Chinese: Part 1

‘Experience is a comb which nature gives to men when they are bald.’ Chinese proverb

In the Soho district of London, in the chaotic vicinity of Trafalgar square, one comes across the small but colourful quarter of China town. Resplendent with a Chinese arch and Pagoda, with many Chinese restaurants, housed in buildings with frontages of typical, antiquated, oriental architecture; with Hanzi, the Chinese script, displayed all over shops and restaurants; and with a high concentration of oriental people here, the most characteristic and eye catching of whom are the old men and women, who, with infinitely wearied, worn, yet wizened old faces, sluggishly saunter around the environs looking old, finished and above the typical petit concerns of life, one finds here a miniscule but very picturesque glimpse of the far east.

On my journeys, I found myself here, in a Chinese restaurant one Friday evening with two old friends. All of us thirty-somethings, we were none of us career men: Andrew was a part time computer programmer whose real love was for composing music; Neil, whose interests are wide and varied, had been on the dole for the last year or so. It was he who had arranged this little shindig.

The restaurant was an eat as much as you can buffet, and in conversation, the three of us talking about what we’d been doing, and happy to have one another’s company again, as old friends do, we casually walked around the food counters, past all the mouth-watering dishes, crammed plentifully with stock, looking forward to this meal. Orange and lemon chicken; sweet and sour pork; spring rolls; beef and vegetable dumplings; chicken chow mine, shrimp and noodle soup – piles and piles and never ending piles of it, of this beautiful, hot, delicious food; and as much as you could eat of it as well; what a happy, contented feeling it produced on this Friday evening, in the hearts of all the happy, excited, talkative diners in the restaurant. We filled our plates high and sat down and ate.

And so after a couple of returns to the buffet; and then a sortie amongst the equally mouth-watering and plentiful desert buffet, choc-a-bloc with chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream, with fruit salad, with oranges, with pineapples, bananas and battered apples of which we ate heartily; we found ourselves full, sated and recovering; and drinking red wine, reclining in after dinner conversation.

‘Well’ I said during a lull ‘what was it you wanted to tell us all Neil. I admit I’m in suspense.’

‘Yes me too’ said Andrew. ‘You’re not going to get married are you?’

‘No, no, no, of course not, no.’ Then after a silence he resumed ‘no, no, no, it’s nothing like that.’

He sat there not looking at us, seemingly shy and reluctant to talk. But in his sensitive little face you could see he wanted to tell us something.

‘Well’ he dared to begin, looking nervous as if he’d prepared a speech for us, a story which he’d rehearsed, but now in the actual moment, he faltered to deliver. ‘Well, let me ask you, what do you think of the Chinese?’

‘The food or the people?’ said Andrew instantly, laughing and making a joke. I laughed too. However Neil just looked irritated, annoyed by the both of us and our feeble joke.

‘You know I mean the people’ he said. I could see by the serious look on his face that he wanted to tell us something important. He looked into the distance as if he was displeased by our foolishness. I sobered up, realising that he obviously wanted to enlighten us with some tale of his.

‘I don’t know, I don’t know what I think of the Chinese’ I said honestly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What’s your impression of them is what I mean. Not in political terms or anything like that. I just mean, take the average Chinese person in Britain, a Chinese student say. What do you see when you see that person?’

‘I don’t know’ said Andrew, ‘I guess the women are pretty attractive. Oriental women make good wives so they say.’

‘You see, there you go’ said Neil immediately, as if he’d proved his point. Andrew and I were somewhat at a loss; we couldn’t see what Neil was getting at.

‘You say the Chinese women are pretty, attractive. Yes? But you wouldn’t say the same about the English or the French or the Italians? Or for any of the women on this planet? They make good wives do they? You know I’ll tell you what you meant, when you said that Chinese women are pretty, what you meant to say is that they’re submissive and can be controlled, that they’re somehow more manageable, more kind, more respectable and decent than western women. And moreover they’re all in need of husbands, strong, tall, dominant husbands just like the good old Englishman, because their own men, God bless them, are shy, obsequious, self-defacing Chinamen, who yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, can be easily fended off just by laughing at them. That’s what you meant now wasn’t it?’

