So I meant to finish this post as soon as possible after it happened, but it just didn't work out that way. When I got back to Zhuhai from Lanzhou, I had two days to do a million things, and then I was traveling for an entire day, and then I was confused and tired, and then I had to make a trip down to Baltimore and have fifty meetings, and then I had to pack and unpack countless boxes and suitcases and whatever in preparation for moving to Baltimore. Anyway, I still want to write the post, even though my perspective is different now that I'm in Binghamton sleeping in that freaking uncomfortable bed I've slept in my whole life. Maybe nobody is even reading this now that you suspect I've returned, but I wouldn't want to leave a perfectly good blog hanging without an ending. Here is what I managed to do before my brain switched out of China mode:
I’m on the plane home. I didn’t wear a watch and this lame airplane doesn’t have those personal computer screens that track your progress like I’m used to, but my computer says the time is Friday 6:32 PM, which must be China time, so if that’s true I’ve been on the plane for six hours and probably slept about 3 of those. When I got back to Zhuhai earlier this week, I only had two days to tie everything up, so Tuesday night I slept about 4 hours and Wednesday night about 5. Then Thursday was the longest day freakin ever, and last night I didn’t sleep, since I had to leave for the airport at 5 AM. The moral of this is I’ve had about 12 hours of sleep in the past, like, 72 hours, so you need to take this into consideration while analyzing my writing.
One night a few months ago, when I was still dating C, Luke had to go to Guangzhou to take an IELTS. The night before his test he was staying in a friend’s dormitory and called me after a few beers. We ended up on the phone for hours, and sometime during the conversation he invited me to visit Lanzhou, his hometown. My response was something about, oh how sweet, you know I’d love to, but of course there’s no way I could possibly do that, how would I explain that to everyone? And I honestly thought it wouldn’t happen. I might have fantasized about it once and then tried not to hope for it. But Luke’s brainwave energy must be a match for mine, because I think he has been able to guide the direction of this relationship without me even realizing what’s going on until it’s already happening. Did that make sense? Like, during another one of those long phone calls when Luke had drunk enough beer to make him forget about the English impediment – or the emotional impediment, maybe both – he said something like, Zoe, we are going to date. This sounded shocking and impossible to me, and I said,
No, we aren’t. We can’t. I can’t.
I know, I know you can’t. But…you will.
No…I know this is getting messy, but, I can’t.
You can’t, but you will.
Typed out like that, his words sound demanding or overconfident, but spoken with this desperate, pleading tone he adopts when he wants to convey something meaningful, they sounded alluring. And then we went to Lanzhou, and then he asked if he could introduce me as his girlfriend and I agreed, and then we had conversations about staying together and him coming to the States during the Winter holiday, and then we had a lovely, devastating parting at the airport. Maybe he has just been able to see this situation more clearly than me, or maybe his creative powers have been pushing for this while mine were still tied up in Cheikh, or maybe we’ve both gone temporarily nuts and will snap back into reality when I hit ground in the States and he hits uncertainty in England.
But I have a feeling this isn’t a fluke, or a fling.
But I was confused about C for a long time so I could be confused about this, too.
I really have no idea.
In any case the adventure of all adventures began on a Saturday in Shenzhen.
Time out. So of course I couldn’t get my charger to function properly on the plane and my computer died, so now I’m home at the lake house, lying on this fuzzy animal fur blanket thing, which is the most comfortable thing I’ve touched in ten months. Time in.
I knew this whole meeting-the-parents thing would be stressful, obviously, and I kept asking Luke for advice on what I should wear, do, say, etc. But he didn’t understand why I was anxious and just kept saying not to worry about it. He doesn’t understand that I have no idea what oldish Chinese parents expect out of a new American girlfriend. I have no context for knowing what is appropriate behavior. So on the bus over I sang my little fear-eraser song in my head and tried to tell myself I looked pretty and was capable of being charming and sweet and interesting and imagined myself meeting the guy without falling down the stairs or spilling stuff on my shirt. We met the dad at a metro stop and he said “How do you do,” and that was about the extent of his English. He is 67 but looked great, with a full head of black hair and lots of energy. I made sure to compliment his hair multiple times. He seemed normal and friendly and dadish but
(to be continued...)
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