4TH JULY REVELATIONS

Bai Jintang had a great idea, whether this great idea was out of boredom and slight loneliness was irrelevant so we don’t discuss that, to have a whole apartment block 4th July party. None of the residents knew that much about american history, since high school had been a while ago and chinese american citizenship was more about your origin than the country, and didn’t bother with the flashy fireworks, barbeques and beer. Bai Yutong and Jintang were raised in Texas, Gongsun came from Manhattan, Boya originated from New Orleans, hence the goth thing, Qiming actually lived in a buddhist temple in Ottawa before Tallahassee, Shen Wei just appeared from somewhere and moved in like a ghost, and Yunlan’s family lived in New York. From when everyone met each other, the common link had, as expected, been where their parents and grandparents came from, but bored chief Jintang wanted to change that a bit, so he could take advantage of the american holiday to have a big extroverted party like his parents had for lunar new year. He wanted to get drunk somewhere decent, or just with a lot of people to also get drunk.

A block party seemed a good way to celebrate a patriotic holiday without being too patriotic, so Jintang dropped handwritten invites to everyone in the block that he knew, starting from his little brother, his other community officer that barely kept salary levels of work up but he had to keep Zhao Yunlan or big chief Zhao would gut him, and the other academic guy opposite Yutong. They were safe guests, known to not be volatile, unlike his weird plant dad neighbor and the scary little emo that worked in the pet section of walmart lately, and glared menacingly at nearly all the shoppers as they passed through to find the cleaning sprays. Shen Wei, the mild mannered university professor was a good cook by all accounts too, and was frequently seen bringing whole crockpots of yummy smelling food over to what was Zhan Yao the PA’s apartment, perfect to cater for the event with the help of his Didi. His asian-american fusion 4th July was going to be the best party ever known!

Boya, Zhan Yao and Shen Wei had all got scribbled mandarin invitations posted through their letterboxes, mentioning a social gathering, which made them visibly nervous, because the group wasn’t penned the meeting of the introverts for no reason. Gongsun was probably the best at pretending he did not hate or fear everyone outside, he’d lived for over 30 years as a quiet yet contributing member of society after all? “Is it a good idea to drink in public in our case? I don’t fully remember what we did on Friday nights, but at the same time I don’t want to know how Bai Yutong suddenly stopped bothering me, or how you all know I lost my butt virginity to a random hot dude that one time I stepped in a nightclub. It’s bad enough for three people to know about my one night stand or secret drunk persona, what if my butt virginity man ends up being there somehow?”, he blurted out anxiously.

Boya, the worst friend to ever live when it came to keeping and not using shameful secrets as extortion, grinned devilishly, which to be completely fair, he did look quite evil dressed head to toe in black leather and red flame converse, one of the pairs Qiming bought him to hopefully lift the ban that week in the magic magician. “You know, if someone leaked that Doctor Zhan refused to come to the block party because he was afraid to meet his cherry popper, everyone would know how wild conservative teacher Zhan laoshi is. We can’t have that can we? I want to see that happy bastard drunk, maybe he turns into a sad drunk and I can collect his deepest, darkest secrets!”, he cackled. Gongsun, the absolute traitor he was, found himself nodding along, wondering if Chief Bai had anything he could ruin after the state he found his prized belladonna plant in, and Shen Wei, the pacifist crowd pleaser the professor always ended up being, joined in on the joint blackmail effort. Zhan yao felt like swearing abstinence from alcohol, but that wouldn’t get rid of what had already happened, and misery was complimented better by spirits.

“Fine, I’ll go as long as nobody mentions my one night stand and we all wear two layers of clothes to prevent touchy feely accidents. Meet here at 4, then Shen Ge will need help setting the food up downstairs in the communal garden, and Gongsun is in charge of half filling the drinks coolers, due to his better salary and tendency to guzzle baiju like water. Jintang is footing the bill for everything else, so be nice to him tonight.”, he replied dryly. With friends like those, he didn’t need enemies, pah!

