Garys foster father appears on TV again. Now, that really was a comic arrangement if ever there was one. Gary never addressed that man properly, barely had a conversation with him, yet he is being described as Garys closest relative. The two of them spent their entire lives avoiding each other, timing their respective arrivals at the house in order to minimize the chances of seeing each other. Gary remembers the huge relief he felt whenever he came home and found the place empty and the dread when he heard the front grille creak open in the night. Often he would come home and find his foster father slumped in the lounger made of plastic strings, his mouth open, trails of dried spittle tracing the line of his jaw down to his bony collarbone, like sea salt on rocks. His head was rounded at the back, the feather-thin white hair rising up in a wispy tuft, his nose pointed like the beak of a turtle. He truly did look like a comic-book animal an Old-Age Mutant Ninja Turtle. The first time Gary got thrown out of school (the exact misdemeanor is forgotten now probably for smoking on school grounds during morning break), he did not think about what would happen if he came home early. His foster father hit him, said it was a waste of money sending him to school, he should just get a job serving tables at the coffee shop or carrying sacks of rice. As he raised the shoe to beat Gary, his jerky movements and bony arms made him look just like a make-believe animal. Old-Age Mutant Ninja Turtle, Old-Age Mutant Ninja Turtle. Alone in his hotel room, sitting amid a sea of comic-book memories from his childhood, Gary feels like laughing, laughing, laughing.
Laughing until he cries.
This endless pantomime tires him, but now, thank God, there is a break. The celebrity news on TV moves on to someone else an older pop singer who fell to the floor at a meet-and-greet session last night, and now people think she is pregnant. Gary knows her. To the public, she seems like a stuck-up woman, but he feels a certain closeness to her because she gave him generous advice when he first moved to Taipei. When he was struggling with voice coaching and trying to break into acting at the same time, she said, Dont worry, one way or another you will be a big star you have no other option in life but to be a big star.
Ha-ha, he said. Maybe I dont want to be a star.
She said, There is no other possibility for you.
They share a love of spicy beef noodles, and when she played her concert in Malaysia, she spent much time eating at neighborhood street stalls in order to experience the delicacies Gary had recommended to her. In an interview with the local press, she referred to him as her surrogate son, and even though they are not that close, Gary knew what she meant, because he, too, felt in a small way that she was like his mother. He knows that she is indeed pregnant and that the father is a rich married man who will not leave his wife, and she is very unhappy. At the age of forty-six, she believes she has lost her charm and has resorted to plastic surgery, which lends her beauty a harsh, tense quality. The cameras wait outside the hospital day and night, making her even more miserable. But heres the problem: Her sadness brings relief to Gary. Every moment the news concentrates on her, he is able to take time out from the ridiculous spectacle of his own life. He wishes the news to remain focused on her misery, but he knows that, sooner or later, the loop will come back around to him. For the fact is that her fame has all but diminished, whereas he is still a huge star. Or at least he was until a few days ago.
He turns the TV off and stares at the blank screen. His hand twitches, resisting the urge to turn the TV on again. He cannot bear the sad ridicule of his life, but at the same time he is used to it now. He wants to see those people from his past, see what has become of them laugh at them the way others are laughing at him. But he manages to resist the temptation and instead logs on to the Facebook page that his record company maintains for him. He is not allowed to respond personally to any messages. Whenever he makes a statement to his fans on this page, it is in fact the PR department that writes the words: Im deeply sorry for all the embarrassment my behavior has caused. Knowing you are all there to support me has touched me deeply and keeps me strong. My problems have brought me closer to you all. Thank you, thank you.
The messages of support stream in from all over Asia. Girls of fifteen, sixteen, refusing to give up hope on Gary. I will always love you no matter what you do, because you are a beautiful human being. I refuse to believe Gary has done any of these things his enemies are liars liars LIARS. Gary is an innocent of loves dreams! Gary is a victim! I LOVE YOU GARY YOU ARE MY SPECIAL FOREVER.
He thought that he would be reassured by these messages, but he is not. Instead, they make him angry. He hates his fans. They refuse to see the truth; they are blind to how rotten his life has become. They still believe that he is a pure, innocent person who can make their pathetic lives happy and bring meaning to their paltry existences, when in fact the only sensation he is capable of provoking is disgust. He loathes them for needing him in this way, for needing him to supply them with dreams. He closes his eyes and feels their neediness weighing down on him like monsoon days, heavy and unmoving, ready to engulf him. Like everyone else, his fans think that the stories they read in the magazines and on the Internet are a joke, a fabrication of events not to be taken seriously. But they do not realize that even if they are exaggerations, distortions, made-up stories by pathetic people with no lives of their own, they are true in one respect: He has always been a disgusting person.
