Let the Clouds Drift and the Wind Blow

Prologue 1

“The clouds are light and the wind is gentle,” or “the clouds are light and the wind is clear”? That’s right, it all came down to that one character, and my straight-laced husband and I ended up arguing about it again. Before I met him, I’d heard the worldly wise talk about the group known as straight men. Why describe them that way? Their dullness and cluelessness about romance are practically universal, but each has his own distinctive architecture of stupidity, like buildings designed to suit their location, their builders, and their time. Heh, the bricks and tiles are mostly the same, but put them together and every structure is unique.

Some people are practically terrified of this group, and some avoid them like the plague. Take my college roommate, A Fang. When she heard a straight guy wanted to pursue her, good grief, she spent a month eating until she’d gained twenty pounds and scared him off.

I also heard about a straight guy who admired his long, flowing hair so much that he’d kept it for years. Without a second thought, he went and got a buzz cut. I was genuinely curious: what kind of person could make someone like A Fang, who valued beauty above all else, change her looks rather than give a guy like that a chance? I found out two years after graduation, when I met my straight-laced-plus husband, Zuo Chuan, and came up with my analysis of straight male psychology after a thousand and one nights of marriage. The trick is to take everything in this world a little more lightly. Oh, not lightly, but clearly, because straight men can really stink sometimes.

Prologue 2

A saying goes, “In the martial world, no skill is invincible except speed.”

Husband: “What saying?”

Me