Candy by Mian Mian Read Free Book Online Page A

I had once had came back to me in a rush. She’d told me how she’d made love with a friend’s boyfriend, that he’d really screwed her brains out, and we’d talked about how maybe a big part of the excitement came from the secrecy, from cheating on someone. Now I realized that the man had probably been Saining, and I cursed him, before running outside.
    I tore down the street recklessly, my emotions in constant turmoil, until I became too worked up to calm down. Rushing along on foot, I couldn’t stop picturing the two of them in all sorts of erotic scenes, and I was getting more and more upset, and I kept shaking my head, until finally even I had to conclude that speculating about other people like this was pretty disgusting. When I thought of Saining buying clothes and CDs for another woman, I started to shake. And whenever I start to shake, it’s a very bad sign.
    I thought he was mine and I was his, and that there was no one else in our lives. I thought that was love.
    Maybe the kind of love that I’d believed in was something you could never have in real life. I felt a sense of bitter disappointment.
    Later, when I got home, Saining was sitting in my doorway.
    The moment he entered me, I knew once again that I couldn’t be without him, and that nothing else in the world made sense to me except this, and that nothing else mattered to me.
    I began to cry, and I said, Don’t leave me; you’re all I have!
    My body shuddered with his, and my eyelids fluttered. It had been a long time since we had made love—I’d thought he was putting all of his energy into his music. Saining could put me into a dreamlike state when we made love. He became another person when we made love, someone absent, and he went somewhere else, somewhere outside of life, to a place that only he knew. He never spoke to me about what would make me happy, and he certainly wasn’t an expert lover. He just wanted what he wanted. But I felt driven to make him happy. I didn’t know how else to make him need me. When he was sick, I loved his sickness like my own. I wanted to be controlled by him because I didn’t know it could be otherwise, and there was something absolute and pure about our need to obey our emotions, and this gave me a certainty. I reveled in the shameful feelings our couplings gave me, as if this was what I was living for.
    We were drinking, and it had been a long time since we’d drunk together. Between sips I said, Saining, we have problems. He said, You’re right. We do have problems. I said, Like what? He said, I can’t really explain it.
    At first light I got up and started to gather my things. And then I realized that Saining was behind me, like a shadow, sitting on the floor at my back. In the early-morning light his skin looked even paler and his eyes even brighter than usual.
    Do you really have to go?
    Three years ago you slept with one of our neighbors, and you left me feeling like I had no place in the world to call my own, but I stayed with you anyway. I didn’t even blame you—I just held on to you tighter. That was a mistake. I should have left you and waited for you to ask me to come back. I won’t make the same mistake twice.
    Saining picked up an ashtray and struck himself on the head with it. I saw blood.
    Grow up! Even if you were dying right in front of me, I’d still leave. You make me feel unclean, as if I’d had sex with millions of people, and I can’t stand that.
    Saining lunged at me and pulled me to him. He leaned against the door and said, OK, how about you wait until my head stops bleeding? Then you can go.
    You’re even more careless with your life than I am. I can give you a few more minutes of my time, but you’re not going to convince me to stay with you. You don’t understand love; neither of us does. Why else do these things keep happening?
    How can you say that?
    Saining, you became a father at eighteen. You said the mother was a prostitute ten years older than you, you left the