‘No’ said Andrew annoyed by the suggestion. ‘Don’t be so stupid’ he added, clearly displaying a bit of contempt for Neil, as if he spent too long thinking about things, and that he exaggerated.

‘Well I don’t know’ said Neil ‘but I think a lot of English people hold that mindset. I too admit to once thinking along those lines. I mean take the typical Chinese male student, Wan, Chen or Lee. What has he been over the last twenty or thirty years or so? I’ll tell you. He’s the lone Chinaman. Small, round, and bespectacled, he’s a wizard with computers, is utterly miles ahead of all the western students, studies hard, understands algebra and knows what a lepton is, all of which you might think would make him unpopular. However because he’s so shy, pleasant, meek and inoffensive, because his English is so scratchy, and he’s so child-like, introverted and intimidated by women, because he’s never been to a party and has never taken alcohol, and because one day he turns up to a student party, drinks half a glass of vodka, becomes completely inebriated, and everyone finds it hilarious, and goes home slapping him on the back and shouting ‘he-he Chen/Wan/Lee or whatever the fuck your name is, he-he you’re such a good sport, because of all this he’s really well-loved in a loser, hopeless case, last dog in the window kind of way.’

‘No, come on’ said Andrew, irked by this.

‘But yes it’s true’ said Neil. ’Why do you think so many Englishmen fly out to the Far East? It’s with the smug and presumptuous intention that they’re going to get lots of sex, that the women will roll over for them, in what is, what with all the deficiencies of the Oriental male, a kingdom of unrivalled alpha-male dominance, a land essentially populated only with women. The Chinaman apologising, doffing his cap, excusing his sorry personage as you make hard, passionate love to his wife. Or a Chinese disco. Full of twenty something, bespectacled Chinese geeks, who’ve never partied before. ‘Oh-hokey-cokey-cokey’ they sing. Or the birdie song. It’s like a children’s disco. They all come along, the nerds, dressed in western clothes, imitating our best known pop stars. They get up and do some karaoke. They just want to be as cool as us you see. He-he! Those twenty-five year olds, having a sip of whisky, dressed up like our pop stars, like the Beatles or Elvis, like Madonna or Jacko, partying the night away. Jesus Christ! The nerds! Oh and they’re poor as well. The Chinaman is the poor man. Have to work for the white man. Za goo ole why ma. Zhankyou zir.’

‘Where is all of this going?’ I said frowning, embarrassed.

‘Well you see’ said Neil, resuming a more serious and sensitive, thoughtful demeanour, after his cynical, sarcastic rant. ‘I have a confession to make.’

‘I guess it all took place about four years ago, when I was living in halls at university, the time when I was studying for my doctorate in philosophy.

‘The halls I stayed in were in every way excellent and cheap, comfortable, well-kept and so on, but the flat mates with whom I was housed for the first year were what made it such a good place to live. All of us mature students, both in name and personality, we got along so well, never arguing or bickering, but cooperating, respecting one another’s privacy, keeping the place tidy, and creating such a genial atmosphere. It was all the more fun because the students came from such a multitude of foreign nations: there was a French girl, an Italian, a German and a Swiss; there was an Australian, a South African, and an American; there was an Indian, a Thai, a Korean, a Japanese and a Chinese; and there was a Nigerian and an Ethiopian. There were also four Brits of whom I was one and my British Indian Muslim friend another. We got along like a house on fire; we cooked for each other, sampled each others dishes, had long discussions and debates on politics, history, current affairs and philosophy, we swapped tales of our diverse lives and cultures. We were, as we called ourselves, a sort of mini United Nations.

‘One day Said, the British Indian Muslim and my neighbour, knocked on my door. I was sat down reading a text.

