to ian on his birthday

part I

i sit here on tuesday night, nursing my third beer, and my thoughts can't help but turn to the first time i met ian... it was in an illegal bathhouse in beijing, 1975... he was gulping paragoric from a dirty brown mug that had a flaking profile of stalin on one side and "World's Greatest Uncle" in fading cyrillic on the other... i had wandered in offa the street, looking for a drink and whatever else may happen... he had evidently been quite a fixture there for the past week... seems he was taking advantage of a recent promotion by the Chinese government involving 10 free bathhouse visits for becoming a member of the Communist Party... he had showed me his little Red Card early on that evening that had seven holes stamped out in it to form a crude likeness of Chairman Mao...

"boy!" he bellowed across the empty pools (the place had been dead for hours... guess no one seemed to be interested in "cleanliness" at 4am on a wednesday night, even in beijing). ian, to his sneering, giggling delight, had been giving the spa boy a wicked time for the past three hours... he turned to me, leaning over precariously in his lime green reclining patio chair... "bastard doesn't even speak Xeno-Pyrennic Basque, the fucking yellow savage...", he hissed... i grunted assent... "boy! i'm not getting in that fucking bath until you clean the dead mantises outta it!"... the steaming water in the pool at which he was gesturing wildly was cystal clear... he glowered menacingly, one hand firmly clenching his mug , the other squeezed into a tight red fist which he shook brazenly at the simmering attendant... the entire scene - the coffee mug, the lime green patio chair, the heavy smell of the bathhouse, the frantic arm waving and fist clenching - produced a quite unnerving effect... i frowned and lit a cigarette... shit, this is gonna get ugly...