The freezing midnight in Beijing's December has a magic.
It makes me notice I'm breathing.
Such awareness is rare. It surfaces only when survival feels tested but isn't actually at stake—cold and darkness being perfect for this.
The wind cuts my nose and cheek.
Leaves of the Wutong trees test how far the night will willingly give itself to the wind.
Approximately 500 meters from car park to home.
Approximately 10 minutes walking.
We do this 500 meters and this 10 minutes at nearly the same time each week: weekend midnights after milongas.
I put my hand into KeKe's pocket—a clenched fist into his palm, his readily stretched palm wrapping my fist.
I've never asked how he feels about it.
I've never asked if he'd like to hold my hand other ways.
I'm not going to ask, either.
I'm not afraid of asking him anything. Sensitive, embarrassing, annoying—I ask right away, follow up relentlessly until the problem is fully exposed or my curiosity fully fed.
So when I don't ask, it's either no problem exists, or silence serves better.
With other men—close or distant—I don't ask when I want to. Swallowing needs, protecting pride, terrified of seeming too much.
With KeKe, I can ask about or for anything. Maybe that's why we work.
*
KeKe is tall and stocky.
"You Milk Dragon!"
"You Elephant!"
"You Aircraft Carrier!"
"Earthquake! You made it again!"
I'm a mean idiot when I have him around.
Which means I've been a mean idiot 90 percent of the time for five years.
And my absurdity knows no limit because there's no limit to how much he can bear it.
*
Marriage—an impossible thing.
I considered it impossible before I married KeKe.
I considered it impossible after.
I consider it impossible as I write this.
Impossible because it's heavy stuff put together: rituals, responsibilities, rewards, and in all likelihood, revenges.
Five years in, I still have no clue about its significance.
Perhaps because KeKe makes all the heavy stuff feel INSIGNIFICANT.
*
The shape of him never triggers fantasies of snow-capped mountain peaks that steal my breath when they suddenly appear through train windows from Sichuan into Tibet.
Instead, the closest things that portray his shape:
Slightly scalding butter tea from a plain pottery pot, after returning to my aunt's place in Kangding from snowy twilight.
Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations on vinyl at 5:00 am, most of Beijing still asleep.
My goose down quilt sandwiched between my legs to pacify an overexcited mind. Many, many midnights.
Things that make me feel spoiled tell me he's around.
*
Every guy before KeKe: charming at distance, unbearable up close.
He's talking about San Francisco. Plane tickets covered, no need to pay anything. His cozy bed, his working desk. I'm nodding. Then I stop replying.
Another. He's cooking again. Garlic, onions, something from a recipe he renews for me every week. I smell the food, glimpse grease on the stovetop. I'm already packing in my head.
Yet another. He drives me to tango and home, crossing half of Beijing. But I can barely move when he sits beside me at milonga. We break up without saying goodbye.
I believed I was un-girlfriend-able.
Then KeKe.
*
When I first met him—March 9, 2021, in a tango class he taught—my mind said: "Not my type."
My body said: "Go get him."
My mind is sharp. My body is slim.
But when they disagree, body wins. Now and always.
And my body won overwhelmingly after I danced with him.
Phenomenal hugger—that's what he is!
Moving with him in close embrace, into the tango music, made my head spin.
So he had me in our first dance.
And he's been having more of me through countless dances since.
So I slept with him—almost rushed it—the second time we met, April 21, 2021.
My mind was still protesting.
So I told KeKe: "I really want to sleep with you. Really. But I can't be your girlfriend or anything. If we're not on the same page, I'll let go my desire for your body."
He agreed. Happily.
But he behaved boyfriend-ly.
He'd talk me to sleep over phone.
He'd text non-stop.
Over weekends he'd travel five hours by high-speed train from Chongqing to Xi'an where I was staying.
Several times, May through June, until I moved to his city mid-June.
The surprising thing: I accepted all this without difficulty.
That was unusual.
*
So even after we rented an apartment together in Chongqing—in the same building as the tango club that held the city's best Thursday milonga—I kept repeating: "No boyfriend-girlfriend thing. No relationship stuff."
