ZGo and love - 3. No rest for the wicked

Today was the day, the day to depart the labyrinthine segues of pity, the day to claim the wanton festive future, day one of the new Hao. He resolved to reclaim the lost raves, the lost bathroom fucks, the lost relationships where he should have been the mandarin asshole. Ricardo had done this to him, Ricky and his numerous dalliances in the guesthouse, his freezer full of stinky goat meat, his cds of bass-crazy reggaeton tracks; and his rotten message on the voicemail wishing sweet farewells, asking for sweet understanding, suggesting sweetly that it was inevitable, even boasting, “We did well together while it lasted. We raised Yuu to be a fine young man. We don’t need each other anymore.”

The electronic voice could still judder its wrathful wake through Hao. Suddenly he was the man who had given everything and gained nothing. Everything felt false, his pleasures, his values, his dislikes. Even the fact that he prided himself a serious man intent on being a serious father to his son was not an achievement but a crown of dross. But today would be different … not another day of regret over his lifetime total of two lovers, the day of the new Hao.

The night felt crisply cold in his bedroom patio overlooking the fluorescent blue of the pool below. The distant rustling from squirrels or perhaps coyotes could interest one to promenade along the dark haggard cliffs of the open space surrounding the mansion. Hao, however, a laptop warm on his lap, was bolted to his lawn chair with the exciting, forbidden task of posting a dating profile.

The particulars were easy to fill: Forty, lawyer, salary-declined to say. Favorite books: The rise and fall of the Roman Empire by William Gibbons. Favorite movies: Tous les Matins du Monde. Favorite music: L'Incoronazione di Poppea. About me …

The section knotted Hao into a sticky gumball. He put aside his laptop abruptly and shot up for a deep dash of breath. The potted bamboo at the far corner of the balcony beckoned with its pasty-yellow leaves and its crinkly brown sheathing the stems. Ricardo had warned him jeeringly about his lack of affinity for green things, and this was the result: an imminent death.

Hao squashed himself back into the chair and opened his laptop again. His cheeks glowed with its bluish light, the cursor blinking in the About Me box. This should be simple, he thought.

Just looking to share my home and heart with the right man.

Those words bled with vulnerability and sentimentality, unfitting of a Mandarin Asshole. His mind segmenting into the deep dark night, he cracked himself for the precise and respectable way to say “Hello, I’m Hao. Let’s fuck make love.”

But he was a lawyer. His métier was of exhaustive excruciating analysis. Studying other profiles should lead to something. But within five minutes of perusal, an axe of ire hacked up his resolve. The handle names were risible: CallMeDaddy, DaddyFucker, among the unoriginal BornToFU, or the incomprehensible BoyButter. His username HaoLi suddenly looked inadequate.

He moaned to the stars like gritty ghosts above the dark leaves feathering the silky mauve night. Falling back against his chair, he clicked furiously through more ludicrous names and avatars of shooting dicks reticulated with pink. The lone abstract-looking avatar, a knife daggering a peach, piqued him despite the overtones of atavistic bravado in the username TheAssManCometh666.

His phone rang. Clicking through the profile mindlessly, he answered, “Hao Chen-Li speaking …”

“Hello, this is Luke calling from the go club. I hope you don’t mind, sir, that Brett gave me your number.”

Luke’s words died on Hao, for he was faced with a photo of a big, blunt, black cock hanging at half-mast and the man’s face tight with a sneer of military ferocity.

“We’re wondering if you’d be making it to the club today,” Luke asked.

Hao smarted his lips and repositioned his hot laptop for more comfort. “I won’t be coming until further notice.”

“I’m sorry to hear that sir. Zoë will be sad too. She really wants to play you again.”

“Perhaps after she memorizes all the games of Go Seigen. Now if you’d excuse me.”

Phone dropped, Hao wriggled his fingers in anticipation of squeezing those corded braids of muscle. Unfortunately the profile indicated nothing of parity between their possible interests except for the scant, ‘You know what I want, you know what you want. MESSAGE ME.’

This was an ultimatum to the Mandarin Asshole.

Dear TheAssManCometh666, I am a great admirer of your titan physique. It is truly without peer. May I inquire as to your exercise regimen over drinks?

The letter impressed him with its veiled intent, but still he hesitated. Something more forceful and yet elegant could do. He was adept, after all, in drafting grandiloquent memos that threatened calamity on indigents and big men with big money alike.

