R and R in Hong Kong

Yesterday, in desperate need of a lead-in to the monologue, I picked on an innocent nameless Romanian housewife attending to her morning job of doing tidy-up to the pavement. 

 By lascivious allusion, I created an imaginary cuckolding tryst of her with Bela Lugosi; and then exercising the impunity of literary license, I transformed her into a naked cleaning woman in an Italian whorehouse wearing naught but a pair of lime-green panties.

My sincere regrets to this lady wherever she is this morning; and whosoever’s bed she occupied last night. I hope it was good for her, too.  The morning hose job, that is.

And as long as I am in ash cloth and sashes, I feel a need to make groveling atonement for my rather crude disclosure of Reagan’s speech to the VFW Convention in 1980 (Viet Nam Syndrome).

He was, after all, only following the characteristic ploy of disinformation by the artful use of distraction--through half-truth: a time-honored tradition of his party since Hubert Heever’s day.

How can you disparage a person for doing the political doo of natural inclination?

So, to all Republicans, dead, living or near death: I apologize.  Make that a profuse apology. 

I wouldn’t want any of you to think I was insincere.

Well!  I feel much better now.  How was it for you, my dears?  May I light your cigarette?  Get you an aperitif?  Wash your feet?  Only tell what I can do for making you mentally traipse through the fecund wasteland of my imagination.

I’ll do anything…except yard work.  Allergy to intense physical labor, you know.  Under doctor’s care for a remedy.  Have you met Dr. Scholl’s?  Lovely man, despite of his foot fetish.

Moving on:

“I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy.  It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.”

-Margaret Atwood-

   

Frosty and I strolled out of the President Emeritus and miraculously came across a bar in Hong Kong.

This one had free-flowing drinks at a discount and a lot of Chinamans’ daughters for lease or rent.  We sat down and began our five day lavation of the place from whence we came.

Soon after our first round was set in front of us, two girls arrived and seated themselves at our table…without an invitation or anything.  We looked at them; then we looked at each other and broke into a fit of laughter.  We were happy.

This, we thought, was going to be good.

Before we could enter negotiations, the bar’s Madam sat down, also without leave to do so.  She was Eartha Kitt gone oriental; of indeterminate age, obviously too old to be anyone but in charge here.

She said, “Are you looking for companionship?”  I thought, ‘No. We’re looking to get laid often and well’, keeping my wiseass retort to myself. 

We smiled.  She smiled back.  The deal was made, the particulars of price and protocol escaping me now.  Frosty landed on one and I the other, like two boys out test driving used cars. 

Used.  I felt a forbidden thrill at being customer number 2879; I don’t know why.

We drank enough of I-don’t-remember-what to adequately lubricate our joints and our loins.  We took our used cars back to the hotel and bid each other goodnight.  We were anxious to begin our test drives.

I can’t remember how Frosty made out that first night, but it became apparent from the get-go that I was driving a lemon.  She was talkative in the way that women are when they would prefer to avoid coitus.  When we finally got down to it, she was listless, she was languid, and she was a disappointment that cost me $30.

The next morning, I paid her and bid her scram.  Frosty and I went to a men’s only breakfast and tooled around, took naps and generally waited for nightfall.

Following one of the best steak dinners of my entire life, we went back to the same bar.  The girls were both there, but I wasn’t having any more of mine, literally or figuratively.

As we sat there, a girl came into the bar and went straight to the jukebox.  She leaned forward with her slender arms bracing herself on the machine, and began moving to the music and her unseen muse.  I was attracted.  I was wanting a test drive without putting up the top.  It was a real now-now-now-I’m-ready kind of sensation.  She was from my perspective a cut way above the attendant does.  She was…so beautiful.

I beckoned to Madam Eartha to come over.  She sat to hear me tell her of my dissatisfaction with girl number first night, and nodded towards what I hoped would be girl number next.  She went to the jukebox and whispered in the girl’s ear over the boisterous noise of rock and roll.

Madam brought the girl back to our table, said something in Cantonese (It had to be Cantonese. We were in Hong Kong, right?) To the reject.  She got up and left without a look back or a word; and Christina took her place.

Her name was Christina Kwan; and her Chinese name was Kwan Foo Mong.  I was to learn this intimacy later; for now, she was simply…Christina.

We began with her protestation over me switching used cars like I did.  She told me this was bad form and would create a problem between her and the deal’s cancelled date.  The girls expected to remain with the man for his entire stay in Hong Kong.  Doing a switch like this made her ‘werwee ahncomfulable’.

I dismissed her misgivings with an airy I-don’t-give-a-shit; and by the second round of drinks, the awkwardness had vanished.

Frosty departed for the hotel with a girl.  I didn’t notice if it was the one from last night or not; and I gave a rat’s ass either way.  He and I were to keep loose contact for the remainder of our stay; but from this moment on, I was with Christina.

She was bratty and haughty.  She was sultry and sensuous.  She was mine.  I never actually thought of her as a sex-object plaything.  That is because, without having once yet dipped my wick in her bowl of universe, I was in love.

