A Man Named Odd

Chunyang Lin

I’d left the U.S. for Shanghai right after graduation. As a lamentable consequence, I hadn’t had sex in eight months. Whereas I’d once lived in a dorm full of young college boys, I now lived in a dorm full of Chinese eighth graders.

My friends had caught on to this, and were, on this particular evening, conspiring to get me laid. We were on vacation in Hong Kong, out to watch the crazy spectacle of a Chinese New Year's parade. As we wandered through Lan Kwai Fong district — an area packed with bars and clubs perched precariously on steep hills — I sabotaged their efforts with every passing distraction. I threw myself into conversation with a group of Chinese tourists, trying to practice my Mandarin, and stuffed my face with pizza at the only food stand still open.

Finally, at the last club, I found myself in conversation with a tall, blonde, Nordic man. One of my girlfriends had snagged him from the bar and seamlessly passed him on to me. Before long we were making out in the corner, and the club owners were urging us out the door. There was little question as to where we’d go — he was staying in the Marriott while I was staying with three others in a hostel room the size of my kitchen table.

By the time we made it to his hotel, he realized he had lost his wallet, and needed to call his credit-card company. As I lay there, listening to him talk forcefully in Norwegian, I started to get turned on. I kneeled on the bed and he stood up in front of me, fingering me through my cutoff shorts, still yelling gibberish into the phone. It was hot that he was making me wait for sex, but after eight months, I wanted it bad. He concluded his business in some fashion — finally — and we got to it.

The next morning, I grabbed my clothes and tried to escape quietly. The naked Norwegian walked me to the door, kissed me goodbye, and called me by my name. I didn’t recall his until I found it in my phone on the cab ride home — Odd. I had just had sex with a guy named Odd. I returned to my shoebox where my friends were waiting to congratulate me. We spent a lazy morning trying to sleep off our hangovers despite the drums banging and fireworks blasting outside our window for Chinese New Year. — Kylie