Editor’s Note: The following stories by Yi-Hang Ma 馬翊航 are part of a notebook Queer Time, co-edited by Ta-wei Chi and Ariel Chu, which gathers contemporary queer Taiwanese literature in translation. To read the full Queer Time collection, visit its home here.

To read Siyü Chen’s English translation, click here.

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海邊的房間

　　今年臺北電影節，重新播映了陳俊志的《沿海岸線徵友》與《美麗少年》。從前的情人在《沿海岸線徵友》軋了一角，藍色水族箱燈光的趴場裡扮演跑趴眾男之一，削瘦身軀與爆炸頭髮型，與影片中的主流男同志形象有點落差。一閃而過的幾個鏡頭，讓他有點像孔雀魚群中的海鰻或水母。第一次看《美麗少年》則是1998年的冬天，我在花蓮讀高中。二十年過去，影片中有早逝的大炳，鏡頭外有早逝的陳俊志。片尾KTV段落，有胡BB跟炅姨兩人搞笑互撕，把彼此臉頰推歪的鏡頭。我研究所時期看過胡BB重出江湖的舞台劇，深深覺得如果臺灣有扮裝皇后在小酒吧的脫口秀，他只能是第一人。炅姨則是我跟朋友演《豔光四射歌舞團》時的服裝設計，替我們做了幾套瘋癲俗艷的戲服，後來他以這部片拿下了金馬獎的最佳造型獎。這些事當時是不可能想到的。

　　那是一所藍色的男校。深藏青的冬季外套有種苦修氣質。水藍襯衫平板像卡紙，灰藍長褲則偏向老鼠的尾巴。少年們的制服因為新舊與質料，出現色譜的細微變化，有時也暗示擁有者的家庭環境。放學與上學時段，鱗藍色的小魚群時密時疏游過路口。前門通向山丘，後門通往海岸，有些川堂牆面下方也漆成水藍，校園就像是被海水佔領或洞穿。老師們說這間學校出過許多作家，楊牧，陳克華，王禎和，陳黎⋯⋯你們也有機會。國文課文裡面我只喜歡高二的〈山谷記載〉，我把書局能買到的楊牧慢慢蒐集起來，模仿或手抄《昔我往矣》裡〈JUVENILIA〉刻意收入的一些少作。嘆息了呀。河水。渡船的人。懸吊的星。預言者。我有個老師教過吳岱穎，說我喜歡寫詩，寫的字小小的，跟他很像。陳克華的〈海岸教室〉寫，從前的花中學生午休會向海邊跑，下課就拎著一袋鮮豔的熱帶魚回來。升上了三年級我們也到了最靠海的建築，但我羨慕二樓自然組的風水。與海的距離被組織壓縮，水線吃著微塵的窗台，手往窗邊伸去就能得到波浪的吻，海的真正方位並不重要。

　　接近靠海側門的和平樓則是有鬼的。他們說，你知道和平樓三樓的廁所，為什麼鏡子被拆掉了嗎？為什麼整個樓層的教室都封起來了？問題追蹤著找答案的人。鏡子反射出的是原來應該在此，或者不應該在此的。有人看見一隻鞋子留在廁所裡，另一隻出現在遠方的海岸上，人從此消失在廁所了。另一個傳說是，夜間無人的教室會有人吹著小喇叭，旋律是德弗札克的〈念故鄉〉。廁所的水管怎麼通到海邊，吹小喇叭的人又為了什麼而吹。地面留下空白巢穴，藍色的身體滾動成虛線，把還沒消失的故事圈起來。

　　年少不是知識與經驗的匱乏，是空間的匱乏。海岸並不是一條線，與海岸相鄰的路附著一些空間的毛邊，數目與形狀不均勻的碎片。舊車棚。榕樹。矮圍牆。乾燥的堤防。冷靜的公車亭。消坡塊削弱海浪，消坡塊與消坡塊之間騰出了房間，補足少年與少年的愛。我的一些美麗同輩，擅長在校園裡製造一些戀愛的騷動。我親耳聽見傳說正流傳，但那句子很美：他們下課都去消坡塊那裡。「那裡」是一個車頭，後面跟著動詞的車廂。有的溫柔，有的不堪。少年與少年們一陣一陣造火車。突突南下，好興奮。研究所時候為了申請軍訓抵免回到高中，朋友指著海岸說，你看海岸線已經後退了，以前大家都是在那裡——

