In the company of women

(Wudaokou K-town, Beijing) The wrong question?

She’s very pretty, big sister said. She was, and had an unconventional charm, with the features of those pigtailed red-scarved proletarian heroines rallied from rural mountain villages in the middle provinces to hold up half the sky for the great helmsman. She was strong, productive, innocent – As if she stepped straight out of the kitschy Socialist Realism propaganda posters that adorn his dormitory room.

And so he noticed proletarian heroine immediately at the club meeting. Hi there, what’s your name. They chatted, found they had some common interests and mutual friends, and got her number down. Not to seem too eager, he only contacted her after the customary grace period, and she said yes. It was a great leap forward.

They met at the appointed time. Proletarian heroine was more beautiful than before, having discarded gym duds for dresses, and he smiled, imagining that she had prettied up for him. There was this one moment when the conversation stopped, and she looked deep into his eyes.

After parting ways, he chanced upon a mutual friend who stayed near proletarian heroine, and asked to visit, thinking he might see her again. When they arrived at the suite, and the friend first entered, the first thing he heard from behind the door was her voice. “Hey [mutual friend], is [protagonist] gay?”

“Why don’t you ask him, he’s right here.” Proletarian heroine giggled, and stood in front of him. She looked deep into his eyes again. “Are you?”

Her cheek was softer than he anticipated. He wondered if she could feel his heart beating faster. Be still, beating heart.

He gave the wrong answer. Apparently there wasn’t a right one.

* * *

Not as pretty as you are, he replied. Big sister was the opposite of proletarian heroine. Slim, delicate, she seemed more akin to the bourgeois socialites of the coastal cities, qipao-clad fan-waving daughters of great trading houses. She rolled her eyes.

They discussed the crush matching game spreading around campus, and she mentions the Gale-Shapley algorithm. The conventional wisdom is that the G-S pairings are ‘male-optimal’, because the (male) asker always gets his best possible choice by the final round.

But he interprets the story differently. To him, it sounds like the worst possible system for men, who must go through the painful process of hearing a series of nos, and then a maybe, with the possibility of being dropped until the game is over. Whereas she need only say yes once, he is never certain of her intentions until then. And the game may never end, and each round may be an eternity; it could be months or years of getting to know someone and letting her get to know you and dancing around the issue until the perfect moment to ask, walking her home at the end of a perfect evening.

* * *

(Hongdae, Seoul)

It’s been almost a year now, and he’s walked her home countless times before. It is not the perfect moment, and not the end of a perfect evening – she’s upset about the party, and social butterfly is a party girl. But the reality is that there will never be a perfect moment and there is no better time than right now.

“Never go for the party girls”, another sister warned. “They don’t commit.” In retrospect, that was good advice. But he ignored it, like all the warning signs.

He got the answer he expected. “I’m sorry”, she said. “There’s no need to be sorry.” He smiled, and walked away, surprisingly not disappointed but relieved. He knew that if she had said yes, he would have let her walk all over him.

Perhaps we never fall as hard as the first time. He couldn’t help but compare social butterfly to the princess, to whom she is as a spark is to a shooting star. But all her flaws also made her more approachable, and it was easier to become friends. But he made the mistake of thinking that friendship is a sufficient condition when it is not even a necessary one.

* * *

The princess packed her things into boxes. It may have been the last time they would ever see each other again. “I can’t believe we wasted so much time not talking to each other,” she said.

Even though there was no reason why they couldn’t be friends, he had avoided the princess for so long because she made him feel inadequate. But over the years there were so many other princesses in his life that had done the same, and since he couldn’t avoid all of them, it made no sense to avoid this one.

As they promised to keep in touch, he noticed her eyes well up with tears. He hadn’t intended to avoid her forever, and had the silly notion that he would change everything about himself and become the ideal person he wanted to be, and when he was ready to face her again, they would catch up from where they had left off and laugh about it. But he never changed. And now it was too late.

* * *

(Beijing park sign) Tread softly because you tread on my dreams…

While they walked around at the festival, they stopped at the omikuji stand. He shook the fortune out of the box and unrolled it. The paper read: great fortune (大吉).

They sat by the steps under the shadow of Athena, goddess of wisdom, warfare, and heroes. Fortune favors the brave. He asked carefully, “What would you say if I told you that I was really into you?”

She smiled. “Is that a hypothetical question?”

“Maybe it is… but you could give a hypothetical answer.”

“Well, my hypothetical answer would start with a y.”

“You mean yyyyy-no?”

She laughed.