As told to the author, or whatever you’ll believe. Any resemblances to real-life events, men, women, and locales are purely coincidental, or something like that. (Editor’s note: this is why u shouldve gone to that stupid defamation law lecture u idiot.) Anyway this never happened so why should it matter??
To reiterate: a fictional tale told by one fictional character to another. We clear here?
Greetings from a fellow London graduate, the Lawyer had said.
It was an unusually civilised conversation starter, to say the least, in the awfully horny and awfully awful world of online dating. By this point—only the third day of her ‘experiment’, as she called it—Kat had already encountered more White Men Coming through the City on Business You Have Gorgeous Skin by the Way I Can Speak Mandarin but Maybe You Can Teach Me Some Canto? I Bet You’re a Good Girl in Bed Too Have You Ever Taken a White Cock Before? than she had thought possible. Where do they even find these people? Going on this godforsaken app is like stumbling into a Marks & Spencer in your local MTR mall—one step across the threshold and you find yourself in Bloody Em ahnd Es, suddenly besieged on all sides by Union Jacks and pale-faced, tongue-wagging creatures with names like Colin and Percival and Duke of Victoria Sandwiches the Third.
The Lawyer’s Tinder profile stated plainly that he was, as you may have guessed, a legal practitioner of sorts. It also said he was twenty-nine, although Kat thought he looked at least thirty-five in all those pictures of him holding wine glasses in fancy-looking establishments. But she started typing a response—she had set her age range to twenty-five to forty anyway, so it wasn’t like she was fussed. Kat was twenty-three, and she had already had enough of men her age. Immature, frivolous boys.
A lawyer, huh?
Indeed, I am. I also teach at the university some evenings, actually.
Kat had to double-check to see that the Lawyer had put two spaces after his full stop. Was he actually old enough to have used a typewriter? Anyway she immediately did her due diligence, that was, put the Lawyer’s first name, along with ‘law’ and ‘Hong Kong’, in the URL bar of her browser and hit enter. Too easy. So he worked at a big American law firm and had written some op-eds in the local English papers, in which he might or might not have expressed a number of political opinions which Kat found, if not objectionable, at least marginally questionable. She would save the questions for later, though. Of more immediate concern was the finding that he taught at the exact same law school—in the same building even—where she worked.
I fare much better conversing in person than in text, by the way. Kat’s phone pinged again before she could even reply to the last message. How does chatting over dinner and some wine this Friday sound?
She hesitated, then wrote, Well, the thing is, actually, I work at the university as well and I’m slightly wary of—pardon my French—shitting where I eat. Whatever that means, ha ha.
The double-spaced reply came almost instantly. I’m just a part-time lecturer. At any rate, I follow Chatham House rules, so I wouldn’t worry.
Kat chuckled at this, then immediately felt ashamed of herself. Logically, she knew that she should be put off by the Lawyers’s obnoxious manner, but she found herself more fascinated than anything. The conversation was also moving much faster than she had expected. In fact, she had this feeling that she was being moved along by the conversation and not quite the other way round. She could say no, she supposed, but she was curious, and the offer had an exclusive, one-time flavour to it. This was exactly the kind of encounter she was hoping to include in her experiment, in her ‘research’ after all, right? A date with a grown man with an intelligent, respectable job, someone who could match her wit? And conversing over dinner and wine, too, not meeting up at the harbourside McDonald’s or some dingy love hotel in Kowloon. It was proving too tempting to resist.
All right then, she typed finally. Where are you thinking?
I know a place in Causeway Bay that has a fair selection of wine. He sent the address readily, which Kat then pasted into Google Maps. Her heart sank a little as she saw a whopping four dollar signs under the name of the place.
Can I just say—it looks very fancy, which makes me slightly nervous, ha ha. Kat had the irritating habit of writing excessive ha ha’s at the end of her sentences when talking to strangers on the internet, in a subconscious effort to seem pleasant and chill. Then she added, On top of this being my first time meeting anyone on here, you know.
Again the reply came quickly, surely. The Lawyer seemed to have a ready answer to everything which, again, Kat secretly admired. It’s pretty convivial. And there is always a first time for everything, I suppose.