　　但我在那裡嗎？

　　同班同學Ｌ從瑞穗來，在花蓮市區租了一間房，對於我們這種更南邊來的住宿生來說是上流階級了。有天下課他要我陪他去圖書館借書，他借了一本《聯合文學》雜誌回來。他斜斜靠在二樓教室外面的走廊，沒有跟我說為什麼要借這本書。⋯⋯同志⋯⋯文學⋯⋯愛戀⋯⋯除了《花蓮青年》與校刊我沒有看過太多文學雜誌。直到下課鐘響前，那本雜誌都停靠在他胸口。陽光清白斜打在水藍制服。潔淨，沒有任何折線的風景，小魚在鈕扣與鈕扣間游動。

　　我住的宿舍圍牆有刺。白鐵圍籬，花苞與花萼形狀的三叉尖矛。水泥陡坡往上是磚牆再往上是刺籬，高牆像過重的判決。牆外是一排雅靜住宅，手書春聯，九重葛，發財樹，花貓與白狗。細小爬藤繞轉在圍籬上，餐廳後面的一小段尖刺處被折彎削平，學長們留下來的破口。都說打蛇要打七吋，教官十點晚點名，專打少年們的七吋。「奉勸各位同學，晚點名之後就好好自習，睡覺，不要偷翻牆。以前你們有學長啊，翻牆回來卡到蛋蛋——」少年們發出哄笑，笑聲裡鑲嵌淡淡不安。不敢爬，沒懶蛋。爬了以後掉懶蛋。我不在意懶蛋。Ｌ打電話來，問我要不要去他的房間讀書過夜。我決定翻牆，隨之而來的是一連串障壁。要保持浴後的香氣，輕鬆乾淨的睡衣內褲，收受室友們恭賀與嘲弄揉成一團的起鬨，繞過教官與值星學長的眼目抵達餐廳後方，後退五步助跑踩上（前人放好的）小椅子一口氣蹬上水泥牆握緊銀白色的欄杆如同握緊你從未真正握緊的他人⋯⋯翻牆出去的時候，花貓在牆的另一端。被驚動之後竄到車底，留下一對警戒的金眼珠。雖然蛋蛋是保住了，但現在回想，還是有種可疑的，身體懸掛在銳物上的幻覺。愛果真是需要力量與僥倖。

　　《美麗少年》在花蓮放映的時候是冬天，是我第一次看紀錄片。視聽室陰暗冷涼，但因為螢幕上的少年，在二二八公園掏出粉餅補妝像平實奔放的夜來香，夜暗的酒吧扮裝擺動泡棉觸角，是嚴厲美艷的星際女王，讓我看了人在洞穴心在汗。《美麗少年》有其嚴肅的一面，當年在文化中心主持紀錄片放映與座談的陳黎一定有點出的。少年的疾病恐懼，性／愛的焦慮，大螢幕出櫃的緊張感（我這樣夠漂亮嗎！）。但我一心想當北部美少女，記憶裡總是削弱了紀錄片的論辯張力。不能說是情有可原，是我太想要自己的房間。

　　鯨向海的〈徵友〉寫，「我二十四歲。／趨近於楊喚詩裡白色小馬的年齡」。我二十四歲的時候也有了自己（租）的房間。房間裡躁進幽沉的情人，意外成為陳俊志《沿海岸線徵友》裡的某條奇異游魚。我待在自己的房間，情人的房間卻很開闊。他說不會也不能跟我綁在一個房間。契約是會帶來傷害的——他的文學理論。他與我分享他在其他房間的故事，說不定也期待我去探索。他去的那間房間，書櫃裡有詩集有小說，主人讀書，令他覺得安心。他們吃令人開心的小糖果，音樂從身體裡湧上來後就出發。因為他愛我，所以他誠實。我在自己的房間裡邊聽他的故事邊想，壞柚子色的燈打在他清白的鎖骨。我掛在牆上，以為自己知道要轉向哪一片海。

