Seven Virtues by Sarah Avayou

Munich
Summer. Der Englische Garten. Munich is part of the Old World, but it’s a new world to me. It’s summer, I’m a young foreign student and it’s time for fun, to be outside, lazing and frolicking in the sun.

You have chosen to meet me at the Schönfeldwiese; you had a surprise for me you said. You are Mischief Incarnate; you seek not to surprise but to shock me. I’m a young student from Asia, and there are new things for me. We meet right in the middle of the beautiful meadows; the sun is high in the sky (cloudless) and the green is scattered with naked, sunning bodies.

Bare skin worshipping sun.

But you misjudge. Young Asian kids have surprises of their own too, can shock clever and proud white girls as well as any white boy could. I throw my satchel to the picnic blanket you have already laid out. I kick off my sandals, and then pull my T-shirt off, then my jeans, my boxers. I lie down on my haunches and look up at you, waiting.

The look on your face is worth it. Shifts then to a grin, and you undress too, in the stark, glorious daylight. You move next to me and stroke a finger down my chest. “Chinese men are so hairless,” you tell me, and I nod, and then lean over for a kiss.

Years later, I can still remember the taste of the sharp onions and the smoky flavour of lamb as we shared a Doner Kebab and further kisses. I remember you suggesting a game of hide-and-seek, in the shade, the shadows of trees, slashes of sunlight offering glimpses, teasing playfully.

So, I hide, but who seeks me?

Tokyo
You have legs so long I tell you that you could be a model, even without the heels. You laugh, and say you seem to have the worst luck with men. Short, pot-bellied older men. Almost thirteen million people in Tokyo, and you attract no one you desire.

Relationships tire you; it’s not about faith, you simply lack interest in them. Love is a mystery, sex a oft-forgotten chore. Really, what’s the point?

Then one night, you come home drunk. Completely smashed. Too much red wine can be too much of a good thing. Friends can deliver you safely home, but they can’t keep you distracted till you are sober.

You get online. You open a chat window with me. I’m drunk, you tell me, and I can tell with all the electronic giggles. You start typing out my name in bold: KENNY MAH. KENNY MAH. LOL. it sounds soooooo like an actor. LOL. I like it lol Kenny Mah omigosh KENNY MAH… it sounds so smooth.

It’s hilarious and I say you will have a hangover the next day and regret all of this. I will remind you, just to be sure. Then you ask me if I’m good, and it all goes downhill from there. We type furiously, naughtydirtyhotsexyshitfuckthisisgood… I wonder if I am drunk too, but I don’t think I have the advantage of that excuse.

The next day, you do have a hangover, a mild one, but also, in passing, making me laugh again at how silly we both are, you tell me that last night was the best sex you never had.

Sydney
You were in KL for a week, extended your stay even, but we never got to meet. Work, family, lack of transport, cues misinterpreted, everything went wrong. And so you returned to Sydney.

We never met.

We never spoke to each other, not really. And I’m reminded of a night in Melbourne, years ago, when I went to my first strip club. With a girl in tow, no less. We weren’t a couple, but there was a 15% discount if we were, so we went for it. We sat somewhere in the middle rows, too shy to be right upfront with the college boys who wanted to ogle up-close (cheap bastards who didn’t tip) but not too far at the back, where we couldn’t see anything.

The stripper wasn’t beautiful, not pretty, not even good-looking. But she had a lithe, athletic body, and it was a breath-taking performance, even with the cheesy 80’s porn music and the miscalculated strobe lighting. This stranger, this girl sitting next to me, I didn’t really know her, but I wanted to kiss her. I thought she wanted to me to kiss her too, maybe.

Suddenly she shrieked, got up and ran to the exit. I ran after her. Outside, she started laughing. When I asked her what the heck happened, she told me the guy at the end of our row was jacking off. And then I laughed too, and we went and grabbed some Lebanese pizza. But nothing more. I can’t even recall her name now.

Missed opportunities. I have learned my lesson. Be spontaneous. So I grab the phone and call you. Across the ocean, across the discovered continent, across static, across nothing. You tell me my voice is deep, is rich, and I tell you it sounds to me like Donald Duck, raspy and blunt. You tell me you hear differently.