Yes, I suppose. Kat thought to herself. In the back of her mind, of course, years of Stranger Danger training could not be shaken off so easily. She had always been such a Good Girl, after all. But she was also twenty-three, a university graduate, and an intersectional feminist. She Knew Her Worth. Plus, the Lawyer was a lawyer and a part-time academic, even if he had vaguely unsavoury views about certain things. (Okay, so he’s a Tory, are we putting them all on the guillotine now?) He moved through the same, supposedly respectable circles that Kat was a part of herself and therefore could not harm her. Right?
And that was how Kat decided, against her better judgment (editor: hindsight bias/spoiler much?), to go on her first date with a Stranger from the Internet.
They took a table by the balcony at the very elegant, very dimly lit, and emphatically not convivial restaurant. The Lawyer showed up in a simple suit, and Kat had dressed up slightly for the occasion in a little satin-y, buttoned-up dress and kitten heels. Still she felt severely underdressed, and silently calculated the amount of credit she had left on all her cards combined as she placed the spotless napkin gingerly on her lap. Five years ago, before going to law school, the socially anxious, London-bound girl had looked up table etiquette videos on YouTube in an attempt to educate herself—but she ended up spending most of her time actually studying rather than going to fancy balls she couldn’t afford anyway, so any skill she had picked up was rusty if not non-existent.
‘So, what’s your poison?’ The Lawyer asked as the waiter handed them the wine list. He looked even older in real life than in his photos, his hairline more receded and his rather sallow face more deeply lined, but a semi-permanent smirk made him look more youthful (or rather juvenile) at the same time. Kat had never heard anyone use the poison line in real life before, or an English accent more unnaturally polished. He dragged out each one of his vowels in the most artificial manner—if she hadn’t seen the double spaces already she would’ve thought he was doing a bit. This was what Kat was thinking as she stared at the thick, richly textured piece of paper with all the French and Italian words she couldn’t quite pronounce, a strained, polite smile on her face.
‘Uh—honestly, I don’t know. I’m not exactly an expert in wine,’ she finally admitted defeat after an uncomfortably long minute of avoiding the waiter’s eager gaze. If this were a normal restaurant he would’ve left us alone by now, she thought.
‘Any wine you like is a good wine,’ said the Lawyer. When Kat gave him the same blank smile he added, his smirk deepening, ‘Tell me, then: red, white, or sparkling?’
‘Red sounds good,’ she said obediently.
‘Excellent.’ The Lawyer picked out a wine whose name Kat’s brain could not even begin to process, in something that sounded perfectly accented. She was relieved. That was quite guttural—probably French, then.
After the Lawyer went on to also order the exact cut of steak that was meant to go with the wine (or the other way round, who could tell), Kat said, just for the sake of saying something, ‘Do you speak a lot of languages?’
‘Fluently, about six. French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Latin. And English, of course. How about yourself?’
Kat was getting a little flustered. Can one even speak Latin? It’s not like, extinct? ‘Eh. Let me count—three and a half, I guess? This, Cantonese, Mandarin, of course, and very minimal Spanish. I’m learning. How—why do you need so many languages?’
‘Oh, I read Classics at Cambridge before I went to London to study for the bar. Picked things up here and there,’ said the Lawyer offhandedly, though a subtle note of pride never left his voice. ‘Have you always lived here?’ he suddenly asked, gazing at Kat’s face intently, with a slight frown, as if looking for something.
‘Yeah, except for the three years of undergrad in London.’
‘I just wondered, since you don’t sound very—well, do excuse me for being politically incorrect, as some people might say—but you don’t sound very local. I would have thought you’d grown up in England.’
‘Oh, no.’
‘Then may I ask why you sound so…different? I’m intrigued,’ the Lawyer insisted.
