1
Bellies
I wore a dress on the night I first met Ming.
A crowd swarmed the union bar, and my shoulders jostled as boys dressed as girls and girls dressed as boys pushed in and out of the front line. A tightness seized my brain, a vacuum-pack seal over its folds. I looked up. Large paper flowers hung from the vaulted ceilings, tinsel streamers stretched from one corner of the long Victorian hall to the other, music blared through the double doors opposite the bar.
The ruffled bodice of the leopard-print dress hugged my chest. Everything else Sarah had was too small for me. The dress robbed me of full breaths. Rob had fastened me into it with his strong hands, wolf-whistling in my ear when he’d let go of the metal zip. A bulb of dread had flowered in the seat of my stomach as I saw my reflection in Sarah’s mirror. I was lanky and looked as if I’d lost a dare. Sarah was behind me, standing like Supernanny even with her bare breasts duct-taped. Her voice rattled in my ear. Tonight will be good for you, Tom! Loosen up, otherwise in a room full of drag queens you’ll look like an incel. Look at Rob. She’d pointed to Rob, tall and twirling in the corner of her room in a white linen dress, the lace hem dancing against his shins, his floppy brown hair bouncing on his forehead.
Sarah had a new monkish wisdom about all things queer, but with none of the monastic silence. She’d come out after I had, but in a few short months she’d acquired a buzz cut, found a new girlfriend called Lisa, and pretended to understand Judith Butler. It was as if we’d never dated. Can you even believe me and Tom were together? It was literally six months ago, Sarah.
I looked behind me, above the heads of the crowd at the bar. Sarah was at the other end of the room, hugging a boy in a platinum wig. A corset pinched his waist; his nipples were bare. He stood on stilty heels poking out from his black flares, towering over Sarah. He looked much better than I did. More pop starlet reclaiming her image, less Liza Minnelli in sensible black loafers.
I turned back to the bar and ordered three drinks from the pale and expressionless bartender. One for Sarah, one for me and an extra third. I held them with both hands as I moved out from the crowd, lifting the triangle of glasses to take a careful sip; it restored some lightness to my head. Sarah waved me over. I set the drinks on the low table in front of them.
“I’m Tom,” I said.
“Ming,” the boy said.
I reached my hand out towards him. He leaned in for a hug. The backs of my fingers met the steel bones of his corset, its lip pressing into my chest. We were the same height with his heels on. He fanned his arm along my back in a strangely familiar way, then lowered himself, landing on the sofa cushions. Sarah sat down next to him, and I on the adjacent armchair. The edge of my knee touched Ming’s.
Up close I could see the mealy glue that held his real eyebrows down. Foundation had settled in the ridges of the laminated hairs. Two thin and inky arches took refuge above the ridge of his brow bone, framing his dark, long eyes. Thick contour disguised the round tip of his nose. Above and below the makeup was a handsome face. A delicate face.
“Ming’s a friend of Lisa’s,” Sarah said. “We met after I got back from China.”
Lisa’s name aroused discomfort in me. Another reminder that Sarah was ahead, and I was behind. They had got together while teaching at a summer camp for wealthy children on the outskirts of Beijing. The last conversation between me and Sarah as a couple began to replay in my mind. This happened sometimes. The supercut spared me the minutiae and showed only the highlights, and for that I thanked the disintegrating touch of time and an active want to forget. The cringe still lingered on, though. It’d been after she’d got a place to teach at that camp. We’d sat on the bed, and she’d looked at me sternly. Why haven’t you booked your flights to Beijing yet? I just can’t. My Mandarin’s fluent, Tom, how much easier do you need the trip to be? I can’t come and visit you because I’m gay. What are you saying, Tom? I’m gay, and I think we should
break up. And then my eyes had sputtered like taps onto her lap. I just don’t want you to think I’m a bad person! Okay, Tom. I could still feel the cold stroke of her fingers over my hair.
“Ming and Lisa wrote a play together last year,” Sarah added.
“What was it?”
“Gay Virgins,” Ming said.
“What was it about?”