The phone rang.

“This is Luke again. There’re over a thousand games by Go Seigen. You don’t mean all of them …”

Some static of grumbling carried over from the phone and then a piercing whine, which ruined Hao’s southern glow.

“Yes, I meant all of them,” Hao said.

“I don’t think this would be too hard for her. She’s …”

“I memorized two game a week for ten years. Believe me, given the right motivation, it’s very possible.”

“Sir,” the low voice grated Hao with its sleepy insistence, “two games a week would make one hundred games a year. It’d take over ten years. She’d never get to play you.”

“You don’t say. At least, she’d have grown to be an excellent player worthy of someone else’s time. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

As he hung up the phone, an idea tickled him to call up his son Yuu for some help with his About Me. The idea, just as soon, died upon a fire of his irritation with Yuu’s fumbling melancholic manners. The boy would rather play mopey ballads on the piano than make war with him.

And he would have to broach the fact of his breakup to him. Not just yet.

Hao sighed, switched to excogitating. Of money, looks, and influence, one need only pick two. He had money; he could lie his way to a semblance of personality. Think Ricardo and his ribald stories of his cutthroat childhood in East Los Angeles—Exactly.

Dawg, yo ass is tight. Let’s meet up.

Obviously not that. In a seizure of exasperation, he wilted on these messages that would in the end amount to nothing. The man must have received hundreds of messages per day, and in what chance in the blustery depths, would the man choose to consort with him a hairless Chinese little man with no abs.

With that, he shipped off his original message, and then his phone rang.

“This is Luke again, I’m really sorry. I’m only trying to smooth a difficult situation.” Hao groaned. “She feels this isn’t the least bit fair to her,” Luke continued.

“Am I obligated to play an entitled dolt?”

“No, no, of course not. There’s no obligation, only our gratitude, sir.”

‘Sir’ was nice to hear. “After she memorizes ten games then we may talk.”

“Five might be more reasonable for an eight-year-old.”

“Ten.”

“Seven.”

“All right, all right! Seven games. And don’t you ever call me again.”

Hao’s throat itched for something: water, tea? His eyes twirled over the bulbous outlines of the trees filling the dark, the amber view through the balcony French doors of Ricardo’s ring on the bedside table. Ricardo’s voice, a stentorian bass, loomed over the back of his head, “Calm the fuck down.” Cool waters sprinkling over him, he smiled and reminded himself, no more Ricardo to goad him to coolness. Then a ping alerted him to the blue glare of his laptop. TheAssManCometh666 had replied

Hey Doll, wtf u look like? And none of that fake-ass shit.

Hao’s mind trundled giddily to a bliss of contorted bodies fighting for supremacy on a silk bed. Then the phone rang.

“Ai-ya! Ai-ya! You’re an irritating mugwort,” Hao shouted.

“I’m sorry you think so, Sir, but I needed to know which games to study.”

“Ask Brett. He’ll direct you to good games by Go Seigen. And now anything else before I come over and wring your neck?”

There was an extended moment of throat clearing on the phone. “Everyone’s worried about you, sir. Everyone misses you here.”

Hao wondered irascibly what mother was cursed with a son like Luke. Elongating himself into aloof cordiality, he crooned, “Thanks. But I’ve just been incredibly busy, like right now in fact.”

“Really, just busy?”

Hao was shivering in rage, but Luke rambled on, “I guess I was wrong to think, from the last time we met, that you were in pain. I tend to be wrong a lot, about these things in particular. Faces don’t make sense to me. Cheeks rounded and red could mean someone is sad or someone wants to axe you in the back. You never know, Sir. Never makes sense. Better to ask, I think. Mom thinks one should know these things instinctively. But instinct is just a simulacra of the accumulated data of experience. It’s only as good as your data, so I think the integrity of your data—”

“Shut up and good night.” For good measure, Hao shut off the phone. He huffed a great wall of release. And dreamily, his eyes fell upon the laptop and the message still flashing at him like a dog pumping away at hard-won bitch. He could this. He could really do this. But as he prepared to sift through golf photos, hiking photos, photos of him hard and sour over go, a tiny thought needled him to halt. TheAssManCometh666 must have meant naked pictures, really?

His hand hung limp over the laptop warm and buzzing through his skin. The stars were spiraling down around him, and the sense of dislocation fractured upon him fully. What the hell was he doing?