I sense a slight hiss of disgust from my right, and I am shocked into actually seeing the man. He is tall, dressed in a high-collared cutaway coat and he has hair that brushes his collar (hair almost as long as mine, is he huaqiao?) He is staring into the table, oblivious to me.

Liu Wen stirs, "It is his first time," he says.

I am sliding back into the field and so I feel the acquiescence.

I watch this time.

Haibao is after one of the silver balls. He attempts to cup around it, so that equally repulsed it will have no place to go and be held, but one of the strangers (not the long hair) hits it with a touch and it shoots towards my end of the table.

Haibao makes a start to stop it, a wild unfocused motion that suggests that I shouldn't want it too close, so I hit it rather like hitting a ping pong ball, back towards Liu Wen who deflects it, pool cue style, right into the stranger beside him.

We are suddenly dropped out of contact and Liu Wen says, "My point," and the stranger, "my loss."

Liu Wen smiles at me, "Good ball." Which in English is more like saying, 'good save.'

We fall back into the golden ocean and the balls are distributed in the center. Silver are top and bottom, red and black revolving slowly around the golden in the center.

Liu Wen taps the red ball toward the silver and both rebound towards where no one is sitting. Haibao reaches out and slings the red towards himself and although the long haired man and Liu Wen try to tap the ball it touches Haibao and we drop out of contact again.

"My point," Haibao says, smiling. No one takes a loss.

"Excuse me," I say politely, "but the silver should not touch one, the red should?"

The long haired man nods. "The gold, the black and the red are friendly, the silver are not. Anyone who causes an opponent to take a silver gets a point, and the opponent loses a point."

"You can never start the gold in motion on the first play," Haibao adds, "and you can't touch the golden ball until it is already moving, although you can hit it with another ball."

I nod.

We are back in the gold. Haibao clicks the black into the silver and we play them around the table. I play cautiously, trying only to deflect, never attempting to catch, and trying always to send the silver to the center, particularly after someone sends the silver at Liu Wen and before it has even begun to cross the space between them he reverses it right back into them.

Finally by accident I send the silver into the golden ball. It has been in play a few times before but I have never even touched it. The long hair reaches for it and one of the other strangers tapps it away. Someone else jacks into our table as the golden ball is gliding past me and I feel everybody shift. It startles me and without thinking I reach out like a jai lai player and sling the ball my way.

When it hits there is an explosion of feeling. For a moment I am the golden ball and the golden ball is me and I am jolted with pleasure. It is orgasmic and threatens to unlock my knees but before I can even react it washes through me and we drop out of contact. I blink and everybody grins at me. I look at them.

Then I remember, "My point."

"Five points for a gold," Liu Wen says.

Back into the light, where I find my sensitivity is heightened. Now when the red or black balls come near I feel a tickle of sensation, with the golden ball it is even more definite. The silver balls seem colder. I become more aggressive in my play and catch the red ball twice. The explosion is less dramatic than the golden ball, and I remember to say, "My point," each time.

Only once am I hit with the silver ball, and it drains me, takes away the sensitivity, and I have the sense that what I have lost has gone into my opponent. Hungrily I play harder until I almost take the silver ball again, managing by sheer luck to deflect it into one of the strangers. He has been playing a long time, and I am jolted again by the power of what drains off of him.

"My point," I say.

"My loss," he says. Our eyes meet and he looks hungrily at me, and we drop into the light.

I am more careful, made aware by my near miss, and manage to catch the black lacquer ball once. It is like the red lacquer. I catch the red lacquer.

We drop out of contact.

"My point," I say.

"Time is up," Liu Wen says. "Nine points, you almost made it."

Time is up? "How long have we been playing?" I ask.

"Two hours," Liu Wen says. "That's how much we paid for. If I had realized you had nine points I'd have fed you the tenth, just so you could see what it was like."

"Like the golden ball?" I ask, staring into the gold of the table.

He shakes his head. "Different."

Better, I think.

I look up from the gold. Already the others are back in contact, only Haibao, Liu Wen and I are out. Somehow I keep expecting to drop back in, but instead, they take off their contacts and I take off mine. My bare wrist feels cold in the air.

I look at them, Haibao looks tense. Liu Wen looks like he always does. I am aware of perspiration on my neck, under my hair. I am even more aware of my aching testicles, and that I am tight against the seam of my pants. I feel as if I have been cock-teased for a couple of hours, which is precisely what has happened. But it doesn't seem as if we have been playing for two hours.

I lick my lips.

"He did pretty well," Haibao says.

"Beginners luck," Liu Wen says.

I realize that Liu Wen paid for me. "Thank you for the game," I say.

"I love the way you talk," Haibao says softly.

"How do I talk?" I ask.

"Your accent, the formal way you say things."

"Do I have much accent?" I ask.

"It's charming, exotic, and yet you sound so refined."

I thought my Mandarin was pretty good. I resolve to work on my accent.

Liu Wen shakes his head, smiling. "I'll see you two later," he says and heads back towards another table. I follow him with wistful eyes, wishing to be back in the golden glow, although I ache.

"He's handsome," Haibao says.

"He could be," I answer, "if he would bother."

"Come with me?" Haibao asks. Lai gen wo ma?

Of course I will go with him. We walk through the godown to the back, where there is a narrow iron stair, and up above the lights he opens a door on a room like a coffin, a little more than a meter high, the same wide. It is only then that I realize why he has taken me here, that there is not another game at the end, or at least, only the old game.

I laugh, although I am so aroused there will be damn little joy.

He stoops and enters, and sitting on the mat says, softly, "Lai lai lai," 'Come, come, come. I stoop and follow him, kneeling in front of him, aware of my boots on the mat. I lean awkwardly forward, resting my hand on the mat next to his thigh, and we kiss. I tug gently at his pants and he raises his hips for me to slide them down. If there is a way to do this without a sense of interruption I have never found it. But then I kneel reverently and pay homage.

And later, once, he asks me, "Why 'ghost'?"

"Waiguai," I say, 'foreign-devil' or 'foreign-ghost'. It's the old slang term for a foreigner. Not very flattering. Like Westerners say 'Slope-head.'

"You aren't a "waiguai," he says, "you're hauqiao." Not a foreign ghost, but an overseas Chinese.

That is what it says on my identification. I was certain my IDEX would be waiguoren but it says huaqiao. The flimsie they gave me indicated that my genetic mother may have been Philippine Chinese (the combination of my mother's Hispanic genes and my father's Chinese, I suppose.) Haibao doesn't know that my mother is Hispanic-American. I do not mention it.

"You look tired," the doctor says in Mandarin.