Red Hat Goes to Taipei
崔詞諳
著
© the author 2017
Apple Daily and Next Weekly were her guilty pleasures. If
Chenping, her daughter-in-law, found her reading them, she would press her lips
tightly together in a thin line of disdain and make one of her snooty, “I just
ate a sour dried-plum” faces. At least now she could read them online and
didn’t have to worry about Chenping snooping through her things on the pretext
of cleaning her room. Of course, Chenping never said anything when she found
copies of the gossip magazines. She would just push them aside with the tip of
her cleaning brush as if she thought that touching them would contaminate her. But
Chenping wouldn’t let a minute go by without making some remark about guarding
the children against evil influences. As if she would do anything to hurt her
grandchildren. And Chenping was one to talk—all that nonsense about not feeding
the children sweets and candy. Chenping didn’t care about sugar. She was just
too tight-fisted to spend money. That woman could squeeze a New Taiwan Dollar
until it was an Old Taiwan Dollar.
The online versions of both magazines were better anyway.
All the illustrations were in color, and you could enlarge the pictures to see
details that were hard to see in the print versions. Like this story about the
two foreigners in Singapore who had disappeared. Apple Daily had copious pictures of what it was calling the
“Perverted Love Nest in Singapore” 新加坡變態愛巢. One of the missing men had a Chinese altar table
in his living room, complete with a statue of a god wearing a red cowboy hat.
The writers of the story were making a fuss about this sacrilegious insult to a
Chinese god.
Old
Mrs. Yan giggled and looked around to make sure that one of the busybodies in
the apartments opposite her window wasn’t standing on her balcony and checking
up on the neighbors. When she was satisfied that no one was watching, she
zoomed in on the picture of the statue. The god was definitely well-muscled and
the thin loin cloth covering his male parts didn’t exactly hide the source of
his power. The image was so clear the veins in his male thingy stood out. She
could even read the characters on the base of the statue. 紅帽 Hóng Mào. Red Hat—a strange name for a god.
But the name was a coincidence that was too strong to
ignore. Her son’s given name was 宏茂. Hóngmào. The characters for her son’s name
were pronounced the same. Mrs. Yan pressed her hands together and made an
obeisance to Red Hat. “Give my son what he most desires,” she prayed. When she
lifted her head, she thought for an instance that the god in the picture was
smiling at her.
***
Another believer. Things were definitely looking up. Red
Hat swiftly traversed the distance separating Singapore and Taipei. Once he had
had a few thousand adherents in Taiwan. He was heartened to find out that he
hadn’t been completely forgotten there. A mother praying for her son. Now he
just had to locate the son and find out what he most desired.
***
Professor Yan Hongmao was fighting hard to stay awake.
The departmental chair was fond of listening to herself talk. He hoped she
would stop soon. The meeting had gone on far too long. Plus, the air inside the office was so stuffy.
He wondered if anyone would protest if he opened a window. He had barely voiced
the thought to himself when Professor Chen, who was seated nearest the window,
jumped up and pushed the sash up. Apparently he wasn’t the only one to want to
let some fresh air in. Chen hadn’t bothered to ask permission. He just went
ahead and did it. He even appeared surprised himself by his lapse in courtesy. Fortunately
his action broke the chair’s train of thought and she stopped talking. The
meeting swiftly came to a close. Yan didn’t stay for the ritual cup of tea and
office chat. He muttered that he had to get home and left.
***
It
took Red Hat some time to delve through Professor Yan’s mind and discover what
he really wanted. It seemed like an odd coincidence, but Professor Yan was not
unlike Rufus and Colin in his desires. Curious and curiouser. Of course, Red
Hat was not unacquainted with this desire. Rufus hadn’t been his first.
The
man who had carved the statue that Rufus bought had also been a lover of his
own sex. As the image emerged from the wooden block, the sculptor had lovingly
carved the bulge of every muscle. As Red Hat’s consciousness began to inhabit
the statue, he had felt the surprising warmth and lightness of the man’s touch
stroking his body. It was Red Hat’s favorite depiction of himself. Apparently
many of his worshippers felt the same way. He would often catch one of his
devotees—it was always a man—lingering in front of the image, devouring it with
his eyes. Every time Red Hat entered one of those men’s minds, he always found
the same desire, a desire that went beyond the usual wants and needs of his
followers.
