Retirement begins

Post-bakery

                The bakery episode is now ended.  What next?  Now I explore retirement.  What does that mean for someone still intellectually active, physically able?

                I made up my mind that if I was going to continue to live, I must have a life partner.  This seemed a bit unrealistic.  I haven’t found one in all these years.  Why now, particularly when the physical limitations of old age have transformed a once desirable body?  If my partner is a woman, that doesn’t matter.  What are my chances of finding a Chinese like-minded woman? 

                If I moved back to Florida I could post ads, like in Craig’s list, for a housemate of a certain age and financial stability.  It feels like trying to find a good employee at the bakery.  Many come and try out, but the good ones never stay.

                Then along comes this bizarre text message from America. Someone is enquiring if I am the Satina as seen on China TV, under ‘Life of Foreigners in China’.  I say yes.  This person explains that they think their father is the man I was looking for, according to the TV show description. 

                That person, as it turns out, was the daughter of a retired man in Chongqing.  She connected us.  We began communicating.  But over the phone, with my limited Chinese, there was little we could say.  He calls every day, to say ‘good morning,’ and ‘have you eaten?’  After a while this gets tedious.  I like the sound of the voice, however.  Once, Jamie helped translate through a conversation.

                I decided it was time to meet.  If he comes to Changzhou, how would I entertain him?  I am a visitor here myself.  Also, being summertime, my friends are all traveling. 

                I booked a flight to Chongqing, for five days.  He planned my introduction to Chongqing, and himself. 

                The flight to CQ was delayed by typhoon-like weather up north, where the flight originated.  We were in phone contact.  I told him, I have heard no news of when the flight would actually depart, so he should go home and wait.  He stubbornly stood at the airport, clutching a bouquet.

                Just before midnight the plane finally arrived in CQ.  As I headed for the baggage carousel I glimpsed a figure beyond the exit doorway.  A serious-faced many clutching a bouquet of roses and lilies stood facing the door.  The luggage took forever to finally arrive. 

                We recognized each other from our pictures.  He greeted me warmly and took my suitcase handle.  We rode the subway to my hotel.  The pavement was wet, it had been raining all day.  He saw me checked in and settled, and then he left. It was well after midnight.

                We spent two days touring the city, and a third day just relaxing at his apartment.  I was glad for the rest, because he had walked my legs off.  We watched a soccer match, and then a ballet of Romeo and Juliet (his choices).  I got on his computer and found translation software, so we could have some deeper conversations.  He cooked lunch for me.  Chicken soup, unadorned with the famous Chongqing spiciness.

                On the final day, he collected me for my morning flight, and saw me off at the airport.

                He is on a fixed income.  He spent a lot of money on me, for food, a romantic evening harbor boat tour, park entrance fees and transportation.  I would have to wait patiently until his coffers filled again for his flight to Changzhou.

                As the weeks went by, our communications became more sophisticated. He learned to use WeChat, with the translation feature.  I no longer had to try to write in Chinese, fraught with selecting the wrong character and sending gibberish.  I wrote in English, he in Chinese.

                By the time he bought his ticket and fixed the date, four weeks later, I was very eager for his arrival.  ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ I kept hearing in my head.

                I did a careful search for a suitable yet affordable guest house for him.  I would provide the housing.  I worked hard on making my spare room suitable as a bedroom, but the sheer quantity of my ‘junk’ was making it nigh impossible. 

                When my well-publicized attempted relationship with LaoZhu failed, a year earlier, Changzhou online gossip withered my reputation with assertions that ‘it was all a publicity stunt.’

                Xiao Wang has always been more a friend than a journalist.  Reading about me in the first serious photo-journal piece in a small Changzhou newspaper, in January of 2013, he tried my baked goods and liked them.  I got to know him first as a customer.  The TV station is in the same block as the bakery.  Then he asked if he could do a short ‘human interest’ story for his station’s evening newscast.  It was cute, showing me interacting with the community buying supplies for the bakery, baking, and greeting customers. 

                Two years later I was thinking about my future.  I decided that my best bet was to find a Chinese boyfriend.  I asked my repeat customers, with whom I felt comfortable enough, to consider introducing me to their elder widowed friends and relatives.

