More of sexy Deedee

Shanghai… Oh, modern city of wonders, the Paris of the East, mysterious, sultry and all the other tired hyperbole that goes with such descriptions. I remember one particularly excitable piece that said the city ‘lived in hypertime’ (by a verbose buffoon called Patrick Cranley, I recall; and indeed a Google reveals him in all his buttock-clenching awfulness here, at the New York Times, no less). What preposterous nonsense it all is!

Shanghai is like a peasant in a shiny suit – superficially impressive, but when you get to know it, still provincial, rustic, haphazard. It’s a guy that’s spent a thousand dollars on Armani and then wears it with beat-up black shoes and white socks.

Thus for example the subway system; the city spends billions on it, filling the news with bluster about the city’s modernity and efficiency – and then closes one subway line at 10pm and the others shortly after. Now the last trains are always full – indeed sometimes so full it is almost impossible to get on board -- clearly indicating the people want to use them. But still they close at ten, ten-thirty, pushing crowds onto the street, all fighting for cabs which, at such times (and even more so in the rain) are exceedingly hard to find.

Or take the elevated highway network -- billions spent, and for a fucked up result. This is not just down to bad usage (though with Shanghai’s breathtakingly appalling drivers, that’s a large part of the problem) but also to do with utterly inept design. Each exit and entry point shares the same bit of road. This means that vehicles trying to shove their way on mix with vehicles trying to shove their way off, a chaotic foul up that starts in the inside lane and then thickens and spreads so that the whole motorway lurches to a halt. The situation is so bad that at rush hour the cops have to close off junctions to keep the motorway flowing. How’s that for a billion dollars? The slab’s a handful of years old but already obsolete.

Or the maglev – another billion dollars’ worth – which can only operate at full speed for 45 seconds, since the track’s too short (indeed ending some miles out in Pudong, meaning that to get to the city center one must take the tube or a cab, thus making the journey by maglev barely faster than that by bus from the airport direct.)

Sure, the city has one or two areas that show some class; but on the whole it is a town of belching and barging, spitting and shoving, thieves and beggars… and those insane drivers. China… 1% of the world’s cars but 15% of the world’s car deaths.

But enough of this shouting. For the most part life here is ok, and so… back to burbling about women. Back to Deedee.

I’d heard nothing from her the day or two after class, so I thought she had likely tossed my card in the bin, brushing me aside with all the other guys that (I assumed) hit on her. But no; a few days later I get this message –

This is my phone number. After the final class you have give me your name card. Deedee.

I was deliriously glad she’d got in touch… and so of course I replied like the horny toad I am; we traded a few messages, during which she told me she was feeling sad, though she did not reply when I asked why.

Now my classes generally conclude with an oral exam a few days after lessons proper finish. Based on her lackadaisical approach to those lessons, I was pretty sure she would not turn up.

Yet turn up she did, though she came and went without doing the exam. I did not know she was there until she popped her head round the door to say she was going. This, I later found out, was because she had become tired of waiting. The way she put it suggested she thought the students were talking too much – but really that was not quite the case.

The interviews were taking a long time since I found one or two of the students quite interesting. One woman, Joan, especially so. I’d talked a little about politics in class (a waste of time since most students know zero about it and refuse to countenance any political view that does not enshrine the ‘China right, rest of the world wrong’ view.) She told me I ought not talk about this. Now in one way that was an expression of her rigid thinking, but in another, it was impressive. It is very rare for a student to talk back to the teacher like this, and I admired her for it.

Since that class I have got to know here a little better, and grown rather fond of her. Though I’m glad to have got to know her, back at that interview, I berated myself, reminded myself I was a cunt, since it seemed to me chatting with her at length had deprived me of Deedee. Thus I felt I had missed a big opportunity by chasing a smaller one.

After Deedee’s brief appearance, I interviewed one of the guy students; he was quite an engaging chap, interesting to talk to. He asked if he could record the interview—‘for Deedee, the cute student.’ So when he turned it on I took the chance to flirt with her in absentia, speaking into the mouthpiece that she should have come to the interview.

It did occur to me that maybe this guy had a thing for her too, and that this was his way of showing it; guys here are seldom direct, but woo by proxy in this way.

Not just guys; the indirect approach pervades so much of life here. The other night, for example, I went out for dinner with Tulip, a woman I am extremely fond of. She’s stuck in a rather odd marriage (married two years and still a virgin), and when we meet I usually ask her about it and usually urge her to get divorced; doing so, I am sure, would bring her greater happiness in her life, though of course it’s much easier for me to give advice than it is for her to follow it. She told me she had begun to push this option, saying to her husband, ‘If you find a better woman, you should go for her.’