‘Go away!’ I shouted. He entered all the same.

‘What do you want Said?’ I said with a mixture of annoyance and happiness at his childish interruption.

‘Eh voila’ he said, revealing something on a plate.

‘What’s that?’ I asked

‘It’s a pain au chocolat. I made it.’

‘A pain au chocolat? You made it? You’re meant to be writing your dissertation, you lazy fool. What’s all this in aid of. It’s not another pathetic attempt to impress Lysia is it? She’s leaving on Thursday, I don’t know why you’re wasting your time.’

‘And Said began remonstrating in his amusing way about how impressed Lysia would be. He was intelligent and mature, kind and passionate, and he always went around the flat in his slippers, a true pipe and slippers man, always slacking off work and heading to the kitchen for a philosophical discussion. He always pretended to have a thing for the ever good hearted Lysia, a French exchange student, a charming, sensitive, young girl. This baking pain au chocolat idea of his was done half seriously, half in jest; Lysia having bemoaned of him that English men could not cook.

‘I went to the kitchen with Said to try the pain au chocolat. Mullegeta, the Ethiopian, was already there, and game for a laugh and a diversion and something nice to eat, decided to try Hussein’s cooking. I did so too. He gave us each one and we tucked in. It was unbelievably heavy and dense. For a while we both tried to politely eat it; but after a while, realising how dense and difficult to eat it was, we were unable to hide our laughter, and overcome with merriment, we gave it up for hopeless, and coughed it up in the bin. Hussein, in his good natured way, took it all well, saying that it was the thought that counts, and Lysia would respect that. Afterwards, we went off down to the bar.

‘Later, after I left, I took the lift back up to my floor. On floor three it stopped and two people got on, two people who in this middle class student hall of ours seemed utterly out of place and incongruous. They were’ said Neil, looking seriously at us and holding our attention ‘a Chinese prostitute and her pimp. At least that was the only conclusion I could draw. The girl, tall and slim, had a tarted, painted face, heavy with mascara: she bore the mask of a harlot, a geisha. She wore a mini-skirt and knee-length stockings with high heels. I felt really intimidated by her, as I always have done whenever I’ve had any brief encounter with a lady of the night. It wasn’t just her dress, it was her attitude, her demeanour. She seemed tough, aggressive, totally dismissive of me, and she talked ten to the dozen to her pimp in Chinese, bossy, sullen, as if I didn’t even exist. I don’t know what it was in the person of the male that made me think him a pimp: he wore thick rimmed black glasses; he wore a leather jacket. He was tall and sturdy. There just seemed to be a presence about him, an aurora of manly superiority. And speaking on his mobile phone, he loudly and bossily gave out some orders in Chinese, simultaneously haranguing with his harlot. Again he seemed totally oblivious of me.

‘When I got back up to my room I was glad to be on my own again. I opened up my window and stood by it, looking out onto the dark, solemn, moonlit night, watching the sequence of lights land in the distance at Heathrow airport, listening to the strains of music float upwards from the pub. I was sad in my heart as if crushed. Why had that prostitute and pimp been here, of all places? Who were they? I felt sorry, disheartened, I felt they had upset the rhythm of lightness and peace that pervaded the hall; I just felt that, whatever the rights or wrongs of prostitution may be, I didn’t want to have to bump into such characters here, I didn’t want to have to face the issue; I wanted to be cosseted, happy and oblivious.

‘Of course I didn’t really believe they were a pimp and a prostitute, I just couldn’t rid myself of that impression. It was a mystery. I had something to think on. In the meantime, just about all of the people on my floor were set to leave, to return home. We were holding a party to mark this event.

‘Everyone on the floor had cooked some dish of their native country, excepting myself that is, who skillfully avoided the ordeal. When the cooking was done, Said came and knocked on my door, and I went with him down the corridor to the dining room, a bottle of wine in my hand, my contribution to the party. As we walked I saw up ahead of me a Chinese guy enter his room. He had just moved in the other day, replacing the man from South Africa, who unfortunately had had to shoot off before our celebration.