娘娘槍

　　大學時候聽過一個故事。朱衛茵跟陳鴻兩個廣播主持人在閒聊，朱衛茵說，她從前剛在臺灣主持廣播時很挫折，因為常被聽眾抱怨有香港腔。陳鴻安慰她：妳這還算好的，我都是被聽眾抱怨娘娘腔呢。

　　那時覺得很好笑很有力，因為各種對陰柔性別氣質批評的回擊，解嘲，四兩撥千斤，都值得保留，成為我這款娘娘腔的資料庫彈藥庫。娘還要更娘，辣成恰查某。誰奈我何或無可奈何的生存美學與哲學。現在想起來在意的是，這個故事的張力，也因為兩種腔不完全是同物，一個通向他方，一個抵達現場。拇指與中指圈出蓮花指，從鳳眼般的孔縫注視他人，洞穿自己。

　　辣是要模仿的，漂亮的戰鬥也需要系譜。日本學者齋藤環的《戰鬪美少女的精神分析》，歸納出動漫作品中戰鬪美少女至少有十三種分類，魔法少女系，同居系，服裝倒錯系，巫女系，異世界系不等。記憶中最早的戰鬪美少女，是科學小飛俠中的珍珍，以及台灣盜版太空戰士中的粉紅戰士（網路搜尋後才發現應該正名叫金鳳，竟有點海產店老闆娘的氣魄了）。這種組合在齋藤環的分類裡是「紅一點系」。做工不甚精細的戰隊服有仿綢質感，攜帶鞭子、弓箭之類的柔性兵器劈腿翻躍，騎上摩托車飛揚塵土，不知是記憶模糊或者是製作成本有限，戰鬥場景總是有種工業區質感，土堆上的芒草因為怪獸摔倒而抖動。科學小飛俠的珍珍睫毛好像可以刺穿壓克力面罩。我喜歡她的披風，粉紅鋸齒在深藍太空裡飄動，海蝸牛之屬。團體發動火鳥功的時候，要緊閉雙眼，額頭出汗吶喊，在死的邊緣移動。美需要痛苦兌換。

　　大學時候因為心臟二尖瓣脫垂跟體重過輕，一直以為自己理應免役，只要等待埋葬，不需要上戰場。豈知碩士論文寫完體重近七十公斤，體檢結果健壯如一頭母牛。知道現實世界不是太空戰隊中的優雅擔當粉紅一點，幾百個光頭裡面我只是比較娘的光頭。

　　當兵前也儲蓄了一些關於新兵的笑話：

　　菜逼八，你拿什麼槍！

　　報告長官，我拿娘娘槍！

　　笑話其實用不太到，清槍起立清槍蹲下步槍分解結合已經消耗大半時間。十月末尾入伍，天氣不是秋老虎就是秋雨，值得安慰的只有公發綠色雨衣是斗篷剪裁。寬敞，飄揚，把雨衣穿成一口鐘（是張愛玲《色，戒》裡的易太太呢），從連上集體行進到餐廳時就有秘密的伸展台。人在雨衣裡，美在心中坐。讓雄壯威武解散吧！在斗篷的掩護下偷偷走著貓步，口不對心，一二一二，口腔裡偷偷敲擊著新的口令。端莊！賢淑！淫蕩！嬌媚！柔軟！曖昧！緩慢！高亢！尖銳！張狂！飛舞——喔，私自攜帶彈藥是違法的。