He said of course, but behaved—I realized later—totally like a serious partner.
He brought me to his parents, siblings, friends. The places he lived, studied, worked.
He'd cook for me after work and dance with me after meals.
He did all this as if just in passing. Not FOR me, but WITH me.
I felt invited to look at his life.
My curiosity about him was thus fed without fear or concern, and fed into courage.
The courage to picture him as my partner.
*
Chest tight. Can't get a full breath. I'm nodding at whatever he's saying but I'm already planning the exit. The words I'll use. The voice I'll use saying them. Gentle. Reasonable. Final.
This was how it always went. With every man before KeKe.
But with KeKe, the exit never came.
*
My ex-boyfriends or intimate almost-boyfriends all treated me nicely, sometimes too nicely.
But I brought none to my family.
Some met my parents when we were just friends or after the romance officially ended.
But mid-September, I called my mom:
"Mom, would you clean my bedroom? I'm coming back to Beijing soon. With my boyfriend."
"Oh, will you? Okay, let me see what I can do."
I can't name my mom's feelings.
She's always busy with her own stuff.
I'd say she was neither excited nor disturbed.
My stepfather was perhaps a bit surprised, though he didn't ask many questions either.
When I told KeKe, he looked terrified, but I knew he was thrilled and calm.
When I told KeKe, I sounded as if this wasn't even worth mentioning, but I knew I was panicked.
Chest tight again. Breath shallow. The familiar suffocation.
But I knew I'd feel worse if I hadn't dared to feel awful.
*
The moment KeKe met my parents wasn't dramatic or sentimental or anything.
They just liked him immediately.
He made a brilliant first impression because of something genetic: he looks very much like a Buddhist Bodhisattva.
He knows nearly nothing about what a Buddhist Bodhisattva is.
Nothing of the Buddhist art, history, philosophy my stepfather and I find fascinating.
But he looks like the bodhisattva image hanging on my parents' wall.
He fit into my family as scrambled eggs fit into fried rice.
*
One day after dinner, we were walking in the neighborhood.
Passing bakeries, restaurants, groceries, hair salons, foot massage studios—shops that stayed or changed over years—I heard something absurd come out of my mouth:
"Why don't you call your dad? Ask him to deliver your residence registration booklet by tomorrow?"
"What's it for?" KeKe was clearly striving to control his voice.
"Let's go get married. Get married now."
"Hmm. I must think about it."
I kicked his ass before burying my face in his chest, grinning.
That was October 5th.
*
In August, I'd just been awarded one of the most prestigious scholarships for outstanding PhD students at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Returning to my university at Mt. Scopus in late October was planned.
The original plan: me, alone.
But by October 5th, the thought of going alone had secretly grown into a pain.
A pain that threatened my survival.
Too late when I realized it.
So my only choice: take him with me.
*
If I left without him, we could still be in touch. I knew this phrase. It sounds like an open door. It's not.
Another thing about KeKe that prompted me to propose: he didn't ask to go to Jerusalem with me. At all.
Neither did he treat me with less care or passion because I was leaving soon, possibly ending our relationship.
He was just there with me, from the first minute to the last second he could make.
The first day we met. The first time we kissed and made love. The first six months of our "no boyfriend-girlfriend" dating. The first time I met his family and he met mine.
He was never planning any of this.
Was I?
I don't know.
If I did, I did it spontaneously.
If I did, I did it when I lost my mind—yet without regret afterwards.
But once I made a plan, whatever it was, he would follow it.
So he teamed up with me and genuinely enjoyed each and every one of my plans (sometimes more than I did) before I could convince myself that having a life partner wouldn't choke me to death.
*
We met March 9, 2021.
We got married October 9, 2021. Period.
*
So if getting married is extraordinary, getting married without a clear idea of it is quite common.
I was married October 9, 2021, age 32.
I felt extraordinary then.
I feel extraordinary now as I write this line on December 16, 2025.
Yet still, I have no idea about marriage.
I bet this is common enough.