Notes of a Crocodile

by Qiu Miaojin

It’s like a series of roadside warning signs. The one behind me says: DON’T BELIEVE THE FANTASY. The one ahead of me says: WIELD THE AX OF CRUELTY.

It seems I’m going to have to learn to be crueler if I’m to become the master of my own fate.

Wielding the ax of cruelty against life, against myself, against others. It’s the rule of animal instinct, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics—and the axis of all four. And the comma that punctuated being twenty-two.

People in this city are manufactured and canned, raised for the sole purpose of taking tests and making money. The eighteen-year-old me went through the high-grade production line and was processed in three years, despite the fact that I was pure carrion inside.

It exempted me from an oppressive system of social and personal responsibility—from going through the motions like a cog, from being whipped and beaten by everyone for not having worked hard enough and then having to put on a repentant face afterward. That system had already molded me into a flimsy, worthless shell. It drove my body to retreat into a self-loathing soul, and what’s even scarier is that nobody knew or seemed to recognize it. My social identity was comprised of these two distinct, co-existing constructs. Each writhed toward me with its incessant demands—though when it came down to it, I spent more time getting to know my way around the supermarket next door than I did getting comfortable in my own skin.

The fact is, most people go through life without ever living. They say you have to learn how to construct a self who remains free in spite of the system. And you have to get used to the idea that it’s every man for himself in this world. It requires a strange self-awareness, whereby everything down to the finest detail must be performed before the eyes of the world. Since there’s time to kill, you have to use boredom to get you to the other side. In English, you’d say: Break on through. That’s more like it.

The first semester she was my lifeline. It was a clandestine form of dating—the kind where the person you’re going out with doesn’t know it’s a date. I denied myself, and I denied the fact that she was part of my life, so much so that I denied the dotted line that connected the two of us and our entire relationship to a crime. But the eye of suspicion had been cast upon me from the very beginning, and this extraordinary eye reached all the way back to my adolescence. My hair started to go gray early. Life ahead was soon supplanted by a miserable prison sentence. It was as if I never really had a youth. Nonetheless, I was determined at all costs to become a person who would love without boundaries. And so I locked myself and that eye together in a dark closet.

My time was gradually consumed by tears. The whole world loves me, but what does it matter since I hate myself? Humanity stabs a bayonet into a baby’s chest, fathers produce daughters that they pull into the bathroom to rape, handicapped midgets drag themselves onto highway overpasses to announce that they’re about to end it all just to collect a little spare change, and mental patients have irrepressible hallucinations and suicidal urges. How can the world be this cruel? A human being has only so much in them, and yet you must learn through experience, until you finally reach the maddening conclusion that the world wrote you off a long time ago, or accept the prison sentence that your crime is your existence. And the world keeps turning as if nothing had happened.

No one will ever know about your tragedy, and the world eluded its responsibility ages ago. All that you know is that you’ve been crucified for something, and you’re going to spend the rest of your life feeling like no one and nothing will help you, that you’re in it alone. Your individual circumstances, which separate you from everyone else, will keep you behind bars for life. On top of it all, humanity tells me I’m lucky. Privilege after privilege has been conferred upon me, and if I don’t seem content with my lot, they’ll be devastated.

Instantly, I recognized that he and I were of the same ilk, each embracing our own singular way of seeing things. Yet he seemed pure and whole compared to me, and in that respect, he was more precocious and more exceptional. Were it possible to love him, it would also mean loving his brand of exceptionalism.

admonitions for young people.

College—now there’s a system. Though it’s not quite death, it’s a pretty close second. It’s the nexus of three major institutions (compulsory education, compulsory labor, and compulsory marriage), and these three institutions happen to be the greatest achievements of human civilization. Contrary to expectation, when experienced in combination, they allow for an escape into a transient, self-absorbed greatness.

To sum it up, the usual bag of tricks consists of: going to class + taking tests + chasing the opposite sex + recreation + earning spending money + pretending to be interested in joining clubs + observing society + hanging out. The first seven constitute eighty percent of your waking hours. I don’t even know how to explain what goes on that eighty percent of the time. I could go on and on, and still never get to the last one: hanging out. You just have to gather all the tools you can—as if in preparation to outsmart life itself—and keep them in that overstuffed bag of tricks.

I hung out with him for a while. When we were together, my masculine and feminine sides reached their highest state of dialectical tension. It was the same for him, and he knew that it was his optimal state. His words had sparked something in both of us.

You’re the kind of person who’d die with me. You practically have horns growing out of your head.

To have paid such a high price to live, only to die! Don’t tell me I don’t have the right to say no thanks?”

I’m so bored that I wish I were dead.

She was used to relying on other people. I had a habit of protecting girls.