‘‘That new Chinese guy’ I said to Said ‘shouldn’t we invite him along. I mean I know he’s only just got here, but won’t he feel left out, seeing as the entire floor is going to the party?’

‘Oh don’t worry about it’ replied Said ‘It would just be awkward to invite him.’

And so we entered the dining room and began the continental feast. Everyone was in good spirits, we had a good laugh, ate up all the foreign food, swashed back all the wine. The American guy brought a CD player and we listened to some music, the Nigerian and Ethiopian guys showed us how to dance, and Said waltzed with Lysia and made humorous efforts to chat her up. It was all so good natured, the party I mean, a party for adults, conducted so pleasantly and in such good spirits. You could hear our good natured laughter some distance away. At one point however, an uninvited guest appeared.

‘It was the new Chinese guy. He came in, in order to procure some food from the freezer, and just as quickly left. He glanced at the party, obviously intimidated, and there was just a sensitive expression on his face, slightly embarrassed, slightly awkward. He was in and out in a flash.

‘And I realised straight away that it was the pimp. I was thoughtful once again. That was a new light in which I’d seen him.

‘The party eventually ended, and over the next few days the mass exodus of our floor began. Three days later only three of us remained: Said, myself and a Korean Wan. One day I happened to be talking with Said.

‘‘Have you seen the new Chinese guy?’ he said. ‘Everything he wears is designer. I saw him this morning slapping on designer aftershave. It costs a fortune. Everything, all his shirts, jeans, jackets, even his socks and underpants are designer. These Chinese are so flipping rich and arrogant.’

‘I was surprised to hear the normally sanguine Said speak like this, for he was usually so friendly, open, ready to be friends with anyone.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I asked probing, interested. ‘Surely he’s alright.’

‘Well he might be, but I’m not making friends with him. No’ he said ‘I don’t know what it is about the Chinese, they’re just such robots. Rich robots as well. You know there’s more than a billion of them, a billion! In a few years time every nine out of ten people will be Chinese. They’re the new superpower. Them and India mind you. But Indians are different. Indians have soul, they’re cultured, philosophic. Indian people can think, I mean think for themselves. They’re individuals. Look at our religions, for example. Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, what a richness and diversity we posses there. We have soul. But the Chinese are soulless, they’re like robots. Even Buddhism isn’t really a proper religion; it’s an atheist’s religion. All they care for is power and money. Their government is nominally communist, but at heart they’re just as avaricious as America. They’re even good at sport now. And not just ping-pong and martial arts. Did you see the Olympics? The 110 metres hurdles: a Chinese guy won gold.’

‘A Chinese guy won gold?’ I said puzzled. ‘An African guy, running for China?’ I inquired uncertainly.

‘No!’ said Said with passion ‘a true Chinaman.’

‘He beat all those black guys’ I said perplexed.

‘Yes!’

‘Is he short?’

‘No he’s tall’

‘Oh’ I said taken aback, shocked even. ‘Is he muscular?’

‘No, fairly lightweight’ replied Said ‘like a ballet dancer in physique.’

‘Oh’ I said. I was overcome by surprise.

‘Well if you ask me, he must be on drugs’ piped up Said again, ‘the Chinese are so desperate for success, they’ll drink dog’s blood for it.’

As much as I was in puzzlement and put out, I was also a little annoyed by this comment.

‘On drugs? How do you know that? Just because he’s Chinese, he must be on drugs?’

‘Well he must be’ persisted Said ‘how else could he have won?’

‘My conversation with Said fuelled yet more thought and reflection. I didn’t like his hostile, negative attitude toward the new guy, toward the Chinese. I felt him to be better than that. Plus, I had seen a new side to the pimp, seen that he could be self-deprecating, sensitive. All the same, didn’t I share some of Said’s feelings? I mean if the pimp dressed in designer clothes and expensive aftershave, if he was wealthy, rich and fashionable, were we ever going to get along? However one issue, that of the Chinese gold medalist, really stuck in my thoughts; and I thought back to how Hitler had been so insulted that a black man, Jesse Owens, should win Olympic gold in Nazi Germany.

