Free Diary of a Naked Official by Ouyang Yu

and again.
    Poet X emailed me a suite of poems by a poet from Bosnia and Herzegovina and wondered if there was any likelihood of getting them published if he translated them. Although I was sure that B would scorn the idea of publishing someone from such a small country I delved into one of the poems and was immediately taken by the thought an introducer (Aleksandar Hemon) writes, that goes: ‘Every war is fought against the body. The body is what soldiers give to the army and their leader, the enemy body is what they aim to destroy. The cost of “freedom” (currently the cheapest word in the English language) is paid in bodies.’ I would have readily published the poet for that invaluable insight but for B who I knew would not touch poetry unless it was either by Nobelprize winners or poets from the USA and the UK. He once said: Mark my words: Nothing would sell well in China except books from the USA and the UK and a few other equally powerful countries, such as France and Germany.
    I like the poet’s words because they remind me that the peace we live in is like a war, a warless war, inwhich bodies, loved, are fought against bodies through the weapon of love until they are exhausted and turn old, then cold. It’s not about love, a minor weapon of destruction that one can purchase; it’s all about bodies, bodies entering bodies like doors, bodies hitting bodies like balls, bodies hugging bodies like burdens, and bodies hating bodies like corpses.
    Sam told me something that I already knew, a story widely spread online of how four fupo or sugar mummies, counterparts of sugar daddies, milked a young man of 28 years old till he died and lived again, after being revived with heavy dosages of Viagra, reaching the final moment of total ejaculation in death. The result is not hard to imagine: the four fupo were arrested on murder charges.
    Whether the story is entirely true is anyone’s guess as there are versions disputing the authenticity but one thing that Sam said about the four rich women, in their late forties and early fifties, left to themselves without ever being touched by their men, has a ring of truth about it. These men and women must have loved each other when they were first united in marriage but years of bondage in the union serve only to widen the gap, mainly sexual, between them until neither holds any bodily attraction for the other and each goes in search of his or her own pleasures, findable in men or women of a much younger age.
    This is terrible. When I do not have sex, my thoughts are preoccupied with it. I turn on the computer to look for porn pics online. Or I insert – what a word; it sounds almost like inserting a member – a CD to watch porn. Or I talk with friends about women, and sex we have had. It is temporarily at work that our thoughts are suspended from it, only to return to it with a stronger passion, like a fire rekindled. The world will definitely go to the sexy dogs; it actually has.
    7/7
    For some reason, I felt quite depressed today and shut myself up for most of the day without seeing anyone, on the excuse that I was not feeling well. Though I allowed my phone to remain switched on, I did not care to take any incoming calls. The jumping to death of this university vice chancellor came as a shock, making me restless. You could say that he took his life for a combination of reasons: his demotion from his high position, the removal of the official secretary, his lover, the betrayal by his mistress of many years who spilled the beans in a secret letter sent to the authorities, and perhaps many other reasons but if I were him I would never have takenthe plunge. If I did, it would be for only one reason: having exhausted any pleasures deprivable from sex. I would then opt for the apogee of sexual enlightenment and extremity by flying off the top of a building face down towards my death, in the final moment in which I come face to face and dick to cunt