Kat did a mental eyeroll. ‘Oh, you know,’ though she suspected he did not know, ‘Survival reasons. Makes things easier in general. Not just in London but here too, especially at the university. Actually, especially when you’re working with lawyers.’ In Kat’s one year of working at the university, she had come to learn that things like booking a room or purchasing pencil sharpeners generally got done a lot quicker if she made her phone calls in English rather than in Cantonese, and remembered to not reveal her last name until the very last moment. Was it unethical? Probably. But a Konggirl had to find her own way to survive in a postcolonial institution filled with snobbish administrators and lazy expats who would never deign to learn a word of Cantonese. At least, that’s what Kat told herself.
The Lawyer continued fixing his light brown eyes, squinting a little behind a pair of square, metal frame glasses, on Kat. He had an intense presence in general that made Kat feel somewhat suffocated, and not really in a romantic way. He declared at long last, ‘I’ve never heard anything like that before. You seem like a most fascinating girl.’ Kat would be lying if she said she wasn’t flattered, despite her initial huffiness at his line of questioning. He started again without waiting for Kat to respond, ‘So, Katherine, is that right? Did you know that the name comes from the Greek word katharos, meaning pure?’ Yes, she did, actually, but it was the first time anyone had ever brought it up in casual conversation. Guess that classics degree really paid off, huh.
The food and wine arrived. To Kat’s relief (and gender equality be damned), the waiter automatically handed the Lawyer the first small glassful to try. Kat watched him carefully, taking mental notes on how to sniff and sip wine in a discerning, sophisticated manner, although she was starting to think that he looked a little silly, even ridiculous. There was something about the size of his head, the way his glasses constantly slid down his nose, much too angular for the rest of his languid face, and his thin lips which moved unnaturally whenever he enuuuhnciated. The Lawyer gave the overall impression of being self-assured but awkward at the same time in his expensive, perfectly tailored (this she could only assume) suit. It was hard to put a finger on it.
‘Here’s to a pleasant evening,’ said the Lawyer, holding out his glass towards Kat’s after they had both been filled precisely to a line that was invisible to the untrained eye. Kat took the smallest sip from hers, and couldn’t help but think that it didn’t taste very different from the thirty-dollar mini bottles of Barefoot merlot she usually got from 7-Eleven with her friends on a girls’ night out.
‘So, I’m assuming you didn’t grow up here then?’ Kat decided it was her turn to cross-examine him.
‘Actually, I did, until I was sent to boarding school in England.’
A frown broke over Kat’s carefully maintained, polite-but-interested smile. ‘Wait, so you grew up here, speak six languages, and none of them is Cantonese?’
The Lawyer laughed, which actually eased his awkward demeanour for a brief moment, though his smirk returned almost immediately. ‘There was never any reason to learn.’ Kat felt more relaxed now that she had had something to drink and got used to the dim lighting, and she openly inspected the Lawyer’s pallid skin, aquiline nose, light brown irises, the corners of his eyes that were slightly downturned. She remembered the op-eds she had glimpsed through in her due diligence exercise—so much for cultivating a unique Eurasian identity in Hong Kong, huh.
The Lawyer made sure Kat’s glass never ran dry, and soon ordered another bottle of wine. She was coming to actually, genuinely enjoy the conversation. They talked about studying, no, reading law, Gabriel García Márquez, classical music, University Challenge, travelling Rome. Despite his ceremoniousness that often verged on preposterousness, he was a surprisingly engaging speaker. When Kat read The Secret History months after this encounter, she couldn’t help imagining Henry, the cruel but charismatic classics student and leader of a murderous bacchanal attempt (sorry, actual spoilers), with his face.
When the bill came, the Lawyer put his card in the leather cover (editor: it’s called a presenter) without even so much as glancing at the amount. ‘Um, how much was that? Should I—’ Kat started awkwardly, but he held up a hand, his smirk now more benevolent than ever. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s my pleasure.’ Kat briefly remembered her (hitherto untested) principle of never letting a man pay on a first date, but also reflected that it probably cost him nothing and so didn’t object. He probably made ten times, if not more, her measly RA salary. Surely it was only a fair distribution of wealth, no? At any rate, she was too drunk to be argumentative.