                Xiao Wang thought it would make a good story.  By this time I had rented the next-door larger space, and it made a nice backdrop for the piece, where I asked the viewers to help find me a ‘gentle hearted man’.  Xiao Wang has a lovely sense of humor, and so the piece was light hearted and very well received.  It led to the other Changzhou station wanting to do a piece, plus another newspaper, plus another writer who wanted to do an in-depth piece (I never knew what happened with the latter’s work, if he sold it independently or what).  All this became a hot topic of discussion on the internet.

                Eventually it caught the attention of a reporter in Beijing, working for CCTV4.  That station was doing a sporadic series on lives of foreigners in China.  Though I can’t be sure, I think that is the one that Linda eventually saw, while living in Brooklyn

                I could not resist assuring XiaoWang that my search had not been a publicity stunt.  I sent him a picture of HuiWen.

                A week later he contacted me, and asked how things were going.  I told him HW was due to arrive in days.  He wanted to meet.  We met at Starbucks, and there were two people with him.  The lady was the reporter in training, and the other guy was the cameraman.  Poor anonymous cameramen, I thought maybe I had worked with him before but couldn’t remember, and never got a chance to ask.

                I knew that Xiao Wang was no longer ‘just’ a journalist.  You see, the station entered his video of my romantic search to a Jiangsu Province-wide competition.  He won first prize.  With that award came a promotion.  Now he trains budding journalists.  He says he has 150 trainees!!!  The two he brought along would be doing the piece.  They don’t speak English, so we did the interview in Chinese.  At one point, Xiao Wang must have felt that they weren’t getting the whole story, so he jumped in and led the interview for a short bit.  We talked about the rumor that it had all been a publicity stunt, and how I felt about that.  That part we did in English.

                We agreed that they would film HWs arrival at Changzhou airport.

                Now, how do I include HW in this?  I don’t want him thinking about it ahead of time, with time to be nervous.  Yet it would be unkind to just spring it on him, a camera trained on him while he exited the secure area, and a microphone stuck in his face.

                I wrote Linda.  I asked her to ask him if he wouldln’t mind being interviewed for the TV spot.  He replied that he did not want that, he did not want to ‘be famous’.  I gently reminded Linda that it was too late now, that she only knew me because of my TV appearance, and it was only right that Xiao Wang should be able to produce the last segment, the end of the search and the beginning of true romance.

                And so he was aware that at some point he would be interviewed.  He took with good humor the work of the TV pair at the airport.  He hugged me warmly, as I gave him his symbolic red rose of love’s declaration. 

                I am not above being an opportunist.  The weather is very hot.  I had bought a special dress for the occasion, which was two-layers thick.  If I said no to the journalists, I’d be traveling for almost two hours in crowded hot buses to get to the airport.  They, on the other hand, would provide an air-conditioned trip there and back.

                On the trip back I thought their questioning of him was a bit intrusive.  I sat quietly, hoping Xiao Wang would make sure in the editing that things didn’t get too personal.

                I thought we would have to drop off his luggage at the hotel, and then come to my apartment.  But as it turned out, he brought just one small backpack, so we came directly to the apartment.  Later on I would take him on my ebike to the guest house.

                My bilingual friends were all out of town.  Sonja is probably in Jilin with her family.  Siok-Eong and Mark were visiting family in Malaysia until the end of the month.  Christel and Steffen would arrive a few days after HWs arrival, but they are not bilingual.  Jamie is still in town, and happy to serve as a translator.

                I thought of Lucy and her husband.  I met him only once, and would like to get to know him.  He is a bookworm, a gold mine of Chinese history and culture.  He does not speak English however.

                Meanwhile, HW and I are trying to get to know each other, while enduring temperatures hovering around 100 degrees.  At least the humidity has left the 88% range, standing around 64%.  Even so, this is the kind of weather where you dip in and out of the shower all day, unless you sit in an air conditioned room all day.

                On our first night alone, we walked to the Italian restaurant, Monkey King.  He is staying very near that location, which is also across from Yancheng Park.  We had plain pizza with garlic, and linguini with shrimp and pesto.  I ordered us two glasses of pinot grigio.  The bill was over 200 rmb, but I didn’t care.  My gesture of welcome.

