Two Trains Running
Two different Hong Kong women. One is a 26-year-old former quality control inspector-turned-hooker, Wendy, who gave me a Tupperware box of home-made spaghetti to reheat later when I paid a visit to her "office" (as she calls it) on my birthday. I call her my therapist because I see her about once a week. At HK$400 (about US$50) a visit, she's cheaper than a real life therapist and more engaging. She won me over the second time I made an office call when she removed her black bra and put the cups over her eyes and exclaimed: "Look! I'm a cat!" and next put them on top of her head so they poked up like rodent ears. "Now I'm a mouse!"
She lives with an older sister who is a theology student at a local university. Her sister has no idea of Wendy's real job and thinks she works as a secretary. Wendy wears sensible office wear to her Mong Kok whore house, where she changes into something more slinky. Laundry is troublesome, she says, because her sister would wonder where the mini-skirt and plunging top came from and why.
Before and after sex she tells me about life inside and outside the office, including other clients such as a rich, kinky Chinese john who paid an enormous sum to cover another hooker from face to belly in hickeys. She went home in a surgical mask in the dark and didn't return for six weeks. Wendy shuddered telling me about it but she always perks up quickly.
She enjoys imitating Arnold Schwarzenegger and giggles when I depart with the worst Terminator "I'll be bahhck" line. Her favorite movies are the Terminator series.
The other woman has the unlikely Hong Kong name of Savannah, given to her by an older sister she says. She's a 42-year-old divorcee with a 21-year-old daughter in college in Canada and her favorite movies are Lord of the Rings and a 1997 version of Anna Karenina, with whom she strongly identifies. Savannah is a self-proclaimed "very spoiled" HK Chinese native, now Canadian citizen and a CPA. She jets between Vancouver and Hong Kong regularly and lives on the 23rd floor of a furnished service apartment in Central - a posh, bustling area that reeks of cash and privilege. Her money seems to come from her mother, her accounting work (she claims to have worked for fashion designer Vera Wang) and her Japanese ex.
I met her at a bar favored by HK liberals, artists, gays, lesbians, beats, and a local "radical activist lawmaker" (as the papers refer to him) nicknamed "Long Hair". She embodies the notion of liberal chic - supporting all the right democracy causes, but treats the underpaid help at her apartment with almost dismissive disdain.
While Wendy imitates Ahnald and plays creature feature with her bra, Savannah lounges beside me asking things like "What would you think if I told you I am someone's mistress?" or "What if I told you I have many lovers? Would you be shocked?"
Not really, I tell her, not rising to the bait. She's visibly disappointed, as am I when after she unbuttons a button on an expensive white silk blouse for a peek of cleavage and says: "Very revealing, don't you think?" she follows up by refusing to kiss.
"Too dirty, not sanitary," she says, leading me to the bedroom, where - at her insistence - we shower before - and after - doing the do. In bed she still won't kiss, though she begs me to nibble and suck her ears while she moans and thrashes and then pauses to wipe them off with Kleenex. "Not sanitary."
We approximate love making until she approximates an orgasm and I leave her.
"I am returning to Canada and won't be back for two months. Will you be sad? Will you write me love poems?" Savannah asks.
"Not unless you throw yourself under a train," I reply deadpan, thinking of Anna Karenina's ending. "And then maybe I'd think about it."
She's not sure if I'm kidding or not and it's better to leave her that way.
  ¶ 4:02 AM