Very Small Rooms

by Greg Baines

My first glimpse of Yu Ting, actually, was on a grainy web cam that was pointed at her as she squashed into the wall dressed in some black lacey fuck-me lingerie. She paned around the room she lived in and I saw her mum crumpled and asleep next to her.

Her house was forty one square metres in total and mine was about eighty but I did share with a French girl who didn’t believe in sex before marriage. But when she moved in I wasn’t in love with Yu Ting.

Yu Ting now ‘feels-close-enough-to-get closer-and-show-more-commitment’ (go to bed), but the French girl and her unemployed mother have forced us into public parks at odd hours hiding from people doing Taichi to grope and get our hands tangled in each other’s clothes and to avoid guys with uniforms and whistles roaming around killing pleasure.

Half of her thinks that I am, of course, some no-good-dirty-foreigner-who-will-fuck-anything-that-moves and say any ‘sweet-words’ to any girl to fuck her so when I told her I’d never heard of  “couples cafés” she slapped me and told me I was a rotten egg and I’d probably fucked many girls in them.

At the café. We edged down a small corridor just wide enough to pass, a long bank of closed doors. Our room had a small flat screen TV on the wall, and a stunted two-seater sofa with tea scars and a long split along one end. Compared to parks and alley ways it was a fucking honeymoon suite.

She paid a girl eighty RMB, which included a tray of watermelon, a pot of tea, two white porcelain cups, a packet of tissues, and a bag of watermelon seeds. Alone, two of us, and we almost didn’t know what to do. Three month relationship, first time alone.

Yu Ting has what she calls her ‘special style’, which did make me nervous about how soundproof this place was. I knocked on cheap fake pine paneling, it sounded flimsy, semi-permanent. I could hear what must have been some movie being played on someone’s computer. Yu Ting kicked off her shoes and unbuttoned her coat.

She had a short skirt on under it especially for the day and she asked me what I thought and I thought it looked a bit slutty but I was completely dishonest with her and said ‘It looks great.’ She smiled, told me I was just sweet talking her and it fell to the floor in a heap and she fell on me and crushed the watermelon. She said, “I’m just a traditional girl, remember?”

I heard a shout as we became entwined, and I asked Yu Ting what it was. She also stopped and sat up. A woman was gasping from the room next door, big deep throaty gasps. Yu Ting blushed and said ‘So passionate’ half to herself and I took the chance to rest and have a bite of watermelon. I thought she was having a seizure.

We locked limbs again, my hands lost in the silk of her flesh. As I removed her bra I was so distracted by the panting next door I got her bra all tangled and we both had to stretch around and unknot ourselves before her breasts were finally bare in front of me, spilling out. She closed her eyes.

Next door, the guy was now building up speed and the sofa in their room was starting to bang against the wall of our room. I cupped Yu Tings breasts in my hands, magnificent pearly white creamy fruit, and I kissed them and started to play gently with her nipples. I could hear her breathing falter.

A door banged on the other side of us in another room and a new couple had started to get into it almost immediately, the woman was panting in a high pitched voice, “No, no…”.

Yu Ting unzipped my pants but she was distracted, kept looking at the wall as if she could see through it. She got her nail caught in the zipper, she cursed at freshly painted cracks in her polish. One of the guys next door started to groan.

Yu Ting tried to forgot about her nail, moved close to my ear. I told her to be gentle and she said, ‘You full of shit.” and she bit down into my earlobe in her ‘special style’  and as I screamed she threw her head back and laughed. She dug her finger nails into my neck to keep my head in position and she buried herself into me; tongue, lips, an exquisite cloud of flesh and sweetness and the room spun and more clothes were removed.

Pain in my neck, throbbing ear. The woman near our heads was coming close to climax and her voice was so loud I couldn’t hear Yu Tings breathing. Yu Ting kept seeing her broken nail and couldn’t concentrate. I told her I loved her but she couldn’t hear. I had to say it again but she was too distracted by the nail to care.

We stopped. We began to cool and the clothes strewn around the room looked odd. We became aware we were naked.

Crescendos grew in the rooms next door and we sipped tea, surrounded by the sounds of sex, of climax, and love in small rooms. I ate more watermelon and she got out nail polish and started reapplying colour gently in small strokes.

I drained the last of my tea and I spun around the cup in my hands and she looked up at me, her nails looking perfect. She said, ‘Use cup, listen. I saw that in movies.’ We smiled, spun the cup over, and huddled next to each other and listened to the guy come. Yu Ting started to breath heavy, and there at the wall we listened through a tea cup and my fingers found their way inside her and she said, ‘I love you bao bei.”