                The next day we just hung around the house.  We watched TV, movies, chatted, played with the dog and cat.  I ate leftover dal, and he bought take-away pulled noodles.  We cooked a simple meal of egg plant, and cucumber

                On Saturday I had an 8 a.m. appointment at the dentist.  The previous night as I walked him halfway home, I told him I’d like him to come with me, and have his teeth looked at.  He said, no, no, his teeth were fine.  I said they needed attention.  His breath stinks.  He protested that it was because of all the garlic we at that day.  I gently disagreed.

                He came of age during the pioneering age of the revolution, where men were tough, life was rough, and it was all for the better good of building a new China.  Dental hygiene was the least of their cares.

                On the third day we went to the dentist.  I had a root canal done.  His cleaning took longer than my root canal.  Afterwards the dental assistant told me he wasn’t finished, and needed to come back for more.  I made an appointment for the following Monday.

                We went back to the hotel.  By then I was already feeling tired.  His room has twin beds.  I thought I’d lay on one, he’d lay on the other, and we’d chat and nap.  I lay down, and he sat on the side of the bed with me.  We talked.  One thing led to another.  We kissed.  Sparks flew.

After that we walked arm and arm around the retro Old China buildings outside the Park gates, looking for a place to eat.  The area has grown up a lot since I first visited it.  They no longer have a family-style small noodle shop.  Everything is expensive there now.  We wound up finding a pulled noodle place down from his guest house.  We came back to the flat and I opened the translation software. 

                I put a light-hearted Chinese movie on the TV, and took a nap on the couch.  He was sitting on my favorite chair (not using the foot rest) and wound up falling asleep too.

                We cooked and ate in.

                We spent the evening playing cards, with much laughter.

                I have paid his room through Sunday night.  We decided that Monday he would move in.  No need to prepare the spare room.

Transgender

Transgender

Suddenly this concept is popping up wherever I look.

There is the Oscar nominated film, the Danish Girl.  My good friend Cal revealed to me that he is transgender. North Carolina passes a law around transgenders and public toilets.

I cannot give this topic a superficial pass.  Suddenly this condition is ascending to claims on constitutional rights.  I have to ask myself, where has this issue been all my life?

I was certainly aware of transvestites, men who like to dress in women’s clothing.  There were plenty portrayed in movies as being prostitutes, flirting with men.

In grammar school there was a boy who was in my dance class.  He was more sensitive, gentler than other boys.  He grew up, got married, and raised a family.

Another boy, handsome, Italian, slight build, flamboyant and a hairdresser to boot, appeared at the 20-year high school reunion with his wife on his arm.  I would not have predicted that.

There were what we called dykes.  Females with masculine preferences for dress and demeanor.

How did we come from that, to a state where a mother says she knows her three year old son is transgender?

Our culture is becoming more and more fractured, with everyone indulging their individuality at the cost of a cohesive society.  Why suddenly do they claim special rights and privileges, special concessions to their preferences.  I don’t get it.  As someone famously once said, ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’

I look at my own life through these newly ground lenses.  I never played with dolls.  In our day, the name given to girls like me was tomboy.  No one ever called me a dyke.  I played nice with boys, when forced to, like having a crush in high school, and needing a date for prom night.  None of this ever came to anything.

Years and years ago when I was in the workforce, I had the sense that I was a man in a woman’s body.  I was independent, self-reliant.  I didn’t know how to pick up boys.  Boys sensed no pheromones from me.  Of course, I did live through the sixties when men suddenly had permission to screw anything that moved on two legs, and women were persuaded to think this brought them ‘hip’ status. 

It didn’t help that I was raised in a home without open displays of affection.  My mother was indoctrinated into the child-raising philosophy of the time, that to give too much attention to a child is to spoil them, give them an over inflated ego.  She took it to the extreme, closer to the ‘cold bitch’ side of the spectrum.  Once I discovered sex I had a spell of insatiability for physical intimacy.  But before long I was able to distinguish between the biological act of sex, and genuine affection and love based on mutual respect and admiration.  In fact, I found that latter to be extremely rare, though I held onto the possibility that it might be more than an urban legend.  I got tired of pretending that I was finding love in each encounter, when in fact I was being used as a dumping ground for male sweat and sperm.

While traveling alone around the world I gradually found my balance.  I developed a sense that I could do anything a guy could do, and often better.  I did not relate with the women whom I met traveling, who seemed to require a male counterpart to help make her decisions.  I did occasionally run into the rare couple who absolutely did complement each other, and I did envy them.  You never know a book by its cover, but they had the appearance of being best friends.