Bai Yutong got dragged to the shopping centre in Panama city, for another set of clothes neither he or Jintang needed, all since his brother was desperate to get laid, or get him laid, with the mutual understanding that this was likely to be gay considering the majority of residents were male, and Zhu Hong was about as attractive as a wasps nest in a box of mad frogs, or something to that effect. For all his workouts and maintenance diet, Yutong was in fact a shy creature, who liked to actually wear clothes on a semi regular basis, which should make it clear that the virtually translucent fitted shirt and uncomfortably tight grey jeans glued to his body was not his choice at all, ever since the last indecent shirt he wore caused a considerable problem. He was too shy to tell his own brother that he wasn’t a virgin anymore, despite his lack of sex life. Admitting that he got drunk at a club one night after graduating police academy, turned into a horny beast and had anal with the closest man to his preferneces was not easy when your family was as nosy as the Bai’s, but in his defence, the man he dommed had been so hot. He could still remember how good it felt, hands wrapped around the tiniest waist to exist, the only shame being how quickly the sub left in the morning.

Jintang on the other hand, located the most inappropriate garment to exist, a pair of gold booty shorts and a cropped lace top in scarlet red. He looked like a snack, a snack with no shame as he walked out the department store and down to the car park with his ordinary jeans in a prada bag. If no one caught his fancy tonight, then he could look good trying at least.

The introverts clothing choices weren’t any better, in different ways to the showy, see through fabrics elder brother Bai chose from the mall. Gongsun’s definition of party was obviously a funeral, much like Boya the little emo, because they both came to Zhan Yao’s apartment in mourning black. The coroner was dressed too formally for a casual gathering, in a black turtleneck, pressed slacks and loafers that would be torturous for anyone else under the hot Florida sun, and Boya was straight out of a goth teen movie in impractical platform boots, leather pants and a low neck crimson sweater. “I don’t know what you expected from a man who cuts dead people up for a living, and a brat from deep New Orleans, where we don’t have a lot of parties for any particularly celebratory reason. I held back to be honest, there was a spiked choker that would have gone well with these boots, and Gongsun wanted to borrow an oversized cross from me.”, he shrugged nonchalantly. Shen Wei looked like he was going to work, except he lost the ugly striped pullover and super formal pressed chinos, which was a fashion disaster in another regard. Zhan Yao thought that even his ratty american flag t-shirt, a gift from his mother when he first went to Harvard, tucked into a pair of knee length navy shorts, was more appropriate for what was essentially a garden party. Instead, the party was getting a funeral guest, a teenage goth, a preppy college student and a slightly tourist like group.

Bai Jintang’s all star American party was going pretty well if no one knew what to wear wasn't a problem, and you focused on the buffet and bar going on. He had Shen Wei on the food table, which would have been filled with greasy junk like overcooked hot dogs and lukewarm fries but the professor didn't know how to cook any of that with his traditional Chinese upbringing and still told everyone to remember their veggies, so they had a huge pot of fried rice, celebration orange duck, and crab soup. He did know that inviting a lot of stubborn Chinese people would make it a different experience to other 4th July parties, and in a way, his was better, because his own kind really knew how to drink. Gongsun had already drank a quarter of the first drinks cooler, and kept hovering by the food.

The coroner had conceived a brilliant plan in the evening leading up to the meeting at Zhan Yao's apartment, involving a container of table salt, sugar syrup and cornstarch. He would ruin the whole party with just three ingredients, by over-thickening the crab soup with corn starch, salting the rice to an inedible state and sweetening the orange duck until it was more of a desert than savoury dish. His mother used to say that the food decided how well a gathering went, so if the food was terrible, the party would follow into the dumpster! It was surprising when people didn't notice though, because he'd tried the food himself and he almost felt sick just testing the degree of awfulness, had he understood his mother all those years ago?

The residents had all got involved in a rather competitive drinking competition, having eaten their fill early on, like it was merely an al fresco dinner. Boya was treading the thin line between tipsy and drunk out of his mind within two hours, and had reignited the old feud between him and Shen Wei, which ended in a hug and poured baiju on each other last time, but this time they were drinking for supremacy. Also quite tipsy Zhan Yao obediently fetched a bottle of top range vodka from the spirits cooler, found some plastic shot glasses, and acted as referee for seven rounds, till Boya started talking and things people shouldn’t know fell into place. Like how Bai Yutong seemed more familiar with each drink, from his mussed up hair to the way his ass looked, as in more alike to his ass cherry popper. Was it possible that officer Bai was the incredibly sexy stranger he let fuck him years ago?

