Crazy things happen when a man thinks that he's doing ugly women a favor if he goes out with them...
A 65-year old American called Johan, who is posing as an ESL teacher in China in order to find a wife, believes that he’s doing ugly women a favor if he dates them. But when an ugly woman says “No” to him, Johan’s pride is wounded and he stalks her to church, a place he vowed never to go.
While the pastor is teaching how, “You can command angels to bring you what you want, even a million dollars,” Johan is plotting how to get the ugly woman to say “YES” so he can tell her, “I don’t date ugly chicks,” but it turns out that she is married, so Johan storms away in frustration, heading to the Dave’s bar where he gets drunk and decides to try out the pastor’s idea. He closes his eyes and squeezes his mind like a lemon, declaring, “Angels, bring me the most beautiful woman on the planet!”
What happens next is one man’s struggle to balance a dream come true, as past mistakes haunt him, a battle between beauty and ugliness in which one goes for gold while the other seeks revenge.
Excerpt
At the Bus Stop
A crowded bus stop.
A very ugly woman.
Those cherry-sized pimples on her face!
She was the only person not spitting in public.
Such a beautiful city, the ground covered with dried up saliva. It felt like people were having a spitting competition sometimes.
Man! She looks just like Mom, in an Asian way.
But what did Mom use to say about ugly women?
Oh yes! Johan remembered clearly.
Mom claimed that the best favor a man could do for an ugly woman is to ask her out.
“We are quite a unique group of people,” Mom confessed to Johan and Charlie one day after Dad had come home drunk and yelled at her again.” Men never notice us, so when they do we have to be grateful.”
Now, Johan glanced at the ugly woman again.
I’ll do her a favor, he whispered to himself, shaking his head to get rid of his mother’s image.
He stepped up to her, wondering what he would do when she said, “YES.”
Chapter One
But she said, “NO!”
And Johan blinked to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. By the time his eyes returned to her, she was gone. When he spotted her, she was turning left down the road.
Something kicked up inside Johan and he followed her.
Without being seen, he marched behind her for about five minutes, and then she stopped and entered a building with a cross on the door.
Johan hesitated.
The last time he had been in church was fifty years ago.
But his feet seemed to speak an independent language. They carried him right into the crowded church.
I’m sixty-five years old and stalking an ugly chick, thought Johan as he sat down at the back, to wait for the woman to finish singing in the choir.
Johan had seen a notice on the wall outside, saying that in this International Christian Church; ushers must inspect IDs and passports of Asian-looking Christians. Due to Chinese government regulations, the church could be closed down or fined if a single native Chinese was caught attending the service.
The ugly chick had told Johan at the bus stop that she was Chinese, so why had they let her in? And she was singing with the choir, smiling as if she were beautiful.
“Stick to the point,” Johan whispered to himself.
It wasn’t the Chinese woman’s presence in this church that made Johan angry. He was mad because she had said “NO” to him.
A beautiful woman saying NO to Johan, that’s OK, but an ugly chick didn’t have that privilege. She should be glad with any fish that comes into her net.
He must get her to say “YES” to him after church. Wasn’t that why he had followed her?
OK, get her to say “YES!” And then what?
Would he date her?
Or maybe he would just say, “No, thanks, I don’t date ugly chicks.”
Johan’s thoughts were interrupted when the choir suddenly ceased singing.
A tall Asian man was walking towards the microphone, the same man whose photo on the wall outside identified him the pastor, a Korean-born American.
The pastor raised both hands in the air, prayed briefly and then began to speak.
“Ask God and He will order angels to do anything for you.”
The church slipped into total silence as the preacher looked around with a smile.
“It’s easy,” he cried. “First, believe in your heart that you’ll receive what you’re asking for; next, speak out your request, using any quote from the Bible declaring that whatever you ask God, He’ll give you and then finally, rebuke the devil.”
Johan almost fell off his chair when the man said you can even request a million dollars into your bank account.
What a joke, he thought.