She was waiting for his reply to this, she told me; but in some exasperation I told her she had not asked any question at all and that her husband, if he had said nothing about the weirdness between them by now, would not start to say it unless she raised it in a far more direct manner.

But I will return to Tulip later, since I want to talk about her (and the many ways in which she fascinates me) at some length.

As for this guy at the interview (who I have now totally forgotten – name, face, what we talked about; what I am writing here is reworked from my diary) – well, if I had been him I would have simply cut out my voice from the recording, for if this was my attempt to woo her I would not want some other guy on there. But I think guys here are not quite so cynical and calculating.

It’s possible of course he was just being helpful, and at the time I also wondered if she has just asked him to do it. But when, later, I took her to dinner, I mentioned this incident, and she knew nothing about it. That leads me to think the recording was indeed his bid for her, shrouded in a typically oblique approach.

I, of course, was totally the opposite to this, and just ran at her with my usual bull-like manner. I hurried home after the interviews to look up the Chinese character for ‘lazy,’ so that I could tease her in Chinese, and then I texted her to say Deedee，你太懒了！为什么你不来考试？哈哈

She said: 我怕老师

I replied: 你怕我？噢！我非常不高兴！

Then she said:是害怕考试我准备了好多天但是还是没有勇气这是我我的错对不起原谅我吧!

And again said: 老师别生气是我不好

So I: 我很生气！所以你必须见面我，喝一杯咖啡！

To which: 我不会喝酒不知道我可以喝果汁吗？

So I hit her for a date: 哈哈几天有空？

And: 下周比较空除了周一都可以的

I ended this with ‘Good! I wanna get to know you better.. I’ll 短信u on Tuesday'

So that Sunday I hit her up again, suggesting we meet. She said, ‘除了周一我都有空.’ So I grabbed her as fast as I could, for Tuesday night, but not wanting to appear too keen and thus scare her off, I said coffee or dinner were both ok, but that I preferred the latter. And she: ‘我们吃晚饭吧！时间地点你说罢.’

My choice was obvious, Laris, so I set the rendezvous. She said ‘好的你可以写英文的我看得懂的’ and then ‘哈哈你欺负我手极不方便发英文短信.’

There’s no need to provide a translation for this, for it’s all obvious stuff; I reproduce it in the original Chinese just to show how desperate I was to impress her. I would imagine to a Chinese reader my attempt to do so is pretty risible.

Next evening we met… I’d half expected her to cancel, for surely a woman like her has guys ever after her and I was just one more? But not so; she even arrived a little before me.

As I walked up out of the tube, the crowds standing on the plaza above were revealed to my eyes. My eyes fastened on one pair of legs in particular, slender, shaped, clad in black stockings. The higher I rose up the steps, the more of these legs I saw, up and up a slice at a time, up to a short, short sexy, flouncy skirt.

That skirt alone was enough for me to expect it was her, even before I had come far enough up the steps to see her face; and it was. This skirt was sexy but curious – it was more of a tutu than a skirt, deep bronzy gold, ruffled and flounced. She looked like she had just come off stage. Those black stockings underneath and ah, those legs! How I imagine them clutching my back… and how I vowed to work to make that happen, how I vowed to take her home and fuck, fuck, fuck her that same night.

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Lucky Dip

When the revolution comes, they will blame the foreigners first.

At the end of every course I teach, I tell the students my email is available on the university website, so that they can ask me for help with their compositions, job applications and the like. Mostly I do this because I am aware my earning power is much greater than theirs, and I get paid 200 rmb an hour for more or less talking in my native tongues. Most of them do not earn that much in a day; and even the Chinese staff doing the same job as I do, with English perfectly good enough for the task, earn less (whereas they ought of course earn more, since they are fluent in both English and Chinese, whereas I am only fluent in English). So making myself available for any student who is inclined to ask makes me feel a bit less guilty about the matter. Foreigners do get an easy deal here; and that is why if revolution ever does come (unlikely as it is with China’s placid, passive population, too supine to ever ask questions) we foreigners will get the first blame for what, truly, are the ills and evils of the government and the Chinese people’s own ignorance.

But the other reason is that it is a convenient way to hit on the female students that catch my eye without doing it too crudely; the whispered word as they leave, ‘Keep in touch.’