Two very different types of people, mutual attraction. And for what reason? It’s hard to believe, this something that exists beyond the imagination of the chess game known as the human condition. It’s based on the gender binary, which stems from the duality of yin and yang, or some unspeakable evil. But humanity says it’s a biological construct: penis vs. vagina, chest hair vs. breasts, beard vs. long hair. Penis + chest hair + beard = masculine; vagina + breasts + long hair = feminine. Male plugs into female like key into lock, and as a product of that coupling, babies get punched out. This product is the only object that can fill a square on the chessboard. All that is neither masculine nor feminine becomes sexless and is cast into the freezing-cold waters outside the line of demarcation, into an even wider demarcated zone. Man’s greatest suffering is born of mistreatment by his fellow man.

A crocodile is a human with reptile characteristics, not a reptile with human characteristics. Beep.”

In the scenario I’m about to describe, which emerged amid all the drama, I was consumed by guilt and fear like never before. I felt like my skin was being grated like a radish—scraped raw, into a pulp. I knew I was capable of the monstrous sin of lusting after a woman’s body.

Yet I grew into exactly that: a carnal being stirring the cement of fear with every step toward adulthood. Since I feared my sexual desires and who I fundamentally was, fear stirred up even deeper fears.

My life was reduced to that of some hideous beast. I felt as if I had to hide in a cave, lest anyone discover my true nature. Ever since I asked Shui Ling Can we start over?, I’d become a refugee on the ocean, and in due time, I was drinking seawater. So I decided to confront my desires head on. I would renounce my resistance and hasten toward destruction.

I just so happen to have the gifts of a clown. I knew there was no way I could protect her from the real world or from being yanked around by the tail. That said, I’d still step in and save her regardless. I was such a shitty human being, why not take advantage of her state of disgrace and kick her while she was down? No matter what kind of trouble she was in, I’d run over in an instant to toss a rope down and pull her back to safety. Now that I’d shown myself to be blindly at her beck and call, she was beaming again. But my malice had already reignited. I could have put an end to my ways that night, instead of treating her like I did. The serial killer in me should have surrendered. I

shoving a red-hot piece of wire up a monkey’s ass. It was as if she had ever so lightly brushed up against the edge of a tooth of mine that had been aching unbearably. (What had once been a vague yet screamingly sexual taboo was now my downfall.) In the end, I saw myself with perfect clarity:

I don’t know how other people endure the violence and cruelty they encounter throughout their lives. There’s no way to judge whether fate is playing favorites when it doles out physical disability, murder, and rape, or you’re hauled off to the concentration camp. All I know is that I was forced into a corner, and so I violated myself in order to ward off the threat of being violated. I had to sacrifice the real, living, breathing

No matter what, Shui Ling, I’ll always feel your absence. From now on, for the rest of my life, I have to change my ways and pay the price for the crimes I committed as an eighteen-year-old. As long as I’m alive and able, I won’t stop talking about humanity and all of its fears.

“It’s been a challenge. It was hard enough to demolish just one little part. It hurt everyone, including me. To make up for it, I let them form a new image of me. It’s been a constant struggle. I’ll always feel love for them and have basic needs to be met, so it takes courage to draw the line. But if I don’t, my love for them and my needs will become bargaining chips that I have to exchange for my independence. And using those would be like retreating before the battle’s even begun.” I didn’t feel the least bit inhibited telling them about my family. The more I shared, the more open I felt.

Not only the people I’d forged close bonds with but almost everyone I knew from college appeared or disappeared in the blink of an eye. No one could be counted on to show up anywhere. Our relationships were about as tight as those between one drifting nebula and another.

What is the human race, anyway, but a multitude of outlets for desires? There’s no suppressing the truths that arise from our experiences. Desires teach us lessons, and we have to go forth into the new worlds that we construct for ourselves.” Chu Kuang’s voice trembled. “When you can’t, that’s when you die.”

That’s the problem with going forth into new worlds. By having another man grip your cock, you’ve gone beyond the perceived boundaries of your former world and delved into your carnal desires. You’ve retraced the roots of self-knowledge, experienced the primal frustrations, and transgressed the perceived boundaries. And you’ve managed to come back alive.” I expounded on Chu Kuang’s thoughts, which had stirred something within

“You’ve emerged from a primordial state with newly constructed schemata, and lo and behold, you’re experiencing a whole new world. Right?” “Hey, I really like you, Sis. But why do you feel the same way, too?” Having recovered his composure, Chu Kuang seemed embarrassed at his outburst just a minute earlier. I didn’t answer. “So it was just a sudden impulse? It wasn’t love?” I asked. Meng

Just hearing about these two and their entanglement was draining. Part of me wanted to get up and leave so that I could shut out the panorama of hazardous terrain that had just opened before my eyes, this world of embattled relationships. I wanted to retreat to the solitude of my desert, which, though bleak, was tame compared to this.

