Friday, August 18, 2006

Seducing Simone #4

So after eating we walked along Huashan Road back to my place. At first, she wanted to watch TV a little, putting off the coming moment. But maybe that was just out of the wish to seem modest, for within a few minutes she had lost interest in that and was instead in my arms, returning kiss for kiss.

Then she wanted to take a shower, and wanted privacy while she did so, meaning that I could not undress her, which I rather regretted. Undressing a woman is, of course, very stimulating, and especially a Shanghai woman like her, decked in lacy, fluttery clothes. Undressing a woman is also stimulating as one moves towards the moment of revealing the panties, for that is always exciting, even here in this society where many women wear the most frumpy, plain underwear. My interest in underwear being what it is, I asked what color panties she was wearing.

The same as last time!’ she laughed. Those had been sporty type panties, with a certain appeal, though limited. But after she came out of the shower, in her night dress, and I took her to the bed, and lifted the night dress off her (after only minor qualms from her) I was rather please to find deep dark blue lacy panties, which, she told me, she had bought specially.

And what will your mother say when she sees these?’ I asked, teasing, for I already knew the answer. And indeed the idea of her mother finding these panties made her eyes open wide.

She’d kill me! But I won’t let her find them’ she said.

The panties matched her bra in color, but not in style, for the bra, bought by her mother, was a Minnie Mouse bra. What parents! Simone also told me, soon after she arrived, that she was not wearing perfume since her mother had taken it away from her that morning – why, she was not sure. It seemed not to have occurred to her to ask, though that may have just been policy so she could preserve the innocent image she had in her mother’s eyes. To them she is still 12.

The real reason her mother took away her perfume was that her parents were out of town that weekend. She’d told them she’d stay with a girlfriend (which was the lie she used to stay with me), and presumably her mother thought she might go into town with this friend and, perfumed, would be in mortal danger.

What parents like this do not understand is that in restricting their daughters so severely they just drive them into the arms of chancers like me. The daughter under such restrictions chafes at them, they circumscribe her whole world. But when she gets a chance to break free of that confinement, when she meets a guy like me – then she embraces the opportunity, and becomes everything her parents hoped her not to.

But even though she’d brought these panties just for me, getting them off her took a little more while, for she thought she should still be reluctant. Yet she was excited, too, so her protests, her No, her Don’t, her hand holding them in place, did not last long. As I eased them off her hand flew over her mount in final protest but, easing it away, I saw what I had been waiting to see; and she is nicely made, shapely, hair so neat as to be coiffured, though she insisted it was natural (which I am inclined to believe).

I wanted to go down on her, of course; and here too was more fuss, since she felt it was `abnormal.’ She soon forgot that complaint when I dived in, and trim, clean and tasty, it was great to do, sexy, intimate, erotic. So, a while of that and then she pulled me up towards her, signaling she was ready for the final push. But already I knew it would by hard going, for by tongue and finger I had found she was tight indeed; and even plenty of lubrication helped little.

It hurt her and was awkward for me, too much fumbling, coaxing. Indeed, I grew churlish at her reluctance to grin and bear it, churlish enough to say “Maybe you’d better find a Chinese boyfriend.” That was an ungrateful thing to say, and, lying on the bed in chagrin I compounded the insult by falling asleep, having had just a few hours’ kip the night before. I woke what must only have been 5 or 10 minutes later, and she began to cry, so naturally I comforted her, already feeling guilty; and we tried some more.

A little more success, now, getting halfway in; but still it was pain for her. So we left it there awhile, cuddling and talking, and then she brought me off (though I had to hold my hand over hers to get the rhythm), over her belly and mons, she watching in fascination as I came, saying, in wonder, “So much…”

We showered again – this time, together – and that was pretty sweet. The daringness of it (as it seemed to her), like that time with Mona in Zheng Da, wrote breathless pleasure across her face. And so anon to bed, and here she wanted to kiss, kiss, kiss, even lying on top of me to do so.

I want to kiss you all night long” she said. I just lay there and let her do what she wanted; it was rather wonderful and she even began to kiss up a little emotion in me. Yes, her body on mine in the dark, her lips and tongue… that memory is a keeper.