He
had even experienced that form of lust first-hand. He thought he owed it to
this group of his followers to understand their needs fully. At the annual
awards dinner for the gods, when Lei Gong had stopped at his table and
introduced himself, Red Hat had understood that more than just friendliness was
on offer. When the Thunder God had invited him to his home for “a cup of tea,”
Red Hat had accepted with a smile. The Thunder God’s skin may have been green,
but he clearly was no greenhorn when it came to the arts of the bedchamber.
Although if memory served, his “horn” was green.
And
here was another lover of men—this man whose name echoed his own.
***
Yan Hongmao trudged back to office after leaving the
meeting to pick up some papers he wanted to review at home that night. The
corridors were deserted. Dark rectangles of frosted glass in the office doors
signaled that the office staff had already left for the day. When he got to his
office, he closed the door behind himself and sat down without turning on the
lights. He swiveled around in his chair to look out the window.
He was so tired. Not physically tired—he was getting
enough sleep. Just tired. Tired of facing the constant sniping between his
mother and his wife. Both of them were rigorously polite to each other, and
that somehow made it even worse than loud, angry voices would have been. Like last
night—his wife had made an extra effort to cook a special meal, things she knew
he liked. His mother had grudgingly eaten a couple mouthfuls and then said,
“Oh, I don’t know why, but I’m just too full to eat another bite.” That hadn’t
kept her from ostentatiously eating three bowls of rice even as she kept
complimenting Chenping effusively. “Everything smells so good. I know you put
so much work into cooking. It’s too bad, but I’m just not hungry.” Then she had smiled in a way that made it
clear she didn’t mean a word she was saying. It was retaliation for his wife’s earlier
comments about the lunch his mother had prepared for their children. “Of
course, in your day, people didn’t know as much about nutrition, and they fed
children too much fat and sugar. Now we know better.” And he had been caught in
the middle. His mother had grudged every bite that he ate, just as his wife had
grudged every bite that he didn’t eat. They may have been the two who were
quarreling, but he was the one who lost the argument.
Nor did the children help. They were so noisy. They had
to have the television going at full volume even if they were engrossed in
talking or playing games on their phones. There was never any peace at home. It
wasn’t the refuge from the office that it was supposed to be.
He loved his family, but sometimes he just wished he
could be free of them. He had done his duty. He had studied hard and won a
high-status job, with an ample salary. He had married. He had had children. He
had ignored his own wishes and desires. He was the good son, the good husband,
the good father.
He was tired of his job too. Tired of all the tedious
demands it made on his time, tired of his students, tired of his colleagues and
the endless wrangling over money. His position was prestigious, and most people
envied him. He should be grateful that he had such a job, but some days he
wished he could escape to a tropical island. No responsibilities. Someone else making
all the decisions. Spending his days as a mindless obedient drone.
He closed his eyes.
The sky and the ocean competed to see which could be more
blue. The sand beneath his feet was soft and silken. The beach stretched out in
front of him. Up ahead, an indistinct object moved toward him. It was a hazy
black shadow against the sun. As he drew closer, it resolved itself into the
figure of a naked man. But not just any man. The man of his dreams—tall,
muscular, glowing. And domineering. The closer he got to the man, the stronger
the man’s power over him became. He could feel the power invading his mind and
taking over his body. The man drained him of his free will, taking him over,
controlling him, enslaving him. He sunk to his knees in front of the man. The
sand was hot against his flesh. The man’s cock grew erect. He opened his mouth
and bent forward to suck it.
His phone buzzed. It was a text message from his wife. His
presence was required at home.
***
Professor Yan was unique in Red Hat’s experience. He
wanted two diametrically opposed things. He wanted his family and social
prestige and acceptance and to be rid of his desires for men. Yet he wanted to
escape his family and the demands of society and be free to pursue his desires
for men, and he wanted in such a way that he was a virtual slave of a dominant
male. The professor even had a name for his alter ego—Cliff, a name derived
from his surname 岩.
Red Hat was still determined to fulfill the wishes of the
professor’s mother and give Yan what he most desired. It wouldn’t be easy,
however. Even he, with all his inventiveness, was stymied. It was almost as if
two people existed inside the professor, each with his own desires.
Red Hat could see why the dichotomy existed in Yan’s
mind. Society abhorred what he wanted as a gay man. All his life the professor
had felt guilty about his desires for men because society told him he was
guilty.
Red Hat looked around and discovered there were many such
men, men who had to hide their desires and blamed themselves for having those
desires. They had much in common with the laborers he had protected on the
Malay Peninsula. Both groups were downtrodden and needed a savior who would
lead them out of their misery.
Well, he had done that once before. He could do it again.
