Wild Kids: Two Novels About Growing Up

And supposing that I run into Weng Jiaping in the future, should I tell him all the things that happened? I’m a bit apprehensive because Weng Jiaping is practically an amateur writer; wait until he gets a bit older and he’ll become a professional writer. In what ways would he adapt my story to turn it into a book? According to Huang Munan, Weng had already turned me into a Big Headed Monkey and made Mr. Hippo a strange monster. And even though I would still love to read Weng Jiaping’s novel, you should know that given the fact that the world is indeed one funny place, I don’t think all the things I’ve experienced are really that entertaining.

Not only that, but supposing that you wrote out every aspect of every event that happened, it would truly be too exhausting. For example, should I let out the names of those kids who burned the geography exams and tell how they got the green safety cabinet open? Supposing I don’t talk, everything will be left hanging, and not even the upright official Bao Qingtian will be able to clear my name. But supposing I spill my guts, isn’t that too far from the loyal and heroic image that I want to convey? Wouldn’t that make all my time in the streets a waste? This is truly just too frustrating a predicament to be in.

Moreover, I was really annoyed at Uncle Xu’s decision to join with Horsefly’s clique. I always imagined Horsefly to be an extremely vicious and doughty fellow with first-rate marksmanship and martial arts skills. But in reality he looked like a blob, soft and fluffy just like a loaf of Wonder bread; he wouldn’t even bounce back to shape if smooshed in on one side. Who would believe that a blob of Wonder bread could just show up and tell Uncle Xu to help out with this, help out with that? He even handed out several thousand NT to Little Xinjiang, Ahzhi, and Old Bull. The first time we locked a member of the Legislative Yuan who couldn’t keep his mouth shut up in a dog cage for a few days, Horsefly gave me three thousand bucks. He even stroked my head and said, “Who would guess? You’re such a cute little fellow!” Cute? Your dick is cute! For a gang boss to speak like your grandmother is really pretty damn pathetic! It wasn’t at all the way a gang leader should behave. An experience like this, for example: supposing I were to tell Weng Jiaping, he’d laugh his ass off at me and who knows, he might even think I made the whole thing up.

There are also a handful of extremely insignificant events that I’m unsure I should talk about. Like that time Apricot disappeared for several days, making everyone anxious and worried. Finally Ahzhi went out to the streets to ask a ghost what he knew about it. That ghost told Ahzhi that he spotted Apricot out near the train station on the street with all the cram schools. Ahzhi then went down to look for her around those cram schools. After poking around for half the day he finally found Apricot in an apartment building that rented exclusively to students from outside Taipei. She was tied to a bed with one foot in death’s door. Later he learned that some student who wanted to fuck her brought her to his room. Then two other guys barged in saying the room was theirs; they also wanted to screw her. There was nothing Apricot could do but say, “Okay, but I can’t cut you any discounts.” They all agreed. But who could guess that after a while yet another guy would show up, saying the room was really his! In the end Apricot didn’t make a penny but got fucked by more than thirty little bastards. Afterward she was tied to the bed and scared half dead by a bunch of spiders and cockroaches that were crawling all over the room. Ahzhi was pissed as all hell, so he asked his ghost friends to give him a hand in restoring justice. But, fuck! After getting popped by these thirty evil, little punks, Apricot couldn’t even formulate a sentence. How was anyone supposed to know just which kids were the perpetrators? But Ahzhi’s ghost friends promised him: just wait until the day before the college entrance exams and they would take a trip to those cram schools and give those bastard turtle eggs something to get excited about. They’d make sure that those little punks failed their exams and wouldn’t be qualified to go anywhere besides a pig farm. However, in the end this never happened and the issue was never resolved. And so this story is only an unimportant and very disgusting interlude. I figure that even if I were to mention it, there still wouldn’t be anyone who would find it the least bit interesting.

And so, other people don’t necessarily want to listen to what you have to say, just as they also don’t necessarily hear what you have to say. But people are always interested in what you don’t want to talk about or can’t talk about, so much so that they always force it out of you.

That’s how things are. As soon as you begin to tell people some stories, you’re sure to end up in a very bad way by the time the curtain falls. They’ll just continue munching on their dried snack peas and sipping their iced black tea as they ask you, “So what happened next? So what happened next?” If not that, they’ll say, “No, no, it should be like this! It’s much better this way!” Or “No, no, it should be like that! That way is much more interesting!”