Tash Aw - Five Star Billionaire

Phoebe is not from Shanghai, but Gary isn’t clear where exactly her roots lie — somewhere in the south, it’s complicated, she said. If he listens carefully, he imagines he can make out a Cantonese accent. She is very bright, but she has not had a great deal of formal education at a high level. He can tell because educated girls type very quickly and use words that only his lyricist and other clever songwriters use. On the few occasions he’d engaged in chats with girls, he hadn’t been able to keep up with the speed of the conversation. No sooner would he press the “send” button than a reply would come through. And they would also type complicated sentences that took a long time to read and digest, and finally they would be impatient and say, Why are you not responding, are you chatting with someone else? Also, professional women tend to ask him questions he cannot possibly answer: How much is your salary? How much are your car installments each month? Do you have promotion ambitions?

With Phoebe, it is different. He can tell by the simple words she uses that she is just like him, unlikely to have stayed in school beyond the age of fifteen or sixteen. The fact that she has succeeded in such important positions at such a young age means that she must be sophisticated and intelligent in ways traditional education cannot measure. He likes her occasional awkwardness, for it makes him feel less embarrassed about his own shortcomings, his own lack of articulate responses. If he asks her a difficult question or one she does not want to answer, or if they speak about something emotional, she sometimes responds by simply saying, En . And he understands what she means by this. Just a simple barely uttered word is enough for them — they do not need fancy words and complicated sentences.

The questions she asked were basic, but they made him think about parts of his life that he’d believed were so dull that they were beyond analysis, so ephemeral that they would not be fixed in memory.

What can you remember about your mother?

Not much. She loved music .

En.

Don’t forget, I was only eleven when she died .

En.

She used to sing when I couldn’t sleep .

What kind of songs?

Love songs. In Minnan hua, which was her dialect. Qian wo de shou, that sort of thing. I understood the words, but I didn’t know what love was .

But now you know?

—

Hello? Handsome brother, you still there?

Yes. I was just thinking …

What?

Maybe one day I will sing those songs for you .

Ha-ha!

I’m serious .

En.

There were other questions, too, more difficult to answer:

What kind of girl do you like?

Don’t know. Nice ones. Difficult to say .

Ha? You are kidding. Are you … gay?? I don’t mind if you are. It’s just …

He took his time to answer, staring at the screen for some time. The questions did not shock him. In fact, he has asked himself the same questions several times. What kind of girls do I like? Am I gay?

There was a time when the press was full of rumors about his sexuality. The fact that he had never had a proper girlfriend was often cited as proof of his gayness. He once had to endure a press conference called specifically to refute rumors that he had become the high-class catamite of a (male) CEO of a well-known pharmaceuticals company. Shortly afterward, the gutter press was full of pictures of a look-alike actor taken from a Japanese gay porn film, and Gary once again had to appear in public to assure his fans that the photos were not of him, even though the impostor bore only a passing resemblance to him. It was so demeaning. Really, the newspapers have no shame these days.

The Internet raged with speculation of his proclivities, with teenagers filling the blog sites with evidence for or against his homosexuality. At the time he thought, These people have nothing better to do with their time. He felt disgusted by how much interest people took in his private life. But, above all, he wished he could have come out and said, for certain, Yes, I am gay, or, No, I am not gay. Because the truth was, he did not know the answer himself.

He tried, on a couple of occasions, to put his sexuality to the test. Never having wanted a girlfriend, he thought maybe he should experiment with boys. In his line of work, because of who he is, it has never been difficult for him to find willing participants in such tests. His first attempt took place when he was about twenty and just beginning to be aware that he was the only person he knew who had never experienced any form of physical intimacy, not even holding hands, cuddling, or kissing. An older producer — a man of about forty, who had always joked about getting Gary into bed — finally maneuvered him into the studio late at night. They were in the closing stages of putting together an album, those frantic days and nights when everyone was rushing to make the final changes to each song, when paranoia reigned and long evenings in the studio were the norm. Gary and the producer sat in the studio, fine-tuning a love song, listening to it on their headphones: a song of great quiet and stillness, Gary’s voice low and breathy over a simple piano arrangement. He knew that the man was going to touch him — the situation lent itself perfectly to the act — and he thought, This time, I will let it happen; I want to see how it feels. He could feel the heat of the man’s body impress itself on the bare skin on his arm as the man moved closer; then he felt a hand on his thigh. He closed his eyes. He felt fingers on his neck; the hand on his thigh moved further up toward his groin. He waited to feel a frisson, a thrill of danger — but nothing came. His mind and body felt blank, empty. He sensed the man’s breath, quick and shallow, and smelled the sourness of his mouth, as if he had just eaten kimchi. In his ears he heard his own voice soaring to great heights, rich with sadness. He tried to concentrate on the sensations of the music but could not fight the rising sense of revulsion: the closeness of the man’s breath, the heat of his body, the insistent poking of his fingers. Gary stood up and reached for the volume control, pulling away as he did so. When he sat down in his chair again, the man had moved away, and they both understood that nothing like that would ever happen between them again.

The second occasion, a couple of years ago, occurred in his suite at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, after the last of his sold-out concerts there. They had had a big, drunken party, which lasted into the early hours of the morning. When Gary woke up, everyone had left, apart from a young dancer from the backup troupe, who was stretched out across the sofa. An engaging, outrageous, slightly effeminate character who was liked by many, this boy was also known to be promiscuous, for he was always boasting of his exploits in the G-bars across East Asia, always picking up strangers in cities where they performed. He spoke in strange, provocative slang that no one could understand: He had spent the night with a “bear” and a “little monkey” and had a great time even though he didn’t consider himself a “baboon,” but maybe that’s because he is neither gonggong or gongshou —that sort of thing. He often flirted harmlessly with Gary, saying how beautiful he was. Now he lay asleep on the sofa, his fashionable ripped T-shirt exposing half his chest, revealing his fine, taut muscles and flawless skin. Gary sat down next to him, sinking into the plush cushions, and ran his fingertips across the dancer’s collarbone; his flesh was like cool stone. It was dawn, and the day was just beginning to lighten with dusky amber hues. Gary looked out across the harbor, motionless at that hour. The first rays of sun were coloring the skyscrapers across the water, making it glint. He lifted the boy’s T-shirt and looked at his stomach, the smooth incised shapes of the abdominal muscles rising and falling gently. He laid his head flat on the exposed stretch of skin, hoping to feel some jolt of excitement, the warmth of intimacy. He waited, but still nothing came. The boy opened his eyes; they were bloodshot but narrowed with pleasure. He stretched his body, raising his arms above his head and spreading his legs — an invitation for Gary to go further (it was clear even to Gary what this meant). Gary watched him for a moment, then, still not feeling the slightest charge of passion, stood up, went to the bedroom, and shut the door before falling asleep.