“Whoa! You’re not offended, are you? How about if the three of us agree to have post-gender relations? I’m done talking about it. In the end, all three of us have been seriously warped by gender labels. Everybody has, more or less. The only difference is, we’re the blessed children of Tripitaka. We’ll talk about it later.” Blushing, Chu Kuang extended his hand in a gesture of solidarity.

“Hey, we should found a gender-free society and monopolize all the public restrooms!”

was elated at the idea. He didn’t have to explain. He too could envision the manual I was writing about my own experiences. I decided to stop pressuring myself to state those experiences explicitly. If I couldn’t, I wasn’t going to let it bother me. I would speak up when the time...

For me, Meng Sheng is like this thing F. Scott Fitzgerald described in The Great Gatsby: ‘A single green light, minute and faraway, that might have been the end of a dock.’ Every day, he’d stare at the green light. If it went out, that meant hope was gone. It was his only point of reference. Know what I mean?”

Amid a recent crocodile frenzy, one radical theologian has predicted that no prophet will emerge from among the crocodiles, and that the gods will see to it that they are all cast into a pit of flames. All things considered, it is indisputable that crocodiles—whether they are studied or scorned—warrant closer attention.

Secretly, though, I did sort of enjoy being a fucked-up mess. Apart from that, I didn’t have a whole lot going on.

Who was the real me, then? It was an abstraction that hadn’t yet taken shape in my lifetime. Self-actualization became the fulcrum that my survival rested

I’ll tell you the kind of person I was. In the eyes of the average person, I was a woman, but that vague semblance was an illusion, an easy category. In my own mind, I was a beast straight out of Greek mythology: a centaur. Like that beast, I’d willingly and madly fallen in love with a woman.

Since I’d managed to shake off this woman’s affections, I’d succeeded in fleeing from all the desires and fears that came with having someone special in my life. Over the course of eighteen long months, a distant flame had been ignited and passed from one candle to the next across a great distance until it would finally arrive at my darkest hour, illuminating the candle I held before

The beer tasted bitter. God knows how much I’d drunk in the two years I lived alone, but it was clear I’d been having one long, silent cry. I simply hadn’t thought of it that way before. Then it hit me: If I died, what difference would it make to the world?

After all, no matter who I was, my death would be no more significant, nor would I be spared from lonely nights. And really, what difference did the world make to me, anyway? With that question, something stirred deep inside me, making my body tremble. It did make a difference. I had needs like anyone else, and sure, one of those needs was a little acknowledgment. But the problem was the way I loved: It was the very cause of my pain.

I wailed. No matter how loudly I sobbed, the sound was drowned out by the noise of passing cars. I’d taken everyone I loved and killed them off in my heart, one by one. I’d long been tending their graves—secretly visiting and mourning during the day, going out and erecting a cross on starry nights, lying inside and awaiting my own death on starless nights. That was my Atlantis, the kingdom I’d built in the name of separation. I’d never before unearthed so much of myself, and so suddenly at that. Inside the world of my tomb, everyone else was dead, I alone survived, and that was the reason for my sorrow.

You loved me. I couldn’t grasp that, and this inability was at the core of my death wish. I never believed that anyone could love the real me—not even you.

Why didn’t I get it? That has to do with my own issues. Ever since I was little and started to learn what it meant to love, I never understood that I had to love me too—otherwise, what was the point? If I wanted to join the rest of humanity, the only solution was gradually to reveal my secret. I would begin to construct what was in my internal blueprint. There was no other way I could go on. For me, it was a matter of life and death, and of pain.

You know that I fall in love with women, that it’s how I was designed. What you don’t know is how I suffered during that year with you. There’s no way you’ll ever comprehend how painful it was for me to be alive. My self-actualization was forbidden. That was why I had to leave you. I once said you were so happy that it made m...

For you, being in love with a woman is natural, the same as being in love with a man. You didn’t believe in unhappy endings, much less admit that misfortune lay ahead, awaiting you. So you took the agony in my eyes to be part of my tragic disposition, and as in any lopsided romance, you partook of the happiness. But I’m like a father to you, only younger. A lover with a beautiful soul, nothing special about it. For you, it was an ordinary happiness. I was the one who shouldered the burden when we experienced two discrete halves of the love we shared.

My world is one of tainted sustenance. I love my own kind—womankind. From the moment my consciousness of love was born, there was no hope of cure. And those four words—no hope of cure—encapsulate my state of suffering to this day. My condition is one that will keep me in shackles for life.