I must say, has become a man or woman's external sexual organ. Sometimes, short messages that come in create wavelets of desire bordering on an instantaneous delirium. When I go to work, they tell me I look much younger than before, quite inexplicably.

In fact, this is what the girl said who I made love with a couple of years ago in Q city. She told me that I was so good that she really enjoyed it. That sounded as if I was the one who provided the service. According to her, I was even better than her boyfriend, like someone in his early twenties. I pretended to be surprised that she did this thing while keeping a boyfriend on the side but she assured me that her boyfriend knew nothing. She then told me that many men she had provided the services to
could not achieve an erection. ‘They had a mind to,' she said. ‘but they did not have the ability.'

27/6

As I went to the loo this morning my thoughts about Snapdragon returned, only long enough for me to decide I'd push her out along with all that had been brewing in my intestines. If there are women who snap like a love-taut woollen thread, taking French leave – Chinese leave a more apt word, as it is more abrupt, more determined, more ruthless and more deadly – why can't I dump them like shit by cleansing them out of my system? It didn't used to be like that but, now that women are equal to men in everything except that they have not swapped their sex organs with men, the contemporary weaker sex, men can react and resist, like a species fighting a losing battle, whose semen is as trashable as a tissue with snot wrapped in it. Snapdragon gone, I shall make sure she does not resurface in my memory and if she by any chance reappears therein I'll expel her then and there by forcibly deleting her from my memory, again and again, until no trace is left.

Immediately following her departure is the
reappearance of Meta, who said, in one message, ‘I want to hug you in my heart'. And in another, ‘when you come back you'll see a totally new woman.' But, for some reason, she would not disclose her whereabouts except that she is busy but will give me a surprise when we next meet.

In the discussion I had with B and others this morning,
Love Lies
– a joking shorthand for the full title of that manuscript – was accepted without objection, along with a few other trashably acceptable manuscripts, self-aggrandisements dressed up as autobiographies, biographies of dead political VIPs, guaranteed big sales through official channels, and a number of unreadable poetry books by 40ish women whose life is passé and whose literary AA – ambitions and aspirations – are matched only by the amount of cosmetics applied on a daily basis, to the detriment of their dermatological care. I did not mention a single word about the other much more interesting manuscripts that have come my way. One of the main advantages for a deputy head in charge of my area, that of publishing works subsidized with private funds, is I can enjoy all the good stuff, or should I say, better stuff, without spending a single cent. In the scheme of things, an excellent book, by the time it is edited and published, becomes a good book, and a good book, a so-so book. It is amazing how a so-so book can sell, such as the one penned by a guy who called
himself Hung Heavens, but I have ceased to be amazed by the mediocrities as the world is made for them, books written by the mediocre for the mediocre, like common food, eaten only to be shat.

28/6

In that transparent booth they refer to as The Goldfish Tank, in which they dance seen without seeing, I chose Meta because of the shoes. This was a pair I had never seen: Its heels in the shape of inverted erect penises, with balls atop like two tiny cherries. After we finished making love, when I asked where she bought them, she told me that she had actually got a shoemaker friend to make them for her, modelled on her own special design, an idea of hers based on the men she had come into contact with over ‘one month'. They all use ‘one month' if asked how long they have been doing this job.

As she talked, an idea suggested itself to me. Why not get her to put the penis-shaped heel in her mouth for me to take a photograph of? She was obliging enough to put one inside her mouth and the other inside her vagina. I took a number of shots from different angles until I could not hold it any longer for the explosive liquid within
was turning into a suicide-bomber, ready to detonate himself. Perhaps because of an artistic synchronization or identification, she allowed me to enter her without the condom. I was so delighted that I cried out ‘I love you, Baby' as I uploaded my jelly-like lotus-root powder, thinking of Snapdragon. It was not till that instant that all I ever wanted to fuck was the dragoness herself.

Long afterwards, we talked about nothing but art, how Jeff Koons made sculpture based on his love with his porn star wife, and Tracey Emin with her ‘My Bed', surrounded with used condoms; names that had never been taught her when she attended the school but that were immediately found likeable for what they had done. With an artistic bent myself, I have secret wishes that I could one day collaborate with an artist on a number of ideas that have been brewing in my head for a long time.

29/6

Dinner at Yamagoya, with Nasturtium and Rehmannia, her daughter, again at her mother's expense. Surprise, surprise. Reh looked little like herself in the photograph. Unsexy, perhaps because in the company of her mother, she was attractive with her languorous eyes and her
long black hair that cascaded over her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of white sandals and a longish skirt, nearly reaching her ankles, whereas her mother was more aggressive in her attire: newly curled hair above and red heels below. I was a bit embarrassed. Much of the time I ate in silence, letting them do the talking. Nas did much in promoting Reh, as a good daughter at home and a good student at school. At such times, I could catch Reh's glances, timid escapades, cast my way and, in that instant, we managed to convey something slightly amorous between us without her mother's awareness. I decided that I liked the girl for her winning smiles and speaking silences.

At night, before turning in, I masturbated myself thinking of the girl. I haven't done this for a long time but the girl's fingers, so pale and tender, seemed to have the power of seducing me in spite of myself.

I did not promise anything but I said I'd throw in a good word or two when it got to the final stage.

30/6

W had an argument with me today. She didn't agree to let our daughter read porn. I said: But it's classical Chinese
poetry, not porn. I then quoted her a prose poem that, in sum, goes as follows:

I have dreamt a dream that is funny, in which, I dream you are flirting with someone else. When I wake up, you are still in my arms. In my heart, I can't afford to lose you, so I sleep hugging you tight, for fear that you may be over there in your dream while you are awake in my arms.
³

She said: This is absolutely unacceptable for a 16-year-old!

I said: What did you take her for, a fool? Girls her age have more carnal knowledge than all these poems are put together.

‘How did you know?' she said, questioning me with her searching eyes. I dismissed it with a ‘there are stories galore online'. Then I told her there were reports that girls aged between 8 and 12 fell in love.

‘But you don't want to quicken the process with our daughter, do you?' she said.

‘Thing is,' I said, ‘girls without boyfriends will do anything under peer pressure. For example, a girl of 16 impatiently waited for someone to come along and take
her virginity just because everyone else was doing it; her story is online for everyone to read. However, if you give them something more refined and yet elementally absorbing they'll be able to cultivate a refined taste without losing sight of the more pleasurable that will in time come their way.'