Well, another attempt to make love in the morning, and with more success. Still I could not fully get in, but there was less pain and more willingness in her. And then lunch – for we woke late -- and then another try, again with a little ground gained.

I saw that with a few more tries she would be used to it, and so this time I was relatively brief with her, and then ate her again, all the way until she came. That gave me a real sense of cool, having her come under my tongue and seeing how it just wiped her out for ten minutes, how she lay on the bed wrapped up in it, lost, amazed.

Still think it’s abnormal?” I asked. She did not. And then she did me, again; but this time all on her own.

Now there was some male pride in this; I’d asked her more about her boyfriend the night before. She told me he never went down on her, because he did not like it, but that she did use her hand on him – though to get all the way there he had to do himself, she explained, gesturing with a hand to show she meant that to reach orgasm he had to wank himself.

Well, that was a challenge to me – the woman ought be able to get the guy off, both to validate her own equality and to show the guy is relaxed, at ease with her, is truly her partner. And it worked, for though she did not say it, I could tell that when I came under her hand, she was pleased. I hope it made her feel womanly.

And that was about it; she showered, dressed, and I accompanied her to the tube at half 5 so she could make her 6 curfew at home — a curfew which I was again rather glad for, since, having been with her the last 24 hours, I was ready for my own company again.



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Thursday, August 17, 2006

The Concept of Irony

So the Chinese press is shaking with vitriol about Koizumi’s visit to Yasukuni.

The China-Japan relationship is one particularly fascinating part of life here. It shows, in many ways, how unwilling – or unable – to think millions of people are in this society. For they misunderstand the past, present and the likely future. And they are blind to the crashing irony and hypocrisy which riddles their belief.

I should perhaps begin by saying that Japan’s conduct in the war was a crime against humanity of the gravest degree, lest this blog be overwhelmed by young hotheads who, at the hint of a supposed conciliatory gesture to Japan, will begin to froth at their anonymous mouths. The horrors they committed at Nanjing were overwhelmingly evil, and the bone pits on display at the Nanjing Massacre Museum are a sight I will not forget.

But here’s how the Japan argument plays out with the average, say, Tongji student, who (being at that university) is generally a bright person.

Me: “It was 60 years ago. Why are you still angry?
Student: “They have not apologized for the war.
Me: “They have. Numerous times, for example Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in 1995, or PM Ryutaro Hashimoto in 1997, or Junichiro Koizumi in 2005.”
Student: “Oh… are you sure? I never heard that. Well.. anyway… they do not teach the truth in their history books.”
Me: “The history book to which you agree is indeed offensive.” (Smile of righteous victory begins to play across student’s face; student’s shoulders begin to tense back in patriotic fervor)
Me: “But it is taught in less than one percent of schools.”
Student: “Oh… are you sure? I never heard that.
Me: “I am. Let me ask you a question. Do you think educators or the government should choose the syllabus in your university?
Student: “Educators. The government does not know what it best, and I wish at my university the teachers could decide what to teach.”
Me: “Well, in Japan, educators decide what to teach, not the government. The content of the books is not a direct government choice. ”
Student: : “Oh… are you sure? I never heard that.”
Me: “When that book was published, there were large demonstrations against it. 30,000 people marched in the streets to protest it.”
Student: “Oh… are you sure? I never heard that.”
Me: “What do you think would happen if people tried a public demonstration like that here?
Student giggles.
Me: “Did you know the PRC signed a joint communiqué in 1972 waiving all war reparations, and in 1978 signed a treat of peace and friendship with Japan?
Student: “Oh… are you sure? I never heard that.”
Me: “Did you know that when the war ended Japan left about US$100 billion of assets in China, which it agreed to leave as reparation?
Student: : “Oh… are you sure? I never heard that.”
Me: “Did you know Japan is China’s number one aid donor?
Student: : “Oh… are you sure? I never heard that.”

And so on.

