In the dark comfort of her suite, in a post auction haze, Mai Lee marvels that she’s living the life everyone she knows could only dream about: private planes, luxury hotels, all expenses paid. Already a celebrity in Shanghai, she is considered te`qua’n– the privileged. All access to clubs and shows, invitations to dinners and yacht parties of the Shanghai elite literally because of the color of her skin.
It’s hard for her to believe that thirty-four years ago, she was an unwanted female in a society mired by a patriarchal regime. Emotionally abandoned by her parents, she learned more on the streets than she did in grade-school. The last time she went home, she recalls, she was donning her first tattoo by Ming Z. At the time, they were both young women in China with a desperate need for self-expression and identity.
Their parents survived the Mao regime, forgoing the individual for the greater good. But remnants of this mindset were poisoning the youth; Mai’s generation was desperate for something of their own, and their restlessness led to dangerous alienation. Even the Chinese government recognized that happy individuals were less likely to rebel, and so another way of life was manipulated for oppressed peace.
When she met Ming, they were both teenagers, and only gangsters and prostitutes had tats. Most Chinese believe their human form should be pure and intact upon life and death. Not until this recent decade was it looked upon as a form of self-expression rather than punishment or branding to a Triad.
The look on her mother’s face that day, was the tipping point; a choice had been made. She had been proud to be chosen by Ming, now considered The Queen of Chinese tattooing. The small dragon tattoo on the inside of her wrist was a symbol of courage and power that had only been reserved for men, it became her manifest destiny as a teen. It only took one inking to know she was hooked, and regardless of the lengthy process, she was Ming’s canvas from that moment– her masterpiece.
She remembers trying to hide the larger pieces from her family with clothing and gloves, but the exhilaration of their defiance was, without a doubt, life-changing. The young women had become obsessed with each other, and their clandestine rendezvous at dawn for an hour or two, was their life’s blood. Mai’s full body jacket would not be piecemeal; Ming had a vision even then, and the larger-than life sized face of Medusa took years to perfect.
The hours Mai spent vulnerably silent, focusing through the pain of the needle, bonded them forever. All of this mixed inexorably with their volatile emotions of teenage puberty, became yet another taboo stacked in their corner. Their moments of exhilaration attempted to fill generations of oppression and indifference; she remembers with yearning how their bodies collided into an inescapable world of their own.
At forty-eight, although she and Ming have gone their separate ways, Mai Lee will never really be separated from her, except now in death.
Fluffing the goose-down pillows of her king-sized bed, Mai reaches for another paracetamol, washing it down with champagne, she knows thinking about death is obsolete as her life has just begun to the tune of the auctioneer’s gavel and two hundred million dollars. There are plans to make, and questions to answer. Where to live? What type of home to buy? How to protect her newfound wealth? And a bucket list of places to go, and things to buy.
Smiling to herself, she picks up a personally engraved invitation from her bedside table, one of many hand-delivered minutes after the auction ended. An Italian socialite has sent a private plane to take her to La Gomera, an Archipelago off the Moroccan Coast for a private reception. The Italians’ penchant for the art of tattooing borders on the perverse, but no doubt, she will be the highlight of the event. Running her finger over the new bump at the base of her neck, she struggles between revulsion and comfort, knowing her location and vitals are now monitored twenty-four hours a day. Signing the deposit of funds into her new Swiss bank account relieved her of the only commodity she had ever owned. Feeling naked for the first time, she will never know the winner of the auction, as they bid by proxy with a gag order.
Handled like a Sci-fi organ donor, the small chip at the base of her skull will direct an emergency response team, at the appropriate time, to immediately freeze her body. They will then transport the frozen pod to a specialized facility for skinning, she was assured, while a bottle of Armand de Brignac champagne was being poured into a Baccarat crystal glass. There, she was told a team of highly skilled surgeons would be on call for the specific purpose of rendering her bodysuit, as they will have less than ten hours to perform the unique task.
It could be the Italian. Taking another sip, remembering the 250-page document she signed that stated she would be “donating” her skin. Of course, the document was accompanied by a letter of provenance from Ming Z. Placing her glass down, she knows that letter was a nail in the coffin of their accord. Reaching for her vape, Mai recalls how Ming was more conventional about the sale of her bodysuit as she attempted to talk her out of the whole, what she called, “sordid affair”.
In a cloud of vapor, Mai revisits the twinge of excitement she felt while Ming argued with her. It was the touch of a last kiss. She was deeply moved that her maker, so to speak, still cared for her. A national treasure in her own right, Ming would never understand her needs, having become accustomed to the lifestyle of the rich and famous, this was her only way out.
The vape in one hand, champagne in the other, Mai is suddenly struck by the thought that this centimillionaire champagne haze will never expunge the fact that her skin is no longer her own.