Shen Wei, engaged in the fierce drinking battle, had drunk way too much to be sensible at this point, and that obviously included self control, because he found himself giving up the argument questioning the most important thing a man could boast about, his courage and integrity, to plaster his body all over Zhao Yunlan. Boya wasn’t better than him, but he won finally, and downed the rest of the vodka in the bottle as a prize. The professor’s shirt was so crumpled, glasses askew somewhere in the garden, that everyone said with certainty that this man wasn’t Shen Wei. “Yunlan! Hug me you big hunky oaf! Love me for the rest of time, carry me into the sunset, or I’ll do the carrying if you want.”, he exclaimed loudly. Even Jintang, relatively trashed as you could expect from a booty short wearing drunk, who had spent the last ten minutes snogging a random bloke from the outside guest list, looked up from his latest squeeze and gave him a confused look before latching back onto the poor stranger. Zhao Yunlan didn’t know what to do, and since he was lightly buzzed on beer, he found the best solution to be simply hugging his neighbor.

Qiming stayed relatively quiet, so quiet that people barely noticed him and Honey Bug sitting in the corner, but Boya knew, and a full bottle of vodka plus a few beers had made the little emo scarily, uhm, friendly. The manager got a sudden armful of grown man, that somehow wrapped all his limbs around the sitting cat dad. “Boya, your sweater is soaked with alcohol and I think you need to stop here. Do you want to talk, I sense a sad drunk on the horizon .”, he said softly. The other man sniffled, a sense of vulnerability taking over his whole body, something unusual to see from the cold front he put up at the cafe and Walmart. Qiming took his second shirt off and draped the flannel fabric over his petite neighbors thin shoulders, feeling cold just watching the baddy shoulders of the sweater slip down.

“Of course I’m sad you happy madman! When wouldn’t I be sad when my parents unintentionally orphaned me as a child, died in a car crash with a drunk driver going to a business meeting and left me to cantankerous aunt Joanie, who sent acting out Yuan Boya to the nearest orphanage?”, he spat bitterly. Zhan Yao slipped the poor man a sympathetic glance, because asking about the little emo was often more verbal abuse than it was worth. “Southern New Orleans isn’t the place for a young orphan to grow up, no where can substitute for family really, surrounded by reminders of his past and future, so I used the moving on grant from turning 18 to move to Tallahassee as soon as I could. No one has ever shown me genuine affection since my mother kissed me on the cheek, your cat is the closest thing to family that I have.”, he continued, snuggling into Honey Bug’s grey and white striped fur. Qiming wanted to cry, cry for the child Yuan Boya that still hadn’t healed from the past, but he was supposed to be the one doing the consoling.

"I can't bring back your parents, no one can, but would they want you to be like this for the rest of your life? When my mother died and uncle took me in, I was happy and carefree, yet I was still healing. Uncle helped me find a new life, I can help you, and let you see Honey Bug anytime if that's what makes you happy.", he replied soothingly. The snivelling lump of shirt and leather in his arms went quiet, seeming to go limp, but when Qiming looked down, Boya was actually sleeping! His face was relaxed, always furrowed eyebrows straight and his pleasantly pink lips curving upwards rather than down, which invoked such a reaction from the closest partiers, officer Zhao and the clingy professor Shen, that they came over to see what was happening.

Shen Wei knew Boya said things drunk that he was unlikely to ever say sober, so when he saw him jump on his super arch enemy without trying to strangle Qiming, the logical part of his brain was curious what was going on. It was rare to witness their scary little emo being so soft, cuddled up to a grey tabby cat and the cat’s owner like a baby. “You caught a rare treasure tonight Qiming, but you should be ready to keep up whatever therapy you did today, this kid has a lot of backstory to reveal. Lan Er, hug me tighter!”, he declared dramatically. The Walmart manager was glad he hadn’t been the one to down a whole bottle of vodka, otherwise no one would be sensible enough to do anything.