It’s a curious double world, China, where it is fine to hate Japan, de rigueur to puff up with nationalist arrogance and demand ‘Japan face up to history,’ while at the same time wallowing in the grossest ignorance of China’s own recent history. The truth of the matter is that the CPC in general and Mao Zedong in particular have killed far more Chinese people, have hurt China far more profoundly than ever the Japanese did. But that is a truth too far for China, and here people are more comfortable with their simple world view, China good, Japan bad, with their simple surety that Japan is, was and always shall be evil, with their shallow-minded reliance on mathematical tricks to prove this contention – such as, for example, their oft-repeated claim that the Japanese killed 300,000 in the Nanjing Massacre, a figure which a cooler-headed look at history suggests is simply not true.


And it really is an alarming thing to hear students talk about Japan. The anger that comes into their voice, the real passion and hatred… I can understand their grandparents’ anger, for that anger comes from direct experience. But for them, who have never been hurt by Japan, it is astonishing, shocking in its brutal, visceral and unthinking conviction. I have met students in class who have actually wept when talking about Japan. It is absurd; how can they hold such hatred to something that never affected them?

It seems to me China is in love with its suffering; its people clutch the Nanjing massacre and all that to their hearts, they dance and romance their pain. It defines them; it is them. And, mired in their unthinking ignorance, what they do not see is that in so hating Japan they are learning precisely the lessons that the Japanese of that earlier generation learned – the absolute contempt for another race that allows such atrocities to be committed.

And the irony of it, the irony! So on the front page of yesterday’s China Daily there’s a photo of Japanese people, in Japan, protesting about Koizumi’s visit to the shrine. Japanese people protest, and the government will at least listen. Chinese people protest, and what happens? The government sends in the fucking tanks. People here are too busy hating Japan to see that it is the freedoms Japanese people have that they should be clamoring for instead.

But of course this is precisely why the CPC encourages hatred of Japan. In doing so, it can take the minds of the people off internal problems and focus them on external ones. The way that the CPC uses the appalling cruelty of wartime Japan to bolster its grip on power shows the most breathtakingly arrogant cynicism, the most profound contempt for the suffering of the Chinese people of the time. But most people here are blind to this. Nor, having the haziest understanding of democracy, do they see that Koizumi has to go to the shrine to show he is not being bossed around by other Asian nations. Not that that means Japan is militaristic – indeed, in the year that I worked there I found the people to be remarkably peaceful, though at that time I did not specifically look into their feelings about China.

And textbooks, let’s talk about teaching truth in schools, shall we? The Cultural Revolution, for example, that decade long period of lunacy in which thug scumbag Mao said, “Destroy the old and the new will take care of itself,” a period in which tens of thousands were murdered. In Chinese school textbooks (and I have checked) it gets two paragraphs, and, in the teacher’s guide, the instructions say “The teacher need not linger on this topic.” These same textbooks lie that the Great Famine was a natural disaster, and that Mao was ‘70% right 30% wrong,’ that the CPC did fighting against the Japanese in the war (whereas in fact the Guomindang did all the fighting after the CPC refused to join their ‘United Front’ against Japan).

And irony upon irony… In the features section of yesterday’s Shanghai Daily there’s a piece about “My grandfather Mao Zedong” in which his granddaughter has the gall, the absurdity to claim:-

“He was a son, husband and father firstly, a statesman secondly.”

There is nothing about this statement that is true.

Mao let both his father and mother die alone, though he had the chance to be with both as they died. He regularly abandoned wives and children, and for his whole life his sole center of concern was himself. And this woman, this granddaughter, even admits she never met Mao (who clearly did not give a fuck about her) yet has the unparalleled gall to claim he was a family man!

Or let’s talk about how Mao ran the Jiangxi Red Army base between 1931 and 1935. During his rule, the population dropped by 20%. Seven hundred thousand people died from non-natural causes. Half of these deaths were from people executed as ‘class enemies’ or from slave labor. In the case of the ‘class enemies’ Mao and his cronies thought up tortures every bit as brutal as the Japanese. For example, a wire would be run through the penis and the ear, and then plucked like a violin-string by the torturer; or a red-hot gun-barrel would be inserted in the anus.

