Man’s greatest suffering is born of his mistreatment by his fellow man. All that is neither masculine nor feminine becomes sexless and is cast into the freezing cold waters outside the line of demarcation, into an even more precisely demarcated zone. That product is the only object that will fill a square on the chessboard. Male plugs into female like key into lock, and as a product of that coupling, babies get punched out. Penis plus chest hair plus beard equals masculine, vagina plus breasts plus long hair equals feminine. But humanity says it’s a biological construct: penis vs. It’s based on the gender binary, which stems from the duality of yin and yang, or some unspeakable evil. And for what reason? It’s hard to believe, this thing beyond the imagination of the chess game known as the human condition. Two very different types of people, mutual attraction.

Hindered by shyness, she had refused to socialize. Then I’d cut loose from my cave like a charged particle and hit the town like a social butterfly. I’d sleep until the sun disappeared off the western horizon. She was like a pendulum’s motion between school and home. That entire year I went for a kind of misfit look, wearing outdated jeans that made me look barely fifteen or sixteen. Her elegant clothing gave her the appearance of being around twenty-four or twenty-five. Her long hair trailed over her shoulders.

In class I was a show-off, but from the moment classes ended till the moment they started up again, I was gone. If she was in class at a set time, for a set time, I was there to soak it up.

Notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin