“I dreamed of you last night.” Dan told Peng on FaceTime earlier that evening. It was a sex dream.
Peng wished he had dreamt of Dan. Instead, he thought about him obsessively during the waking hours. He thought of Dan when he woke up, when he went to bed and many times in between. He missed the kisses and cuddles they shared when Dan came over two weekends ago. He had been wondering if, and why, Dan seemed less interested in him now. Now that everything got shut down again due to a new variant and that social activities abruptly came to a halt consequently, he had little to do but wonder.
The sex dream calmed his mind. Through a sex dream, Dan had given him, Peng the addict, some temporary relief. Dan is still interested in me after all, Peng thought. Then at once he was repulsed by his own neediness.
Dan could’ve been a one-time hookup during a night when Peng had been feeling extremely horny. But once Dan came over, Peng decided he wanted more. Was it the way he looked, smiled, acted? Peng pondered. When they chatted earlier, Peng couldn’t help but think about how cute Dan looked, how adorable his smiles were.
Peng was sitting on the couch in the living room, wrapped in a blanket. He had been sitting there thinking since the FaceTime with Dan ended. He looked out of the living room window and snow was falling. It had been falling all day. The snow definitely doesn’t have the supply chain issue the news was talking about earlier, Peng thought and was amused by this thought. He was often amused by his own thoughts. Was it snowing the night when Dan came over? Peng couldn’t remember. Peng invited Dan over two more times after that horny night. Peng learned that Dan was there for a short term internship and would return to school soon. Peng felt an onset of immense sadness.They decided that they really liked each other and so they stayed in touch.
If we had stopped then, I wouldn’t have been so tortured right now. Peng decided to get up and make some tea. He walked over to the kitchen, turned on the electric kettle, and then leaned against the countertop. We already had fun, didn’t we, Peng continued to think, wasn’t that enough?
He had said this to Jeff, a South African teaching English in Ho Chi Minh City, after he returned from a trip to Vietnam in the autumn of 2019. He met Jeff the third day he arrived in Ho Chi Minh City and at once to Peng the city seemed more than merely interesting, it became romantic. Jeff took Peng to the Pho place he frequented; they went to a bánh mì place nearby the morning after Jeff stayed over; they hung out in a Starbucks and merely talked. Jeff took him to his apartment in district two on his motorcycle. Peng remembered sitting at the back of the motorcycle and embracing Jeff all the way as they passed through Saigon streets among hundreds of other motorcycles. He felt like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, even though he had only seen the posters of the movie and never the movie itself. This is definitely one of the most romantic moments of my life, he thought then and he thought so now still. They cuddled in Jeff’s bed and watched Peng’s favorite movie Up together. “Fuck, you didn’t tell me how sad this movie is.” Jeff started to sob when Ellie died. Peng held Jeff closer.
They kept in touch for a while and shared the small details of their lives. However, it was clear that Jeff wanted a long distance relationship that Peng couldn’t commit to. He told Jeff when he started dating someone.
“A little part of me still held on to you. But now I think its time to let go!” Jeff wrote to him on WhatsApp, “I hope that you will be very happy.”
Peng asked Jeff why they couldn’t just stay friends.
“All I think about when I chat to you is that morning you were on top of me naked and your sexy muscles and your sweet kisses.” Jeff wrote.
“You’ll always have a special place in my heart.” Peng wrote back, “we had a great time together and I will always remember and cherish that.”
Jeff unfollowed Peng on Instagram and a few months later, Peng also unfollowed Jeff.
Peng felt sad that he broke Jeff’s heart but he didn’t regret it. Jeff was twenty four and hadn’t cried enough over guys like Peng did. A quick heartbreak is much better than a slow death where passionate romance withers into unbearable indifference or even quiet hostility. Time is a merciless diluter, it pixelates lucid images, turns the intoxicating sweet smell of thousands of roses in a garden into the faintest hint. It dilutes not only an event, a sensation from the past, it also dilutes the present as each second goes by. It dilutes faith so churchgoers have to renew their belief each week; it dilutes love so lovers have to reaffirm each other consistently and frantically. People who don’t understand this effect of time don’t understand life. They live their lives under a false sense of security while time attacks ceaselessly in the background. Peng would rather what he had with Jeff diluted only as a past event.
