Confessions of a Catholic (118)

After that "first night" I spent with Rex, I noticed a lot of strange gaze around me. Some looked at me like a fallen star. Some looked at me like I had HPV. Some looked at me like I had terminal cancer. Some looked at me like I was contagious. A once pretty, come clean goddess with good scores and loving family became just a battered MK girlfriend whose virginity was unapologetically seized by a ghetto gangster, like a second hand D&G bag now only depreciated to worth nothing, or a used Lamborghini with no resale values.

Only Rex and I knew that nothing happened. Everyone else assumed that I gave him my virginity. Nobody said anything to my face or dared to ask if we actually did it. Was that the benefit of doubt? Not sure, it was a legal lexicon anyways. I didn't think people were calling me sluts behind my back, but I would not be surprised either if they said so. I didn't have that look of shame losing my virginity to a gangster, and to be honest, why should I ever feel ashamed of something I never committed at all? In many people's eyes, I was considered the beauty and the best. They saw my first night with a gangster as a flaw in my seemingly impeccable image.

I must have been unaware of STD diseases because I dated a gangster. I must have been bold and shameless in giving away my virginity like that. I must have been clueless in sex education. I must have not used a condom. I must have been unaware of the AIDS wave in the 90s. I must have lived in a cocoon my entire life, if not a yellow submarine. I must have been an idiot in romantic relationship. This lack of guard against opposite sex must have been my biggest weakness, as fatal as the Anchilles' heel. I was deemed "perfect" up until I dated Rex. If I didn't go out with him, I could have been the next Cathy Tsui. I could have been America's next top model. I could have been married to a peak resident, living my worry-free life like a canary. I could have dated a doctor, an accountant, an engineer, a dentist, anything but a gangster. The majority of the students in my school were diligent, hard-working and so neat freak that they could be sterile.

I was not particularly sensitive in digging out what people had to say about my chastity behind my back. But they said that I was not chaste because I let loose my Qipao button on my neck after I finished a basketball game. Apparently, they linked that button to a woman's chastity while dressing up in bra top outside of school and showing their entire thighs when they swayed to the music in choir practice.

Another thing that I started noticing was that a considerable number of my acquaintances were citing poems that had sexual connotations. I was more of a humanities student so I could pick up what they were trying to convey. One of them was the classic verse, "曾經滄海難為水，除卻巫山不是雲". I could maybe paraphrase a little here. The poem looked like it was describing a scene in the mountain, expressing a spectacular view of a height that could not be compared to the native land and of a water body that was insignificant when compared with the familiar sea at home. But a native speaker would also be able to tell from its pronunciation that could imply something sexual. It might actually look something like "Once upon a time, the wet ass pussy had a pus", "after leaving the wizard mountain, no one was anything like the cloud and no sex could be compared to my first one". You needed a bit of imagination here. But overall, Chinese native speakers would understand.

I was okay with these hidden messages and indirect mocking. I was okay with being called an old fossil by my rival, Jacqueline. I was okay with speculations about my sexual health. What had I done? I had just turned Hong Kong into an "imagine nation" by "doing nothing". I was deeply entertained and amused by their reaction. I thought Hong Kong people had the highest average IQ score in the world. Since when did they become so gullible? No idea...

Mother Mary or shameless slut, either way, I felt somewhat futile in defending myself in this increasingly polarized and biased world so I thought I might just stay silent and let their imagination run wild.