Last Night - Short Story by Yuan Changming

 

Last Night

Short Story

by Yuan Changming 

Now, with your temporary elopement drawing to an end, every minute spent together was, for both of you, “worth as much as one thousand gold,” as an ancient Chinese poet once said.

When you woke around five o’clock, you were on cloud nine to find yourself in the middle of morning wood, a really rare experience at your age. Without waiting a single second, you climbed on Hua before she had enough time to take off her underwear. As your pecker was no longer as thick, long and hard as in your youthful years, you had to take the classic position each and every time without any change. You told her that if you had had more sexual energy, you would have preferred to penetrate her either from behind or beneath her. After discharging all your remaining manhood into her body, you engaged yourself in an endless afterplay. While kissing and fondling her, you felt inspired to write a poem about yourself as a rain sparrow, as you had found Hua’s little garden to be the ideal nest for your soul and selfhood at the same time. While you kept wondering about the close interrelationship between sex and spirituality in the back of your mind, you couldn’t help wanting to share with her your most special sexual experience with your wife, which took place right before you moved to Canada as an international student.

“When and how did you two do it?” asked Hua.

“I was thirty two then,” you replied. “When Helen and I were treading water in Beidaihe, which you know is the most popular seaside holiday resort in northern China, I led her to walk step by step away from all others and thrust all my manhood inside her from behind her back in the sea without anyone noticing us.”

“You’re such an outrageous naughty boy!” Hua remarked. “Ping’s never done such a crazy thing with me.”

“I know he’s also ‘naughty,’ but not as crazy or outrageous,” you observed. “By the by, what’re the different experiences you’ve had with me that are particularly enjoyable to you?”

After doing some thinking about this question, which was apparently intriguing to her, Hua began by telling you that she felt extremely excited when she took a joint shower with you, something she had never done before with Ping. As you caressed her slowly and softly from her neck to her feet, she produced so much juice that it felt like dripping together with the water. Another most pleasurable thing you did to her was to search her G-spot and keep stimulating it with your middle finger. Though Ping had once attempted to finger fuck her in the past, she refused him resolutely, because she felt dirty and disgusted about his fingers. Also, she found it profoundly comforting and delightful to remain naked in your arms, saying that even on the wedding night, she habitually slept under her own comforter after sex. Besides, for all her life, she must wear a pajama during sleep. Each time after sex, she would put her underwear and her pajama back on, or she could never fall asleep, but sleeping totally naked with you turned out to be something not only possible but actually preferable.

“Which’s your most enjoyable experience with me?” you asked.

“The act itself of course,” Hua said. “Except that I wish you sometimes do it a bit more slowly.”

You knew that you had done the pushing and pulling too fast, especially when you found it difficult to work up and maintain the hardness. You simply had to; otherwise, your waning sexual power would not allow you to retain your thrust. Now, in your late sixties, you might be a big sexual nuisance or burden to your wife because of her complete loss of libido, but with your little remaining sexuality, you could never satisfy Hua, because she was still perfectly functional like a full-fledged young woman.

“Sorry, like every other male in the animal world, I cannot really satisfy a female, especially a super libidinous woman like you,” you said, trying to give yourself a universally valid excuse. “How about Ping?”

“He’s got nothing on you!” Hua said, her words sounding more like a condolence or encouragement than a real or well-grounded correction. “What about the different things you’ve done with me that you found most enjoyable?” she asked.

In reviewing your sexual experiences with her, you recalled the fact that Hua was the only woman who had made you feel totally melted in the depth of feminine warmth and tenderness. Though you had slept with a few women before, you had never had such bone-etching and soul-melting experience. Nor had you ever kissed or bitten a woman’s bud before her. While this was something you had never even thought of doing to a woman, you were truly surprised to find Hua’s hidden face was a beautiful sight to behold.

“You mentioned this to me on our second night together, remember?”

“Of course, but I want to reiterate it, because this is my biggest discovery not only about you in particular, but about all women in general. Probably it is this secret feature that has made you so special, and so extremely attractive to me.”

“You’re kidding! How could you tell before you sleep with me?”

“I’ve got an inner eye, my third eye, which allows me to see a dialectic relationship between a woman’s two faces.”

“I’m listening.”

“Well, if a woman looks shiny or carries her age particularly well like you do, that’s because she’s got a high libido and been well nourished by sexual love like a flower. Alternatively, if a woman has a handsome hidden face and is well-irrigated by sexual love like a root, she is bound to have much better looks than others or look much younger than her real age.”

“Another bunch of baloney! But I would say you’re a true blue visual creature!”

“Yep, just as you’re a true blue auditory one!”

After your last turtle brunch, you helped Hua wash all the bedsheets and clothes, clean the whole condo suite room by room, and pack up her big suitcases mostly with toys for her two grandchildren and traditional herbal supplements for her husband. In the evening, you ate out in a small but busy restaurant adjacent to Fuhua Square and took a long walk around the area, where Hua had used to do grocery shopping or run on household errands before immigrating to Australia. Around nine o’clock, you visited Sugar Tang, a very popular food outlet selling all kinds of sweet soups. Knowing zhujiaojiang as the most nutritious soup for breast-feeding mothers as well as Hua’s most favourite local Cantonese dish, you asked her to order a big bowel for the two of you. While eating, Hua told you in detail how to cook it.

“It’s very simple. First, soak a well-cleansed pig’s foot in red sweet vinegar overnight, then stew it with ginger and boiled eggs in the vinegar for two hours.”

“I’ll pass this recipe to Helen.”

“But no one could really learn it. The taste here is unique.”

“Probably they have some special extra ingredient.”

After returning home, you shut every curtain and had a long last joint shower. Before going to bed, you wanted Hua to perform a naked dance for you in her large well-lighted living room, but she shook her head firmly, saying it would be disgusting for a crone to do such a crazy thing. Besieds, she had forgotten most of the movements. You insisted on her putting on minimum clothing and trying “the Blue Sky Dream,” a beautiful Tibetan dance which she had liked and performed best. Without any musical instrument available to you, you sang the song aloud in tune with her movements. When you entered the bedroom, she asked you to read a couple of poems you had written for her.

To give her a sense of how it sounded in English, you selected two pieces from your published collection Limerence. The first is what you consider your best love poem, which reads,   

   

  Missing in Missed Moments 

 

Each time I miss you 
A bud begins to bloom 
So you are surrounded by flowers  
Everywhere you go  

 

Each time I miss you 
A dot of light pops up 
So you are illuminated by a whole sky  
Of stars through the night

  

After you paraphrased the two stanzas in Chinese for her, Hua said that though English poetry sounded Greek to her, she could nevertheless feel beauty and love flowing sweetly, slowly and softly between the lines as between the two of you. Then you read the following piece in a dramatic way: 

 

To All That I’ve Lost Most Dearly 

 

When I die at another antlike moment like this 
No human crowds would gather to mourn my loss 
Nor would anybody really notice my departure 
Much less shed tears, even if because of the wind 
Yet I am sure trees will shake off their leaves; horses 
Will stampede, raindrops will taste somewhat salty 
Hills & mountains will all murmur in a muted voice 
Above all, Zhuhai will weep under sagging clouds 
For it well knows there will be no more human soul 
On this planet trying to connect with the city as far 
As from beyond the Pacific, so closely & constantly 
With its myriad spirited fingers caressing every 
Synapse of the neighbourhood, the very building 
Where you dwell, while poetry cannot help feeling 
Empty as if its heart were hollowed by my absence 

 

Hearing your explanation of what you tried to express in the poem, Hua felt quite saddened. When you told her how the chief editor of a long standing California-based poetry magazine actually cried in reading this piece, Hua shared her feelings, because it was “deeply touching.” 

 

“Okay, enough of high romance, let’s get down to our low business,” you suggested as you carried her into the bed, where you began by fondling her breasts, your favorite toy. A few minutes later, you reached down and massaged her vagina in a Taoist way. Before becoming manly enough, you kissed her bud, gave it a good farewell bite and used your scissors to cut a lock of hair respectively from her head and secret garden. After you put them into a red envelop, which you planned to bring with you back to Canada, Hua kissed your birdie in return. Fortunately, it put up a good show as if to accommodate the occasion by flapping right into her nest, where you wished to perch forever.

