Spittoon Issue 7 Sneak Peek: "The Younger Cousin"

Xiao Tan noticed that her hair looked puffy; she’d probably wiped it dry with the feet towel he left airing outside. She’d also drawn two thick lines over her eyebrows. Rouge was painted onto the corners of her eyes and her cheeks. When she sat on one side of the bed, the other side flipped into the air. Xiao Tan had no choice but to use his weight to press it back down. Like this, they started chatting. When Xiao Tan spoke, Yunxia raised her head, looking at the pitch-dark dusk outside the window, lowering it too sometimes. She had the same answer for each sentence he finished: “Oh, really?” Sometimes she turned her head, looking at her cousin with a pair of feline eyes. Xiao Tan quickly spat out a pile of words and sat there quietly, waiting for new words to well up in his head like water in a tank. He suspected that it mattered that his words should have some significance. Later, he realized that there was a dead moth on the back of Yunxia’s left hand, resting at the edge of the bed. He bent down to blow it away, simultaneously using his right hand to cover her left. After that, he squeezed, or rather, gripped her hand. She did not pull it away, and betrayed no change while continuing to listen. Xiao Tan, still talking in earnest, squeezed so tight that sweat almost dripped out. Ah, even though he mustered up the courage to lean over, holding her close enough to kiss, he still had to finish what he was saying. She closed her eyes, lay back on the bed, and a groan erupted from the bedframe. The frame was more than sufficient for Xiao Tan, but now, holding two people, it resembled a diving board propped up between an irrigation canal and a ditch. Unaccepting of such a weight, it bent, becoming a quivering, wobbling thing. With Yunxia’s assistance, Xiao Tan peeled off her underwear. Her two breasts were the size of washbasins, the nipples swelling like pieces of dried persimmon, darkened by mold, filled with little bumps. She had barely any pubic hair, just a few sparse yellowish strands, flinging up here and there at odd angles. At first she held her hands there, not letting him look at her powder puff mound. Later on she moved her hand away, but at the very same time, she turned off the light.

Xiao Tan felt as though he had thrown himself on a bed on top of the bed, a quilt on top of a quilt. He had dived into a bottomless pit of cotton or sponge, a swamp. He drifted within it until a certain force blocked him. Every time he pressed down, his body automatically bounced back some. Beneath him, she groaned decrepitly. After a while, likely out of exhaustion from her journey, she fell asleep. Shortly afterwards she woke up again, held Xiao Tan close, and lightly scratched his back with her fingertips, over and over again. As they copulated, Xiao Tan was unable to control the stream of promises and praises coming out of his own mouth. Like, “What I’m sayin' is, you grew up so well, there must be somethin' (behind it). Such white skin, there must be somethin'. Somethin' in the water in Xiongjiashan. Must be you n I’s blood.” Like: “If you n I got married, it’s blood mixin blood. If we get a kid, it’s gonna be for sure beautiful and cute.” Like: “I’ll keep you forever, we got all the time in the world. You be the old lady and I’ll work,” or: “I never liked nobody like this, look at my two arms up on the bed here, I’m shakin.” Making promises bigger than the sky for just a little bit of sex, that’s just how he was. Yunxia sometimes replied: “You really mean all this?” Xiao Tan would raise his hand and say: “Swear by the cow that saved my life it’s true. If even half a word I’m sayin' is false, thunder strike me dead.” Xiao Tan lasted for about seven or eight minutes, about what he deemed enough to meet a man’s standards, until he came. Right after, a sense of loss, emptiness, and self-hatred arose in his heart. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back bent, combing his fingers through his hair. The sound of her wiping her belly and lower body with toilet paper came through. She tore a piece from the roll, rolled it into a ball after having rubbed herself clean, sniffed it, and tossed it under the bed—tossed about a few dozen. She grabbed his hand, letting it touch her belly. He groped it symbolically several times, then withdrew his hand to his side. “Let’s go to sleep,” he said.