Rent a Boyfriend - Gloria Chao Page 0,71
the mic. “Yes, thank you! Don’t take your pants off to fart!”
The audience laughed. How amusing—the idiom was hilarious enough to be a joke in itself.
“Chī shı dōu jiē bú dào rè de! ” an elderly woman yelled from the front row to a wave of groans.
Ying-Na snapped her head back in shock. “You’re so slow you can’t even eat the shit while it’s still hot,” she translated. “Damn, that’s extreme, even for stinky tofu lovers!”
She stopped gesturing to the audience and grasped the mic with both hands again. “Along those lines is one of my favorites: Gou gaibùliao chī shı. It’s kind of like ‘a leopard can’t change its spots,’ but directly translated, it’s ‘a dog can’t help but eat shit.’ ”
My nose burned. That had been Nǎinai’s second favorite phrase. Who would’ve guessed dog shit could stir up such nostalgia? It was so ludicrous I laughed through the grief. Best medicine, better than acupuncture or the cow’s hoof.
“Why did they have to go with something so crude?” Ying-Na continued. “There were so many other options. . . . A panda is still a bear beneath the cuddliness, scallion pancakes will always give you diarrhea, a woman can’t run in her qípáo. . . .” She flashed the slit up her left side, revealing her leg, Angelina Jolie–style. “Unless she’s an American girl who knows how to use a knife!”
She raised her voice to shout over the thundering crowd. “You’ve all been so wonderful. Thank you so much! Remember, none of this was racist because I have Asian immunity! Zàijiàn!”
The spectators whistled, screamed, and stomped their good-byes. Their enthusiasm mirrored mine, and even though I barely knew her, I felt proud of Ying-Na. She wasn’t the cautionary tale; she was the hero. The dreamer. The fighter.
As the audience stretched before the next act, I downed my Coke, then collected my things. Should I try to get backstage? I hadn’t realized Ying-Na was so popular. Now she felt like a celebrity, not an old friend.
A club employee tapped me on the shoulder. “Miss Chu would like to extend an invitation backstage.”
I followed his broad bouncer shoulders, weaving through chairs and feeling like a bit of a celebrity myself. The dressing room was merely a coat closet with a stained armchair on one side and a stool on the other. A smudged mirror leaned against the wall, threatening to topple at any moment.
Ying-Na’s face brightened when she saw me. I stuck a hand out, but she pulled me into a hug. Her sweaty skin stuck to mine, and I held back a cringe.
Now that we were in close proximity, memories flashed through my mind. Ying-Na, age six, yelling out her mother’s mahjong hand to the rest of the table. Everyone had been amused except her mother, which now, in retrospect, had probably been her motivation—getting some laughs, but more important, annoying her ultra-tiger mom. Ying-Na, age eight, grabbing the stuffed animals to put on a show for the younger kids, cartoon voices and jokes galore. I remembered keeling over with laughter, my stomach hurting, just like tonight. Ying-Na, age twelve, reading us kissing scenes from her romance book, telling us she’d teach us how to kiss since our Chinese mothers never would. She had grabbed stacks of oranges for us to French with. I had eaten mine.
I pulled away first. “Ying-Na, I mean Christine, I can’t believe you remember me!”
“Of course! And I still have an ear to one last grapevine leaf. I heard about what happened with your parents. I’m really sorry.”
I sat on the armchair, folding one leg beneath me. “Figures. Disownments usually make the mahjong-table gossip.”
Ying-Na laughed, and I filled with pride that I had made her laugh.
She sat on the stool, able to cross her legs because of the slits running up to her thigh. “You’re becoming quite the tale yourself. Kicked out of MIT, possibly pregnant, dating a bad biker dude”—I snorted at that one—“and the kicker, that you had Romeo-and-Juliet-ed yourself into the Charles River.”
“Jesus, I had no idea.”
“Don’t worry. You’re immortalized now, just like Ying-Kan’s penis. And me.”
I chuckled. “What an honor.”
“I tried to spread a rumor like, ‘Ying-Na is a stand-up comedian, and she’s actually funny. Go watch her!’ But nobody bit on that one.”
I laughed. “Your show was fantastic. And I love the slashed qípáo—brilliant.”
“Slashing down nonsensical traditions one at a time.” She flashed her stage-worthy smile.
“I’m really happy you’re doing so well. You’re a celebrity!”
She sighed. “Not really. Cultural humor is tough. A