“Gay virgins.”
Ming laughed. Sarah laughed with him. His smile widened, pushing a small dimple into his cheek. I imagined myself poking the fleshy dent. Boop! What the fuck are you doing? A quick panic flushed through me. I brought my legs closer together; the blobs of leopard print sagged as the fabric gathered. I held the rim of one of the drinks on the table and gave it to Sarah. I moved the third drink towards Ming.
“This was for Rob,” I said. “Have it. I don’t know where he’s gone.”
“Thank you.”
His eyes lingered on me as I pulled my dress up and fished the flask out of my tights, taking my bag of tobacco out with it. I leaned forward, my knee pushing a little more into his. I twisted the cap and tipped some vodka into my own drink, then into Sarah’s, and then held it over Ming’s. His red lips curved into a smile, and I splashed some into his cup. The dress felt more natural sitting next to him.
“Cheers,” Ming said.
Our eyes met as we sipped. Is this a vibe? Maybe it’s just polite eye contact.
“Have either of you seen Lisa?” Sarah asked as we lowered our cups.
“I think she’s in the main room,” Ming said.
“Shall we head in?” she asked.
I held up the pouch of tobacco. Ming’s eyes followed it.
“I can roll one for you?” I offered.
Ming smiled. I looked to Sarah, tilting my head, motioning for her to go ahead through the double doors. She left us. Ming hobbled along towards the exit. His heels restricted his gait, and so with each step I held for a moment longer at the balls of my feet.
“Sorry,” he said, “I’m really slow in these.”
“I didn’t even notice.”
Ming looked down at my shoes.
“What are those?” he
asked. “They look orthopedic.”
I stopped walking and twisted my feet inward, staring down at the plain black loafers.
“This is all I really had,” I said. “I didn’t want to buy anything new. Are they that bad?”
“For the occasion, yes. Don’t worry.” He held a hand over his eyes. “I’ll block them out.”
I laughed.
“How kind of you.”
We kept on walking. I looked back before we stepped outside and saw Lisa and Sarah, already making out by the double doors. I think I like girls, Tom. It’s so nice dating someone who isn’t white and just gets it. In Sarah’s eyes, bar the color of our hair, Lisa and I were as far apart as could be. I was a gangly white boy in his ex-girlfriend’s dress. Lisa was a vegan who wore vintage leather and had an eyebrow piercing. And she was Asian. South, not East like Sarah, and only half, but still. They were also the same height. Perfectly matched. Seeing them made me feel lonely.
Ming led us towards the rail that snaked around the union building. It was dark and a bit quieter, away from the courtyard filled with smokers sitting on picnic tables, standing in clusters on the grass. Ming watched me as I rolled a cigarette. The cold wrapped around the joints of my fingers, and a small tremor began in my hands. Part nervousness, part frostbite. My rolling was slow. I wasn’t a smoker; I just did it when I needed a time-out. I sealed the paper with my tongue and gave him my lighter, but he waited for me to roll one for myself. He then lit his own, and held the small flame in front of me. I dipped my head towards it, and once the fire had spread onto the cigarette he put the lighter back into my hand. He dangled the slim roll-up between his index and middle finger, taking deep drags, allowing a column of ash to grow at the tip.
“What does a play about gay virgins look like?” I asked.
“It was kind of, like, immersive theater,” he said. “Each character was gay and thought they were a virgin. One was an older man who’d fucked loads of guys but had never slept with a woman. Another was a gay woman who had endometriosis and couldn’t have penetrative sex. There was another man who grew up in a small town and was a virgin in every sense of the word, but especially to all things gay.”
“That’s interesting.”
Ming let out an elongated meh.
“We thought it was groundbreaking. But it definitely wasn’t. I think straight people liked it. Gay people thought it was boring.”
He took another drag of his cigarette. I wondered what he thought about my enthusiasm for Gay Virgins. Wait, does he think I’m a gay virgin?
“I like your makeup,” I said. “Did you do it yourself?”
He gasped.
