La reata - Independent poetry journal 

George

So, there was George. I walk into the Seven Star Republic in China Town. I’m high and I’ve just come from the Rich Hotel in Old Town. It’s one of those “hotel guests must sign in at the front desk with photo ID” but, there’s never anyone at the front desk. One night, I remember walking up there with my date, only to be confronted at the top of the stairs by chunky pink puke mixed with blood. It stained there for twenty hours. Even then. I over-heard them say, “He had an ulcer.” He was dead now.

My first night at the Rich, I left my date in #31 and ended up in #24. Three Old Guatemalan working men. Singing, dancing in the small space, drinking Budweiser tall cans.

I stayed there for about two weeks with a guy in a dark smoky room. Watching old vampire movies and Monday night football. Drinking cheap beer. That was room #31, in the center corridor with the large, dusty standing fan pointing down the hall. You need a key for the women’s rest room in this place, and some times, the lady in #25 doesn’t want to loan me her key (which she wears on a chord around her neck). When #25 doesn’t want to lend me her key, I use the shared toilet to the left of #23. You walk in, everything is dingy blue tile, straight ahead is the toilet room with a door. On the right, a shower room with two drain holes in the floor. I took a shower in there with D is for date. While wetting my hair, I looked up to spot a used condom hanging from the plumb. It was high, some one must have TOSSED it there. And in that toilet room, an EMT once told of finding a man who had passed out with a plunger up his ass. People had been waiting in line.

So, one night, I’m walking to the bathroom. I’m actually going out to buy cheap jug wine with the gift card I get for taking TB meds at the health department here. Anyway, as I walk past #23, the door opens. I see a tall, toned young man with shaved head… HOT. He allows me to go first. He’s gone when I come out. I go back to my room. I make up an excuse to D-, roll a smoke, wait four minutes. I go back down the hall. He’s waiting for me. Inviting me in.

His lap top is open on the bed. The bed, this room, is not his. His friend is at work --- security at one of the bigger venues downtown, just a few blocks away. Turns out his friend is not allowed to have computers or any such equipment in his possession, by order of the court. (However, there is a drawer full of phones if you should need.) So, tall boy shows me some of his friend’s news worthy exploits on line.

Then he shows me his.

Now this is a Sunday night. Friday night, I had been in #31, watching the local news. They showed a picture of a good looking boy wanted on some federal warrant. My reaction to his photo: I’D LIKE TO FUCK HIM.

Well, that’s the motherfucker I’m in the room with.

I’m done. I’m got. I tell him he can have anything he wants. I light a smoke. I allow him to undress me as I smoke. We do what we gotta do for an hour. I still have a jug of wine to purchase and all the markets close by 11pm. We make plans to hook up. His friend works where Sigur Ros is to play that week and I want to go. But within two days he’s been arrested. Later, I’ll write him a letter.

Anyway, I guess this all started about George.

Its summer afternoon. I leave hotel room #31 to get some cheap combination platter to go. D- wants chow mein, I want fried rice… so, I walk into the Seven Star Republic, tinted glass doors shut, closing the sun behind me. It’s a banquet room. All open space. Fresh water aquarium in the center. Round family style tables, seating 6-8 people, spinning tray in the middle, soy sauce, sugar packets. Hearth workers in the kitchen, clattering woks. One waitress at the register. Sitting, reading something. Keeping one eye on me after my order (sweet and sour pork combo to go, was it?) and one eye on the only other person in here. A man two tables over, drinking HEINEKEN and waving me over. “Hello, come sit with me, eh?” So I do. He orders a beer for me. The waitress checks my ID. Then I pull out the mandarin I’ve learned. Leeshu. Green. Earlier in the week, I decided, as I was going by MIDORI means green in Japanese, I ought to learn it in Chinese. I was at one of those import markets in Chinatown that sell potato chips, smokes, single wrapped silk roses in buckets and a case of ginseng vials (good for the man) near the register. I asked the woman, when she was finished ringing up the 6 pack of BUSCH 16oz I’ve been sent to buy, to write the Chinese character for green.

GREEN WHAT? She asks.

GREEN. I say as I’m pointing at the green ring on my finger. The colour green. So she writes two characters, which literally translate to GREEN COLOUR. Leeshu in Mandarin. Loksek in Cantonese is the best I can do phonetically.

Now, back to George, who laughs as hard at me telling him my name is Leeshu or Loksek or even Midori, as I do, when he, Cantonese through and through, introduces himself as George. We each order another beer. He tells me he studies Tai Chi. I tell him I ride a big red bicycle. We end up doing somersaults behind the aquarium, this place is BIG. He’s even doing back flips. We go to a small hall way in the back corner where the bathrooms are and he’s teaching me how to strike. We’re hitting the wall. I’m having so much fun, but I’m being very serious here. He’s fast, tiger claw. Okay, give me a second: you strike, come back in to plant the knuckles. Flat, sharp jabs. We do this for a while and I’m working my left fist, to --- MAKE IT STRONGER.

On return to the table, two more HEINIES. Now, we begin to spar. He seems a bit off his game, or maybe he’s playing Monkey Trickster Tricks on me. I surprise him a few times, and this I get from dancing, making contact when I get down on the floor and sweep kick. Then it’s my turn. The succession is slow, but the strikes he does throw, I do well blocking. We roll around on the floor a bit more. I’m laughing. And then, he disappears.

My good spirits have me wanting to believe he’ll come out of the bathroom any time. The waitress says, “He gon.”
And when these things happen I can only say,
“THEN THIS IS HOW IT MUST BE, CARRY ON.”
I mean he DID pay for the beers before he left.
I take the sweet and sour back to room #31.

MATHILDE BRIARE