 

“Now I understand why in Junichi Watanabe’s bestselling autographical novel A Paradise Lost,” you said, “the narrator and his partner designed carefully to die together at the peak of their intercourse. Though their intertwisted bodies looked embarrassing to their undertakers, it is unquestionably their best time and best way to leave this world.”

 

“Why?” 

“Because death is the only way to eternalize their happiest moment.” 

“But I don’t want to die that way.” 

“Now I also understand, finally,” you continued, “why eastern Asian lovers often commit double suicides when they lost all their hopes to live together.” 

“What’s the rationale behind this tradition?” 

“Also because death is the ultimate way to live together ever after.”  

“You want us to die together to eternalize our happy love?” 

“Yes and no, but let’s enjoy it while we’re still alive and capable.” 

After plenty of horizontal refreshments, you put your new silk underpants on her instead of yourself and asked her to sleep with it for the night. 

“What’s this for? I’ve never even tried a guy’s pants,” Hua said.  

“Just to consecrate it, like a grand Buddhist master.”  

 

Thinking that you had only 12 hours left before leaving each other, you felt both sad and grateful. Sad that you would have to wait for another whole year before you could find a chance for a physical reunion; grateful that despite your old age and difficult circumstances, you managed to have not only spent almost sixteen whole days together but enjoyed as many as nine soulmelting moments, chatting about everything without any reservation, making love with each other ad libitum.

     

“Like you say,” Hua said. “I’m also feeling as if falling in love for the first time in my life.” 

“Indeed, each time I fornicate you, I feel like I’ve never fucked a woman before.” 

 

“Have some decency!” 

“But to you, and to you alone, I’ve lost all my decency and dignity as a man.” 

“You’d better keep some for me, if not for yourself.” 

 

“People say a wise man does not fall in love, and only a fool is trapped by his feelings. If this is true, I’m really a big fool, a preordained one.”

 

“But you are a wise fool, since you’re a PhD holder, a thoughtful writer and a widely published poetry author. Aren’t you happy to be such a wise fool?”

 

Of course you were. You didn’t know why, but together with Hua, you felt foolish in happy love, just as you had done so in hard labour. While your brain seemed to have stopped functioning, your whole being was controlled by feel, which allowed you to sense nothing else except happiness in love. Actually, often did you feel so happy as to want to die at the moment of ejaculation. This way, you could immortalize your ecstasy, but now the impending departure from her overwhelmed you with a sense of sadness. Despite your plan to honeymoon on a yearly basis, you found the wait unbearable.  

 

“I’m a migratory rain sparrow,” you said to Hua, as you interpreted for her the following poem titled “Swift” you had just finished: 

 

    Above this wild wild world covered 

          With layers and layers and layers 

        Of red dust, my selfhood 

      Has long been tired 

    Tired of flying 

  Flying alone 

  Day & night 

 

But where can I perch? 

Do I have a nest at all? 

   

  O for a solid  

  Respite before 

    Continuing my lonely 

      Flight, snuggling my inner- 

        Most being in the heart of your 

          Soul, and settling my weathered body 

            Right at the A-spot of your tenderness 

 

 

Yes, you had found your permanent sexual-spiritual nest in Hua, but you had to keep yourself away from it for most of the time and fly every minute with the thought of her husband occupying your nest. Even though you could accept the fact that Ping was able to fuck her any moment and spend time with her openly anywhere, you were afraid that another rival could pop up from nowhere, like Hao and Jing. Hua told you that she felt exactly the same. She could cope with the fact of you living together with Helen day and night, but she would never tolerate the idea of another woman, even if it were Yiming, playing a part in your life. To both of you, separation was a torture.   

 

“That’s the predestination for all extramarital relationships,” you said.

Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 2 for fiction besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline and 2069 other literary outlets worldwide. A poetry judge for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards, Yuan began writing and publishing fiction in 2022.