“Rude! I’m not wearing any,” he smirked. He swallowed a large mouthful of his drink, and I watched the gulp traverse his gullet. He looked at me from above the cup. “Leopard print suits you.”
“Sarah lent it to me.”
“Did she do your makeup, too?”
“She did.”
Ming furrowed his brow. He scrutinized my face. My eyes drifted towards the grass. It was awkward being examined. I thought of Sarah holding my jaw in one hand. For God’s sake, stop moving, Tom! The waxy pencil had glided above my Cupid’s bow, and the small, flat brush colored the spaces in between, squishing my lips in short, aggressive strokes.
“She hasn’t done you
justice,” Ming said.
A smile crept over my lips. My blushing cheeks stung against the cold. I looked down at my feet. Maybe he does want to get with me. Maybe I’m not stupid for thinking it.
“You kind of look like Liza Minnelli,” he said.
“Oh.”
I fucking knew it. Ming set his elbow on the rail as he squatted towards the grass.
“Are you cold?” I asked.
“Look at my nipples.” He pointed at them, swollen like BB pellets. “They could take an eye out. I just need to sit down for a second. My feet hurt.”
I laughed, then sat down close to him on the grass, knees towards my chest. He shifted into me, allowing his elbow to rest on my thigh, the side of his hand grazing my knee. I drank what was left in my plastic cup. There were a million interesting things to say and I couldn’t think of one of them.
“Did you meet Lisa through the play?” I asked, groaning inside.
“We were friends beforehand. She hadn’t come out yet, though. She was the only gay virgin there.”
I laughed again. I felt the weight of my body on the damp grass. The moisture in the soil climbed into Sarah’s dress.
“You and Sarah dated, didn’t you?” Ming asked.
“Yeah, a long time ago.”
“It wasn’t that long ago.”
A flash of embarrassment thrummed through me. I tried to laugh it off.
“I know.”
Ming ground the end of his cigarette onto the gravel.
“Was it hard?” he asked. “Like, being gay and dating a girl?”
It was hard. Sarah had been my first and only girlfriend, but towards the end of our relationship the thoughts I’d long avoided had spilled in, like drops of food coloring into water, green fluid expanding until the ink was all I could see. And then my stomach would warp from the closeness of her body to mine, unknotting only as I turned my back to her in bed; and the old discomfort that grabbed me when Sarah and I fucked had gained new meaning, and I could see that the threads that had sewn us together were spun from cowardice. It was one thing to feel that I didn’t want something, and another thing to know it or to say it or to live it. My stomach twisted thinking about it again.
“It’s not like I forced myself to do it,” I said. “I just thought it’s what I wanted, and then I realized it wasn’t. Her too, I guess.”
I set my cup back on the grass next to Ming’s, then put my cigarette out. I reached for the flask and offered it to him. His long fingers coiled around the cap as he unscrewed it. He took a quick sip. His face scrunched at the taste. He passed it back to me, then kissed me on my cheek. It straightened my spine. My face went hot.
“Thank you,” he said.
His warm breath sailed into my ear. I was hard. He spoke again before I could lean in towards him.
“It’s good you guys figured
it out, though.”
I looked at him with a weak smile. My brain felt foggy; the tightness returned.
“I still feel slow to it all,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I came out late, I guess.”
I was oversharing, but he charmed the words out of me. People didn’t ask about this stuff enough. Nobody wants to admit that people leave the closet but not the room.
I looked again to my left at the people in the courtyard. Rob had appeared across the patch of grass. There were pink dribbles of cranberry juice along the hem of his dress. He was speaking to a girl. She was beautiful, but rake-thin in a way that seemed to draw the youth from her face. The red rubber of her latex dress clung to her like a cherry peel. She wore matching gloves that went halfway up her arms. They stood beneath a yellow spotlight affixed to one of the building’s walls. This was Rob’s stage. He laughed as he gesticulated over her, arms moving across the narrow diameter of the beam of light, features large and expressive. I knew the sorts of things he said. Do you know Tom? He’s my best friend. He’s gay! The drinks are fucking expensive down south, right? Have you ever had a threesome? It’s such a natural way to fuck if you think about it, isn’t it? The girl giggled. Rob never had to say much.
