Tag: fiction

Breaking Bourgeois Brains (starring Jack Stearns, PhD)

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Jack Stearns is an English teacher in China, waging a one-man crusade against Americans, capitalists, and Christians, which are one and the same in his eyes. This is FICTION. Any resemblance to actual people is simply coincidence.

Class was over but not the day, so for Jack Stearns it was time to play.

He had taught this to his students. Yes, he had taught it. . .now if they had understood it or not. . .

They hadn’t, of course. That’s what you got when the bourgeoisie was allowed to control education. Students only interested in passing tests and what’s worse, teachers only interested in the same thing, that fat payday which all A’s brought. Oh well, at least it wasn’t Wuhan University. His experiences at that Jesuit stronghold had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The Governor of Hubei had invited him to give lectures on Critical Thinking. Knowing as he did how the Jesuits had taken over, he dedicated his lectures to disproving the existence of God. At first, attendance had been high, but slowly, people stopped showing up; at his last lecture, his words only reached a few brave students, who were standing in the doorway, calling out “Hello!” and snapping cellphone pictures. The Jesuits had run him off. Oh Grandpa Mao, if only you could see what has happened to your China!

Jack had written a new chapter today, concerning his university experience. No, not the one at Wu Da—this happened in the UK when he was earning his degree. In a European History course, they had a discussion about England’s greatest Prime Minister. Point: what made a Prime Minister “great”? One student—a young bourgeoisie man, though Jack’s brain had yet to receive the Chinese upgrade so he hadn’t been able to articulate it, still his powers of intuitive reasoning had always been rather strong—had said that despite the hatred she’d got at the time, despite some rather conservative policies, Margaret Thatcher would go down as the greatest Prime Minister in history for the impact she had, not to mention the barriers she’d broke for women. Jack’s hand immediately shot up. “I would rather see her riding up on a cross than the wall of any hollowed building,” he said. Everyone had laughed. So Jack had gone on. He didn’t remember what about, but it did involve his time as a bodyguard for women, especially this stunner who he would have followed, for free or otherwise.

“You followed women around?” someone said.

“Let’s move on,” the teacher started, but Jack overrode her.

“I provided protection for plenty of women, even ones I didn’t know.” Some snickering met this. Such was the attitude among hopeless bourgeois cases. “In fact. . .” and when he got done telling them of the people he had beaten up and killed back when he’d owned his own multimillion pound international law firm, including of how he’d once hidden in the backseat of one client’s car who’d neglected to pay him and that morning “persuaded” him to cough up the money. “Among other things,” Jack added, winking at a young Asian lady in the front row. After that class, the teacher had taken him aside and told him the discussion section wasn’t mandatory.

“It’s only for the students who need extra help.” She cleared her throat. “Which you clearly don’t.”

I broke her bourgeois brain, Jack thought and resolved to remember that line for his writing as he pounded up the stairs to the netbar.

The girls behind the main desk avoided all eye contact with him. Shy as usual. So typical, so so typical. Jack gave them a wide smile anyways. One girl moaned and buried her head in her hands. Oh Grandpa Mao!

He stalked around the computers. He had no one spot; just a right one and the right spot could change from day to day. And indeed it did, though he didn’t remember exactly what the variations were. Today that computer by the window called to him. Good too, for what he was working on he had best to avoid any eavesdroppers. Anyone who might steal his magnum opus and make a killing off the brutal truths and caustic arguments and stirring philosophy found within. No, that would not do at all. Any money made off his wisdom rightfully belonged to him.

He already had a rather wonderful topic. Just yesterday, he had seen the cutest sight. Two little Chinese girls were skating along, when one fell and her skate came loose. The other stopped what she was doing and helped her put it back on. Such concern, and shyness too; when Jack came rumbling over, they both ran away screaming.

He had the idea. He had to write.

He spotted a laowai.

Who was he? Jack knew he was $American$, he just didn’t know the yank’s name. He was on the phone. His masterpiece forgotten for the moment, Jack now wanted to play a few rounds of Warcraft 3 against someone. The Chinese being far too shy to play with him, he defaulted to this guy. . .this. . .$American$. However, he could not simply stand there and wait for him to stop yapping. That was too boring. He needed to occupy his great mind with something—otherwise, he’d go mad. So he squatted through pain and creaks and reached over his enormous belly and untied his shoes. Slowly, slowly, he started threading them back together.

Read more about Jack Stearns.

Also, check out Jack at McDonald’s.

The Leaky Air Conditioner

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Little Red King
Deleted Scene: The Leaky Air Conditioner

This is a deleted scene from Little Red King. It occurred near the beginning of the book, and is pretty much word-for-word something that happened to me.