　　新訓戰鬥課程需要到教練場練習偽裝，採集各種野地植物插在身上，假裝自己是一叢草。配發泥黑墨綠的偽裝膏，用來彩繪臉部迷彩。這就是Project Runway啊！我在心中吶喊著。本次主題為：野性的呼喚，請參賽者以咸豐草昭和草五節芒甜根子草及其他野地植物製作夜間禮服，時間為五十分鐘，配額成本為：零元。當然並沒有人像實境節目一樣爭先恐後奔向野地的草叢。遲緩，懶散，如一些淋過雨的牛。我拔起那些名稱不明的植物，將自己裝飾成一叢普通的，微有鋸齒的草，沒能把自己插成碧昂絲或是高潮的鳳梨。清槍蹲下，清槍綺麗——唱乎自己聽。我因為諧音快樂，但沒有開槍。

　　也許真正偏愛的不是紅一點系，是少女戰隊。像水手月亮遇見水手水星與火星；魔法騎士雷阿斯的獅堂光遇見龍咲海與鳳凰寺風。我後來遇見另一個同梯叫紅姊。清晨連集合場集合前他都會記得戴上角膜變色片。

　　鄰兵問：紅姊你的眼睛怎麼那麼有神。

　　他甩甩（並不存在的）長髮，說：我本來就是這麼美。

　　那是他遞給我的娘娘槍與月光寶盒。只是再美的女兵也會退伍，戰隊也會解散，從有晶體與巫力的異世界回到土水現實。後來陸續有朋友入伍，我成了美少女戰隊的領頭羊。我打開備份的文件檔，要把入伍前的預備小物清單要傳給朋友。檔名叫做「辣妹髮妝」，小物從入伍通知書生活照大頭照奇異筆電子錶到防蚊液都有。最後面有個選配清單：唇蜜，褲襪，放大片，化妝棉，小扇子。其實那些玫瑰色小物不帶也沒關係。但或許收到的人也可以穿梭，在內務櫃裡提槍擊發一次。

　　讓那裡看起來並非那麼無可撼動，那麼平凡無效。

A ROOM BY THE SEA

They showed Mickey Chen’s Fragile in Love and Boys for Beauty again in this year’s Taipei Film Festival. A former lover of mine had a role in Fragile in Love, as one of the extras partying under the blue aquarium light. His thin body and large, bushy hair didn’t quite fit the film’s more mainstream gay aesthetic, and in those brief moments he appeared on screen, he looked like an eel or jellyfish among a school of guppies. The first time I saw Boys for Beauty was in the winter of 1998, when I was attending high school in Hualien. In the twenty years that followed, Dabing, one of its subjects, would die young, and so would Mickey Chen, its director. In the karaoke lounge scene near the end of the film, Hu BB and Auntie Jiong get into a playfight in front of the camera, shoving each other’s faces aside as they exchange insults. I saw Hu BB’s stage play comeback when I was in graduate school and became thoroughly convinced that had there been drag shows in Taiwan’s bars, he’d have been a pioneer. Auntie Jiong was our costume designer for Splendid Float, and its wild, campy costumes won him Best Makeup and Costume in the Golden Horse Awards. We couldn’t have imagined any of this back in the day.

It was an all-boys school in blue. Our winter coats were an austere navy blue. Our ocean blue shirts were stiff like cardboard, and our slate blue trousers like the tails of rats. The boys’ uniforms had slight color variations depending on their age and material, sometimes hinting at their wearer’s social background. In the evenings and mornings, small schools of blue-scaled fish would flit through the street in thickening and thinning streams. The front gate faced a hill, and the back gate led out into the sea; some buildings had their wall skirtings painted blue, too, and the whole school seemed engulfed and submerged in seawater. Our teachers told us that many writers had come out of our school, such as Yang Mu, Chen Kehua, Wang Zhenhe, Chen Li… You, too, could have a chance. The only thing I actually enjoyed in Chinese class was “Notes from the Valley,” a story found in my second-year textbook. I began to collect every Yang Mu piece I could find in the bookstore, imitating or hand-copying his early work from the “JUVENILIA” section of Then as I Went Leaving. A sigh. A river. Travelers on boats. Suspended stars. A prophet. One of my teachers also taught Wu Daiying, and he told me that my poems, all written in my tiny handwriting, reminded him of Wu. In “Seaside Classroom,” Chen Kehua recounts how the students of Hualien High would run to the shore during lunch break and come home with bags full of colorful tropical fish. As third-years, we too moved to the building closest to the sea, but I still envied the natural sciences class for their view on the second floor. The distance to the sea was formulated and compressed; the waterline lapped the dusty windowsills. You could reach out your hand and feel the kiss of the waves; the sea’s real location was inconsequential. 

