Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 09:47:39 -0800 (PST) From: Stephen Aramburu Subject: Tiangang's Story Part I Usual disclaimers apply. If you are not of legal age, do not read this. If you are narrow-minded and disapprove of homosexual relationships, then : a. why the hell are you reading this story in the first place? and b. go somewhere else. The next two chapters will tell the story of the unfaithful dad, Wang Tiangang. Special thanks to James for his contributions to this story. His name was Yuri. Yuri Bovin. I can still remember his face, as though I saw it yesterday. Yuri Bovin was his name! He was an exchange student from Russia, China's powerful ally of the north. It's funny, sometimes, how quickly time passes you by. What I am about to tell you happened almost twenty years ago...yet, I could still hear his velvety voice whispering flowing through my ears. I could still feel his soft, tender lips breathing and brushing against mine. I could still feel his powerful, muscled arms wrapped around me...like a warm, firm blanket...a shield from the rest of the world. I'm not really sure how it all started, but I'll tell you what I can remember. In 2006, Xuzhou is a beautiful, bustling metropolis with tall, glass buildings and neon lights, clean, concrete streets where cars buzz back and forth, amusement parks and arcades, indoor swimming pools, tennis courts, art galleries, restaurants that serve all kinds of food, and, of course, the infamous casinos, though they don't play a huge part in our industry. Xuzhou is sometimes known as the Las Vegas of China. You want it? Xuzhou's got it. (Surprising that Shanghai and Beijing are getting all the hype) But in 1988, Xuzhou wasn't a huge city. It wasn't even on the map. At that time, Xuzhou was an obscure village in the middle of the Yuinnan province and the site of an isolated high school that only accepted two types of students: those who were extremely talented and extremely smart...and those whose parents had a lot of money. If you graduated from this school, you were basically guaranteed a spot in a good college, a high-paying job, perhaps even a position in the government, and a stable future in what was then a very uncertain society. (Not surprisingly, kids who got accepted because their parents had a lot of money almost never graduated.) Today, this school still exists and is known as the Xuzhou Academy and is still considered the top school in the southeastern district of China. It was the spring of 1988...my second year in academy. I woke up in my dorm room to the usual sound of the clattering bells that echoed throughout the entire campus at precisely 6:30 A.M. All the students got up, showered, brushed their teeth...whatever their daily routines were. Then, we changed into our workout clothes and stood in the courtyard for roll call. I reluctantly crept out of bed and stretched myself out...all 5"7 130 or so pounds of me. The sun was shining brightly and the trees were beginning to blossom. The snow had already melted, yet, we could still feel the chill of the past winter as we shivered. The Xuzhou Academy was a military training camp and a college combined into one big high school campus. We were required to wake up at 6:30 every morning and be the in the courtyard by 6:45. Roll call took about fifteen minutes. We'd run laps from 7:00 to 8:30, before our hour-long break. Then, the classes began and ended at 5:00 P.M. Same old routine day after day after day. Life was so pointless and so monotonous that at times, you wanted to strangle yourself to death. I had a lot of friends at this school, so life wasn't that bad, though none of those friends were particularly close to me. I liked having them around, but often found their conversations boring. They always talked about the beautiful girl who was to be my wife, Lily, and how hot her ass was...how voluptuous her body was...how much they wanted to sleep with her. The truth was, Lily had secretly been my on-and-off girlfriend for the past year or so. We were always jumping back and forth between "going out" and "just friends", sometimes several times a day. I didn't think she was beautiful. I didn't think any girls were beautiful. I couldn't see what the other guys saw in Lily. It never applied to me that I preferred guys over girls, however. Homosexuality was, at that time, an unknown concept in China. Boys married girls and had kids...end of story. That morning, I stood at the back of the line. "Wu Xingming?" "Here." "Sun Hexing!" "Here." Then my name... "Wang Tiangang?" "Here!" I called out. Then, we began running...and running...and running. It seemed to drag on forever. I wasn't tired or cramping. Nobody was. After almost a year of running for an hour and a half every morning, it was impossible to not be in amazing shape. At 9:30, I sat down in my first class of the day...math. I resented math. I never understood how math ever helped you in life. We were training to become government officials. Ironically, the school never taught us politics or survival skills or any of that useful shit...instead, they taught us stuff like math and science. That day, the teacher, Mrs. Bai, or Mrs. Bitch, as we called her, came in late. "Students!" Mrs. Bitch croaked. "We have a new student among us today...he is visiting us from Russia! I expect you to treat him as you would any student from China! If I catch any of you..."blah...blah...blah. She went on like this for the next twenty minutes, which would've been fine, since it took up time, had it not been her deep, manly voice that was echoing throughout the small room. "Please welcome...Yuri Bovin!" That's when I saw him. I gasped. Never in my life had any sight ever thrown me back the way looking at him did. He