“Is that Rob?” Ming asked.
“Yeah, it is.”
“That’s my housemate, Cass. She thinks he’s hot.”
“He is.”
“You’re hotter, though,” Ming said.
“No, I’m not.”
“You are.”
“No.”
“Stop it,” he said.
“What?”
“There’s nothing more boring than a hot person who doesn’t know it.”
He squeezed my forearm. My dick moved against my tights. I mouthed a soundless thank you.
“Honestly,” he said. “Also, you haven’t left anything late. Try not to worry about it too much. Let’s go back inside.”
I felt a sudden defensiveness, even though I’d brought it up. Who says I’m worried? I’m not worried at all! I pushed myself off the grass. He tipped more of the flask into his mouth and held out his free hand. I pulled him up from the ground.
Inside, the crowd at the bar had thinned, and so Ming charged to the front and ordered two drinks for us. Sarah and Lisa hadn’t moved. Sarah’s back was still against the doorframe, knees bent slightly so that Lisa stood over her. My eyes fell to Sarah’s hips; her pelvis tilted back and forth. Sarah ahead. Me behind. They didn’t notice us as we walked past them towards the sound of the second room. I looked
looked out for security and poured the last drips of the flask into our drinks.
A drag queen spun onstage in a skirt made of red plastic cups. Ming and I danced together in the crowd. My knuckles grazed his hip, and then my hand moved around to his back, my fingertips touching the narrowest part of his corset. We looked at each other as we swayed, first to the beat, but then not at all.
As Ming and I stared at each other, I felt that fear from the summer just past. The one I felt when I fucked that guy near my parents’ house. He was staying with his gran and invited me over when she was out. There were pictures of their family everywhere, smiling approvingly as I plowed into him on the velvet couch. It was the same fear I tried to shoot into that ginger banker’s throat, the one that I hoped he’d swallow but instead left inside me. He coughed, placed his hands on his hips, sat on his ankles and huffed. That was at least two grams of protein, kiddo! I nudged his shoulders away from me and he nearly fell over. Fucking creep!
Ming and I danced closer and closer until his smile touched my lips. The tips of our tongues shook hands. He pulled back a little, then put his mouth close to my ear.
“Do you want to go back to mine?”
Ming and I walked hand in hand towards his house. His grip was cold, disconnected from the heat of his body. I slowly rubbed the top of his hand with my thumb, transferring a little warmth. We took one of the main roads through town, lined with shop fronts shut for the night. A group of drunk men laughed at us from the pub across the street. They looked like they smashed chairs over each other’s backs for fun. I’d forgotten what I was wearing. One of them stepped onto the road. His muscular thighs bulged in his tight jeans. He wore fake tan. Even in the dark I could see his boomerang eyebrows, the work of hot wax and an overzealous hand.
“Can I have a kiss, ladies?” he shouted.
I kept walking but Ming slowed down. He blew the man a kiss. The man laughed, and Ming laughed, and the men across the street laughed. I felt like the butt of the joke. We walked on.
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?” Ming said. “Like, he was in just as much drag as I was. It’s the horseshoe theory for gender. They probably mix their drinks with Armani Code.” He stopped walking. “Hold on a second. My feet.” Ming put his hand on my shoulder and pulled his heels off one by one. “I’ll walk barefoot,” he said. “And if anyone fucks with you, I’ll—” He raised a heel-wielding arm.
I chuckled. The walk felt easy again, and I stopped thinking about the makeup and leopard-print dress and the stupid shoes that didn’t go. We turned off onto a side street and walked up the steps to his house. He led me up the dark stairs and into his room. The lights turned on. His room was simple. A desk by the window, a neat bed. A tall mirror, a chest of drawers and a standing rail along a wall. I saw a pile of clothes at the far side of the room, peeking out from
behind the bed. I hated mess, but maybe there was a reasonable explanation. A fire alarm when he was about to put them away. A concussion.