The building by the seaside gate was haunted. They asked, do you know why the bathroom on the third floor of the Heping Building had its mirrors taken down? Do you know why they boarded up all the classrooms on that floor? The questions pursued those seeking answers. The mirrors would reflect things that should have been there, or things that shouldn’t have been there. Through them, a boy had seen a lone shoe lying in the bathroom—and another shoe on the shore, in the distance—before he went missing. Another story claimed that at night, a trumpeter would play Dvořák’s “Going Home” in one of the abandoned classrooms. How were those bathroom pipes connected to the shore, and why did the trumpeter play his song? A blank, empty nest was left on the ground, and a blue body rolled itself into a dotted line to envelop the lingering stories.

Youth was not the lack of knowledge or experience, but the lack of space. The shore was not a line. The hazy edges of space were bound to the seaside roads, fragments varying in shapes and numbers. Old garages. Banyan trees. Low walls. Dry dikes. Impassive bus stops. The concrete tetrapods tempered the waves, and the space between them made room for love between boys. My beautiful peers were experts in creating the stirrings of schoolyard romance. I was there to hear the stories being made, and despite everything, the sentences themselves were beautiful: they went to the place near the tetrapods after class. “The place” was a locomotive, followed by carriages of active verbs, some gentle, some obscene. Boy and boy made train after train, all chugging down south, all thrilling. When I returned during my graduate school years to apply for exemption from basic combat training, a friend pointed to the sea and said look, the shoreline has receded. That’s the place where we used to—

But was I in that place?

My classmate L. came from Ruisui and had a rented room in Hualien. To the rest of us boarders from even further south, this was already considered a luxury. One day after class, he asked me to go to the library with him, and there he borrowed a copy of Unitas. He leaned aslant against the wall of our second-floor hallway, and he didn’t tell me why he had borrowed that magazine in particular. …Queer…literature…love… Other than Hualien Youth and our school publications, I hadn’t read that many literary magazines. That magazine remained propped against his chest until the school bells rang. The sun cast its pale rays on his ocean blue uniform. Pristine, a line of unobstructed sight, little fish swimming between his buttons.

The wall around my dormitory was thorned. White iron fences with spikes the shape of flower buds and sepals. Above the concrete slope was a brick wall, and above the brick wall were thorns—the tall wall seemed too harsh a sentence. Beyond the wall was a row of elegant residentials, handwritten duilians, bougainvillea, money trees, calico cats, and white dogs. Delicate vines coiled around the fences, and in a section behind the cafeteria, the thorns were bent and flattened, an opening left by our seniors. They say that to kill a snake, you have to hit it where it hurts. Our military officer did his evening roll call at 10 PM, and he knew exactly where to hit us. “I suggest you guys either do some studying or head to bed. Don’t even try to scale the wall. In a previous class, some kid got his balls snagged on the fence—” The boys burst into laughter, and in their laughter was a hint of nervousness. They didn’t dare scale the wall, hadn’t got the balls. Were afraid they’d lose their balls. I didn’t care about my balls. L. called me on the phone and asked if I wanted to come read and spend the night in his room. I decided to scale the wall, as well as whatever obstacles that followed. I had to smell fresh out of the shower, had to have clean and comfortable pajamas and underwear. I had to endure the compliments and mockeries of my dormmates, had to evade the watchful eyes of the military officers and prefects as I made my way behind the cafeteria, where I stepped back into a racetrack pose and launched myself, with the help of a stool (that somebody else had placed there), onto the concrete wall, holding tight onto the white fence the way I’d never held onto another person… I found a calico cat on the other side. Startled, it dashed under a car, revealing only a pair of wary golden eyes. My balls were safe, yet thinking back, I can still feel an unsettling phantom sensation of my body impaled on sharp objects. Love indeed required strength and foolhardiness.

