Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 09:47:39 -0800 (PST)
From: Stephen Aramburu <aramflag@yahoo.com>
Subject: Tiangang's Story Part I

	Usual disclaimers apply.  If you are not of legal age, do not read
this.  If you are narrow-minded and disapprove of homosexual relationships,
then : a. why the hell are you reading this story in the first place? and
b. go somewhere else.

	The next two chapters will tell the story of the unfaithful dad,
Wang Tiangang.  Special thanks to James for his contributions to this
story.


	His name was Yuri.  Yuri Bovin. I can still remember his face, as
though I saw it yesterday.  Yuri Bovin was his name!  He was an exchange
student from Russia, China's powerful ally of the north.  It's funny,
sometimes, how quickly time passes you by.  What I am about to tell you
happened almost twenty years ago...yet, I could still hear his velvety
voice whispering flowing through my ears.  I could still feel his soft,
tender lips breathing and brushing against mine.  I could still feel his
powerful, muscled arms wrapped around me...like a warm, firm blanket...a
shield from the rest of the world.
	I'm not really sure how it all started, but I'll tell you what I
can remember.  In 2006, Xuzhou is a beautiful, bustling metropolis with
tall, glass buildings and neon lights, clean, concrete streets where cars
buzz back and forth, amusement parks and arcades, indoor swimming pools,
tennis courts, art galleries, restaurants that serve all kinds of food,
and, of course, the infamous casinos, though they don't play a huge part in
our industry.  Xuzhou is sometimes known as the Las Vegas of China.  You
want it?  Xuzhou's got it.  (Surprising that Shanghai and Beijing are
getting all the hype) But in 1988, Xuzhou wasn't a huge city.  It wasn't
even on the map.  At that time, Xuzhou was an obscure village in the middle
of the Yuinnan province and the site of an isolated high school that only
accepted two types of students: those who were extremely talented and
extremely smart...and those whose parents had a lot of money.  If you
graduated from this school, you were basically guaranteed a spot in a good
college, a high-paying job, perhaps even a position in the government, and
a stable future in what was then a very uncertain society.  (Not
surprisingly, kids who got accepted because their parents had a lot of
money almost never graduated.)  Today, this school still exists and is
known as the Xuzhou Academy and is still considered the top school in the
southeastern district of China.
	It was the spring of 1988...my second year in academy.  I woke up
in my dorm room to the usual sound of the clattering bells that echoed
throughout the entire campus at precisely 6:30 A.M.  All the students got
up, showered, brushed their teeth...whatever their daily routines were.
Then, we changed into our workout clothes and stood in the courtyard for
roll call.  I reluctantly crept out of bed and stretched myself out...all
5"7 130 or so pounds of me.  The sun was shining brightly and the trees
were beginning to blossom.  The snow had already melted, yet, we could
still feel the chill of the past winter as we shivered.  The Xuzhou Academy
was a military training camp and a college combined into one big high
school campus.  We were required to wake up at 6:30 every morning and be
the in the courtyard by 6:45.  Roll call took about fifteen minutes.  We'd
run laps from 7:00 to 8:30, before our hour-long break.  Then, the classes
began and ended at 5:00 P.M.  Same old routine day after day after day.
Life was so pointless and so monotonous that at times, you wanted to
strangle yourself to death.
	I had a lot of friends at this school, so life wasn't that bad,
though none of those friends were particularly close to me.  I liked having
them around, but often found their conversations boring.  They always
talked about the beautiful girl who was to be my wife, Lily, and how hot
her ass was...how voluptuous her body was...how much they wanted to sleep
with her.  The truth was, Lily had secretly been my on-and-off girlfriend
for the past year or so.  We were always jumping back and forth between
"going out" and "just friends", sometimes several times a day.  I didn't
think she was beautiful.  I didn't think any girls were beautiful.  I
couldn't see what the other guys saw in Lily.  It never applied to me that
I preferred guys over girls, however.  Homosexuality was, at that time, an
unknown concept in China.  Boys married girls and had kids...end of story.
	That morning, I stood at the back of the line.
	"Wu Xingming?"
	"Here."
	"Sun Hexing!"
	"Here."
	Then my name...
	"Wang Tiangang?"
	"Here!" I called out.
	Then, we began running...and running...and running.  It seemed to
drag on forever.  I wasn't tired or cramping.  Nobody was.  After almost a
year of running for an hour and a half every morning, it was impossible to
not be in amazing shape.
	At 9:30, I sat down in my first class of the day...math.  I
resented math.  I never understood how math ever helped you in life.  We
were training to become government officials.  Ironically, the school never
taught us politics or survival skills or any of that useful shit...instead,
they taught us stuff like math and science.  That day, the teacher,
Mrs. Bai, or Mrs. Bitch, as we called her, came in late.
	"Students!" Mrs. Bitch croaked.  "We have a new student among us
today...he is visiting us from Russia!  I expect you to treat him as you
would any student from China!  If I catch any of you..."blah...blah...blah.
She went on like this for the next twenty minutes, which would've been
fine, since it took up time, had it not been her deep, manly voice that was
echoing throughout the small room.
	"Please welcome...Yuri Bovin!"
	That's when I saw him.  I gasped.  Never in my life had any sight
ever thrown me back the way looking at him did.  He was about 5"8 and