And it is so cheesy, our starting thrusts of sexual discourse — how could you possibly feel my touch across your warm, tense, mad, hungry skin just by my description, my voice? It’s ridiculous and we stifle our laughter… But then it gets serious, and suddenly it’s not so cheesy anymore.

We make love with our voices and our imagination and the joy of opportunities not missed.

Beijing
Your wedding is impending. It’s a glorious thing, but yet you are worried. I’m here for you.

In another world, you’d be exactly the sort of girl I would have wanted to marry. A loving, kind and intelligent woman. Faith, family and friends. You know what are the important things in life. You have your direction and you bring light to those around you. You’re an angel.

But we are not lovers. We are very good friends, such good fortune, and I’m incredibly excited for you. I tell you not to fret, that with all the good friends you have surrounded yourself with, we will take care of everything. The wedding will be a success; beautiful, perfect. We’re both perfectionists, I say, I know precisely what your standards are, for they are mine too.

You smile and agree. We are perfectionists. But you are worried for me too. The conversation turns. You tell me to struggle less, that I am perfect the way I am, in all I do. That seeking perfection is perfect in itself. You know all my fears and doubts and imagined burdens, you know them all.

Be patient, you say. Don’t seek so hard. It all comes. You tell me I have a lot of love to give, yes, but remind me gently that, also, I need a lot of it too. It’s so simple it’s almost funny to think I wouldn’t know this, but maybe I don’t. Hearing you say it makes it true.

I need love.

KL
It is the night before Valentine’s.

This is merely dinner, I tell myself, nothing more. The kopitiam is dimly lit with decrepit oil-lamps; sinister shadows enflamed the war-time walls. The white coffee is bitter, an acrid reminder that this time is alive and real. I am here now. We will have dinner, nothing more.

I wait for almost an hour, and it’s weird, it’s odd how unconcerned I am. Time passes, or doesn’t. I’m caught in limbo, songs in Shanghainese flutter around me, the slow circle of copper-plated fans barely affect the warm, humid night. We have only met once before, and I can scarcely remember your face. Just the bevy of earrings on your left ear, including a diamond bar that not so much shined as glimmered silently, and the taste of your tattoos.

The night is long and I am in a dream.

Then you arrive, and I know I am not. You offer apologies, one after another. I smile and say it’s okay, and it is. And unexpectedly, after the torpor of the past hour, I find myself real again, and I take all of you in. Food is ordered, something light, and we start chatting, a proper conversation after saying all the sorries one can say.

This shouldn’t go so well, so smoothly. My Cantonese is out of practice, and you keep attempting in broken English. But we manage. We more than manage. There is something more. Somehow, against all expectations, we connect. We connect again.

Still, we are wordless too. You are shy but I am determined (or is the other way?); and so, the bill is called for, and we return to my studio. It looks much the same as when I first moved in almost a year ago, but it is comfortable. It puts everyone at ease. Even you. Even me.

My sofa has yet to arrive and so we settle on the bed. It’s a simple excuse but it works and it is true. Honest seduction. But am I the seducer or the seduced when I cannot resist just looking at you, feeling you, smelling you? Conversation quickens nervously, slows and then is taken over by touch. We connect again, this time closer. With all the time in the world.

This is lust, this is animal attraction, this is want and desire and need… this is everything but love. Love is a dirty, four-letter word. But man, does it feel good… And some time ago, midnight was bridged and it is now Valentine’s. We observe this and greet each other with silly smiles, in between kisses.

I have a vision, of the sing-song girls of Old Shanghai, porcelain faces with rashly rouged lips, dark temptresses in pale skin. But none compares to you. This is another history as you envelope yourself in me (or is the other way?), as you grab hold onto me and I onto you; we are desperate and easy and slow and harsh and this is punishing, this pleasure, this breath of little deaths, of minor stars ignited and as our limbs are crossed together like threads of fate without scissors to slice it asunder, we come into each other, we come as one, we come together, we…

Later, you will tell me how beautiful I looked when I was in final throes, how every second spanned a lifetime of impossible anticipation. You want to see it finally arrive, but you don’t either. You want it to last as long as it can, as long as forever, even though you know it can’t.

Can’t it?

How are we to know? Love or lust is only now, only now. Would we never have to utter, “Ah dear, but come thou back to me…”