And are people here clamoring for this truth to be faced up to? Or do they rather put Mao on the banknotes, his portrait in Tiananmen Square, his murderer’s face on a million busts and million statues? One of the greatest murderers of the 20th century but he’s a hero here.

Now the lies told in China do not make the lies told in Japan any less serious. They are no excuse not to be critical of Japan. But aside from a few wishy-washy generalities such as the bogus percentage above, local people (save for a tiny minority who see that to know their history is the true way to love their country), mostly live in total ignorance of the last half century’s terrors. Yes, some anger at Japan is justified, but nothing like the passionate hatred that soaks this society. And what is worse? To be hurt by an enemy (as in the case of Japan and China) or be hurt by a friend (as in the case of the CPC wallowing in the blood of its own people). attacking

That’s all in the past” students will tell me, and so it is. “We know all this” they will say (only they do not; they but know it in the most general, vague terms) “But what is the point of talking about it?” Why, then, are Japan’s atrocities not in the past? Ah, the double standards of this society.

I am a man who knows something about double standards. So back to that next time.


Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Seducing Simone #3

I did not think to message her again until the evening of the next day – which, of course, shows my fundamentally callow attitude. Now I was sure of her, there was no need to woo. Sending messages to a woman you’re unsure you’ll charm to bed is stimulating, spicy; the need to bat messages back and forth, to tease and maneuver, keeps the thumb active, keeps the mind ticking over on what the next reply will be, and the response to it. But once you’re sure of the woman, all that dies down.

And so (as I might have expected if I had really bothered to think about her at all) she replied to my message that she was unhappy.

Why?,’ I asked.

Because you didn’t send sms to me, Ha ha, do you believe it?

She followed this by texting, ‘I’m really waiting for your sms all day. I know u r busy but I still feel unhappy. Ha ha.

And so I replied to say I was sorry about that, but that I had been very busy. I had not, of course.

I know ~ I’m happy now~ I want to be your girlfriend now~ ha ha ha ha only making a joke but I really like you.’

Then she asked, ‘you have been kissing many girls, right?,’ to which I made some glib reply.

Oh my heart is broken.. :-) 你真的是华心大萝卜啊。。’

Now I did not bother save my messages, so all I have is a record of hers. But my replies can be pretty much guessed from the pattern of what she says.

‘what do you mean? You will kiss me for a long time?’

‘why? You change your heart quickly or love other girls fast?’

‘which kind of woman do you like best?’

‘you’re like a playboy.. But I still like you. You have special charm. I wanna say goodbye to my bf’

‘together with him I can’t learn anything and I found I lost a lot of time’

‘my mood is complex now. I don’t know whether meeting you is a good thing or a bad thing.’

‘Let me think about it.. Well this Sunday I will get away from my parents and stay with you all day, OK?’ (I’d asked if she’d spend a night with me)

‘Or you unwilling to stay with me?’

‘It’s very exciting~ Just like you say, I’ll let my youth be colourful~ Don’t cheat me any more’

‘If any girl told you she wanna be your gf would you agree with her?’

‘I love you, I wanna be your gf.’

‘Ha ha Don’t mind only sound out you~’

昏.. I know you like see me become a bad girl’

‘You wanna see me have many many boyfriends?’

‘Very well!! I miss you all night until now~ :-) How about you?’

‘Sorry’ (I had not said anything to make her say sorry; the reason she said it is clear from the following message.)

‘Maybe you don’t like to hear I say I miss you.. So I say sorry.’

‘:-) You say you dreamed of me, tell me something about that’ (I’d told her I dreamed of her. I had not. But telling a woman this is an effective gauge of where she sees the relationship going. It is a shallow and obvious thing to say, and would not work on a Western woman, but of such flimflam is my box of tricks made.)

‘Maybe it will be interesting! Don’t worry, tell me’

‘Are you sure you tell me the truth?’ (I’d told her it was a sexy dream – that’s part two of the routine.)

‘I understand what’s in your thoughts’

‘Tell you later!’ (I’d wanted to know what she though of my dreaming about her so.)

