Rapists Love Ice Cream

So I’m downtown at a teahouse with five of my students and my friend Leather (pseudonym), whom I can’t thank enough for enduring this weekend with me, when one of my students emotes that I am a very nice person and a good friend to him and the others (you’ll notice they didn’t compliment my teaching ability…bastards) and he would like me to think of myself as a member of their little social group. I am flattered, because these are some of my favorite students and I explained to him how happy and honored I was that he would say something so nice. Leather (pseudonym) was also touched by the gesture and inquired if their group had a name, like the “Diamond Satchels,” or the “Coronets.” They said they had. They called themselves (are you ready for this?) the, “Rapists.”

Well sitting outside with five “rapists” isn’t my idea of a good time but I got to admit, Leather (pseudonym) and I were anything but intimidated. The only thing these upstanding, young boys were raping was the complimentary buffet and the Qing Teng Cha Jia (Ivy Tea House). One of the more masculine, “rapists,” hammered down six and a half bowls of ice cream not to mention a myriad of fruits, meat dishes and cakes. The table average was 3 bowels of ice cream per person, yours truly abstaining becasue I have a figure to worry about but these boys packed it on, and they (like rapists) didn’t take no for an answer when it came to seconds.

At the time we (Leather (pseudonym) and I) were completely caught off guard by what they said. “Did they know the severity of what they were saying?” I thought, “Did they know how heinous an act rape was?” I figured they didn’t. Like with the word “fuck.” They just say it thinking it’s a cool thing to say yet they have no idea what it means or how to use it. I could teach a full semester on nothing but the innumerable uses “fuck” has and they still probably couldn’t use it correctly. In fact I know they couldn’t. But I felt pretty confident that they were unaware of what their name actually implied, so I asked them. And they said, “It means a very strong man.”

Things do indeed get lost in a translation when the worse crime one can commit in the West becomes a compliment in the East (or China at the least.) I had spent the large majority of my weekend with my kids and I felt bad that Leather had taken so much time out of her day to help me out so I politely excused us and we headed out for what all English teachers in China need after six days of contact with your loving, but sometimes (and I mean this in all politeness) overbearing students: hard, stiff drinks.

Leather (pseudonym) and I headed to House Bar which is blazingly loud but has a very relaxed upstairs area with semi-private booths with comfortable chairs and couches. The gin and tonics were wonderful, and at only 10 kuai (a little over one American buck) they were quite good considering they were ninety percent gin and there wasn’t a bubble of tonic to be found (neither were limes but they were using Seagram’s Lemon Gin so it had something of an oily, citrus taste to it.) We gulped down three and left to hail a cab.

Leather (pseudonym) lives on the opposite side of town, so she got the first cab and I thought I would wait for another. Well I wasn’t quite done drinking and I couldn’t find a cab I liked (the one filled with naughty Chinese debutantes) so I decided to stay downtown a little longer. I had spent almost two full days (75% of those weekend days) with my students. I had drinking to catch up on, not to mention I needed some quiet “me” time with my good friend Sudsy McBrauhausen (he’s Irish and German.) So I stopped at the first bar I saw which was the Night & Day cafe. It was a very chic place and the bathroom proved it. Whenever you are using a urinal and in mid-stream you stop and think, “Is this the sink?” you are in a nice bathroom.

Anywho it was a wonderful place, similar to Kana’s but the music wasn’t as good. Well it was but in a bad karaokae sort of way. I sat there listening to the crooners and watching a J-Lo Live in Puerto Rico concert wondering about the ways of life and love and all that other hoo-hah we occupy our time with when we are drinking by ourselves. And then, like a drunken, middle-aged and balding male siren I heard the sweet poetic words of Bob Dylan open my eyes once again like they always had before.

Well it must have been a rare version of Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind, because I never heard this rendition. Regardless, it struck a chord and the answer was so obvious all along. “The answer my friend is bro’ing in wind. The answer is bro’ing in the wind.”

Rummy McTonedeaf also strengthened my resolve for a war free world when he belched out the line:
“How many times must cannonballs fly? And all the people in the skyyy!”

How true crazy, drunk Chinaman. How true. Anywho’s it’s time to drink.