The sharp and rude whistling brought him back to reality. He turned around to face the vibrating kettle. Hot steam was rushing out of the kettle mouth and then the whistling sound reached a breaking point and stopped altogether. The water in the kettle, however, continued to boil for a short time, resembling the hurried breathing after a climax. The boiling stopped quickly and quietness returned.
Peng opened a cabinet and thought about what tea to make. He considered two teas with low caffeine, ginger honey and coconut oolong. His grandmother used to make him ginger water whenever he was sick and now whenever he drank ginger tea he thought of her. She was a strong and quiet village woman who in her last few years succumbed to dementia. Peng saw her for the last time in his hometown in China just before the pandemic, she didn’t recognize him. Neither could she recognize her sons and daughters. That terrified him — how could one forget the children they brought up? She passed away a few months into the pandemic and Peng couldn’t get back for her funeral.
“The bitterness is good for you.” She always reassured Peng whenever — every time, that is — he complained how bad it tasted.
Whatever sickness or disease I have right now won’t be cured by a cup of ginger tea, nai nai.
Peng made a cup of coconut oolong tea and walked back to the couch. The aroma of the tea smoothed him. He picked up the graphic novel adaptation of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way from the side table. He remembered where he left off — Swann was obsessively thinking about Odette, who had become cold to him, and promptly put the book down. Bored, he took out his phone and opened Instagram out of habit. A minute later, after he opened a few stories, he became bored again. He returned to the home screen and saw Snapchat. He tapped on it and the camera opened right away. Oh god, I hate this. Peng became annoyed right away.
Peng had stopped using Snapchat for years but downloaded it again because that’s what Dan said he used most. For the past few days he had been using it, he never saw any stories from Dan. Maybe he just doesn’t post many stories, Peng thought, or maybe he blocked me from seeing his stories. He hated that he was having all those thoughts. He smelled the coconut tea again and took a sip. The last time he talked with Dan here was a week ago but just earlier that day someone had sent him a few nudes. A few people asked whether he had Snap on Grindr and he told them he didn’t use it often but gave them his username nevertheless.
Peng examined his friend list for the first time since he downloaded the app and saw his ex. He tapped into the chat and there was nothing. Of course, everything disappears here. Out of habit, he pulled down and to his surprise, instead of a refresh spinner, some texts appeared. He suddenly remembered that it was possible to save chats here. There were a few saved messages from 2015 and 2016 in the chat and nothing was particularly interesting. He had saved a grinning face, his own message, in June 2015, likely by accident. Now Peng became curious and wanted to find out what messages he had saved on an app he hadn’t used since 2017. He returned to the friends list and one by one, he tapped into the chat and pulled down. He found some flirtatious messages between him and a guy he liked, David. The flirting eventually stopped after Peng went into a relationship with his ex but it didn’t stop right away. Slightly ashamed, Peng exited the chat and put down the phone. Is it really that terrible to flirt when one’s in a committed relationship? He asked, and then answered himself, there is nothing to be ashamed of. Yet he couldn’t convince himself because the guilt still lingered. Over the years he had become less morally rigid. He no longer avoided guys in an open relationship because of his own attitude to open relationships — a hot fuck is a hot fuck. The 24-year-old Peng wouldn’t believe the person he had now become. The 24-year-old blocked everyone who sent him unsolicited dick pics. Now at 30, Peng looked at them and judged them with amusement (does this one look crooked?) and then proceeded to ask for ass pics, which were what he really desired, with specific angles (“do you have ones that show your back too?”). Then again, the 24-year-old never really enjoyed sex and nevertheless started a serious relationship at that age. What a fool.
Peng went back to hunt for more saved chats. He tapped into his chat with Brian, the first guy he dated after he came to Canada, and pulled down. A wall of text instantly overwhelmed his eyes and he had to scroll a few times to reach the end — or rather the start — of the messages. The time stamp on the top of the chat showed June 29th, 2015. Peng started to read,
“The first time I knew I felt something for you was sitting on the bench in Stanley park. You were so unlike any guy l’d ever met before. I fell in love with your heart sitting next to you. The moment I fell for you completely was in the water the next day. You swam over to me, and I couldn’t hold back. I had to kiss you. I had to know what it was like to kiss someone like you.”
That was the summer of 2014 when Peng took a trip to Vancouver from Calgary, where he was studying at that time. He met Brian on the trip and they spent a few days together.