‘Take care of yourself. I like it that you regard me as an adult~~~ You can tell me everything you thought, about sex…’

The next day we met again, but just for an afternoon. And while we spent it in bed, we did not make love. As we idled together, talking, she worried out loud that, if we made love, I’d then lose interest; and so I likely would, I thought to myself.

But yet… as I lay there, just cuddling, it was rather sweet, and I felt whispers of emotion. She fitted in my arms snug and light; cool against my body, even under the duvet, light, sweet. Slender as she is, her body lies against mine nice. When I’d carried her into the bedroom it was as a scrap of silk – she is featherweight, 45 kilos or so. With a bulkier woman it takes each body a few hours to adjust to each other, and so cuddling soon becomes too warm, sticky, under the duvet, after lights out, until the cooler small hours and the body’s adjustment. But she was just right, and it was good. She’d be fun in bed, I was sure, and promises of it percolated through the afternoon, how she straddled me, pressed into me.

I could see that she’d take a little more persuasion before she gave herself to me wholly, but I knew I’d be able to persuade her to yield, and that she had the potential to be a fine lover. She would not be a great lover to start with, of course. Women here, I have often found, are cautious lovers at first, having been raised to suppress their sexual side. I was well aware, for example, that when I went down on her it would cause her to squirm at first. She’d find it dirty, wrong, product of this society as she cannot help but be. Mona, for example, in telling me about a new local boyfriend, said ‘But I will have to hide how experienced I am with him. He wouldn’t like that at all. He has to feel like he’s in charge and I don’t know anything.

But I was pleased Simone felt I saw her as a woman – that too would help bring her to me, for her parents and sap of a boyfriend only make her feel like a child. Perhaps if I was a bit more honorable she would be child in my eyes too, for, when I first got to know her, she had not quite turned 20. But that youth fired me rather than cooled me, and so I carried on with my pursuit.

This time, after she’d left (to hurry home for her 6pm curfew) I made sure to send messages after her:-

‘I miss you too. Tell you some good news. Maybe I can stay with you a whole night this Saturday.’

‘You can compare with superman! 快去吃饭!谁叫你中午不吃完上又不吃的!’

‘We must make love on Sunday?’ (I replied to say that it was totally up to her. And of course it was; I would respect whatever choice she made – but would do my best to persuade her to choose yes).

‘Oh I see! Thank you! You are very kind! I love you! Kiss~

‘Do you have free time after 6 tomorrow?’

算了当我没说’

噢!Maybe I can stay with you all night. I’ll try my best.’

And so we met to spend the night together. She was a little early at the rendezvous, which seemed to me a measure of the keenness she had for the encounter. I suggested eating – was she hungry? She was, and she wanted to eat at McDonalds. This made my lip curl, rather – such trashy bland pap. It made me think less of her, though she did not quite see my distaste. But I pushed the feeling down – after all, she was only 19, and so it was no surprise she has the tastes of a teenager. And the more mercenary angle of it occurred to me too – junk food a cheap and quick precursor to sex. What need for candles and romance?

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Seducing Simone #2

During that coffee with Simone I’d almost made a slip. She’d said something – I forget what – that made it unclear how she’d got my email, and gave the impression she’d got it from a friend. I half followed up this comment, but in doing so almost gave away that I did not recall where I’d met her. But by switching back to what I had thought to be the case (that she had got it from the university people) I was able to cover my error (something which was eased by her only moderate command of English) and thus hide from her the fact she was, to me, at that point, essentially wholly random.

The messages that we exchanged after that coffee soon came towards the point, and I asked if next time I could see her all night.

Ha ha, I think it’s impossible’ she replied. ‘But if you can come to Wuxi (the city where she studies) maybe we can stay all night

That was a promising reply, yet she remained a little unsure (and that of course made her the easier to seduce) and followed it with another message to say, ‘You can laughing now. I’m silly, right?

A week or so after that coffee, I found myself with a free day, due to a cancelled class, all the students having been packed off to learn the sparkling profundities of the Three Representatives. Or was it the ‘Seven Goods and Seven Bads’? Or the ‘Four Maybes, One Yes and Three Don’ts’? Some such specious dreck.