was about 5"8 and towered most of the other students. He was pretty thin, but very well defined, especially his muscular arms. His legs were thin, compared to the rest of his body, but were also very defined and muscular. All in all, he was about 140 pounds of sheer beauty. He had shiny blond hair and dark, green eyes and the face of an angel. I found myself face to face with a Greek god. I had seen Michelangelo's David before in pictures and found myself strangely fascinated by it, but I'd never imagined that any living breathing human being could be so perfect. But he was! Like David in flesh and blood, instead of stone! "Now class," screeched Mrs. Bitch. "Today, we shall be learning about the trigonometric value of..." I wasn't listening. The whole time, my eyes were glued to Yuri. I wanted to touch him...to take all of his clothes off and to just feel his body. Just looking at him made me feel strange...a sensation that I'd never felt before. I was getting really horny really fast...and it hurt. It hurt really badly. The whole day at school, all I could think about was Yuri. A couple of times I looked at him and he smiled back...that warm smile that melted my soul. It felt weird...I couldn't fully grasp what I was feeling. It was like a drug...so addicting and completely unavoidable...yet, not enough. I yearned for more. But what was that more? What was it that was missing? His blonde hair...his legs...his arms...his face. What was happening to me? That night, after spending about an hour in the library, I stared into the ceiling of my dorm room into the late hours of the night. The dorms at the Xuzhou Academy were small and cramped. There were two beds per room, each room being about the size of the inside of a bread truck. My room had a large window with a great view of the courtyard and a desk and coat hanger in the corner which I never used. Normally, there would be at least two people to a room, but there was an odd number of students in the academy, this year, and I got lucky enough to be the one who didn't have a roommate. Each floor would have about two or three shower rooms. Guys and girls lived in separate dorms (for obvious reasons). It was pouring that night. Spring showers, I guess. Things just didn't add up. "I'm a guy," I thought. "I like girls. Girls are hot. Girls are beautiful. Their chests. Their asses. Their legs. Their hair. Their dresses. That's the way things are supposed to be....but Yuri..." It was true. Yuri was more beautiful than anybody I've ever seen, including the goddess, (my future wife), Lily. But it wasn't right...Girls were supposed to look at guys...not other guys. Did this mean I was a girl? No...no way. So... I began to doubt who I was...the further I delved into my personality in my search to discover the truth about my feelings for Yuri, the more confused I became of my own identity and who I really was. My thoughts were cut short, all of a sudden, when the door to my room slammed open with a thud. I shot up out of my bed in shock and confusion. My eyes had already adjusted to the dark settings of the drab dorm room, so my eyes hurt as the light from the hallway pierced in through the doorway. There stood the administrator of the school, Mr. Qin. He was a short, pudgy man in his fifties who would constantly get made fun of behind his back by the students for being too unattractive to find somebody who wanted to get married with him, despite having been alive for nearly half a century. That, we students speculated, was the reason that he would constantly punish students for no apparent reason in order to take his anger and frustration out on us. After all, girls like real men, not one with an unclear gender, like Mr. Qin. "Wang Tiangang," Mr. Qin snorted in his high-pitched, unmanly voice. "You're gonna have a new roommate." "What the f..." I whispered, before realizing who I was saying this to. "Of course, Mr. Qin," I replied respectfully, though I wanted to beat that pig, Mr. Qin, up at the moment, not only for disturbing me in the middle of the night, but for stripping me of my privacy and making me share a room with somebody else. But all those negative feelings vanished when my new roommate walked in the very next second...It was Yuri. He glided into the room, carrying his perfect, angelic figure with him, while having a large back slung upon his back. I gasped as I saw him walk in. The whole time, my eyes were glued to his strong, manly arms. What was happening? The object of my fantasies...my roommate for the rest of the year? "Good night," said Mr. Qin, as he slammed the door shut. Yuri sat down on the bed next to mine. "Hey, how are you?" he said, in not-so-perfect Chinese. "Hi," I replied back, unsure of what to say. "I'm Wang Tiangang...nice to...nice to meet you." I extended my arm. He grabbed it very firmly. "I know," he said. "I saw you today...in math." "Oh yeah..." I said tentatively, cold sweat running down my back. "Bai is a real bitch." "I know..." Yuri said, chuckling. "But our teachers in Russia are a lot worse." "I hear Russia's awesome," I said, suddenly starting to feel more comfortable. "It's not," said Yuri. "The government just wants to make it seem that way. I'm glad I'm not in Russia anymore." "Well, you'll love China," I said. "I'm sure I will," said Yuri. "It's getting late...I think we should probably sleep." "Yeah...we should," were Yuri's last words, as he stripped off his clothes and climbed into the bed. I couldn't help but stare. Seeing him shirtless and under the covers gave me a strange sense of happiness. And talking to him...and the fact that he was actually willing to talk to me...was I that good? I fell asleep, satisfied. Let me know what you think. Email me, Steve Aramburu, at aramflag@yahoo.com.