The messages of support stream in from all over Asia. Girls of fifteen, sixteen, refusing to give up hope on Gary. I will always love you no matter what you do, because you are a beautiful human being. I refuse to believe Gary has done any of these things his enemies are liars liars LIARS. Gary is an innocent of loves dreams! Gary is a victim! I LOVE YOU GARY YOU ARE MY SPECIAL FOREVER.
He thought that he would be reassured by these messages, but he is not. Instead, they make him angry. He hates his fans. They refuse to see the truth; they are blind to how rotten his life has become. They still believe that he is a pure, innocent person who can make their pathetic lives happy and bring meaning to their paltry existences, when in fact the only sensation he is capable of provoking is disgust. He loathes them for needing him in this way, for needing him to supply them with dreams. He closes his eyes and feels their neediness weighing down on him like monsoon days, heavy and unmoving, ready to engulf him. Like everyone else, his fans think that the stories they read in the magazines and on the Internet are a joke, a fabrication of events not to be taken seriously. But they do not realize that even if they are exaggerations, distortions, made-up stories by pathetic people with no lives of their own, they are true in one respect: He has always been a disgusting person.
He kneels on the floor and looks at the patchwork carpet of papers and magazines strewn across the floor in front of him. He surveys what lies before him: all the words and images that sum up his entire life. The room around him is filthy clothes cling to the silk upholstery like rotting vegetation, and there are dirty plates and cups everywhere. No one has come to clean the room in three days. Maybe it is because his manager has forbidden anyone to come in. Maybe it is because the cleaning people are afraid of Gary and fear that he will hit them or even sexually assault them. He is suddenly very tired, but climbing into the bed on the other side of the room seems too much of an effort. His limbs ache, and his face and neck feel clammy. He lies down on the floor, trying to find a soft pile of carpet, but the newspapers and magazines are too densely laid out and he ends up lying on top of them, curled up on his side in a little ball. They make a loud rustling noise every time he moves.
So in some ways all the reports of Garys troubled, mixed-up life today are a simple continuation of his troubled, mixed-up life before. We would all love to believe in a fairy-tale story of a village boy made good, becoming a world-renowned figure while retaining his simplicity and integrity, but the nature of our modern world is that everything is corruptible from the beginning; Gary is merely proof that purity and decay are entwined, that beauty is another form of depravity. Vanity has its price, and Gary is paying it right now. Every single one of his remaining concerts, including the major events in Shanghai and Beijing, have been canceled, and even the smaller venues in Xian and Fuzhou have been postponed indefinitely. Already, one of his major sponsors has canceled his endorsement contract, rumored to be worth RMB 10 million. Even as we speak, the posters of him smiling and drinking a can of soda are coming down from billboards across Asia. Others are certain to follow: You cant advertise wholesome cows milk drinks if you are an alcoholic. No one will employ him anymore, and his young career appears to be over. His innocence, which was his Unique Selling Point in fact, his Only Selling Point is now lost, and there can surely be no comeback. Like a brilliant show of fireworks, he dazzled for a while but now leaves us contemplating the dark night sky. What will he do now? Might you turn up at your local real estate office a couple of years from now and find that Gary is your broker? Quite possibly. But should we be sad? Clearly not. He wanted this life, so we should not pity him for being where he is. Nor should we mourn the loss of his talent (though therein lies another debate: Was he actually talented or only pretty?). Others will soon come along to replace him, and others will fall just as he has. In a few years no one will remember him. So let us now leave this unfortunate young man to survey his broken career in peace and isolation. He deserves that much.
8. ALWAYS REBOUND AFTER EACH FAILURE
THE RESTAURANT WAS NOT YINGHUIS CHOICE, BUT SHE WAS IMMEDIATELY struck by how appropriate it was. Set on the top floor of a handsome 1930s redbrick building on Shaanxi Nan Lu, its décor was rich, modern, and just a touch masculine white-oak floors, French bergères, plum-colored rugs, and large paintings of swirly abstract shapes. It was the perfect setting for a first business meeting. Floor-to-ceiling windows all around the room offered a view of the maze of streets lined densely with plane trees and office blocks that sparkled in a jigsaw of lights in the night sky. The table was tucked away in a corner of the restaurant, discreet but not screened off from the rest of the room, unlike the private rooms that most rich businessmen favored. Its balance of intimacy and openness made her feel at ease. She thought, This man has class.