John is a French major who has come to Wuhan, China, to teach English for a year. In his first days, he is jet-lagged, having stomach troubles, and comparing what he’s seen so far to his semester abroad in France.

Part of it was amusement, part of it was expressing some thoughts I hold about language learning. I never belittle anyone’s attempts at a foreign language, and I can’t stand the pieces of shit who do. There’s nothing more damaging to someone trying to speak a foreign language than ridicule, whether it’s foreigners learning Chinese, Chinese learning English, or in my experience, Americans learning French.

Unedited from the first draft.

**

John was in bed. Staring up at the ceiling. Thirteen hours. He was thirteen hours ahead. What was his mother doing now? How about Sandra? In class? Working probably. She started her first job soon. How about the rest? In class too? Or killing time in the library between coffee and study? He had seen a Starbucks on the ride in from the airport but it was across town and it was too far and what if there was no place to get coffee this was the land of tea after all and what if–

These thoughts put him to sleep.

The pounding woke him up.

A shirtless foreigner pale sparing his upper arms and neck opened the door to an old Chinese man with a beard, wearing moccasins that looked to share his age. The man uttered something. The sounds indistinguishable in meaning for John from a bird’s morning cry. John then uttered something back. The sounds indistinguishable for the man too and he said something else, held up a finger, and went downstairs.

John closed the door. Another knock came.

This time it was a young man who greeted him in English.

“Hello! How do you do?”

“I’m fine,” John grogged. “How about you?”

“Yes. My father says the water, it falls from your…” He drew a square in the air.

“Oh.”

“May I please come in to see it?”

“Sure.” John stepped aisde and cast his arm out. “Come on in.”

The young man strode across the foyer and through the bedroom. He stepped out on to the balcony, John still in the foyer. Swaying. The young man saw something and waved John over.

John went.

“This is the water,” said the young man. Eyes awake many an eon followed the invisible line his finger drew. Water was indeed leaking, dripping steadily from John’s air conditioner to theirs and announcing its arrival a dull, hollow thud. There was a silence as the young man stared straight at John, expecting something, but the problem was, John didn’t know what. So he just said the first thing that popped in his head.

“What are you going to do?”

“Yes.”

Perhaps the young man hadn’t been waiting. He was thinking, John realized. Rehearsing, even. Drawing up and revising his words, words he now spoke to John.

“I wonder could you shut down your AC.”

John wiped his arm and stepped back inside. Under the cold air, he said, “I’m sorry. But I don’t think I can.”

“Yes.”

Again that look of concentration. The supreme effort it took to speak a foreign language to that language’s native speaker. The fear. The fear of failure, of making a mistake, a mistake that the native speaker would then pounce on. Jesus, no wonder so many people were quite in his French classes. There were fucking graduate students who just sat there except when called upon, and no wonder. The higher up you went, the more the pressure. The higher the expectations, and God knew the expectations you held for yourself beat the expectations others held for you any time. God only knew what expectations this guy held for himself and what the penalty for failure was.

“My father come up here and fix it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He left. His father came up and gave a short ni hao with a wave and a laugh and John managed to return the wave but nothing else as the old man moved on past him to the balcony. He stood where his son had and reached down and twisted a pipe. The leaking stopped. He turned, said something and then headed to the door. John followed and when the old man disappeared down the stairs, the young man appeared up them.

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

“It is fixed. Okay?”

“Okay. Good.”

“May I have your name please.”

“I’m John.”

“Excuse me?”

He cleared his throat. “Sorry. My name is John.”

“John. So common name.” He said this with a big, bright smile. “My English name is Matthew. It is very nice to meet you.”

John returned the smile as best he could. They said goodbye and John closed the door. He drew the curtains shut and went back to bed. He had been tired before but after their visit he wasn’t too tired and wasn’t this just like France where on his first day he’d short-circuited the room, oh that room, that terrible room they shoved him in it —

John took another trip. To the land of dreams. Memories of France carried him there.

A knock brought him back.

He opened the door. The old man was standing there.

“Ni hao!”

With a tool in his hand.

New Fiction: The Man in the Reflecting Pool

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My flash fiction, The Man in the Reflecting Pool is featured in Stanley the Whale.

He had been coming to the reflecting pool for years. For as long as he had been, so had the reflecting pool.

So had his reflection.

It was the man’s reflection who met him each morning, who ate with him. Who listened. He looked as dirty as the man did, sometimes dirtier. But he never mocked the man. He never shied away. They looked directly at each other without the evasion others held for those who reminded them of what they could become, with only a few missteps.

Click to keep reading.