Xiaolu Guo - A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers

The train moves along the south coast of Portugal. I didn’t stay in Madrid or anywhere in Spain because I lost eighty euros when train stopped in Madrid. Maybe they are being stolen. I didn’t feel like to stay in the big city anymore. It is always aggressive in the city. Here, the train patiently takes me to Tavira, a little town close to Atlantic Ocean, yellow sand everywhere.

Out of the station I find blocks of old residential houses, decayed in the hot sun. I walk to a corner café between two streets, white plastic tables and white chairs outside. I sit down, breathe out, get rid of the stale and take in the fresh. Suddenly I feel everything slow down and stop. In the shade of sun, two old local mans with very dark skin sit on the chair. They are smoking, quiet, in the morning. Two little tiny coffee cups are left empty in front of them. Everything is brewing very thick in the early morning here, like the sun, with passionate beams. They got a real sun here in their sky, not like in England. English sun is a fake sun, a literature sun.

The other side of the café is a grocery shop. Some vegetables and fruits are being sold. A young woman standing outside, she seems mad, I mean, real mad. She keeps talking to nobody, and there is no anybody there at all, not even a wild dog. She wears fleshly red lipsticks like she just drank a glass of blood. Sometimes a car passes by and she talks to the car. Strange, somehow there is always a mad woman in any little town in the world.

A young girl, looks like a backpacker, a tourist, wanders in the street. She wears a tight lemon-colour T-shirt. Her young lively breasts drag those old local man’s eyes. As she disappears into the end of the street, two old mans withdraw back their eyes, and both exhale the smoke from their mouths. It must be a pleasure for them, in the morning street, seeing a young active breast under the lemon T-shirt.

The sunlight is like a knife cutting off the earth, half of the world is in the shadow, and the other half is bright. It is like a black and white movie, and everything is in slow motion. The sky is deadly blue, blue and blue. In alley ways, the old houses are silent, with rusty iron balcony and wooden window. They are sucking people’s soul. I understand why some foreigners travelled to a strange town for a short stay, but one month passed by, and then three months passed by, still there, and eventually ended up to live there for the rest of their life. That strange power, forces a person settle down a foreign land, whatever how wild he was. I can feel that strange power. It is something opposite of adventure, something comes from the living habits, and acceptance of monotonous, the monotonous of everyday’s life.

Sitting in this corner café with old mans, I am melted under the hot sun. My body is losing its shape, and floating in the air. My entirely existence is being sucked by a strange power. It scares me.

I find room on top floor of Residencia Mina. A budget hotel. The room is narrow but clean. With the beautiful sky light it feels light hearted. I love this small Mediterranean-style hotel. Standing on balcony I can see the river wriggle and connect to the sea. The sand is dark yellow, and the houses are colourful. Two or three old mans sit on the bridge above the river, smoking, chatting. The old streets, the green bushes, the sea birds…All these are exposed under the sun. I feel very close to the nature, the happy side of the nature.

I climb the steps up to roof of hotel. It is like a tropical garden, full of pot-planted palm trees and flowers. The sea not far away, shining in the distance. There are several ferries carry people to the outskirt part of beach. It is high noon, and the late summer sun is really hot. I take off my shirt, letting my body naked. It feel so good I take off the rest of my clothes. My soul is dancing. If happiness is a brief matter, then I am in this brief moment. I wonder whether the sadness inside a human sometimes is just because of lack of sunlight.

I think of you, while I am naked lying on the roof garden. We used to make love so often in your garden, by the fig tree. I remember all those details of when we were making love. I remember that you would take out my earrings before we make love. I remember that they were always entwined in my hair, very difficult to come out, but you would try hard to remove. That is you. That is one of the details I will always remember about you.

Unconsciously, I touch my earrings, but they are not there now. I am getting restless. I feel my nipples getting hard. I want to be exposed and touched in the hot sunlight. I think of book I bought in the train station while I was bored waiting:

Women’s Pleasure or How to Have

an Orgasm as Often as You Want

Question: “How do I build up my skills?”

There are two ways in which you build up your masturbation skills:

1. By doing it more frequently.

2. By doing it in a variety of different situations. This creates the sexual versatility that is so important to your progress.

Below are fifteen different ways of masturbating that you can practise. These fifteen methods are divided into four lessons.

Lesson 1: Masturbation in private

Lesson 2: Masturbation in semi-public

Lesson 3: Masturbation in public

Lesson 4: Improving your timing

Masturbating, I never tried it before. Nobody Western would believe that I never try to masturbate as a twenty-four-year-old woman. Or maybe I did but I didn’t know what I was doing. Sex in my understanding means something to do with a man, but not to do with myself. Having sex with oneself is like talking to oneself: bit mad. When I saw that Soho peepshop, I never thought to do with me. I also believed no love then no sex. Sex is an expression of love. But somehow this idea is changing. Now I feel tortured by the desire inside my body, and I feel strongly how much this desire wanting to be fulfilled.

“You should learn to play with your own clitoris.” Once you told me this on the bed. We were naked, and we had just made love.

Your hand touched my body. “If you want to have an orgasm, you should touch yourself here.”

I remember this conversation. But I never did it with myself, because I was always with you. Why do I have to?

On the roof of Residencia Mina, through the trees, the sun penetrates my skin. The leaves rustle in the mild wind. I start to touch myself.

The juice flows from my cave, and my fingers touch my hidden lips. Up and down. A great urge coming over me like a high tide flooding my body. The only thing I can see is the blue sky. The deep blue, like a boundless sea. The dry leaves under my skin are wet from my desire.

My body starts to shake. My breath gets difficult. My cave wants to devour something. I want to shout. It is almost painful, I feel like crying.

And I scream.

On my own. With myself. I did it. It is like dream.

For the first time in my entire life, I came by myself.

I can be on my own. I can. I can rely on myself, without depending on a man.

Faro is the capital of the Algarve region and the southernmost town in Portugal; tourism now dominates the economy.

The train from Faro to Lisbon will depart at 1:30 in the afternoon. It’s twelve o’clock now. I learned Faro is a resort town. From the dictionary the resort place must be a very nice place, but in reality it is the opposite. Faro is very concrete. Almost ugly. What should I do in little resort to kill one and half an hour?

I walk around the train station with my rocksack on my back. The sea is just by the train station. But this sea smells bad. Between the sea and the inner land is an industry space, no beach. The rocks nearby the shore are dirty, polluted. It smells pee or something unpleasant. But some seagulls still convolute there. I feel sorry for those seagulls. I walk back to the street nearby the train station. People sitting outside of cafés looks at me. I can feel their curiosity to me. I bet there is few Chinese people come to this town. What is like looking this Chinese girl through their eyes? Without a companion with her, lost herself in the street, doesn’t know what to do about her life…Or maybe they just think of Chinese food when they see me.