After church, he cornered the ugly woman but she introduced him to her husband, a stocky Korean with a fat tie and bad teeth who smiled all the time, calling Johan “my flend, my flend.”
Johan ignored the man’s hand, which hung in mid-air, waiting for a handshake. He called the couple “losers” and marched straight to the guides to demand why they had let a Chinese woman in the church and choir.
“Her husband is not Chinese so the government won’t mind,” a young man with a happy face replied. As he was trying to show off several other Chinese Christians who had foreign spouses in the church, Johan muttered, “Who cares?” and then left.
He jumped into a cab outside and told the driver to head for Dave’s bar where he went to work on a bottle of whiskey.
Johan got senselessly drunk, left the bar for home and stumbled into his apartment, the alcohol in his brain pushing him to try “the stupid preacher’s idea.”
First, he closed his eyes. Then he squeezed his mind like a lemon. Finally, he spoke; declaring that he wanted a wife, the most beautiful woman that ever walked on this planet. After that he muttered, “hell yeah!” and then fell asleep.
Chapter Two
It was only 5 A.M., but the waiters were overturning tables and chairs, sweeping the floor and taking out the trash.
Johan hated this.
If the manager could not stay open all night, he should never have opened a bar in the first place. Didn’t he see that Johan wanted to drink all night?
Also, the women tonight looked extra ugly. They could have become beautiful only after Johan got very drunk. In fact he usually measured how tanked-up he was in a bar by how fast it took hideous women to look attractive in his eyes. But because the manager was bent on closing early, Johan would go home without reaching that peak point.
He cursed the manager’s mother when the man tried to help him into a taxi, but the Chinese man smiled, breathing garlic flavor in Johan’s face as he said, “Bye- bye laowai!”
Later, when he finally found the keyhole and unlocked his door, Johan staggered to the bathroom, and without brushing his teeth or washing his face, he applied a green facial mask for his acne, and then fell in bed, fully dressed.
Drifting in and out of sleep, Johan tossed under the covers until the rising sun chased away the darkness from the house.
Then he found himself staring, dry-eyed, at the red window curtains, wondering if the loud music from outside would ever stop.
He could have closed the windows, but the inside of his head was pounding to the unpleasant rhythm of the deafening boom, boom, boom, rocking the blue walls of his tiny apartment.
The bitter taste in his mouth confirmed that he had consumed more alcohol than he thought the previous night, but it was the banging inside his head that hurt.
Immediately he knew that those idiots were out there, and a murderous rage filled him.
I'll show them, he threatened silently.
There was no need to dress after he crawled out of bed.
Johan skipped towards the door but suddenly stopped. He had just seen his face in the wall mirror. Covered in the green facial mask, he looked like Shrek.
Quickly, he stepped into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Without brushing his teeth, he stepped out and lit a cigarette.
At the door, he suddenly stopped and made a U-turn, heading for the open closet where clothes hung carelessly and pants, socks and underwear slept on the floor. He reached into the pocket of his battered, leather jacket and grabbed the handle of an old Swiss Army knife, the one that he had bought years ago with the positive intention of killing his Dad.
An electric thrill rushed through his body and Johan slashed the air a couple of times, thinking about that hot summer afternoon fifty-four years ago, how his mother had come out of the shopping center a few seconds after his father had slid a piece of paper inside his pocket, digits finagled from the blonde by lying that he was unmarried, and that he owned the gleaming red Cadillac.
They'd better not give me any trouble, Johan thought, holding up the knife against the light.
Then his mother's pimply face flashed in his mind…eyes swollen from crying, hair undone, bruises on her cheeks. She was explaining to him that all the noises last night were nothing.
"Just clumsy old me falling out of bed and Daddy yelling because he was helping me get back in bed."
Johan's heart gave a sudden lurch and he decided against carrying the knife.
His insides ran upwards as the elevator took him downward. Then his legs seemed to move into his upper body as the machine stopped on the first floor.