The drawback to this situation is that after each class, a host of students will add me to their accounts, meaning that I general I cannot pick out the women I am most keen to talk to. Is the new person who wants to chat to me a man or a woman? If a woman (and it is frequently impossible to tell by name alone, especially when written in pinyin), is it one of the ones I am interested in?

Of course I cannot straight come out with it, ask Are you a guy or girl?’; and in general each conversation begins with the student saying, ‘Hi, I am your student. Do you remember me?’ – which is no help at all. But it is usually easy to find out the gender without even asking loaded questions; the fact is women in China are eloquent, talkative, opinionated, loquacious and each an individual; the guys are mostly monosyllabic, misinformed and identical. (Which is why 90% of the students who add me are women anyhow.)

The dilemma grows even greater if we begin chatting a few weeks after the classes are over, for by that time I generally have no memory at all of the woman or the class, so easily are they replaced in my interest by subsequent students.

The long and the short of it is, from time to time I make a coffee or dinner appointment with a woman whose face and form I cannot remember.

This is the lucky dip, and in general it is something I rather enjoy… heading for the rendezvous, wondering what she will be like, what age, what looks, what availability.

As a child I would go to an annual fair near my home. There was a lucky dip stall there, a large tub filled with bran in which was hidden a selection of gifts, some better, some worse. The image of my hand burrowing into the bran, and the feeling of anticipation that went with it; these are on my mind each time I make such a date.

Sweetie was one such dip, and a dip that came up lucky.

I’d been helping her online with a fairly complex paperwork problem, and (more by luck that judgment) had managed to solve it for her with some aplomb; coffee was natural after this. Heading to meet her, I still had no clear idea of who she was. But to my pleasure I found she was a woman from a class I’d taught a few weeks before.

True, I would likely never have thought about this woman again had I not met her now, but in that class she was the one I wanted.

Sometimes there is more than one woman I incline to in a class, but only rarely nil; for even if it is not such a good batch there are still gradations, ranks. And so there’s always one woman I’ll choose in each class.

And, online at least, Sweetie had a sexy personality, which seemed promising. So we had our coffee, and I asked the questions I needed to ask, married, boyfriend, and so on (whether the woman has a husband or boyfriend or not does not matter; what matters is how she talks of him. If it is with love, then I know I have no hope; if it is with brief coolness (as most generally it is) then I know I have a chance). In this case, the prognosis was good. So we had our coffee, we talked and we flirted, but no more than that; sex may be easy here but it is not quite that easy.

But I knew I had done a good job, for, talking to Sweetie online a little later that night, I saw she had added a line of text by her sign-in name:

`He said I am cute and funny, and many guys will run after me. But I see a fat boring girl in the picture. The picture is honest.’

I had indeed told her she was cute and funny as we drank our coffee, and now I repeated it. She half-believed me.

I guess – no, I am sure – an objective viewer of this would see me as rather predatory, manipulative. Maybe it is so. But I liked her in class, I liked her when I met her in person; she was cute, appealing. And, sure, it is not much more that friendship and fuck for me; but as far as that goes, it is genuine.

A week or so later I hit her up for dinner, meeting near Henan Zhong Lu. Now, Shanghai’s best restaurant for a seduction, Laris, is in that part of town. It always works a charm, and I have had great success with the women I have taken there. However, I knew I had already charmed Sweetie – I did not need to do any more. And frankly I like to reserve this place for women who intrigue me a little more than Sweetie did – my interest in her was purely physical, purely fuck.

But as it happened, Sweetie had her own suggestion, a Guangdong place hard by, which suited me fine. It was ok, though too brightly lit as are most purely Chinese restaurants (I mean those not catering to an international clientele) and with patchy, generic service. For the first ten or twenty minutes of our date she played her Nintendo, or maybe Gameboy; whatever it was, she was keen to take it to a point where she could save the game.

The meal done, we pondered what next – but there was not really much ‘we’ to it, for she was waiting for me to make a decision. The decision I wanted to make was, let’s fuck. But of course I could not deliver it so crude as that. It had to seem as much her decision as mine; so I offered that we could go for a beer. But Sweetie thought maybe it was a little early to go to a bar, so I suggested she might like to ‘see’ my place.

She agreed: and so back we went by tube, which she preferred to a cab (I think because she wanted to seem somewhat modest, and a cab would have been rather more intimate). But even so, we kissed a little on the tube, though mostly modestly -- unlike a little later in my bedroom, where kissed with more passion.

But even then she wanted to keep it under control, so after some passionate kisses she broke away and said ‘Let’s have coffee!’ While it was brewing she stood on the balcony, and I went to her there, kissing her some more, my hands roving her body, pressing her pussy through her trousers.

