Early Lessons in the Classical Language, Chapter 8
Suzie Two
He turned sixteen by the time he started cheating sailors in the seaman’s bars of Wan Chai and North Point, a new sort of lark, he thought, but in fact it was a low point of debasement that he would not quite descend to again. He would hang around until a sailor offered to buy him a drink. By prior arrangement, these were watered-down facsimiles and the bar kicked back some of the price. He was kind of like a bar girl, but he didn’t do sex. It worked pretty well—he ended up with about the same as Mellon’s super generous allowance in Taipei, a little less than a hundred bucks a month—until about five weeks into his game, a sailor grabbed his drink, swallowed a mouthful, and confirmed his suspicions. He looked him straight in the eye and told him under his breath he should beat him to a bloody pulp. But in a bigger voice, he said, “I see.” He stood up, turned, and walked out the door.
This gentlemanly display of mercy impressed him enough to make him stop his con. Instead, he organized an English conversation class for bar girls two afternoons a week and ended up making about the same money in less time and without the need to constantly drink booze, even his watered-down bar girl versions would make him drunk after a few hours, especially if he hadn’t eaten much. It was also the beginning of a perennial part time career selling his mouth and ears in conjunction with his native English language skills to the same girls that sold him their hands, feet, oral, sexual and anal orifices in concert with whatever skill they had at pleasing men.
He became a regular little mascot at the Arizona, especially after the question arose, Was he a cherry boy? They had pushed on his nose and pronounced him one, laughing and loud-mouthing but, judo like, he turned it to his advantage. “Yes, I’m cherry boy,” he whispered. Of course, they immediately switched positions. “You NO cherry boy!” Nevertheless, he held his ground, adamantly maintaining his virginal purity and not for one night alone but for many a fair night until one of the older women, named Suzie—no surprise in the heyday of the novel The World of Suzie Wong, set in Wan Chai, exactly where he taught and hung out—made a leap of faith and, in a self-induced state of suspended disbelief, took him under her wing. She saw to it that he had fried rice and noodles, sweet rolls, and sometimes milk tea. He usually had to buy his own drinks.
One night after closing time she told him to wait for her at the end of the block and took him to her squalid rabbit hutch apartment where she let him sleep with her and, before noon, she gave him access to her pleasure dome below. True, technically, he wasn’t a virgin, but she taught him several important things about intercourse, mostly about entry and exit speed; in short, be slow on the entry and fast on the withdrawal or was it the other way around? He was nice to her, brought her a bottle of Hennessy five-star cognac one day, and felt toward her a genuine form of puppy love.
One night, around two-thirty in the morning, he felt the urge and unable to sleep, secretly escaped from Frank’s apartment without waking the maids and walked the ten blocks to Suzie’s place. Light leaked out from under her door and he could hear movement on the other side. She was not especially surprised to see him when she let him in, but whispered she had a guest. If he could slip into the closet-like space in the makeshift entryway, hide behind the curtain, and be quiet, she'd be done with her client soon and he could stay.
The guy blabbered something drunken and Suzie yelled, “No worry, no problem,” and went back to him in the bed. She was saying things to him, in a low growl disguised as a moan, and he didn’t particularly like what he could hear of it. Things like “Sooo good, Jerry.” “You sooo big, Jerry.” “You strong. You strong, Jerry.” Before her words had their intended effect, he peeked through the curtain and was dumbfounded by the prick he saw. In all dimensions he had him in spades. In fact, it was the biggest prick he’d ever seen, the better to remind him how puny he was compared to other men of the West. Within ten minutes Jerry had done his duty and was getting his clothes on and mumbling something in British English about what a swizz it was for forty dollars, Hong Kong.
Of course, he’d have to be British because the Americans had to be back on the ship at midnight, poor saps. But not Brits and not me, no curfew for us. No, Sir. When the American sailors cleared out of the bar before midnight, he would always feel smug and superior. Grown men like them having to go home to Mama while real men, him included, could stay out as long as we frickin’ A wanted.
Suzie squatted over a spittoon and pissed a good one, wiped her snatch with a bit of toilet paper, and dropped it in the pot. She then dumped some hot water from a thermos on a skimpy towel and did a more thorough job of wiping up, since the head was down the hall, and there was no running water in the room. With a mean scent of fresh urine directing his attention to his chosen destination, he took off his clothes and lay on the bed, his erection wholly enabled, although doglike in comparison to recently departed Jerry ‘the horse’. Nevertheless, there was something to be said for ending up with the girl.
He looked toward Suzie who had fallen asleep on her side facing him. An embroidered white cotton shift bunched up around her waist, her businesslike manner, her tough exterior, gone slack. She must be exhausted, he thought, and for the first time he wondered, truly wondered, what was really there, across the OS divide.
He lost his impulse to wake her and turned away. As he began to fall asleep an insight arrived. There’s a yin-side, he thought, to it all. Not a joke or a whipping boy, not an amusing clown, not even an opponent across the ring or a victim tightly bound. Other images floated through his mind. He let them sail through, none quite fit the bill. A whore? A Wan Chai bargirl! Nope, said the game master, I’m afraid, you’re wrong … A cunt, he murmured, that’s gotta be it, he thought. Noooh, the game master crooned, getting warmer perhaps, but why the pejorative? We’re just talking facts here, son, and soon he was asleep, Suzie by his side. As dawn steadily cleansed the bed through a single grimy pane, he dreamed he was in Montana again on the high mountain side of the ranch, in the company of wolves, a Chinese girl among them, the atmosphere wary but friendly, and the voice of his mother arrived with the light — in a situation like this, it said, you have to be polite. Time to study now, she cooed. Time to study now.