And so, suddenly free, I messaged her suggesting a meet. She accepted with alacrity, as I knew she would since her messages the intervening days had been green lights all the way. We met at a big mall near People’s Square, her clad in a white dress covered with dark polka dots which fluttered in the warm breeze, wrapping itself more closely around the contours of her body. But we did not linger, soon heading home so I could ‘show her my flat.’ This of course was a euphemism, and she showed she knew it by the tense, expectant way she sat in the cab. She knew it was sex, I knew it was sex. But I also knew that this was no easy green light. She would still need persuading, cajoling. And indeed she then seemed to set up a get-out, telling me ‘My stomach aches.’ This, of course, meant she had her period, at which I felt a brief surge of chagrin. So maybe I was wrong, I thought, and we would not be lovers today. But then I thought again; she was, after all, coming back with me. Whatever happened, this was most surely not merely a matter of ‘showing her my flat.’

Her nervousness increased once we got back to my flat, but I did not let that stop me too long, clipping her in my arms and angling for a kiss. She tensed, but did not pull away; let me kiss, but did not respond. And in this she was just like when I was seducing Tingting; bursts of passion mixed with stretches of reluctance. She’d kiss back for a moment or two, then withdraw again. Yet clearly she was interested, not murmuring for me to stop as I caressed her body.

I was sitting on the dining room table as this took place, her in my arms, her body held between my knees. I wanted to take her to the bedroom – which of course met with much protest from her, ‘No, no, I can’t, I am not a bad girl..’ Yet even so she let me lead her there. At the threshold she stopped; so I just picked her up – she is light, lithe -- and carried her to the bed.

It took a while, her passive and active by turns; a battle between what she wanted to do, and what she was conditioned to do. Again like Tingting, she wanted to be persuaded, wanted to be talked round. And some sweet words, some whispered ‘darlings’ and my assurance that she was not at all a bad girl allowed me to begin to undress her.

And now her reluctance showed for what it was, a mere veneer, for she began to return kiss for kiss, and now with interest, with passion, none of the perfunctory, cool response of before. Now she willingly let me unzip her zip, slip her cute white skirt up over her head, to reveal her smooth body, her bra, which, unusually, was not a padded one, for her breasts did not need it.

Indeed, she even worried out loud to me that her breasts were too big – a rare worry for a woman here to have. More than this, she was actively apologetic about the size of her breasts, telling me, ‘I hope you don’t mind… I don’t like it..’ And while I tried to convince her that they were wonderful, exciting, sexy, well-shaped, she was reluctant to believe me.

But she was still not fully ready, for she would not let me take her panties off, though I very much wanted to see her naked. But she was pretty sure about keeping her panties (tight fitting white cotton sporty type) on, and I accepted it was as a result of having her period rather than fear of fucking, for by this time I knew she was not a virgin. And so I did not push the matter. Why should I? I now knew that getting was I wanted was just a matter of time. There was no hurry – indeed, the anticipation made it all the more interesting.

I, naturally, was already naked, and at first she refused to look at my cock. And for our whole time abed she was not quite comfortable with it. She half wanted to look, half was afraid to. So I had to ease her hand down there, and then she did caress me a little, but nervously, unsure.

She did gratify me with murmurs as to its size – which murmurs, given her general innocence, could not have been calculated enough to be flattery. ‘It’s so much bigger than my boyfriend’s...His is just…’ and here she tailed off.

Ah, her boyfriend, who she mentioned to me before as something of a playboy, a handsome guy, runner after women. This is palpably rubbish, for what she went on to tell me shows he was no sort of lover. Kissing, caressing, I asked her if she enjoyed sex. ‘Sometimes..’ she said, with not much enthusiasm. In our resulting conversation I learned that she has been with him two years. And in this two years they have made love …six times. So few that it is easy for her to remember each time – each time, I tell myself (with little risk of being wrong) brief and unimaginative. I could easily imagine his technique – brief, hasty, furtive, bumbling; taking, not giving. Six times in two years! I knew that next time we met I would show her more than she’d dreamt of.