When the Lawyer suggested that they went back to his place, which was conveniently just around the corner, to continue their conversation, Kat didn’t object either. She had never been to a truly wealthy man’s flat, and surely she couldn’t just go home without seeing it at this point. As the pair walked out of the restaurant, the Lawyer—who towered over Kat by almost a foot—pulled her in without warning and stuck his tongue down her throat, quite literally. At the same time she felt a firm, deliberate squeeze on her thinly covered bottom. She froze for a moment but did not object. She couldn’t say she hadn’t expected this—after all, she had met the Lawyer on Tinder—but she was surprised nonetheless. Throughout dinner they had had what she thought were friendly, academic exchanges. At no point did either of them say anything that could be interpreted as remotely romantic, flirtatious, or even seriously personal. Sure, they were a man and a woman in a dark restaurant, and he paid for dinner, but since he didn’t so much as compliment her elegantly exposed cleavage, Kat had thought that he wasn’t interested in anything more than her intellectual company. After all, he was so much older; surely he was used to dating much more mature and accomplished women. (Most days Kat didn’t even think of herself as falling within the category of ‘women’.) Didn’t he even give her career advice? She had thought she was special. A smart, fascinating twenty-three-year-old this moderately rich and powerful man just wanted to buy dinner for.
So Kat was wrong. But that’s fine too, because this was taking an interesting turn, wasn’t it? Inexperienced though she was, she was of course not naïve enough to think that the Lawyer would want to stop at a kiss and a cheeky butt-grab. But she was a free woman, and in principle (again, untested) open to having sex with a stranger on a first date. And if she didn’t feel up for it later, she could, obviously, always just say no. Easy-peasy. She knew the law and ethics on consent inside and out. She’s a big girl now, and she had proven her intelligence throughout dinner—the Lawyer had laughed heartily at her literary jokes and wry observations of various personnel in legal academia. Reassured, she followed the Lawyer through the Causeway Bay side streets in the dark, until they reached an opulent block of serviced apartments.
The Lawyer lived in a modern, monochrome flat which smelled exactly like him—some expensive cologne that Kat could not name. Bookcases with glass doors lined the walls and, in the middle of the living room where the TV would usually go, was a vintage, mahogany radiogram. A matching wine fridge stood next to it. On the wall behind was a custom shelf displaying katanas of various lengths and curvatures. (Editor: Seriously? Was there a samurai domaru too?)
In her drunken stupor, Kat registered that the Lawyer had started saying something—some kind of joke—about Rurik Jutting, a British, Cambridge-educated banker who famously murdered two Indonesian women in his luxury apartment in Wanchai a few years ago. Was he a classicist as well? Kat could not for the life of her comprehend why anyone would bring that up on a date, but laughed anyway and told herself he was just being witty. After all, they had joked about any number of other things during dinner, not all of them exactly PG-13. Look—he’s a lawyer and academic who wrote op-eds for other rich white people in the city. It wasn’t like he was going to do anything to her. He wouldn’t.
‘Hey, how old are you really, if you don’t mind me asking?’ asked Kat as the Lawyer poured out a glass of wine for her, from his very own temperature-controlled collection. Kat didn’t even bother to read the label.
It was the only time when the Lawyer looked even slightly flustered that night. ‘Let’s just say somewhere in the region of early thirties,’ he said hastily.
As if to stop Kat from asking any follow-up questions, he started kissing her (if it could be called that), then lifted her up from the sofa and easily carried her to a king-sized, monochrome bed in the next room. His movements were rough and awkward. He loomed over her small body, and started inexpertly unbuttoning her dress while slobbering all over her face. Neither of them said anything. No you’re beautiful, no let me make love to you, not even nice tits. Kat then watched while the Lawyer undressed himself, and, at the sight of his naked body, felt a sudden surge of disgust. She could taste the heavy red wine in her throat now, threatening to overflow any minute. He was not her type to begin with, but she had hoped that experience and sophistication would make up for it. Instead, he was lanky and inept as a teenage boy. But it seemed to her like it was too late to bail now, enthusiastic consent be damned. Beyond what the law might say, she didn’t really know what the etiquette for casual sex was in cases like this. Like, if she said no now she would have to put every single article of her clothing back on before she could leave, which would take at least a couple of minutes—what would they talk about in the meanwhile? Would they just stay dead silent? Should she make up some excuse to mask her disgust and protect his ego? And, well, there was the banker-murderer stuff…
It was too late now. He was struggling to insert himself inside Kat. Something to do with the height or angle of the bed. Then she realised that something else was missing and pulled away instinctively.