I looked at the large, framed painting of an open pomegranate above his bed, each seed the size of my palm. Some of the pink pellets had untethered themselves from the white membrane and spilled out of the blushing shell.
He peeled off his wig to reveal a small mop of sweaty hair, dark and parted at the center like mine, but straighter. He reached into a desk drawer and took out a packet of face wipes.
“I lied,” he said. “I am actually wearing makeup.”
I laughed. I was doing a lot of laughing. The edges of my lips and the bottom of my cheeks felt strained. Stop laughing so much. Say something interesting. Nothing came to mind.
He pulled out some of the wipes and handed them to me. I watched him clean the makeup off. The wipe glided across the planes of skin that formed as he stretched and contorted his face. The lines he’d drawn on vanished, and his black and bushy eyebrows emerged from the dissolving glue. He pulled the sides of his eyes and scrubbed away the thick liner. The squareness of his jaw crawled out of the disappearing layers of pigment; his eyes were smaller on his face and his nose less delicate. The only thing that appeared unchanged were his pert lips. I wanted to kiss and touch him again, but I didn’t move. Gay virgin behavior.
“How do I look?” he asked.
“Beautiful,” I said.
I sat down on his bed and began to wipe. I scrubbed until I was sure the moist paper had stripped the color from my face. I looked up at Ming. He gestured towards the standing mirror by the desk. I stood up and saw my reflection. The dark eyeshadow had smeared around my eyes, the color of mature bruises. It’d spread as far as the edges of my cheekbones. The red lipstick enveloped the skin around my wide mouth. We laughed.
“Do it carefully,” he said.
He gave me another sheet. I rubbed my shut eyes with it until the wipe was soiled. Red spots bloomed on my cheek and stung the surface of my skin.
“Much better,” he smiled.
He took me to the bathroom on the landing and pumped a dollop of white fluid into his palm, and then onto mine. He massaged it into his cheeks and forehead. I did the same. I splashed water from the running tap onto my face, the droplets hitting my eyes. He wiped himself clean and gave the towel to me. I set my face into the damp patches that his had already touched. We went back into his bedroom, and I sat near the head of his bed, drawing triangles on the white sheet with my index finger. The silence between us was heavy. I should’ve kissed him in the bathroom.
“Do you have anything to drink?” I asked.
Ming gave me a surprised smile, which then melted into something kind and understanding. I felt a little stupid. Always kiss in the bathroom!
“I’ll get us some beers,” Ming said.
He slipped out of the door, returning with two cans and two empty glasses before pouring our drinks. I took a sip of beer as he sat at the other end of the bed, taking in nothing but its foam hat, the mass dissolving into
drops of fluid and gas, lingering at the top of my chest after I swallowed. I pointed to the painting behind me.
“Did you do that?” I asked. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, over summer. When I was at home with my dad.”
“Where’s home?” I asked.
“Kuala Lumpur.”
“You don’t sound like you’re from Malaysia.”
“What does someone from Malaysia sound like?”
I chuckled into my glass. In that moment my world felt small and shameful.
“Are your parents still there?” I asked.
“My dad is,” he said. “My mother died six years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
He gave me a soft smile and nodded, lifting both his legs onto the bed to move closer to me. He hunched his shoulders over the glass he held between his thighs. His eyes drifted to the amber well in his lap.
“Would you ever move back?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not so hot for the gays,” he said. “I was insulated from the worst of it, but it’s not like I could’ve, like, held a man’s hand. It’s nice living somewhere where I can.”
My fingers stretched, and I extended my arm to reach for Ming’s hand. Smooth. My thumb ran along his knuckles, over the skin that gathered on the top of bone. I set my beer on the bedside table to my right. I took his glass and set it on the table to my left, and then I moved towards him.
He lay on his back while we kissed. Our tongues grew forceful. He got up and turned away from me. He lifted his arms and asked me to loosen his corset. There were so many knots. I pulled at the mass of black string until the weave of laces began to dangle. The panels of his corset split with the tectonic slowness of continents, his back the mantle from which the world would open. He turned around and I unbuckled the hooks at the front. He let out a long sigh when it came off. His ribs expanded with his breath.