towered most of the other students.  He was pretty thin, but very well
defined, especially his muscular arms.  His legs were thin, compared to the
rest of his body, but were also very defined and muscular.  All in all, he
was about 140 pounds of sheer beauty.  He had shiny blond hair and dark,
green eyes and the face of an angel.  I found myself face to face with a
Greek god.  I had seen Michelangelo's David before in pictures and found
myself strangely fascinated by it, but I'd never imagined that any living
breathing human being could be so perfect.  But he was!  Like David in
flesh and blood, instead of stone!
	"Now class," screeched Mrs. Bitch.  "Today, we shall be learning
about the trigonometric value of..."  I wasn't listening.  The whole time,
my eyes were glued to Yuri.  I wanted to touch him...to take all of his
clothes off and to just feel his body.  Just looking at him made me feel
strange...a sensation that I'd never felt before.  I was getting really
horny really fast...and it hurt.  It hurt really badly.
	The whole day at school, all I could think about was Yuri.  A
couple of times I looked at him and he smiled back...that warm smile that
melted my soul.  It felt weird...I couldn't fully grasp what I was feeling.
It was like a drug...so addicting and completely unavoidable...yet, not
enough.  I yearned for more.  But what was that more?  What was it that was
missing?  His blonde hair...his legs...his arms...his face.  What was
happening to me?
	That night, after spending about an hour in the library, I stared
into the ceiling of my dorm room into the late hours of the night.  The
dorms at the Xuzhou Academy were small and cramped.  There were two beds
per room, each room being about the size of the inside of a bread truck. My
room had a large window with a great view of the courtyard and a desk and
coat hanger in the corner which I never used.  Normally, there would be at
least two people to a room, but there was an odd number of students in the
academy, this year, and I got lucky enough to be the one who didn't have a
roommate.  Each floor would have about two or three shower rooms.  Guys and
girls lived in separate dorms (for obvious reasons).
   It was pouring that night.  Spring showers, I guess.  Things just didn't
add up.  "I'm a guy," I thought.  "I like girls.  Girls are hot.  Girls are
beautiful.  Their chests.  Their asses.  Their legs.  Their hair.  Their
dresses.  That's the way things are supposed to be....but Yuri..."  It was
true.  Yuri was more beautiful than anybody I've ever seen, including the
goddess, (my future wife), Lily.  But it wasn't right...Girls were supposed
to look at guys...not other guys.  Did this mean I was a girl?  No...no
way.  So...
   I began to doubt who I was...the further I delved into my personality in
my search to discover the truth about my feelings for Yuri, the more
confused I became of my own identity and who I really was.
   My thoughts were cut short, all of a sudden, when the door to my room
slammed open with a thud.  I shot up out of my bed in shock and confusion.
My eyes had already adjusted to the dark settings of the drab dorm room, so
my eyes hurt as the light from the hallway pierced in through the doorway.
There stood the administrator of the school, Mr.  Qin.  He was a short,
pudgy man in his fifties who would constantly get made fun of behind his
back by the students for being too unattractive to find somebody who wanted
to get married with him, despite having been alive for nearly half a
century.  That, we students speculated, was the reason that he would
constantly punish students for no apparent reason in order to take his
anger and frustration out on us.  After all, girls like real men, not one
with an unclear gender, like Mr. Qin.
   "Wang Tiangang," Mr. Qin snorted in his high-pitched, unmanly voice.
"You're gonna have a new roommate."
   "What the f..." I whispered, before realizing who I was saying this to.
"Of course, Mr. Qin," I replied respectfully, though I wanted to beat that
pig, Mr. Qin, up at the moment, not only for disturbing me in the middle of
the night, but for stripping me of my privacy and making me share a room
with somebody else.  But all those negative feelings vanished when my new
roommate walked in the very next second...It was Yuri.  He glided into the
room, carrying his perfect, angelic figure with him, while having a large
back slung upon his back.  I gasped as I saw him walk in.  The whole time,
my eyes were glued to his strong, manly arms.  What was happening?  The
object of my fantasies...my roommate for the rest of the year?
   "Good night," said Mr. Qin, as he slammed the door shut.  Yuri sat down
on the bed next to mine.
   "Hey, how are you?" he said, in not-so-perfect Chinese.
   "Hi," I replied back, unsure of what to say.  "I'm Wang Tiangang...nice
to...nice to meet you."  I extended my arm.  He grabbed it very firmly.
   "I know," he said.  "I saw you today...in math."
   "Oh yeah..." I said tentatively, cold sweat running down my back.  "Bai
is a real bitch."
   "I know..." Yuri said, chuckling.  "But our teachers in Russia are a lot
worse."
   "I hear Russia's awesome," I said, suddenly starting to feel more
comfortable.
   "It's not," said Yuri.  "The government just wants to make it seem that
way.  I'm glad I'm not in Russia anymore."
   "Well, you'll love China," I said.
   "I'm sure I will," said Yuri.
   "It's getting late...I think we should probably sleep."
   "Yeah...we should," were Yuri's last words, as he stripped off his
clothes and climbed into the bed.  I couldn't help but stare.  Seeing him
shirtless and under the covers gave me a strange sense of happiness.  And
talking to him...and the fact that he was actually willing to talk to
me...was I that good?  I fell asleep, satisfied.
   
   
   Let me know what you think.  Email me, Steve Aramburu, at
aramflag@yahoo.com.