I did encounter women to whom I was attracted.  That is, their femininity and grace made the sun shine a little brighter for me.  And then there were the other women like me, such as the famous Miss Jones. 

We met on a Greek Island, and met again on a kibbutz.  I had already started to meditate, so we would meditate together.  Her energy helped me find my center, and my meditation improved.  Then we went our separate ways, only to meet again in Nepal.  I had heard of this American who ran a café in Kathmandu.  My colleagues at the monastery would visit her shop when they were in town.  It was a meeting place, also a place to dump the shopping while you go out for dinner, that sort of thing.  When eventually I had the opportunity to go into town with these people, she and I rediscovered each other to mutual delight. 

I think of her, when I see how my bakery in China has served a similar purpose in its short life.

Would my life have been easier if I taped my breasts and walked around in men’s clothing and hairstyle?  That seems weird to me.  I would have complicated my life even more.  The only possible advantage I could imagine would be if women were then attracted to me.  But in fact, I think my personality is a put off to men and women alike, so I doubt that would have been the result.

I speculate as to how different my experience is to someone calling themselves transgender.  I guess I will never know.  As I said, I didn’t play with dolls.  I played cowboys and Indians.  I dug out dirt to make runways and villages for what is now called matchbox cars and trucks, together with the neighborhood boys.  I climbed trees, played stick ball (when the cruel neighbor kids weren’t ostracizing me, for whatever reason of the moment).  I flew with the wind on my bicycle, exploring the town, visiting the far flung kids from my school class.  Alone, always alone.

This was all excellent preparation for the long and adventurous life I led, taking me around the world, learning languages, absorbing cultures, and having many careers.  This life was well-suited to someone who has given up romantic dreams of idyllic love.  The romance was in the travels, the possibilities that lie just around the corner.  Had I been a dependent woman, waiting for my identity and security to be provided by a male, I would have been stopped in my tricks thousands of miles and decades ago.

I feel bad for people who are not confident in expressing themselves.  For that poor little boy who likes to dress up as a girl and play with dolls, that he should have to be stigmatized for the rest of his life by his mother telling him his gender roll was confused, I feel for him.  Why must everything be so black and white.  Why cannot I be both male and female, in whatever body God gave me?  Why do I have to choose one or the other?  From talking to my transgender and gay (or should I say LTGBQ) friends, I feel that the real problem is a lack of tolerance in our relationships.  If a guy wants to wear ruffles and laces to work, why can’t he?  Why must he be gossiped about, judged wanting in masculinity?  If a woman chooses a mannishly short haircut and is given to wearing three-piece suits, what’s the problem?  Why must we treat these people differently, to where they develop a chip on their shoulder, and feel the need to run from civilized society and develop a subculture?

My cousin, when here four children were under ten years old, came home and found her husband in flagrante with a man in the basement.  Did she have to get hysterical?  Did she have to treat him like he was a felon who should never be near his children again?  For the rest of her life, does she have to go ballistic whenever they need to have a conversation?  He did not go on to develop a stable relationship with a man.  She forced the breakup of the marriage, and her children to grow up without a father, for what?  I admit I am not walking in their shoes.  Maybe I would not feature being penetrated by a tool that had been dunked in shit.  Or maybe, just maybe, enlightened people could find a way around such traumas and let their friendship go deeper.  We are all flawed human beings.  Can’t we make a better effort at loving each other unconditionally, accepting our flaws and theirs, and just get on with life?

Why do we have to fragment our society into smaller and smaller peer groups, and then demand special treatment because our decisions stand in the way of our sharing the rights and responsibilities of the society we have chosen to leave?  Many States have passed laws given gay couples legal rights, such that if one of them were hospitalized the other would have the right to be treated as family; they can be on each other’s medical insurance.  Why must they go a step further, and demand the right to shatter the milleniums-old established institution of marriage?

Truly, our culture is on the brink of extinction, no less than our planet as we know it.  Young people can’t see it, they are caught up in the moment.  Like not seeing the forest for the trees, they are blind to what is happening.  We old people are marginalized, so clearly our perspective is quaint and irrelevant.

There is nothing new under the sun.  When we have to develop a whole new vocabulary to describe what has been going on forever, we are ascending a tower of babel.