Hualien first screened Boys for Beauty in the winter, and it was my first time seeing a documentary. I sweated in the dark, cold cave of the theater room as the boys on screen took out their powder foundations in Taipei’s 228 Park, their made-up faces bold like night-blooming cowslip flowers. They weaved through dark bars costumed and twirling polyfoam antennae, all solemn and beautiful interstellar queens. Boys for Beauty has its serious side, as Chen Li—who was in charge of documentary screenings and lectures at the cultural center—must have pointed out. The boys’ fear of disease, their anxiety over sex and love, their nervousness about coming out on the big screen (do I look pretty enough?). But I was fixated on wanting to be a Taipei beauty, and in my memories I always downplayed the discursive value of the film. I had no excuse; I simply wanted a room of my own. 

The poet Jin Xianghai writes in “Looking for Friends:” “I’m twenty-four. / Almost the same age as the white pony in Yang Huan’s poem.” At twenty-four, I too had my own (rented) room. Within that room was an ambitious and somber lover, who would eventually become that strange fish in Fragile in Love¹. I remained in my room, but my lover’s room was wide open. He told me he’d never tie himself to my room. Commitment opens the door to pain—this was his literary theory. He shared with me his stories from another room, perhaps hoping that I too would go exploring. The room he visited had poems and novels on its bookshelves. Its owner read, which gave him comfort. They ate happy little candies together, taking off when music surged out of their bodies. He was honest, for he loved me. In my own room, I listened to his stories and let my mind wander, watching grapefruit-colored lights glow against his pale collarbones. I hung myself on the wall, thinking I knew which part of the sea I would turn to.

^{1 The film Fragile in Love is loosely based on the poem “Looking for Friends.”}

SISSY-GUN

I’d heard a story in college. During a conversation between broadcasters Rosita Chu and Chen Hong, Chu said her confidence really took a hit when she first started working in Taiwan, because the audience complained about her Hong Kong accent. Chen comforted her: hey, at least they weren’t complaining about your sissy accent.

This had amused me, since anything that challenged or played up the idea of effeminacy was worth stowing away as ammunition for my private sissy arsenal. O to be more sissy than a sissy, fiercer than the baddest bitch. A philosophy and aesthetics of existence born out of impudence and resignation. Thinking back to it now, the appeal of the story lay in the fact that the two broadcasters’ accents were of completely different natures. One led to another place, one zeroed in on the here and now. Fingers extended like the petals of a blossoming lotus, one peeks out of the phoenix-eye-shaped gap between the thumb and middle finger, looking at others, seeing through oneself.

Fierceness is something that has to be learned, and the art of beautiful fighting has its own lineage. In Beautiful Fighting Girl, the Japanese scholar Tamaki Saitō identifies at least thirteen subgenres of fighting girls in manga and anime, such as the magical girl, the roommate girl, the cross-dressing girl, the witch girl, and the girl from another world. The first beautiful fighting girl I remember was Jun the Swan from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, as well as the pink warrior from the Taiwanese knockoff Space Warriors (after some Internet research, it turned out that her official name was Jin Feng, which sounds rather like the name of a seafood shop proprietress). According to Saitō, fighting squads like these would fall under the “splash of crimson” subgenre, referring to the one drop of pink among a sea of men. The girls’ slapdash costumes have the texture of rayon; wielding malleable weapons such as whips and bows, they kick and leap their way onto their motorbikes before speeding off in a trail of dust. Due to either the fogginess of my own memory or the limits of the production budgets, the fight scenes all had an industrial quality, the silvergrass on top of dirt piles trembling as the monsters plunged into the earth. Jun’s eyelashes seemed to have the ability to pierce through her acrylic mask. I liked her cape, liked its pink zig-zag hem flapping in the blue sky, the kin of sea snails. When the group called upon their firebird power, she’d close her eyes and let out a battle cry, her forehead drenched in sweat as she hovered along the brink of death. Pain was indeed the price of beauty.