He had the requisite experience. He just had to devote some thought to the
problem. It would be much easier if the professor were indeed two separate
people.
If this were a cartoon, a light bulb would go off above
Red Hat’s head.
***
(Psst—Zed, you’re breaking the fictional
equivalent of the fourth wall. —Yes.
So? Do you have an objection to that? —It’s not realistic. —You expect realism in a story like this? Let
me continue. You can carp later. —But I think —Enough. I’m exercising authorial
privilege and banning you from this story.
My apologies to the rest of you for this interruption. Someone
thinks that just because he has a big prick, he can be a big prick. To continue—)
***
A light bulb exploded in a radiant flash over Red Hat’s
head. “Eureka,” he shouted. (Actually,
being Chinese, he said, “找到了!”)
Professor
Yan began to gather the papers he needed to review that evening at home and stuff
them into his briefcase. But then he stopped and put them back on his desk.
Enough. He had already accomplished plenty of work that day. Time to reward
himself. The papers could wait until tomorrow. Tonight, he wanted to spend the
evening with his family—help the kids with their homework, chat with his
mother, and later spend some “quality time” with Chenping. He pulled on his
coat. Time to go home.
Yan
skipped down the stairs to the front lobby, humming a tune to himself. He was
so caught up in his own anticipation of a delightful evening with his family that
he almost bumped into a monk leaving the building at the same time. He
apologized, and the monk bowed to him without speaking.
It
wasn’t until later, when he woke up in the middle of the night, that the monk’s
presence in the building struck him as odd. He couldn’t recall ever seeing a
monk in the building before. And the man had been so strange. First, his robes
were a bright red, which was unusual enough in itself, but the really weird
thing had been the hat perched jauntily on his head. It was a cowboy hat, a red
cowboy hat, with the brim rolled up on the left side. Second, the man was
young, at least young for a monk these days. Few young people wanted a
religious life nowadays. And the man had been so well built. The robes were
sleeveless, revealing the young man’s muscular arms and shoulders. Now that he
thought of it, the robes hadn’t been the usual loose draperies. They had fit
the man’s body so closely that he might as well have been naked.
He
had to have been a student, Yan decided—probably a new recruit for one of the
sports teams undergoing some sort of initiation. Dress up like a monk in bright
red and wear a ridiculous hat and parade around campus in that get-up. Well, it
was none of his concern. He rolled over in bed and closed his eyes.
***
“Hey,
Cliff.” The three men wearing red cowboy hats waved at the monk as he stepped
through the main entrance to the Red House. “Is there a service tonight?”
The
monk, whom everyone called by the English name, had to shout to make himself
heard over the noisy Friday night crowd of revelers. “At midnight. Dress
optional, but keep your hats on.”
The
services were so popular now, especially among the gay men who frequented the
bars and cafes in the Red House and the surrounding Wanhua district. It didn’t
hurt that Cliff was so attractive. His red robes did nothing to hide his
stellar physique, and his example of worshiping Red Hat in the nude was a
stimulus to attendance. Many worshippers, particularly those with great bodies,
copied his example and shed their clothes—all except their red cowboy hats.
The
monk surveyed the throngs inside the Red House. So many men were wearing red
hats now. The movement had spread rapidly among the gay men of Taipei. Red Hat
had become their patron god and protector as the stories spread of the god’s
willingness to grant his adherents their innermost desires. Many men had
followed Cliff and turned themselves over to the god, becoming his mindless
devotees.
Several
hours later Cliff, wearing only a red hat, stood naked before the statue of Red
Hat. Cliff had journeyed to Singapore and brought the statue back. The
succulent, gleaming body of Red Hat stood on a pedestal above the main altar.
The god was depicted in his guise of perfect manhood, strong, muscular, potent.
Cliff raised his eyes to the god’s groin and let Red Hat take over his mind and
body. As he surrendered, Red Hat filled him with his own power.
Cliff’s
erection was mammoth. He bowed his head to the god in gratitude, and then
turned to exhibit himself to the crowd of worshippers. The throng collectively
moaned with desire at the sight of Cliff’s mammoth cock. “Give yourself
completely to Red Hat. Let the God control you.”
Here
and there a man stood up, proudly naked. As each bowed to the god and emptied
his mind of all thoughts but utter devotion to Red Hat, his cock grew erect.
Soon half the men were standing, proudly erect, proving their adoration of Red
Hat. Soon even those who had yet to achieve that degree of loyalty to the god
had torn off their clothes.
The
midnight orgy services at the Red Hat Temple were notorious.
Devotees of Red Hat