When he came out, Chinese people in the vestibule stared at him. Johan felt that all eyes were on him not because he was smoking in a public area but because the little hair left on his round head was blond and his beady eyes were sky- blue.
"Look! A foreigner!"
He heard the sentence many times. Some people pointed. But others instantly made a public show of politeness.
A fat woman held the hand of a boy pointing a chubby finger at Johan. The boy had the same level of excitement children display when watching a circus. The woman slapped the kid's face and said, "Don't point at the foreign uncle, it’s not polite! Don't you know how to be polite?"
The other people nodded their heads solemnly.
"How lucky this little boy is to have such a polite mother!" They exclaimed, one after the other, in loud tones. The lad stared blankly at the grownups as if they each had two heads.
Acting on a sudden instinct, Johan stuck out his flabby tongue at them. Then he raised his middle finger, without saying the words that go with the gesture.
The people laughed happily.
They must have thought it was a game. They were still laughing as they showed Johan their own fingers. Some showed their thumbs, forefingers, little fingers and ring fingers, probably wondering why Johan wasn't staying to continue this fun game.
Chapter Three
Boom! Boom! Boom!
These sounds, Johan heard as he marched towards the crowd. Even the noise of traffic was smothered by the beat.
A red stage had been mounted near the shops that sold tea.
Six belly- dancing girls, dressed like they were going swimming but were afraid that sharks would bite their stomachs, were twisting their bodies like snakes, with fixed identical smiles on their heavily powdered faces.
The small crowd, watching the free performance, cheered wildly. The gym's workers dressed in matching black T-shirts bearing the establishment's name on both sides were handing out flyers and leaflets.
Johan marched straight behind the stage where cables were connected.
People pointed at him and shouted "laowai, laowai," and despite his limited knowledge of Mandarin, he knew that laowai meant foreigner, a label he hated like poison because it was offensive in some contexts, reminding him of the Spanish “gringro.”
His eyes scanned thick cables running over each other and found the main power supply switch, a white one, (made in China of course), to which the main cable giving electricity to the speakers, turntable, microphones and all the other equipment was plugged.
The surge of energy that visited his body was the electricity that usually shocked his face whenever his father slapped him across the mouth. He jumped forward and grabbed the plug, screaming at the top of his voice.
And then time froze and the smiling sun became obscured by a shapeless cloud.
The decorative lights went out, not one by one. The musical equipment's blinkers stopped flashing, and everything became so still that no one missed the sound of the voice screaming behind the stage.
Chapter Four
The cloud blocking the sun floated away, and solar energy filled the atmosphere.
Johan brandished the white three-headed plug in one hand and his almost burnt out cigarette in the other, screaming, "Stop this noise! I can't freakin sleep!"
The spectators, probably thinking that this was part of the entertainment package the gym had prepared for them, started clapping and shouting, "laowai, laowai!"
Johan's face reddened as he climbed on one of the speakers, stumbling and falling down, while the onlookers giggled and clapped.
Johan frowned as he tried again. The speaker danced dangerously beneath his feet. People opened their eyes wide as if holding their breaths. The sound box stopped shaking and Johan hoisted himself on top.
Shoulders in the crowd relaxed as if everyone had resumed breathing.
Then Johan began to hop up and down, screaming, "Stop this freakin noise! I can't freakin sleep!"
The spectators roared louder.
Johan's face shone with sweat.
The people were still screaming out their lungs when blue lights flashed on the scene.
The police had arrived.
Chapter Five
Johan ran his mouth a lot when he got drunk, but he never told anyone that teaching English was not his real job. It was a cover to obtain and renew his visa so that he could remain legally resident in China to carry out his real mission.
All this changed when he met an African man called Justin, under quite strange circumstances.
A woman, whom Johan had found on the Internet, had flown in from Chengdu to visit him in Dalian. One look at her and Johan regretted why he ever let her come this far into his life. She was the definition of “UGLY” and that’s how Johan knew that all her pictures had been photo shopped. To make matters worse, as soon as they got home the first thing she said was, “You reimburse my flight.” When Johan said “No,” she got angry, and told him that she was going to stay at her sister’s house. Before Johan could say a word, she grabbed the kitchen knife.