‘And so with all these conflicting thoughts in my mind I happened to bump into the pimp on several occasions in the flat. And eventually I decided that, somehow or other, I should introduce myself, and get to know him, as I did everyone else who washed up here, as was my custom. It seemed rude not to offer him the hand of friendship.

‘So one day in the kitchen I did exactly that. He could not have been pleasanter, nicer, friendlier, he made such an effort to be deferential, extremely aware that he was on foreign soil, that somehow, I was his host. He was astonishingly fluent in English! Incredibly dexterous in his use of our language, very communicative and fluent, whilst his grasp of grammar was simultaneously supreme. He easily understood all that I said; there was no need to speak down to him. However the most shocking thing about him was his accent. Usually, the oriental will struggle with the European tongue, his pigeon English, though understandable, deficient and holey, devoid of ls and rs. Yet this guy spoke with an English accent, half aristocratic, half cockney-John.

‘‘Imagine that!’ he said laughing good humouredly ‘we went out to the country and spent a night in a castle. Such a typical old English castle. I didn’t know what to expect as we roamed around all those dungeons and courtyards. It was like being in a Shakespeare play! I honestly expected to see the ghost of Hamlet or Macbeth in my dreams, jumping out of the wall to stab me!’

‘And later

‘‘But it’s so quiet here in England. Everywhere shuts down on a night time. We stayed in an hotel up in Brighton one evening and ended up in a nightclub, cos everywhere else seemed so shut down and deserted. The same is true here. Nothing to do on a night time. It’s so depressing in the winter. I come from the south of China, it’s more like Italy than England, with short winters and long summers. But here is so depressing! I mean what are you supposed to do on an evening? I just spend my time indoors, getting depressed, getting fat because I eat so much!’

‘And with this he good humouredly patted his stomach as if he was getting fat and old but also philosophic: it was self-deprecating.

‘Well I have to admit, I never in my whole life met such a peculiar specimen, such a strange, intriguing creature. He really was a find. In terms of his sensitivity and intelligence I couldn’t fault him. Pleasant and self-deprecating, he seemed to empathically understand people, and if he felt like it, be kind to them. His emotional sensitivity was second to none. Intellectually he was bizarre. Speaking brilliant English, and casually referring to Shakespeare, he was for all that enrolled on a business management course, one of those utterly lightweight diplomas, offered by our English universities, that cost excessively high fees, that no English student in their right mind would pay, and that amount to a handful of meaningless lectures per week, a few flimsy essays and exams, and a congregation ceremony, complete with cap, gown and glass of champagne, in the grassy, leafy campuses of aristocratic England.

‘So he wore glasses, both intellectual and fashionable, and his attire, his black leather jacket and white scarf or cravat, his jeans, his boots were all of designer stamp. He wore them with such panache and style. He was tall as well as sturdy, and in the face fairly handsome. Yet there was just a presence about him that made you understand he was the chief male. A total assuredness about the man, a confidence, a superiority complex I might say. Not expressed in arrogance or talk or cockiness. Absolutely not. It was very much the reverse. Silent, calm, supreme, his dominance was unquestionable. You could just sense it, oozing off the man. For instance I would see him, casually dowsing his face with designer aftershave in the morning, and when he saw me watching he would smile genially, self-deprecatingly, and say good morning. I liked him for that. Yet I knew that behind closed doors he was surely something else.

