【Man · Wife】
My name is Man. Born in ’99, twenty-six this year, a language teacher at City No. 2 Middle School. This profession is all about keeping up appearances, and I was raised under my mother’s thumb, so I did grow into exactly the kind of respectable woman people see me as — one meter seventy-three, sixty kilos, back held ramrod-straight when I walk among the students and parents, voice pitched neither high nor low. Only I know how many places on this body have never been touched by anyone.
How strict was my mother? In high school I wasn’t allowed to wear skirts that showed my knees; in college I wasn’t allowed to stay out overnight; if I dated someone, I had to bring him home for her inspection first. So in four years of college, the most outrageous thing that boy ever did was clutch my hand in a movie theater, his palm slick with sweat, and the moment the credits rolled I pulled my hand back. I was always a blank page — so blank it made even me laugh. A woman in her twenties, an E cup, blouse buttons always straining a little, yet a mind spotlessly clean, knowing nothing at all.
My mother picked the man I married — good prospects, steady, and I had nothing to complain about. The first half year he still coaxed me, still whispered things in my ear that made me blush, and though it was always over in a hurry, I thought that was just how married life was. But two years in, he got busier and busier — dinners, projects, business trips — coming home and dropping straight into sleep. When was the last time he touched me? I couldn’t count it on my fingers. He’d turned me into just another nice-looking piece of furniture in this home.
The body never lies. At night while he snored, I lay there with my eyes open, aching and empty down below, as if a hand were gently scratching inside me. The first time I bought one of those things, I placed the order hiding under the covers, listed the school gate guard as the recipient, and my face burned like it was on fire when I picked it up. At first it was just a tiny bullet vibrator, tucked into my panties — I’d clench it while planning lessons, and halfway through grading my legs would go weak.
Later the bullet wasn’t enough. I switched to a vibrator, the slim kind that could go in just a little, and I bit down on my pillow with tears in my eyes, but it was still empty. After that the things in that drawer only got bigger — I remember it clearly, from two fingers thick to three fingers thick, and I kept thinking, if only there were something real, hot, and moving to fill me up, how good that would be. The moment that thought surfaced I’d pinch myself, telling myself you are a married woman, you are a teacher, you cannot think this way. But the more I pinched, the clearer the thought became.
The seminar came at exactly a time like that. The city organized a two-week inter-school teacher training, each school sending a few people. The sessions were dull; at lunch a male teacher sat down beside me, surname Cheng, early thirties, from some vocational school, tall and broad, with a slightly goofy smile. He grabbed me a pair of chopsticks, tossed off a couple of lines of classical poetry, and to my surprise could keep up. I added him on WeChat under a perfectly upstanding pretext — professional exchange.
【Cheng · The Other Man】
The first glance I got of Man, I knew this woman was no simple case. Not the alluring type — the type wrapped up tight by a strict upbringing, who has no idea how tempting she is. Collar buttoned without a single flaw, yet those two swells bulged so much the blouse wrinkled, and when she sat down her waist dipped and her ass filled the whole chair. When she spoke she barely dared to meet your eyes; one look and she’d shy away, lashes fluttering — and that little spark in me flared up in an instant.
I’m no good at much else, but I read women dead-on. The more one of them keeps up the front, playing the virtuous wife, the more starved she is underneath. I added her on WeChat and didn’t rush anything — first we talked classical poetry, the grind of teaching, the little punks in her class. She replied fast, weighing every word, but the stifled thing between the lines I saw through at a glance — this woman had nobody at home who cherished her.
【Man · Wife】
I knew I shouldn’t chat with him so much. But he understood me. I mentioned a kid in my class whose parents had divorced and whose grades had crashed, and he laid out a whole approach; late at night, done grading, I typed a single word, “exhausted,” and back came instantly, “Sleep soon, don’t push yourself.” Just those few simple words — I stared at them a long while, and somewhere inside me softened, and then hollowed out. My husband hadn’t said anything like that to me in a very long time.
Over half a month, our chats went from teaching matters to daily life, from daily life into the small hours. One night he sent, “You’re married, but I always feel like you’ve never been properly loved.” I stared at my phone, my finger hovering over the screen a long time, and in the end I sent back only one word: “Mm.” The moment it went out, I knew something had caved in.
On the last day of the seminar, he said over WeChat that he was on duty that weekend, his family had all gone back to their hometown, and asked whether I’d like to come by and sit a while — “just talk, take a look at those books you mentioned.” I stared at that line of text, my heart pounding hard. I knew what “sit a while” meant; I wasn’t actually an idiot. I should have refused. I told myself a hundred times I should refuse.
But that night, lying in bed, my husband came home past midnight again from another dinner, reeking of liquor, and dropped straight into sleep. In the dark I opened that drawer, gripped the biggest one inside, pushed it in, bit the corner of the quilt — and the tears fell first. It was cold, it was dead, it couldn’t fill me. I stared at the ceiling, my mind full of that line Cheng had sent.
Early the next morning, my husband was heading out to a banquet, and at the door he turned back to remind me, “Stay safe home alone, lock the door.” My back was to him as I stuffed things into my bag, and hearing those words, my hand trembled once. I gave an “mm,” my voice thin. He didn’t notice; he shut the door and left.
He didn’t know that what I’d stuffed into that bag was a newly bought lipstick and a dress I’d never once worn. Even less did he know that no sooner had he said “stay safe” than I started the car — the address I keyed into the navigation was the one Cheng had sent. The wheel was in my hands, my hands shaking the whole time, but I never once eased off the gas.