I drew my dress over my head, then pulled his velvet trousers off. I ran my mouth down his body; the point of his nipple slid down the groove between my two front teeth. It landed in my mouth. Ming grinned.
I was grinning for most of the time we fucked. The fumbling was more fun than clumsy, and when he elbowed my face by accident he cupped my jaw and kissed it better.
Afterwards, as I lay breathless on top of Ming, a feeling bubbled beneath the stupid smile on my face; the cousin of that fear from the summer and the dance floor with Ming. It was stronger than with the banker or that other boy, and I knew this time that it was more than the aching joints of a shame-filled youth. I didn’t want any more bankers or boys on old ladies’ couches. What if this is it? What if he doesn’t want to see me again?
We cleaned up and
lay down next to each other under the covers. He curved his spine perpendicular to mine and placed his head on my chest, sliding down from my ribs and onto my stomach.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“You can hear everything,” he said. “Not in a gross way, but it’s soothing. I used to lie on my mother’s stomach when I was younger. Try it.”
He lifted his head and sat up. I placed my ear on his abdomen and listened to the low gurgles under his skin. The system beneath it seemed larger and more powerful than the belly of a boy. Ming stroked my hair, and his hand covered my ear. I shut my eyes. It was a dark and endless canyon. The deep deep sea, outer outer space.
“Do you think you’ll do drag again?” he asked.
I lifted my head and lay down next to him.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t like it. Will you?”
He shut his eyes and yawned, one hand holding mine and the other over his chest.
“Yeah,” he said. “I feel more confident in my body when I do it.”
“Do you not like your body normally?”
“Does anyone?”
I met this with silence. I didn’t love my body, but to me my body was just that. A body. I thought of how Sarah used to stand at the mirror, pinching love handles and complaining about her short legs. I’d offer reassurances in the way I thought boyfriends were supposed to. You have lovely, long legs! Maybe even the longest legs I’ve ever seen? Please don’t change!
“How about when you’re in drag?” I asked.
He yawned again, drawing his thumb back and forth against mine.
“It sort of stops feeling like my body. Like, I don’t feel as self-conscious.”
“That’s weird.”
He stayed silent. His thumb went slack. I regretted my tone.
“You have a beautiful body,” I said.
He opened his eyes and smiled at me. I kissed him. We held our faces close.
“Let’s go to bed,” he said.
His fingers gripped the switch of the lamp and clicked us into darkness. We shuffled deeper beneath the duvet and I fell into a dreamless sleep.
Ming shifted on the bed when I woke up the next morning. We weren’t touching. The light of the room poked through my eyelids. I peeled them open. My head faced the wooden bedside table. I studied the chips in its coat of white paint. The glass of beer I’d set down was still there. A hairline rim of bubbles ran along the edge of the beer’s surface, neither popping nor dissolving, held in stasis. A gust of wind blew through the window and across my cheek. It hit the glass, and the bubbles began to wobble.
2
Heart
When we left for Christmas break I worried we’d stop speaking, but we messaged every day. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to texts from Malaysia, and when we came back in January we picked up as normal.
I started to skip lectures for mornings with Ming, catching up using Rob’s notes and then not at all. Ming never went to them anyway. He didn’t care for much other than plays.
“I like to make people laugh,” he’d told me. “And cry! Just feel stuff, you know. Maybe I like controlling the room. Sue me.”
Ming reached over to me for my laptop on the bedside table. He typed in my password and opened the web browser.
“I’ve got a lecture in half an hour,” I said.
“Tom.” He looked at me, wide-eyed and mouth ajar. “Our days here are numbered. It’s second year. Enjoy being a wasteman while you can. Bailing on your responsibilities gets depressing in a couple of years.”
I pretended to sigh and shifted closer to him. Ming didn’t need to study. Sometimes when I went over to his I found him doing things other students didn’t. Reading out one of his scripts while standing on his desk chair, rolling out fresh pasta, squatting over a large metal bowl and making kimchi. ...
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