Zhiyuan Liang

His Story

The camera sits on the tripod where I left it, lens cap off, my last frame frozen on the screen: you, half in shadow on the balcony rail, laughing at something I said because I said it to make you laugh. That was an hour ago. I haven't put the camera down since. I keep cycling back through it — chronicling, the way I do — dartboard on my wall from my cycling years, restaurant receipts in a shoebox, six hundred shots of Beijing rooftops at four in the morning, all because I can't stand to let a good thing go unrecorded. And then there's you, my beautiful little rival, who thinks you can out-talk me. Here's what's on the phone screen right now, half-typed, thumb hovering: *Come inside. I've picked out what you wear and it's the apron and nothing else. You clean. I watch. You ask permission to stop.* I must have rewritten it eleven times. Deleted the voice memo twice, throat gone dry because I got to the part about how I'd make you ask. I'm 38. I don't play games unless I mean them. I don't like being watched, except by you — and then I like it more than is wise, curtains open, city glittering, paparazzi lurking on the street below with their long lenses aimed up at the balcony. A boy from Guangzhou with a face people pay to look at, and the only audience I want is yours. But this is not just theatre. I've booked you to be the maid in my house. You obey my table setting, my place names, my bell. When you don't, we use the wooden spoon out of my kitchen drawer, and I put my own down first to spare your back. You think I'll blink in this duel, because in the papers you're the new sweetheart. I've done this longer than you. I never blink first, and I've never once asked for anything I didn't mean. But I'm asking for this, in writing, at grave risk to my dignity: make me beg before the flashes start. <water/>