switching platforms

by Ling’Ling

as we met, so we parted. i cannot remember the date. i never can. it might have been a tuesday or a wednesday.  I was standing on platform 6 at the Shanghai South Railway station. my heart was in my mouth as I watched the train pull away. my hands were shaking from the violent hangover that was ganging up with my broken heart and the morning’s 4 cups of poisonous black coffee. i was never going to see or hear from her again. she didn’t know the routine but i did. new simcard, old e-mail address, no facebook, no myspace, no msn, no worries only fear and self-loathing in my shanghai shoes. it hurt so fucking much, but i couldn’t cry. i wanted to but the tears wouldn’t come.

i turned around and started to walk away as another train pulled into the station on the other side of the platform. to this day I cannot remember where it came from. how is it that i never found out? it was written right there on the side. i stopped to watch it pull in. the big picture windows on the passenger carriages looked like youtube vignettes of chinese travellers gathering their things, saying goodbye to friendly strangers with whom they had just spent the last 36 hours snoring, drinking, eating and chatting. my world had fallen apart but theirs was still turning. they seemed to think that there was hope and joy left on this fucked up planet. hadn’t anybody told them? i didn’t begrudge them their peace, but i envied it.

i turned around and started off in the opposite direction. my first step sent me crashing into a moving stack of fake louis vuitton luggage. this time i was caught too off guard to maintain my footing and was sent sprawling backwards onto the rain soaked platform. i looked up to see that the moving bags were in fact held by the most beautiful creature i had ever lain eyes upon. the weight of her oversized baggage managed to counter the laowai tackle i had just given her and she managed to stay upright.

should i describe her to you? i needn’t. you know her because you’ve seen her before. she’s the girl you saw on the subway, or in the elevator, or on the other side of the street. which way was she going? you knew right away that she’s the perfect one for you. you saw it in her eyes and the way her hair hung down around her cheeks. maybe it wasn’t her hair but something else. i wouldn’t know what did it for you but you knew what it was and i have no doubt that you were right. she was perfect. did you talk to her? maybe she’s next to you right now or maybe you just kept walking and cursed your own cowardice. whatever you did, you have my utmost respect friend.

myself, i was seized with terror in the knowledge that before me stood a creature with the power to fill my days with divine ecstasy or to make my life a waking hell. did she know it? of course she didn’t. such knowledge is a forbidden fruit. she was completely ignorant of it and that is why she could hold it in her hand. god pity the unfortunate woman who puts that fruit into my own hands. in any case the decision was not my own, fate had already decided for me.

like so many things about our story, i never could remember what was said that day. the words were not important, they were just an accessory to what was happening. we left the station that day together and that’s the way it was from then on. she moved into my little apartment on taikang lu that very day.

our life together was inordinately happy. any person who has experienced this kind of love before knows well that everything becomes secondary to the daily bliss of the time spent together with that perfect diamond. there’s really no way to describe it without digressing into romantic clichés, of which i am totally averse, despite my own hopeless romanticism. even the annoying habits ands quirks of femininity that can drive a man to complete insanity were infused with a charm that could send my spirits soaring. she was an angel. a fact that i never once forgot.

i remember one time picking myself up off the ground after being knocked from my bike by a speeding shanghai taxi, i was bloodied and bruised but my first thought as i rose to my feet and saw the blood pouring from my battered knees, hands and arms was her. there i was standing with my mangled bike, having narrowly escaped a gruesome fate under the wheels of a wildly careless taxi and all i could think about was that our plans that evening for a homemade dinner followed by reading together were almost ruined.

i think we continued in this fashion for several years. a habit that never ceased to annoy her was my complete inability to keep track of time. even now i don’t know if we were together for 3 years or 30. i’ve never been able to understand people’s obsession with time. we were together and we were happy and that was it.

oh god oh god. i should stop right here. this story doesn’t end well. did i give you the impression that it would? god forbid. i digressed. grew complacent, took things for granted. fucked up. i have not been nor will i ever be able to make sense of what was going on in my mind as i started to push her away from me. she was such a simple and beautiful thing, making her happy and in turn myself was like paint by the numbers. i knew exactly what i had to do, and in knowing it i proactively began to do the opposite. it’s so easy. two more beers than i needed on a thursday night. phone off of course, just to make an innocent thing look like something else. who was i trying to hurt? don’t we know that we do these things to ourselves? holding in the things i wanted to tell her and saying only what i knew i shouldn’t.

she packed her bags.

as we met, so we parted. i cannot remember the date. i never can. it might have been a tuesday or a wednesday.  I was standing on platform 6 at the Shanghai South Railway station. my heart was in my mouth as I watched the train pull away. my hands were shaking from the violent hangover that was ganging up with my broken heart and the morning’s 4 cups of poisonous black coffee. i was never going to see or hear from her again. she didn’t know the routine but i did. new simcard, old e-mail address, no facebook, no myspace, no msn, no worries only fear and self-loathing in my shanghai shoes. it hurt so fucking much, but i couldn’t cry. i wanted to but the tears wouldn’t come. i turned around and started to walk away as another train pulled into the station on the other side of the platform.