We left and she steered me to an upstairs apartment.  I began to learn that everything except the bars were upstairs in Hong Kong.

We had a delightful second of fumbling, she showing me how to pull the ties of her pink panties loose at the hips.  After that, I swelled beyond the swelling of all that long nine months of loneliness;  and took her with a wild abandon that has never left me.  Not ever; not even now in my silver-haired old age.

As I write this, that tiny upstairs apartment is once again home and the lithe diminutive pale skinned warmth of black haired Christina lies exhausted and joined to my side.  I wanted that intimate universe to be for always.  I still do, whenever the wind blows from the west.

In the morning, she demanded, “Give me ahhrr yor’ money.” The lips of the hotel manager nothing but a silent movement, I at once handed my money over, but judiciously held back Dad’s $400. That wasn’t mine to give, I silently reasoned.

Into the daytime of this last of Her Majesty's Crown Colonies we ventured.  I quickly saw what Madam Eartha had meant by ‘companion’.  Christina as my sole guide, we ate in (upstairs) restaurants with no sign hanging to alert the hungry. 

We toured.

The Peak, Tiger Balm Gardens, Ferry to Hong Kong Island; Gawd! It past before me in a dazzling flash of sights and images unimaginable. 

One evening, she led me down to the water, to a tiny sampan steered by a lone old woman. 

Between working the single rear-facing oar from a raised dais, she served our dinner as we watched the skyline and spoke in the diminished tones of lovers everywhere.  

At one point, a large three-masted junk glided near silent between our sampan and the wall of lights across the bay.  For a brief moment, its black silhouette with all those millions of colored lights as background burned a wonderful vision into my brain; a postcard from wish-you-were-here.

On the last day, after another delectable meal of unknown substance, I told Christina that I was going to the Duty Free exchange.  She looked at me with puzzlement. She had all the money, did she not?  No, I finally revealed my cache of $400.  She immediately demanded that I give it to her.  When I refused, she turned and began to walk away.

I knew she wouldn’t really leave me on the sidewalk, nevertheless, holding to my guns came as a dreadful test of my will; rather, my weakness to refuse her anything.

I began walking in the opposite direction.  Seeing my resolve, she came back and walked in silence, no doubt brooding about the cash that got away.

The China exchange contained more items for sale than Gimbals.  With the express deliberation of the prepared, I selected the stereo system—tuner/amplifier, turntable, tape deck and speakers in about ten minutes.

It was made so easy: purchase completed, the components were crated in wood, wheeled around the corner to the U.S. Post office, Customs forms filled and stevedores tipped; it was already on its way back to my parent’s house in Rockville.  From selection to out the door had not consumed forty minutes.

Christina left to go do whatever she did out of my sight.  Agreeing to a rendezvous at the bar, she went, probably disgusted at the spectacle of me spending what she saw as her money.  Women!  I could probably write more than a few monographs on my lifelong feud with women over money.

Shit.

Astonished that I still had over $150 left, I decided to buy some clothes and a watch.  To the in-house tailor’s shop, seated on a sofa with a proffered drink in hand, the two Chinese guys brought forth bolt after bolt of material.  I chose two pairs of slacks, a pair of shoes and a pink Tom Jones big-blousy-sleeved shirt in pima cotton.  While I waited the hour it would take to run up all these custom-fitted threads, I progressed to the watch store.

That took up the entire hour’s wait.  Not hundreds but thousands of watches were on display.  After anguishing deliberation, I picked a Tag Heuer with more dials than a submarine’s com.  Beautiful!

Resplendent in my new duds, I arrived at the bar, to be hustled back to Christina’s apartment for a home cooked meal of duck eggs stir fried in a well-used wok. 

It was cozy, Frosty, the two girls and smitten me. 

Frosty took his girl back to the hotel; Christina and I lingered there until dawn.  As the hourglass ran out of sand, I wept and declared that I would be back, no matter what.  She teared up and choked, “This is werry strange”.  And it was over.

We boarded the aircraft, everyone on the plane done in.  The only on-board entertainment was a large black guy who called himself the Big Apple and spoke in the third person. “Way dey duh Big Apple’s seat?  Way dey duh Big Apple gon’ sit?”

He finally found the last open seat on the aircraft and wedged himself in.  The Special Forces guy was across from us again, placidly reading his paperback.

After five days of eating Chinese food with zero nutritional value, I was so weak I couldn’t lift the forkful of scrambled eggs to my mouth and save my life.  Pathetic: that was what I was at that parting moment; and that was what I would remain for all the time left to me.

The bus rumbled away from our barracks leaving us in the dust and heat of Viet Nam again.  Frosty let out a bark of laughter at the irony of what we had just been through.

I didn’t laugh. 

I was still back in Hong Kong…with her.  I remained in a stricken despair for the last sixty days in-country; and in a profound way, I am still there on the Kowloon side, sick with longing for someone and something that could never be.

I would show you all the picture I carry with me of Kwan Foo Mong; and tell you that this is the woman of all my dreams; but you cannot see what lies buried inside a broken heart.