No Condom, I Love You
This is a love story that doesn’t end well.
I met her on the southwest coast of Sri Lanka. The water was refreshing, but the waves were strong, my legs got tangled in seaweed, and I fumbled. She waved her hand, I rubbed the salty water out of my eyes, and there she stood, with a bright red sarong wrapped on her beautiful body. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” I shouted. She pointed at the ocean, but I couldn’t read her lips, so I smiled and nodded like a goofball. She shook her head and signaled for me to come out of the water. The closer I went, the more radiant she got. She was one the most beautiful Chinese girls I’ve ever met.
“I want to swim,” she said. “Yeah, the water is great, just watch out for those crazy waves,” I winked (not sure why I did that, but sometimes I do stupid shit like that.) She walked towards the water, her ankles disappeared into the ocean, and she turned to look at me, “you come, help me.” This is what I love about traveling, the magical surprises I get along the way, the strangers I meet that shake me up and tear me apart, sometimes it really feels like the universe has opened a portal, because what are the chances that two people from two different backgrounds could connect on such a deep level, in a land that’s foreign to both of them. The moment we went in the water, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. If this was a scene in a movie, you wouldn’t buy it, it sounds fictitious, in real life strangers don’t make out in the ocean the moment they meet. Trust me, they do. What happens during my travels never cease to amaze me. No wonder, I love it so much. Who I am today is because of all the places I’ve traveled to, and all the people I’ve met.
We went to the villa I was renting for the week, I turned on the shower, and she joined me. “You taste sweet and sour,” she said. That took me straight to Singapore’s street food hawker, I don’t know why, but I guess when you travel a lot, your brain changes in funny ways and also it has something to do with neuroplasticity (Google it). “Do you mean, I’m a soup?” I kissed her. She laughed so hard, she snorted, “no, like salt water,” she said. “Oh, you mean I taste salty,” I pulled her hair. “Shut up and fuck me,” she said.
It was the Chinese New Year holiday. Every year, I get a month-long paid vacation during this time, because everyone in China heads home to spend the holiday with their family. It’s a time when Chinese people explore China, imagine 1 billion people out and about, so it’s advisable for foreigners to avoid traveling in China during this holiday season. For me, it’s the best time to travel and explore the world, it’s winter in China, but summer in South America.
But she’s Chinese, so why is she not home? I thought.
I had never met a Chinese person before who challenged the status quo, so it was quite refreshing. She said that times have changed, and a lot of young people now feel trapped, because of their guilt, it’s a twisted dilemma. The young people want to travel, but the family wants them to follow tradition, and their culture doesn’t encourage open discussions, unlike how I grew up. So this year, she decided to jump in at the deep end, and test the waters. She said, she was scared to return home.
On my last day in Galle, we went out to explore the Galle Fort, and savored the sunset from a hill. This is something I do on all of my trips, I wake up at 4 AM at least once, so I can make my way to the best spot in the city to watch the sunrise. And I do my best not to miss the sunsets. Nature gives us these gifts to help us align with it, the sunrise gets us ready for the day, just like how the new moon gets us ready for the month, and how the spring equinox prepares us for the coming year. And sunsets, they make us reflect on how we lived our day, did we do the things that we valued most, or did we stay in the rat race. She told me she hated sunsets, because they made her sad, they reminded her that she was selfish; and instead of spending this valuable time with her family, she was sitting on a hill on the southwest coast of Sri Lanka, telling her secrets to a stranger.
After a few months, she called me from her home in Xiamen, a beautiful city on the eastern coast of China. She wanted to see me, so I asked her to come stay with me for a week in Shenzhen, there were a few bands playing in town, so I knew we’d have fun. We also planned a day trip to Hong Kong. I picked her up at the train station, she was more beautiful and elegant than I remembered. Being a foreigner in China sometimes makes me feel like a celebrity, because the way local people look at me with curiosity and wonder, it makes me feel loved. But when I was with her, all eyes were on her, the girl who liked foreigners. Mind you it wasn’t the look of curiosity and wonder that I usually get, but more like an ambiguous look of judgement. How dare she.
“Next month is my birthday,” she unwrapped the wet red towel, threw it on the ground, and jumped into the bed with me. I got up to pick the towel, but she pulled me back in, “I say I turn 27,” she raised her voice. “Is that important in China?” I asked. She hissed and pushed me away. “I’m curious, I really wanna know,” I picked up the red towel, and hung it in the bathroom. “You don’t understand, you foreigner,” she took a sip of red wine, and placed the glass on the rough ceramic coaster I had brought back from Burma, she said it reminded her of Jianxi, a place known for their ceramics. “So explain to me,” I came back to bed, and took a sip of her red wine. “You talk too much,” she turned off the lights. I drew open the curtains, because I loved how the moon light gleamed in her brown eyes, and glowed her naked body. And also because she liked the feeling that someone was watching her, it turned her on. I tore open the pack of condom with my teeth, and kissed her. “No,” she said. I stopped. “No condom, I love you,” she pulled it out of my hand, and threw it on the ground like it was the red towel.
I’m not gonna lie, I love having sex without a condom, it just feels so much better, but it was a moment where my next move dictated my future. You have no idea how much I wanted to go for it, if you ever meet her, you’ll know. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” I said. “I trust you,” she said. How do you tell someone that you don’t love them without hurting them, especially to someone who comes from a different background, speaks a different language, and has a different outlook on life? I really liked her, but our values were different. I knew that this would not last in the long run.
“If I no marry, people say I am sheng nu,” she cried.
Sheng nu means “leftover women.” This might be new for you, but for millennial Chinese women, it’s all-too-familiar concept. Sheng nu refers to any woman over the age of 27 who is still single, women who seek advanced education, financial freedom, and a more unconventional life path than their parents. But despite the progressive movement, the message from society remains unchanged: If you’re not married, you’re doing something wrong. There’s a great article about this in Vogue. I spoke to over 20 Chinese female friends, and the feeling was unanimous. But here’s something amazing, one of my friends, Chloe pointed out that if we replace the first Chinese character in Sheng nu with a different same sounding character, the meaning from “leftover women” changes to “victorious women" and the funny thing is the word for victorious women doesn’t exist in the Chinese language. I love this idea, especially because we are not creating a new label, we are un-labeling the stigma. When a Chinese person will see the characters for victorious women 胜女, the sound of that word will make them think of the stigma attached to the other word they didn’t even see, that’s the beauty in this idea. This will project an image of single women as victorious, instead of as leftover, or maybe my expectation for humanity is too high. I do want to explore this idea further, when I’m back in China, I’ll shoot portraits, and speak with more women who share this unanimous feeling.
The next morning, she went back to Xiamen, and that was the last time I saw her.