“It was crazy but, I knew I had to see you again. I resolved to go to Alberta if you were willing. Maybe it was too much too soon, but any way that I could make this last was worth it. I drove for 14 hours and slept on the side of a cliff to go see you. And the whole way I was so happy.”
That romantic gesture won Peng over and led him to believe Brian could be the one. After Brian’s visit, they talked regularly over FaceTime and Peng decided to visit Brian in Vancouver for Christmas. Once he was there, however, Peng was met with unexpected coldness from Brian. Peng couldn’t understand what caused that coldness, but neither did he understand the desire that made Brian drive 14 hours to see him. They had a fight and according to the messages Peng was reading, Brian yelled at him to get out in the end. Peng couldn’t remember what the fight was about. In the messages Brian told him he was going through something at the time. He glanced over the next paragraphs where Brian confessed his uncertainty about committing (“But then I wondered if we really could be something”, “When I knew you were the one, I got so scared, scared of committing to you than I ever thought I could”). That bored Peng so he scrolled a few times to the end,
“I hope I get new memories of meeting you at the airport in Toronto
Of finding a place to call ours
Of meeting your family
Of seeing your hometown
Of telling everyone that I love you
Of Peng next to me in life.
Through thick and thin
The man I wake up to and go to bed with
Who fills my days
I hope one day we may be together again.”
None of that came true in reality. Brian had moved to Toronto when he sent the messages. They never met in the airport in Toronto. Brian met his partner Minh in Toronto and they bought a place together. Peng and Brian did hook up a few times when Peng also moved to Toronto — Brian and Minh were in an open relationship. They had greater sex than they did years prior because both of them learned to enjoy sex more. Peng decided to stop because Brian just wasn’t high enough on his hookup list. The attractive person Brian and a few others saw in Peng, Peng now saw in himself and that person had no trouble finding sex. Peng also wasn’t interested in the hookup stories Brian shared before and after they fucked. Brian stopped talking to him after that.
Peng cried over these messages in 2015. He read them over and over and each time his heart broke a little and healed a little at the same time. But reading the messages now, Peng didn’t feel anything. It was like reading an intimate letter from one stranger to another, except without the perverse tantalizing sensation that kind of letter usually induces. How sad, Peng thought, how sad that all I’m feeling is indifference, that I’m not sad in the slightest. I don’t think I’ve grown heartless or cruel, but sometimes I wish I had, then I would never be hurt again. In this story, everyone moved on, Brian seemed to be happy and Peng realized long ago they would’ve never worked out. He lay down on the couch and put the phone on his chest and continued his thoughts.
In seven years, he wondered whether he would still be talking to Dan. Will we still be following each other on Instagram? Peng wondered, or will we just be two strangers walking on the same earth, never to think of each other again?
It seemed to him, harmless fun can continue on and on if no one ever develops an obsession, because the dark psyche of the obsession ruins the lightness like cancerous cells invading a healthy body. Is obsession a necessary phase to love and happiness? One has to push through the darkness, be tortured in order to reach the light far ahead, right? But why do I think like that? That idea feels very religious, Peng reflected, or perhaps this idea of having to suffer in order to have anything good, anything worthwhile is just Chinese.
If the end goal is in fact happiness, why does one need to be in love with another person at all? I could just be a happy Chinese monk. I’m too fond of sex to be a monk now. Peng was again amused by his own thought, the idea of becoming a monk. The time I have wasted on this silly obsession, I could be learning a new language, I could be practicing guitar, working out, cooking delicious meals. I could even be meditating like a monk while watching the snow. That thought excited him so he got off the couch and sat in the lotus position on the floor, facing the window. Outside, the snow calmly fell. Thanks to the street lights and lights from the opposite building, the snowfall was still visible, but some areas of the sky were brighter than others. Each snowflake followed another, they danced into the dark and then back to the light, unhurriedly into a collective destiny.
The mediation hadn’t lasted for a minute before Peng took out his phone again. He opened Snapchat, unsaved all the messages from Brian, went back to the home screen, long pressed the naughty ghost and banished it to another realm once more. He put the phone on the floor beside him and returned to his meditation. He took a long breath in and then a long breath out. He sat there for almost an hour before he finally got up and went to bed. The snow was still falling.
That night he dreamt of Dan.