Camillo Dali

---

She's sitting there in half a porcelain shaped egg completely naked and beautiful. Her hair is being swept up from the egg and cut by a man all in black. The white of the egg is giving off a bright light to the room which is otherwise slightly dark as it would be in a log cabin of some western movie. I find the cutting of her hair to be slightly disturbing as it is all too familiar and as the man looks up I realize I was right, it's Camillo. The scene fades and there are other scenes with other naked women, all of whom I know from University. I find myself somewhere far off looking at these scenes angry. Not because he's cutting their hair in this beautiful room but because he has never cut mine in this room. He always cuts mine while I sit in a chair. I find myself slightly jealous, not of the women but of his relationship to them as he is showing no romantic connection to them at all, but simply presenting his normal face of cutting as if he too were in the Salon focusing on hair.

The phone irngs and I wake up. Camillo's on the phone "Hey" "Hey" I say in my normal sleepy voice. "You just get up?" "Yeah." "Everything go okay with last night." "Yeah." "You coming to the Salon this afternoon?" "Yeah." "Okay." "I just had a strange dream about you." "Your having my dreams now? Are-maya" (Are means nothing and maya is a way of saying "God" so it'd be closest to Oh my goodness or something like that). I tell him about the dream and he says "Are-maya" about three more times. It's not exactly within his culture to do something like that with naked women so he's a bit shocked but he's dealt with me long enough to not be that shocked.

That is officially the third dream I've remembered having about Camillo while I've been here in China. Which, for me, is quite astonishing. I barely ever remember my dreams and I've certainly never had three dreams about the same person before (of the dreams I remember at least). I probably have had three dreams about my parents and my sister but that would be it.

Last night was Julia's birthday and what a strange night it was. We had classes as usual from 2-7:30pm and then I met Kelvin to go over to Cat's place. We went and bought some drinks and then went over to her place. She had already made a salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, and tofu and made two other dishes of fish with pineapple and some peppers and a soup of squid and mushrooms. Of course we also had rice. Almost right after dinner Julia called as she had just finished her telephone tutoring. We decided to meet her at a pool place behind the stadium at Olympic Square so we all started walking over there. Once we got there we ran into Julia and then Michael who was just back from the US. Michael needed Chinese money and I didn't have any American (and am going back soon) so Cat, Kelvin, Russell and I piled our money together and we exchanged money with him (he had 100$ American). So now I have American and he has RMB which is good. Then we all went in and sat and played pool and chatted for a little while. Camillo and Akun and Xiao Zhang all called wondering where they could meet us and we decided to go to a bar afterwards to meet them. Xiao Zhang and Julia are both about six feet tall and are therefore a perfect match height wise but unfortunately last night Xiao Zhang was acting extremely drunk and practically drapping himself around Julia, Cat and I as he danced. There are two ways to dance close with someone like that, one is how I would dance to a hip hop or rap song with someone and the other is an extremely sleazy way. As it is completely out of the Chinese custom to be close to people (especially people who aren't one's partner) Xiao Zhang was doing the sleazy part and dancing with him ended up being like trying to push yourself away from a big bear.

The boys ended up leaving in a very strange manner that was slightly disturbing to me for a little while but then it all became clear. Akun had somehow gotten sick. He had only had one beer and was throwing up and not feeling well at all (maybe he got food poisoning or something like that). So Alex and Akun left together without telling anyone. Later Camillo told me "Can we leave now?" I was in the middle of dancing with Cat, Kelvin and Julia and a bit confused. After all it was Julia's birthday and she wanted to stay and dance. I walked outside with them and Camillo said "You're not drinking, you haven't bought anything. Why are you here?" "I have American dollars and no other money. How do you expect me to buy something? I can ask them to buy something or you can buy something." "It's not you and it's not them we just need to leave. Can you ask them to come down and leave with us?" I'm thinking to myself they're not going to want to leave as they're having fun but I go up and ask them anyways. When I come back I have the same response I expected "they're not going anywhere. What's up, why do you guys want to leave?" "I'll call you later we've gotta go now" he walks away without giving me his usual half hug. "Okay" I say confused and go back up to dance. Later he sends me a text message or two and calls me. I figure out that Xiao Zhang had finally realized he was not welcome to dance with us in the manner which he was dancing and needed to go home. Camillo was just his escort. Unfortunately I was having fun dancing with Camillo but one's gotta do what one's gotta do.

Personally I never understand why Chinese people can't say what things are exactly. When I was on the phone with Camillo I said "Why couldn't you have just told me why you were really leaving?" "Xiao Zhang was there!" he replied. If they were Americans Xiao Zhang might have told me himself what was going on but that's definitely not how Chinese function. I think they do everything possible to save face but it's more than that too. For example it used to be that Camillo wouldn't tell me if he was having class or not, just that he couldn't come meet me yet. I was never really clear about why he did that. If he had just told me he had class that would have been the end of the discussion. I would have said "Okay, see you when you finish class" but when a person normally comes out to meet you and they're saying they can't go yet it makes me confused and I have more than one sentence response for it. Fortunately Camillo has recently realized that and changed his response to "I'm in a meeting" or "I have class now" to make things easier for both of us.

On Tuesday Kelvin, Cat and I went with Kelvin and my calligraphy teacher to do some shopping. We went to a nice little book market and got a couple books to model and practice our calligraphy and then we went to a little shop that sold soy bean milk and a type of Chinese donuts. It was the second time I'd had them as the first time was down in Daliang with Paul. I really like them a lot. They take a bowl of hot soy bean milk and dip what they literally call "oil sticks" into the milk. We definitely wouldn't translate them as "oil sticks" as they are simply slightly greasy fried rolls of bread but that's what the Chinese call them. Then we went and bought my first set of paintbrushes and other equipment for calligraphy - paper, ink, and a pad to write on. The art store was in a really cool little mall filled with tons of intriquite art being sold. There were extremely ornate carvings in wood - so detailed that there were even two complete spiderwebs carved in two different pieces of wood. There were also stone carvings and Chinese paintings. We just walked around for a bit afterwards and had a great time.

---