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The air inside the bar is thick and heavy, so thick Xiao can almost feel it weighing on his tongue like the aftertaste of his drink. He can’t remember the name of it. The bartender, a man with shockingly pink hair and a tattoo on his neck, had grinned and called him handsome, and that word had driven out all hope of Xiao comprehending anything else he said. He had nodded jerkily and accepted the drink without responding, his heart beating in his ears and along with the fluctuating noise around him. The bartender had laughed loudly at his reaction. Like a rabbit, he’d said in Cantonese. Calm down, little brother. You’re fine here.
Xiao doesn’t know if he is, though. He’s never been to a bar like this before, but it reminds him of the parties he hated in high school—the smudged makeup, high-pitched laughter, the thumping music that he can feel resounding in his ribcage, an unpleasant sensation not unlike the beating of his own heart. The press of bodies against him that would always cause him to shrink away, the swirling mass of humanity that he was never comfortable in.
Here, the mass of humanity is similar in its noise and motion as the masses at those parties, yet it is so very different. It is a surging crowd of beautiful, beautiful men, all somehow comfortable in such proximity—enjoying the closeness, even. Chinese, Thai, European, American—so many different, beautiful faces, so much laughter and chatter and belonging. Xiao stands against a wall, holding a drink he doesn’t know the name of, watching and not watching. Watching, because he wants to watch. Not watching, because his mind constantly berates him for doing so, as it has done his whole life. Do not look. Do not think of looking.
He looks down into the liquid in his cup. Its aftertaste is sour, but not altogether unpleasant.
How pitiful he must look. Someone who goes to one of the only places he can theoretically belong, yet still doesn’t let himself do so.
Hey, little brother!
Want to dance, handsome?
I like your tattoo. Can I see some more of it?
Every time the words are tossed his way, by some man’s laughing face, Xiao starts and stares back down into his drink, his heart speeding up. He never answers. He can’t. Words don’t come to him—they evade him. In every language he knows, he has never learned how to respond to a man’s interest.
How pitiful.
Hey! I like your eyes, little brother!
The first part is spoken in English, but the address is in Cantonese. Xiao blinks, looking around through the darkness and warmth and color of the room. There’s a man in front of him, who has extricated himself from the fluctuating mass and is standing still, grinning widely. He’s European, but short, with dark hair dyed teal in two braids on either side of his round face. His makeup is eyecatching—teal eyeshadow that matches his hair, tiny rhinestones glittering at the corners of his eyes, and red lipstick. His shirt collar is cut just low enough to show his collarbones, and Xiao’s eyes flicker down and back up.
He is the most beautiful man here. That is certain, and with that certainty Xiao’s heart beats uncomfortably, dread settling in his stomach. He has never been good around such beautiful men.
The man saunters towards him, his smile still wide, and it would be infectious if Xiao could move his facial muscles. His movements are fluid, free, unbothered—he has made a place for himself in this world, and he’s making sure everyone knows it. You’re so cute, he says in English, coming to a stop so close to Xiao that he can see the mascara clumped on his eyelashes. How hasn’t anyone gotten you to dance yet?
I’m wearing colored contacts, Xiao says suddenly, his voice coming out too quiet and too raspy. He hadn’t expected his vocal cords to work at all, and he considers the words now thrust between them with surprise. This is now a conversation, something Xiao hadn’t planned and doesn’t know what to do with.
Well, yeah, the man laughs. Nobody’s eyes are naturally such a pretty gold. I’m sure your natural eyes are pretty too, though, if they’re anything like the rest of you. His eyes flick up and down, and Xiao feels his face grow warm.
Your eyes are nice, he says stiltedly. I’ve never seen someone with such green eyes before.
The corners of the man’s eyes crinkle in a smile. You’re sweet. And your accent is so cute, where are you from?
Xiao pauses. A rural town in Sìchūan province. You’ve never heard of it.
Sorry, but you’re right, I barely know where Sìchūan province is. A quick laugh. Did you like it there?
Xiao doesn’t know how to respond. It is not easy to forgive the sins of your home, but it is easy to forget them in a room so full of beauty, while talking to a man who bursts with color and life and freedom. I like it here in Hong Kong more, he responds.
A lift of dark eyebrows. Why is that? The men are prettier here?
He says it so easily, so naturally. Like he’s never had to hide before. And for all Xiao knows, he hasn’t.
Some of them, Xiao hears himself say.
The man laughs again. Xiao’s words amuse him. Life itself probably amuses him, Xiao thinks. He tilts his head, and his bangs fall across his forehead like strokes of ink. The rhinestones glitter at the corners of his eyes, catching the light as he steps forward, closer to Xiao. Come dance with me, he says, perfectly painted lips whispering the words into Xiao’s ear.
Xiao swallows. He wants to say yes. He wants to take this man’s hand and finally go into the swirling mass of humanity that he has never had the courage to enter before. He wants too much, too intensely, and he can already feel himself stifling it—a reflex, a needed one.
But no one here stifles their want. Certainly not this man, whose hand Xiao can already feel curling around his waist, causing an electric shock to jolt through Xiao from the point of contact. Xiao sets down his drink on a table, and he can almost hear the man’s smile.
Over twenty years of building a dam in his heart, now with the first cracks starting to show.
What’s your name?
A second hand brushes the back of his neck, tugging him even closer, and Xiao almost stumbles.
Venti. A single breath, a single word. And yours?
Xiao.
Just Xiao?
Just Xiao.
I want to know your full name someday, Just Xiao, Venti murmurs. His eyes are half-lidded, but their rhinestones wink as brightly as ever.
A dam in his heart made of secrets and self-disgust, of rumors and ugly words and shaking sobs. A dam that he can feel finally beginning to crack here, almost two thousand kilometers away from the place of his birth that he knows now was never his home.
It is a structure built over too many years to shatter so quickly under the gaze of a man with rhinestones by his eyes. It is a structure that Xiao knows will not fall now, nor anytime soon. He wonders what its absence would feel like, if he will ever experience it.
Maybe you will, Xiao says.
Venti breathes a laugh. He inhales the heavy, alcohol-tinged air of this room but exhales pure euphoria. It is a conversion that Xiao wants to know the secret to, just like how he wants to know the texture of Venti’s ink-painting hair between Xiao’s fingers, the feel of his body under Xiao’s hands. He wants and wants, and maybe, just maybe, now he can allow himself to have.
With the dam cracked, who knows what is possible.
So when Venti leans even closer, winding his fingers through Xiao’s hair, Xiao meets him halfway.