The coffee never got drunk, cooling by the side of the bed as our passion rose. It was my normal routine, kisses starting on the mouth then moving to all over face, to neck, ears, to her still-clothed body, to belly, to top eased up and off over her head, and roll over, unhook her bra, and kiss breasts, nipples – her breasts a little spread, but pleasing – and she takes my top off, and I kiss her pussy through her trousers, trousers off, her just in panties and me too; and then her naked, and me following and, (as many other women have said), the ‘It’s much bigger than … other guys..’ There, the slight pause because she did not want to say ‘the other guys I’ve fucked.’ This of course this might be what women say to all men – how would I know? – but it is surely not mere flattery. The average Chinese cock ain’t up to much, as shown by no other evidence than the condoms sold in China are simply too small.

Getting inside her was – again as with other women – not so easy. It hurt her, though, unlike Gloria, or Jiping, she did not let that stop her, she bore it and, with plenty of lube, the pain subsided after a while. And as she got used to it, she got more into it, me coming from behind, from spoon position. At first, she would not go on top but anon she did; later she told me her reluctance was due to doing this with a past lover – it had hurt him she said, so she thought maybe she was doing it wrong. Some wimpy Chinese guy in her past, I guess. Rolling her over later, I quested for a bit of anal, nudging my cock against her there – and as she did not demur, I pushed on, getting in maybe an inch. Then it began to hurt, so I desisted. But she was willing, so with more lube, more preparation, it might be achieved – and frankly that would be almost half the reason for me seeing her again.

The other half of my reason for seeing her again goes back to earlier conversations we have had, in the various mediums; I think it was on msn first that she mentioned she was having dinner with her wife. ‘Wife?’ I’d queried. She’d explained that she had a number of very close women friends, so close she called them her wives. There was a sexual tone to this, and when we talked in the coffee shop that time I referred to it again. Her response was equivocal enough to make me wonder more.

Making love to two women at once, and having the two women make love to each other, is of course the ultimate fantasy of many men. It is not something I have done yet, but it is naturally something I am most keen to experience.

Now Chinese women in public life are the boring, tame creatures Chinese men want them to be. But between the sheets, they come alive; clutched by passion, you can reach the raw woman, with all society’s bullshit shucked off. And so asking a woman about a sex act is best done in the middle of a sex act. Thus I let a quizzical expression play across my face and, sure enough, she asked What are you thinking?’

With a show of hesitant reluctance, I said, ‘I am wondering what you would do if another woman came in and kissed you.’ I’d tried something similar on Lucy (to whom I believe I said ‘I am imagining you with another woman..’) and she’d shown some expression of interest; and so too now Sweetie pondered it, said, `Maybe.. one of my friends might like to do that…but I’d have to think about it – I wouldn’t want to risk her friendship if she said no.’

So that’s pretty much what it comes down to – my sole reason for seeing her again would be anal or lesbian. Thus masculinity!

The sexiest woman I ever saw

Deedee turned out to be a student at one of the city’s better universities, the East China University of Politics and Law. (‘Better’ is of course relative – even the best university here is still only the turd floating on top of the cesspit).

This was something of a surprise to me. See, another part of the image of Shanghai Woman is bimbo. And while in my right-on liberal way I try not to categorize so crudely, Deedee’s late arrival to class (she had missed the first session entirely) and her good-time-girl demeanor, led me to the lazy conclusion that there was more to her exterior than her interior.

But, shallow as I am, I was still exceedingly keen to impress her, and this I tried to do, in what, to a Western woman, would likely have been amateurishly obvious. Since I know most of the universities here, I asked her ‘Do you study at the Songjiang or Zhongshan Park campus?’ and this (which had been my sole purpose in asking) impressed her.

‘Two years at each,’ she said, telling me she was studying German. ‘But I hate it’

‘Guess what I studied as an undergrad?’ I asked.

She of course said ‘I don’t know.’

‘German’ I told her – at which she laughed and blushed.

This was of course shameless flirting, and while I half expected she was quite astute enough to see it, it was less obvious to the two guys in her group, since guys here, on the whole, have fuck all idea about flirting, even flirting as crude as mine. As we talked I tried not to gaze at her perfect good looks too closely; but dragging my eyes away was hardly better. As she sat she leaned against the wall, sitting at right angles to the proper direction of the seat, her body full of life and movement, her legs up on the seat next to her. Because of this, I pretty much had to keep gazing directly into her eyes – otherwise I would be looking at her breasts or at her panties, since she was wearing a very short skirt which, with her legs up on the seat. This is not to say I did not look – of course I looked – and even though all I could see from my brief, furtive glance was the fabric of her black tights under the skirt, it was still quite enough to make me need to pull down my sweater after I’d done talking.