“I kill you before I go,” she screamed.
Johan panicked and ran outside, wearing only his boxers and no shirt. The woman locked him outside. And then she started smashing every item that could be broken in his apartment.
Neighbors heard the commotion, came out and realized it was a foreigner. Some pointed at Johan and screamed, “laowai, laowai,” before going back inside their houses and locking their doors. Johan was still knocking on the door when a tall, dark man came out of the elevators.
“Hi,” said the man. “My name is Justin and a Chinese lady called me to say you need help.”
Justin convinced the woman to open the door but she was still bent on getting money from Johan.
“He promised me he’ll pay flight,” she told Justin.
When Justin gave her some cash, she counted the money, smiled at him and then walked up to Johan and slapped his face, before grabbing her bag and storming out of the house.
Immediately, Johan felt like he could tell this African man almost anything.
“You remind me of my son,” Johan said to Justin.
“Oh,” replied Justin. “Where is he?”
“I’m talking about the son I never had,” replied Johan with a laugh. And then he told Justin his real reason for coming to China.
But when the two policemen got out of their car and a horse-faced young man with a haircut like an umbrella ran forward and volunteered translate, Johan found himself facing the familiar question.
“Why did you come to China?” The cops asked through the interpreter.
When Johan told them where he worked, the translator smiled through buck teeth and informed Johan that the policemen thought he was cool.
"You’re American and you teach English in the university, so they like you," said the young man.
The two police officers were very different physically. One was very fat while his partner was very skinny. The fat one spoke to the translator in a loud voice, and the young man turned to Johan.
"Why do you sleep in the morning? Why don't you sleep at night when there is no loud music?"
Johan saw the gym's workers squeezing close to the belly-dancing girls and the rest of the crowd pushing forward.
Why was everyone in this stupid street so interested in what he had to say?
Lie! A voice screamed inside his head.
Dad used to lie all the time.
Caught up suddenly in a tide, soaring out of an ocean of repressed memories, Johan closed his eyes to become six years old. His handsome almost twelve-year old brother, Charlie, stood next to him, outside a mall in Duluth, Georgia. The two boys were watching their father, flirting clumsily with a blonde in a short skirt. Dad kept glancing towards the mall where Mom was using the restroom.
But the translator's voice brought Johan out of his thoughts.
"Why don't you sleep at night when there is no loud music?"
Johan murmured quickly, saying "stupid" and "idiots" twice. The translator frowned and Johan had the feeling that the young man would eat his head before admitting that he didn't understand much English.
Even with Johan’s limited knowledge of Mandarin, he was proved right when he heard the translator telling the policemen that the foreigner had said he couldn't sleep at night because he worked at night.
When the chubby policeman began to speak loudly, Johan used the way he slapped the young man's back as a clue to conclude that the cop was praising the translator's bilingual skills.
As the crowd rushed forward, it suddenly appeared like the people would squeeze life out of Johan and his little group. But the skinny officer who had not yet spoken, saved the day by inviting Johan to their car.
They drove around the city, bombarding Johan with questions. From the back seat which he shared with the translator, he answered in English. The translator stumbled and stuttered, got lost several times, but always bluffed his way out. At the red lights, the young man poked a forefinger inside his nostril and pulled out something. He rolled it slowly between two fingers before rubbing on what he thought was the car's seat.
But his finger was on Johan's pants.
Consumed by silent disgust, Johan ignored the smeared spot, keeping his eyes ahead until the bumpy ride came to a finish, in the same place, where it had commenced.
But the crowd had dispersed.
Helios is an award winning novel about a brilliant inventor of new technology, a fallen CEO seeking redemption, and an idealistic youth who comes of age in corporate America.
My second book is about a boy who has Asperger's Syndrome and is bullied to the point to where he shoots up his school. I have divided the excerpts from it into three parts: Before, during and after the shooting.