‘So there he was. I was full of confusion toward him. Undeniably he was a genial man, and always, every time I saw him, he would, without fail smile pleasantly and offer some greeting. I couldn’t deny his intelligence. Yet I also saw that he possessed a lot of vulgar trappings, things, ideas, possessions, with which I just could not relate. Designer clothes for one. The suspicion that he was phenomenally rich, for another. The insipid, anti-intellectual course he was taking. He had come to England a year or so hence and improved his English, at some expensive school for a year. Prior to that he had studied at a Chinese university, but the degree he had earned there, being so common and worthless, it had been necessary to come here and gain an extra diploma in order to satisfy the demands of Chinese business, whose echelons he would one day enter. And there I saw him, a silent, cool, suited businessman, bossy and psychopathic when need be, just as I’d first seen him when on the phone, casually sleeping with sexy business women, soulless, oh, so soulless, making easy money. I saw him in expensive clothes, unhappy, headstrong and testosterone fuelled, whilst everyone around him tried to please him, to get in his good books. You see for all the good I’d come to recognise in him, that tough, psychopathic, pimp behaviour remained undeniably intrinsic to him, and I wondered whether I had been wise in making friends with an alien such as he; I wondered whether there wasn’t something two faced in my behaviour, that I was a tad hypocritical.

‘But above and beyond what I thought, and above and beyond our gentile, civilised manners, there was some subtle, archaic understanding between us, that he, and only he was the dominant male. Physically we weren’t, bit by bit, so mismatched. Yet there was an undeniable presence about him, something, something difficult to pin down and point to, but something which informed me that he was the natural stud and bullock around whom all the women should flock; whilst I, and I knew it only too well, was meek, insignificant and flimsy, in no way attractive to the opposite sex. I guess he was sturdy, he was strong. His back was so erect, he was well built. But so are many others. He had something else.

‘And the way in which he had self-deprecatingly felt his stomach and told me he was getting fat, spoke volumes, I felt, for how he truly regarded me. I had detected a false note in his words when he had said that. Not that he was supercilious, his intention had been completely sincere. However I felt that his words had sprung from out of his superiority complex, in the way in which a slim girl, full of well meaning but false smugness, will, when she comes into contact with a fatter woman, pretend that she too is getting heavier and oh my gosh aren’t we all in the same boat! I sensed how he felt then, that he considered himself superior to me, and to be honest, I couldn’t really refute that. He was superior.

‘And if his sexually charged presence and persona were not sufficient enough to inform me of his superiority, he spelled things out in universal language, by decorating himself in women. And I don’t just mean Chinese women.

‘There were plenty of Oriental pearls mind you, but there were others besides, notably a Finnish girl and an Italian’ said Neil, looking at us keenly. ‘And it was easy to see why they liked him. Women seem to find his type so appealing. Intelligent, calm, a good listener, he was also clearly able to manipulate and mentally dominate them; hold their emotions subject to his will. Physically as well, I guess he was attractive, although here he was no athlete or sports hunk. And you know I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but women I think prefer his lazy, indolent, sleepy type, men who are happy just to eat and get fat and not concerned about their figure; corpulent, easy and well fed, an arrogant, lazy, superiority, languidly draped about his person – women I think prefer his type to the fit, toned, energetic, sporty type, who keeps in shape and is worried about being so. No, that satisfaction and comfort that he manifested in his lazy, superior, fat cat way – women I promise you love that. And always well dressed and well groomed. They loved, they utterly loved, to have dinner with him. That seemed his only pastime almost, to sit and have dinner with a girl, he quite and somnolent, she talkative and appealing to him.

‘So he was then. I think I should tell you his name, it was so typical of this unclassifiable, enigmatic man. For her was no Lee or Wan or Chen. No. He took an English name: Blake. Imagine that. We were gratified by the presence of Blake.

‘So like I say, I went and made nice-nice with Blake, and though I did so with good intentions, I later came to regret it since in my heart, I felt I couldn’t ever really like him, and moreover the idea of being his inferior, I mean inferior to a Chinaman in my own land, was a bizarre notion to me. Whenever I saw him though we were always affable, always smiling and being good mannered. But there was a tension in the air. And it was soon exacerbated.