‘Aren’t you going to put on a condom?’ she asked, her voice a little hoarse from all the drinking and talking earlier.
He didn’t stop pushing. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t come inside you.’
‘How are you so sure?’
‘I have excellent self-control,’ the Lawyer said in his repulsively posh voice.
In her head, Kat was thinking about all the times she had rehearsed a scene like this before in front of a mirror. She was always going to say something like, maybe you should worry about catching something from me. Or my family are crazy evangelicals and you’re going to have to pay for this baby. Surely that would have worked. (For some reason ‘no’ was never an option.) But she did not say either of those. She did not say anything else, nor did she push him away. To be clear, she did not seriously think that she would be murdered or otherwise maimed if she had objected—it just somehow seemed completely, utterly impossible for her to say no in the circumstances. The Lawyer’s sallow face became beaded with sweat, and his glasses hung on the bridge of his nose precariously. Why did he not take off his glasses? Do his eyes look really weird from this angle? Then Kat closed her own eyes. It wasn’t hard for her to zone out—the wine did most of the job.
After he had finished, the Lawyer handed Kat a luxuriously fluffy towel and kindly said she could take a shower in his bathroom. She did as she was told, and he said, quite inexplicably, ‘Good girl.’ When she came out, her now-wrinkled dress back on, he courteously asked if she wanted some more wine or coffee. Somehow he seemed older now, more paternal again. Did he maybe feel bad? Was he worried that Kat was going to throw a fit? No, she wouldn’t, she was too nice for that.
Kat said yes to coffee and made small talk while waiting for the moka pot to boil in the pristine, marble-tiled kitchen, as if the Lawyer didn’t just penetrate her without a condom on. She didn’t really feel like going home and being left alone with her own thoughts yet, really. If I can just talk to him and act like I’m having a good time, maybe everything will stop feeling so…uncomfortable.
‘You get tired quickly, don’t you?’ He meant from the sex, even though clearly, he was the one who ended it by ejaculating on her stomach. She didn’t bother faking an orgasm because by that point she was no longer under any illusion that he gave a damn. Looking at the Lawyer, a pale, oversized, ludicrous figure in a hotel dressing gown, she recalled in her head what had just happened—it didn’t even feel like he enjoyed the sex that much, if at all. It had seemed more like a ritual he was accustomed to going through and professed to find satisfying, for mysterious reasons.
‘Just haven’t slept with anyone in a while, I guess.’ At this point Kat’s mind was pretty much on autopilot.
‘Oh, really?’ That seemed to pique his interest. ‘Men or women?’
She frowned. ‘Men. Well, I’ve never had sex with a woman before.’ Not that I would mind trying, she said in her head but not out loud. It was none of his bloody business.
The Lawyer gave a disingenuous chuckle. ‘I’m surprised, since you said you were a feminist and all.’
Somehow that comment managed to land worse than the Rurik Jutting shit. Without acknowledging it, Kat took a sip of black coffee, hoping it would sober her up, but maybe not too quickly. Then she changed the subject. justbenormalohmygodyoucandothis. ‘Working as a lawyer isn’t much fun, is it? All the paperwork and late nights.’
‘Legal practice is stimulating enough, but I suppose the hours are rather long. Well, this is how I unwind—a delectable dinner, some wine, and good company.’
Kat started to have the strange feeling that she was being roped into something she didn’t quite understand. ignoreitcatignoreit. ‘And you like teaching?’
‘Indeed. I’ve always enjoyed listening to the sound of my own voice, you see,’ another false chuckle. ‘And I rather like the campus. Walks in the library can be quite refreshing.’
