I got my finances under control last week but I have a ways to go. Luckily, my salary, which seems miniscule by today’s Western standards, makes me a very rich man indeed in Beijing, and I can pay it off fairly quickly if I cut down on the $45 dinners.

Work is good, especially with the boss on vacation — I love her, but she does make everyone feel some pressure, she is so demanding. I gave a seminar yesterday on grammar that definitely terrified some of the less English-savvy Chinese employees. It was pretty tough, but I got a lot of thanks for it.

It is late October and utterly freezing here. It just struck me that October 9 came and went and I never thought about it, the anniversary of my brother’s death. And October 30, yesterday, is the day Roy died, my best friend from college. These are all things that put my own problems in perspective.

I was just interrupted by an unusual phone call. I am going to take a gamble and write about it now, although I’ve never blogged about such personal subjects before. If only a couple of people see it, it will be worthwhile. I must by necessity live a secret life here in Beijing, where being gay, while no longer a crime per se, is certainly something one doesn’t announce to one’s colleagues. So I keep all aspects of the topic out of this diary and out of my worklife. I have entrusted one colleague of mine, a very mature and wonderful young lady, with the URL for this site. Amy, if you are reading this tonight, I am counting on you to honor my trust in you.

So the phone rang a short while ago. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t believe that I can ever be happy here. I can never tell my family about the man that I love, I always have to live a secret life.” So said my friend David, one of my first friends here, a 21-year-old student at a local university, his voice choking with emotion. David told me about a teacher he was in love with, an American whose father had just suffered a heart attack. He had to return at once to America and David, who has been looking for love for so many months, was utterly devastated. I hardly knew what to say as I heard his sobs, but I felt that I was hearing a cry of agony from all the gay men in China. “He was the only man I loved and now he’s leaving me. I know why he has to go, I know it’s his father and I would do the same thing. But still I feel so frightened and so alone, I have never felt so alone. I looked for this man for so long, and tomorrow he’ll be gone. Finding love in China is almost impossible, and I am frightened I will never find it again.”

In Hong Kong, I felt terrible for young men who felt they had to marry and have a child because it was so much a part of their culture — the very idea of coming out was anathema to their way of thinking, to their way of life. In China it is infinitely worse. At least in HK there is a gay community, a place to go and know you are not alone. In China this community is so much in its infancy, so small and so fragile that it can offer people like David little support. I urged David to recognize that life is often sad and unfair, but that there is enough joy and happiness to make it worthwhile. I told him that at the age of 21 it might be hard to realize that life goes on after the man you love goes away, but that it does. I told David that the key to his happiness would be his relationships; he had to reach out, to have a support system, friends he could go to like me.

I was sincere, but in my heart I wondered how easy that would be in China. It wasn’t the first time I had heard a young Chinese man gripped with extreme panic as he looked with hopelessness at the many obstacles that stood in his way to happiness. The time before was in Shanghai, where a very brilliant friend of mine was reduced to tears as he told me that all he could see in his future was pain, frustration and boundless loneliness. I put my arm around his shoulder and tried to give him encouraging words before I too broke down, a fountain of tears, because I couldn’t tell him that his fears were unfounded.

David was never a close friend of mine, but in this moment I felt he was my brother, and I wanted to reach out and shield him from his anguish. As soon as he said hello, I knew something was very wrong, and I got up from my computer and sat down on the couch. I knew he needed all of me. I know that I made a difference for him tonight, and our talk was long and serious. I know I couldn’t heal the problem, make it go away, but I know that I helped him just by giving him perspective. But what can I do to help ease the anguish of all these millions who, like David, see their lives as a kind of death sentence? China has, of course, by far the world’s largest gay population. How tragic that so many of these people go to bed each night and wake up each morning with an aching heart, knowing that even if they do as expected and marry and have their child, they have been sentenced, through no crime of their own, to live a life of unspeakable aloneness, bearing a sense of shame and self-hatred. Tonight I feel as though I have cried for every one of them, for every one.

It certainly gives me pause, hearing about all those Australian partiers in Bali having their limbs blown apart yesterday. I was there just a few weeks ago, secure in the knowledge that Bali, as a Hindu community, is safe from all acts of terrorism. As is the US — who, after all, would ever commit major terrorism in the land of the free, right? Yes, we really are all ants, and the foot can come down on us at any instant…. It puts my debt crisis in perspective a bit, though I still feel a deep sense of apprehension (i.e., dread). I guess all those who were blown to pieces last night would do anything — ANYTHING — to be in my shoes. After all, it’s just some money. Better to be out some money than your LIFE. That makes sense, but it really doesn’t make me feel jolly, as I still have to come to grips with my life and my finances.

It has been months, and so much has happened. At the end of August I went to Shanghai to study at Fudan University’s summer program, an intense and difficult language course. But it wasn’t really intense enough. I had to much free time, and ended up going almost daily to the spectacular spa on Siping Lu, with its ginseng baths and environment of total relaxation. It rained much of the time while I was at school, and when it didn’t rain the city was hammered with a brutal heat. I was making no money during these several weeks and lived off of credit cards and my fast-dwindling savings. I ate almost every afternoon at the university “canteen,” where not-bad meals are served on metal trays for about 4 kwai (fifty cents). I wasn’t very happy at the school, where I had only one really close friend; most of the other students in the program were Japanese, and they stuck together and had a surprisingly poor grasp (if any at all) of English.

After struggling to keep my head above water in Shanghai, traveled to Hong Kong on August 28, and the next day I checked my email when I visited my former employer, and there it was: an email from the Beijing office of a multinational PR company offering me my dream position. Could it be possible? After two months of living in sheer terror about how I was going to get financially stable, about how I was going to survive, I finally could relax. That night I went for dinner with Pauline, Priscilla, Katie and her husband at Tung Ah. The one headache was that the company wanted me to start at the office in just a few days, on September 12, so things were hectic. I had to go to Bali in two days, I had to come back to HK and get a China visa, take care of my stored belongings, go back to Shanghai and pick up two huge suitcases I had left there.

Bali was beautiful, though not what I expected. Much of it is commercial, at least in Kuta, and over crowded with tourists. But we had some great times, including a full-day boat trip with snorkeling, a grilled-fish dinner on the beach at Jimbara, many massages, and some great food. We also did a two-day tour that was quite beautiful — huge rice paddy valleys, temples, monkey forests, etc. It was a good vacation, though I never do seem to rest enough, ever.

It is the full-week Lunar New Year holiday here in Beijing, where I have settled down in a cozy apartment. Unfortunately, it is getting cold already. I have not experienced real cold in years, having lived in Phoenix and Hong Kong most of the past 12 years. Also, I don’t know anyone, so the sense of aloneness can be pretty intense.