Back in college, I was severely underweight and had a mitral valve prolapse in my heart, so I’d assumed I’d be exempt from military service—all I had to do was wait for burial, no need to ever set foot on a battlefield. To my own surprise, by the time I had finished my master’s thesis, my physical exam results showed that I weighed nearly seventy kilos and was healthy as a heifer. In the real world, there were no splashes of crimson among space warriors. I was just a more effeminate shaved head among hundreds of shaved heads.

I stocked up on military themed jokes before I began my service.

Maggot, what’s that you’re holding?
Sir! It’s my sissy-gun², sir!

As it turned out, there was no need for jokes. Get up in the morning, stand at attention, clean my gun, get down on the ground, field strip, reassemble—all this took up most of my time. I began service at the tail end of October, the weather alternating between sweltering autumn heat and pouring autumn rain; my only relief was that the green raincoats assigned to us were in the form of cloaks. Oversized and free-flowing, my raincoat became a classic cape (like Mrs. Yee’s in Eileen Chang’s Lust, Caution), a secret runway already in place the moment I joined the crowd and marched to the cafeteria. Body in the raincoat, beauty in the soul. It was time to disband might and machismo! Under the cover of my cape, I stepped onto a secret catwalk, my disobedient tongue repeating new, silent commands. One, two, one, two. Elegant! Virtuous! Lascivious! Sweet! Soft! Flirtatious! Leisurely! Uproarious! Sharp! Untamed! Liftoff! Dance—     Oh right, it’s illegal to privately carry ammunition.

Basic combat training included a class on camouflage, and we went out to the training field, searching for wild plants to stick on ourselves so we could pretend to be bushes. They gave us black and green paste to paint our faces. This is Project Runway! I screamed internally. The theme of the episode: Call of the Wild. The contestants shall construct an evening gown out of beggarticks, fireweed, silvergrass, Kans grass, and other wild plants. The time limit: fifty minutes. Extra budget: zero yuan. Of course, nobody made a mad dash for the raw materials like the contestants did on the show. We moved slowly, languidly, like a herd of rain-soaked cattle. I picked up plants I couldn’t name and decorated myself into an ordinary, vaguely zig-zag-shaped bush that resembled neither Beyoncé nor a fiery, orgasmic pineapple. I strip my gun and get down on the ground, I clean my gun and there’s magic all around—and so I sang to myself. I took great joy in my puns, but I never opened fire.

Perhaps what attracted me was not the splash of crimson, but the idea of a fighting girl squad. Like Sailor Moon meeting Sailor Mercury and Sailor Mars, like Hikaru Shidou from Magic Knight Rayearth meeting Umi Ryuuzaki and Fuu Hououji. I later found a compatriot in Sister Hong. He never forgot to put on his colored contact lenses, even for morning assembly.  

A fellow soldier asked: Hong-jie, why are your eyes so bright?
He tossed his (non-existent) long hair: because I’m just that beautiful.

That was the sissy-gun he handed me, my moonlight Pandora’s box. But even the most beautiful fighting girl has to retire someday and disband her squad, leaving a world of crystals and magic for a reality of earth and water. Later, when more friends of mine got drafted, I became the new trailblazer of the fighting girl squad. I opened the text document I’d prepared and sent out a packing list titled “Fierce Babe Beauty Book.” It contained everything from conscription notices, candid shots, and headshots to magic markers, electronic watches, and mosquito repellent. At the end of the document, there was an optional checklist: lip gloss, stockings, circle lenses, makeup pads, folding fans. These rose-colored items were not strictly necessary, but perhaps those receiving my list could use them to step through dimensions and fire off a shot inside the closet.

And make that space seem less formidable, less mundane and futile.

² The words “gun” and “accent” are homophones in the original Chinese.