‘For instance one night, I awoke at two o’clock to a commotion outside. I opened my window and looked down to the hall’s entrance beneath me. It was the usual scenario: students coming home drunk from a nightclub, getting out of a noisy cab. I’d gotten used to such incidents as soon as I’d moved here, but this time, seeing it was a posse of Chinese, amongst whom was Blake, I allowed my anger at being woken up to rankle me, as if this wasn’t suitable behaviour for our Oriental guests.

‘Then one evening, exiting the kitchen, I witnessed something completely novel. A Finnish girl came out of Blake’s room. Before they became aware of my presence, I saw them embrace, as if to say goodbye and thanks for the sex. I saw them do one final kiss, and then as the Finnish girl exited the corridor, she turned one more time, looked intimately at Blake, and, raising her finger to her mouth, ‘popped it’ in a coquettish way. Blake responded by popping his own finger, as if it were a secret message between lovers. By this time he’d become aware of my presence. I put my head down, acting as if I hadn’t noticed, and he made his usual self-deprecating smile. I just smiled back and walked on.

‘But the chief cause of tension with Blake remained his Chinese whore girl. I would come into the kitchen often and find them both seated over dinner; and though Blake ceaselessly made an effort to be gracious, the prostitute did not. She would just sit there, gabbling ten to the dozen in Chinese, looking beautiful, completely indifferent of me as if I didn’t exist, in the kitchen of what was my floor, and what had been my floor for over a year, in the kitchen where I had spent so many happy hours with my now departed ex-flat mates. Anyway there was tension there, and I felt perhaps it would’ve been better never to have made friends with Blake. However for the moment we both put on friendly faces.

‘And I didn’t too much care either for I was going on holiday now for two weeks. The night before I left I went to see my Korean friend Wan. Said had by this time left, so we were the two remaining survivors from our previous year.

‘‘Our new flatmates will be here by the time I return’ I said to him happily. ‘I can’t wait to see who we’re going to get.’

‘‘Maybe some nice girls!’ he said breaking into laughter. We both knew what was on our minds: we recalled the lovely French, Italian, Swiss and German girls of last year.

‘He-he! Last year there were four girls, this year I’ve heard at least half the floor will be female – that means nine!’

‘Oh Good! Good! Lots of girls for you and I.’

He opened up his top drawer, took out a bottle of Martini, and two small shot glasses.

‘Cheers!’ we said clinking our glasses, ‘here’s to lots of new foreign girls!’ I said. And we spent the night chatting and relaxing. Finally, at around twelve, I left.

‘Now, I had to go downstairs, onto the girl’s floor, to quickly say goodbye to one of my female friends. However, just as I got into the corridor, I saw someone up ahead: it was Blake. He came out of one of the girl’s rooms, knotting up his cravat as if redressing, with a young Italian girl in tow: she was small, slim and lithe, she was dark-haired and wore glasses that made her look very intelligent. I held myself back hoping he wouldn’t see me. He didn’t. And so thinking himself alone, I watched him exit with the Italian girl; and turning their backs on me, I saw them walk down the corridor. And there and then I was given a glimpse into the secret personality of this man. For as they walked, the petit Italian girl walking submissively ahead of him, he – the supreme, the dominant – casually and with smut raised his hand and slapped her backside satisfactorily; her peachy, slightly flabby backside, he slapped with such satisfaction. She didn’t turn around to face him as he did so, she just walked straight on, submissive, controlled, at his will; whilst he walked erect and dominant, slapping her butt with supremacy. As I saw this, it was as if I had caught a glimpse of a male and female gorilla stealing through the forest, the strong male, the submissive female.

‘And mind you’ said Neil excitedly, ‘this was just two days after he’d introduced Miss Finland to the delights of chicken chow mine. No it was some sight that, I seemed to see it almost in slow motion. That dominant male slapping the Italian girl on the backside, as though she were his slave, his chattel. Never have I seen a more dominant, comfortable man. I went off for my holiday the next day.’