‘In the library?’ Kat thought of the vaguely brutalist structure smack in the middle of campus with its perpetual smell of Subway sandwiches and burnt coffee. She never went there of her own volition unless she had to check something out for her supervisor.
‘You come across some…fairly good-looking students sometimes. Of course, I would never do anything improper with my own students. I am perfectly aware of the rules.’
At that, something seemed to click inside her, and Kat finally resolved to leave. The Lawyer generously called her an Uber, and for some reason she asked him to just send her to the nearest MTR station and not her flat. She wasn’t worried about him having her address, really. Rather perversely, she still felt a pang of guilt for having let him pay for dinner. Kat regretted this the instant she stumbled out of the stranger’s car and into the bright glare of the station, the journey home stretching interminably before her.
It was almost three in the morning when Kat had taken another shower and put all her clothes in the wash. She lay still in the dark, unable to fall asleep or simply keep her mind quiet. Her phone, which she habitually kept next to her pillow, lit up just then. It’s him, replying to one of the messages she had sent him earlier. It should be about seven p.m. for him now—one of those rare days when he managed to get off work early, then. She sat up a little and hit the phone icon on the screen.
‘Hey.’ It was a relief to hear his familiar voice. ‘Why aren’t you sleeping yet?’
‘I’m not sure. I feel a little fucked up.’
‘Fucked up? What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ was all I could manage at that moment. My head was hurting from the wine (who said expensive wine doesn’t give you headaches?) and I kept sniffing my hair, which still smelled like whatever it was the Lawyer had doused his flat in. I wished someone who loved—no, even just liked—me would hold me. I had this strange feeling that my body, having been touched by a man who did not know and did not care to know me, was becoming somebody else’s. I let my phone rest between my ear and shoulder and grasped one hand in another tightly around my knees, as I listened for his breathing on the other end of the line. They were both stone-cold and unfeeling and alien.
‘Do you ever feel lonely, Conor?’
A pause, then he said in his usual, matter-of-fact manner, ‘Of course. I’m always working late, and I hardly talk to anyone outside of the office during the week.’ Big American law firms, huh. There was no hint of self-pity or so much as melancholy in his crisp voice. ‘So, to answer your question: all the damn time.’
‘What do you do then?’
‘I try not to think about it too much—read a book, go to the cinema,’ he said in the same flat tone. I closed my eyes, listening to the silence between his words, imagining the interior of his trendy Whitechapel flat, the expression on his face, the colour of the twilight sky in London. Then he started again, ‘Well, sometimes there’s you, calling me from halfway across the world.’
I had to quietly swallow the lump that was rising in my throat. ‘Sorry—I hope I, uh, didn’t catch you at a bad time.’ Pathetic.
‘No, you didn’t,’ he chuckled—a real, warm expression of emotion, unlike what I’d got used to hearing all night, ‘You know for a fact I like talking to you, Catherine.’ Katharos. Pure. Lovely…but not really.
These silences between us were beginning to grow comfortable, even comforting. They would remain this way in the time to come, until one day when all there was between us was silence and nothing else. I basked in it until my hands were mine again. ‘Hey, what on earth did you even see in me all those years ago?’
‘Do you have to ask in that really sceptical way of yours?’ He quipped, and there was a pause when I thought I could physically hear him think. ‘You were cute, you cracked me up, and you actually put up with me—whatever I was like back then.’
I was lost for words for a moment. ‘Oh.’
‘And you?’ He asked gently, casually.
My mind went blank. ‘Same thing, really.’ I was grateful he didn’t press me for a less half-arsed answer. The real reason—which I never told him, would never tell him now—was that, for the longest time, I thought he was the only person in the world who really tried to know me, who really saw me for who I was. Not the weird Asian chick with a barely masked eating disorder who had virtually no social existence outside of crimlaw lectures, not the sheltered law school graduate struggling to find her feet after deciding she was too good for Corporate and stable relationships, and certainly not the twenty-something-year-old-closest-thing-to-a-teenager-I-could-legally-fuck. Just me. And I would always be grateful for that, despite everything that happened to us, between us, afterwards. But that would be a story for another time.