But what about the love between you and me? It happen in the big city, a very big city, London, a very international place, like airport. Can you keep that love? Can we keep it? I ask myself, in my heart, touching your hair. There is something shaking inside me.

Now you lie down on the bed, your body is hidden in quilt. Your quilt is so heavy, and the texture feels very rough. Not right for this hot weathers. It must be with you for many many years, and it must be from somebody else-you never buy beddings. When I saw your quilt and sheets the first time, I just know you lived long time on your own without a woman. A house has a woman will definitely have a soft and cosy beddings.

Feeling your body is shivering in pain, I can’t leave you there. I take off my clothes, and I lie beside you.

“Will you have sex with me?” you ask me, with a weak voice.

“Why? Do you want?” I am very surprised.

“Hmm.”

Your hand still presses your head where is the pain from.

“If I come it helps me forget about the pain and fall asleep,” you say.

“But what if nobody beside you or you don’t have a lover when you are very ill?” I am shocked.

“Then I would do it with my hand. Like I did before you came into my life.”

I don’t know what to say anymore.

Touching gently your little bird, I move my fingers. I can feel your pain directly. Your pains is like electric current transfer into my finger, then my palm, then my body, then my head. I become shivering with my anticipation, for that I want cure your pain.

You face look relieved, but your breath becoming much heavier. Your little bird gets harder in my fist. I don’t feel sexy at all; all I wish is to stop you suffering.

“Are you ready to come?” I am holding you.

“Yes…” you say, enduring the great pain of climax.

Your body is shaking. Then the sperm comes. My hand is completely wet. It jets, again and again. The milk. It must be bitter milk when a person is suffering. It is the milk of love, my love to you, but it is also the milk of pain, your pain in your life.

Your breath calms down. You are leaving your pain.

We lie still, without moving even for one centimetre. We are just like your still statue. The sperm on my palm is drying. You fall into sleep. I can feel every single pulse on your wrist. I can feel every single beat from your heart. I breathe in your breath. I inhale your exhale. It is being so long that we lie here like two statues. I look at your face, for so long. I even can see your death. The shape of your death.

*

equal adj. 1. identical in size, quantity, degree, etc.; 2. having identical rights or status; 3. evenly balanced-n. person or thing equal to another.

Rupert Street, fish restaurant. Saturday evening. Large lobster placed on the window is so seductive that I can’t move my feet away. We get in. You order goat cheese, and extra vegetables. I order fish soup and squid BBQ in wine. We agree having two glasses white wine as well. Later, when waiter gives the bill it forty pounds all together. Expensive.

You take out twenty pounds, put on the bill book. I don’t move. I look at you, wondering.

“Half!” you say.

“Why? I don’t have twenty pounds with me!” I say.

“You’ve got a debit card.”

“But why?”

“I’m always paying for you. In the West, men and women are equal. We should split food and rent.”

“But I thought we lovers!” Loudly, I argue.

The old couple next table stops eating, look at me with strange face.

“It’s not about that. You are from China, the country with the most equal relationship between men and women. I’d have thought you’d understand what I’m talking about. Why should I pay for everything?”

I say: “Of course you have to pay. You are man. If I pay too, then why I need to be with you?”

Now you are angry: “Are you really saying you’re only with me to pay your living costs?”

“No, not that! You are man and I am woman, and we are live together. When couple is live together, woman loses social life automatically. She only stays at home do cooking and washing. And after she have kids, even worse. So woman can’t have any social position at all. She loses…what is that word…financial independence?” These are what I learned from Radio Four Woman’s Hour every morning ten o’clock.

“Really? OK. So, if the woman stays at home all day, like you, why can’t she hoover the floor? Why do I have to do the hoovering after I’ve done a whole day’s work?”

That’s true. I never woover the floor. I only sweep the floor. And my eyesights is very bad, so there are always lots things left on the floor.

“But I wash clothes! And I cook everyday!”

“Thank you, that’s very kind of you. But what’s wrong with a bit of hoovering?”

“Because I hate that woover. You must pick it from the rubbish place. It is so noisy, and it is so huge. It is like dragon. I just don’t like something so big!”

“Come now! You like a big cock, don’t you, so why don’t you like a big hoover!”

“!”

OK, so woman and man pay half half even when they live together. And woman and man have their own privacy and their own friends. And woman and man have their own separate bank account. Is that why Western couples split up so easily, and divorce so quickly?

We argue all the way back to home. Open the door, make a pot of tea, you start woover the floor again.

So noisy. It makes me headache immediately. The woover must be invented by mans. I sit on chair not let the big dragon swallow me and take out the Little Red Book from my drawer. There are some pages about womans and equal in Mao’s speech:

In order to build a great socialist society it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women to join in productive activity. Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production.

This must be the original thoughts which became legend “womans hold up half of the sky” in China.

While I am in deep thought about China, you switch off the dragon. You stare at me, and say:

“I wish I’d never given you books. Now all you do is sit there reading and writing. You’ve become so bourgeois.”

frustrate v. 1. to upset or anger; 2. hinder or prevent.

frustration n. the feeling of being frustrated.

You lie in bath. The water comes to top, and the bubble covers your body. We both always take bath when we feel depressed. Do most English people do that, especially in the long dark winter? I wonder. How many baths we have been taken since we being together? In last six months the bath I had must be more than I did in the last twenty-four years.

Now, you even didn’t switch on the radio. You lie there like a nude statue in the water.

“Why you are silent?”

You shrug your shoulders. Have no comments.

You don’t want talk. Not at all. Not even one word.

“Have you got headache?”

You shake your head.

“So you don’t want talk to me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I just want to be on my own to think. You know people sometimes just want to have their own space.”

Only your face is on the surface of water. Impression of your face is like the sky being covered by a big piece of dark cloud. You not happy.

“Why you not happy? What have I done wrong to you?”

“I just feel tired of you,” you say. “Always asking me words, how to spell them, what they mean. I am fed up.”