As I talked to others in the group I scored another hit or two. The other girl among them asked one of the guys how to say jinmi in English – and I supplied the translation, ‘calculating’ (they were talking about Shanghai people). Then a moment later the guy wondered what ‘zhuanye’ meant – ‘specialty’ I told him. Boots chick (this was how I labeled her in my mind at the time, since I did not know her name) noticed both these and I could tell she was a little bit impressed by it; for all it takes is a word or two like this to make people think one’s fluent at a language.

Now I’ve been here five years but I’m a lazy swine so my Chinese sucks – as does that of most foreigners here. Most of us expect the locals to know our language, rather than bothering to learn theirs; and thus there is some kudos in being able to speak it. And I was so pathetically keen to impress this woman that I wanted her to think I was one such foreigner.

Pathetic and also fickle, since the very next day, in a different class, another Shanghai Woman grabbed my attention -- Echo. She was not quite so cute as Deedee, though dressed sexily; but with her it was more what she talked about with me that hooked me. She’d studied fine art at university, so I asked her to describe a show she’d been to. She chose Seiji Ozawa’s recent visit – something I had been very keen to go and see, but had got pickpocketed on my way there. She told me the concert was great, but also that Ozawa was a bit irritated by the constant stream of latecomers. This is an irritation every artist has to put up with, since audiences here lack the common graces of back home. Indeed Shanghai audiences, like Shanghai drivers, are the rudest and most ill-mannered thoughtless oafs I have encountered.

At the end of this class Echo lingered to ask ‘What are you doing tomorrow night?’ I assumed she wanted to have coffee to get my advice about language stuff; but not so. She wanted to offer me two tickets to a Bartok concert, which she could not use due to having class. I was really most touched she offered them to me, and gladly accepted. ‘I can give them to you now’ she said. ‘They’re in my car.’ And so she took me to it, a new blue shiny one. And thus she turned my head – musical, fashionable, well-heeled. Quite worth a chase… and chase her I did; and will write about that, too, later.

But to get back to Deedee; my next class with her was a week later or so, but I did not really expect her to turn up. Her absence in the first and half attendance in the second made it fairly clear she wasn’t much interested in learning. Many students are pressured into these classes by her parents and only attend grudgingly, and I assumed she was one of these (something she later confirmed.)

And indeed she was not there; but, half an hour into the class she turned up. The door opening slowly and her peeking her head round, knowing I would tease her on it. But I just smiled at her lighthearted entrance and let her go to her seat with little further comment (normally I make the late students say why they’re late, partly to get them talking but also since it makes the others laugh, which makes them more confident to talk). And then I spent the rest of the class, up until the break, trying not to check her out too much. But as I called the break I saw her pulling on a scarf. I knew she was going to make a run for it. Not alone from her putting the scarf on, but also from the conversation she’d had on her mobile phone, whispering quietly (but not so quiet that I could not hear) to arrange meeting people. I knew she would wait until I left the room so she could escape without my comment, and I knew if I had stayed in the room she might not have had the bottle to go. So I could have kept her there just by staying put.

But I made it easy for her – out of an ulterior motive, of course. I slipped my wallet from my coat into my pocket and went out into the corridor to lurk; there I got chatting with one of the guys from the class. I heard the classroom door, out of my line of sight, open; and I heard the precise click of high heels on the tiles. I knew it was her. She was clearly hoping not to get rumbled and gave me a sheepish smile when she saw me. I smiled back, keeping it genial, fairly light, though I could not resist saying ‘It was hardly worth coming!’ Then I walked down the steps with her, so that, out of sight of any other student, to save her blushes and mine (for I did not want to so obviously hit on her in front of the class), I could extract from my wallet the business card I had made sure to put there before leaving home. She smiled at this, and I could not read the smile. I like to think it was a smile of surprise and pleasure at this unexpected thing. But a more objective interpretation would be that it was the smile of a woman used to getting hit on. She told me her name – this was the first time I’d heard it – and off she went. There was a car waiting for her across the road, shiny, new, other people her age in it, Shanghai’s new rich.

As the car slid off down Shitu road into the noise and night, she turned to wave goodbye to me, smiling; my heart leapt and sighed, but I did not expect to hear from her again.

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