Excerpt: Rules for Virgins
Byliner | December 2011
Submitted by John Tayman + FollowIn this excerpt from the inaugural piece of Byliner Fiction, set in 1912 Shanghai, an aging master courtesan begins to teach the secrets of seduction to her beautiful young protégé.
Buy Amy Tan's Rules for Virgins for $2.99.
For the story behind the creation of Rules for Virgins, please click here.
Clothes are like a theater curtain. Some courtesans always keep the curtain closed until they open the curtains of the bed. They go by the old rules. No touching of hands. Everything very proper, as if they are a proper bride. How boring. The man may as well be with his wife. That kind of modesty may have been the custom twenty years ago, but these are modern times. If you provide a glimpse of the future, it won’t cheapen you. You’re still holding back. In fact, the more you let them peek, the more they will want what you are holding back. Just remember there is a difference between giving a man a glimpse and letting him examine the goods in detail.
Some of the best glimpses occur during garden strolling accidents. These must seem perfectly innocent. It might go like this: You are wearing a tight jacket, and trousers whose seam fits into the crease of your pudendum. You walk by the rockeries and pond, engaged in lively conversation. Suddenly you cry out and pretend you have stepped on the sharp stone I secretly placed there earlier. Quickly sit on a garden stool and cross your legs so you can examine your imaginary wound. The pain has caused you to forget the lewdness of this position. When you catch the man staring at your pudendum, act embarrassed at first, then coy. He will play the role of the gallant gentleman who insists on examining the wound to ensure you are not crippled for life. This ploy was once successful only with girls whose bound feet were three-inch stubs. But nowadays, even the daughters of scholar families no longer have their feet bound. So there is no shame that your feet are unbound. Of course, some men will be disappointed, especially the older ones. If you notice ahead of time that the man is aroused by tiny “golden lilies,” it’s best not to bother with the injured-foot ploy.
Another trick is to ask your suitor to pluck a flower for your hair. Turn away from him as you attempt to slip it along the side, by your ear. Then let it fall. In your hurry to retrieve the flower, you bend over, and the jacket that had barely covered your hips now lifts like fog from the moon. Be sure he has a view of your rump for at least three seconds. When you stand and see his face, cover your mouth with the flower and laugh. Give the sly happy look of mutual conspiracy. When he is standing beside you, push your finger into the center of the flower and note for him the darker, more flushed color, the deeper fragrance. He will nearly be insane at this point, unless the flower that fell has lost its petals and is a weedy little thing.
There are some simple garden positions you can use. Stand next to a tree, and as you admire its age and strength, straddle it ever so slightly. Columns are also good for this purpose.
After your defloration, I will lend you some of my special skirts. Here is one in your color, a rich imperial violet. The whiteness of the skin is best against a darker-colored skirt. The middle panel conceals a split, like the part between two curtains. You can close the split with frog clasps. Or you can unfasten them to show the knees, or the thighs, or the pudendum. This skirt is only for very special suitors or patrons who enjoy showing you off in public. Never cheapen yourself by revealing what is beneath the skirt if your suitor requests a look. Everything with this skirt must be an accident you control. The more generous the suitor, the more accidents you should have. You might catch your skirt on the arm of a horseshoe chair. The flap opens, the whiteness of your skin flashes, and with your coy look of surprise you’ve given your patron two seconds of titillation. A variation is to loosely sew the clasps on so that they easily rip away.
You can have accidents of the skirt at the theater. Patrons are especially fond of this if you are seated in a curtained box. Once he discovers the opening, you can allow him to stroke you throughout the performance, but only if he’s given you a gift that night. Mounting and descending the carriage are also good opportunities for suitors who need only a nudge to become a patron. Blustery days are also advantageous. Let your fingers help the gusts raise your skirt. If the man is already your patron, you can allow him other privileges. When you are at a banquet in your honor, let his hand under the table slip between your legs to explore the forbidden in front of his guests. Converse brightly but hesitate every so often, and provide the half-lidded look you learned for your songs. The others will know exactly what is happening. Nothing is openly said, but all will know. Always maintain the appearance of propriety. In this way, you can enhance the agony of desire in your patron and in his envious guests. I guarantee the party will end earlier than usual.
Buy Amy Tan's Rules for Virgins for $2.99.
Story Update
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Amy Tan Just Published Her First New Fiction in Six Years. Here’s the Story Behind That Story.
About two months ago, my pal and fellow writer Walter Kirn asked if I had any short stories, which might be suitable for a new online digital publisher called Byliner. I knew of the company, because I had bought a piece by Jon Krakauer called Three Cups of Deceit, which I devoured in one sitting. Walter, you should know, is a writer whose work and literary tastes I truly admire. He had become the Byliner fiction editor, who was helping launch Byliner’s fiction department with several original stories. He added that Byliner specialized in long pieces, 10,000 words or more. I laughed. I had nothing new or old I would want published, let alone anything that long. Walter was undeterred. He brought up the idea repeatedly.
And then I had an idea. I had recently run across a photo of a family member, my grandmother’s cousin, who appeared to be wearing courtesan clothes. Like many young girls of the period, she might have been wearing the trendy clothes that courtesans made all the rage. Whether she was a courtesan or not, the discovery piqued my interest in learning more about the courtesan world. I fell headlong into that world and my imagination of the life my distant relative might have had. What was their daily routine? What did a new courtesan need to know? I did some research and the rest was imagination that spilled into 14,000 words, a primer on how to be a successful courtesan and avoid cheapskates, false love, and suicide. I had never written a story that long and, surprisingly, I loved the freedom of not worrying about word count. Few magazines would publish a story of that length.
Although I now had a story of suitable length for Byliner, I developed cold feet. It would be the first fiction of mine published in six years. Mind you, I had not been staring at a blank screen all that time. I had been occupied raising money for an opera and writing libretto for it, as well as doing research in the mountains of Guizhou for a novel, and also writing an article for National Geographic. I went back and forth over whether this new story should be published. I imagined ridicule, humiliation, all the fears I’ve always had as a writer when it comes to publishing. I’m sure it drove Walter crazy. But he acted very patient as he went back and forth about why the story should be published. He is a very persuasive fellow, also encouraging, and gently wrestled it out of my sweaty little hands, then served as the editor on the piece. It was a difficult process only because we had to conduct it over Skype with a 15-hour time zone difference, he being in Montana, and me being in Beijing. On one occasion, he called me at 3 a.m. his time.
So now there is a story called Rules for Virgins. It takes place in Shanghai in 1912, when my grandmother’s cousin was a young woman in Shanghai. It concerns a fourteen-year-old virgin courtesan who is mentored by a seasoned one, Magic Gourd, now over the hill at age thirty-three, who has a no-nonsense attitude, modeled after my mother’s. If you take out the nature of these women’s profession, the actual advice is more like the marketing strategies of any business, and in this story’s case, humorous ones having to do with the vulnerability of men’s egos. That makes it an age-old story, I think. Look at our politicians today. Those were the kinds of clients who went to courtesan houses of yesteryear—rich, successful, powerful men of privilege—lured by the illusions of romance and their desire to bed a first-class courtesan, no matter what the cost. The story is darkly humorous and ultimately heartbreaking, as were the lives of many of the real courtesans at the end of their careers.
Some of my friends have already suggested that some of my research must have come from 20 years of experience serving as the rhythm dominatrix in The Rock Bottom Remainders. They said that I likely enjoyed writing the story as much as I did whipping the butts of Dave Barry, Scott Turow, and Stephen King as they pleaded for mercy (“more, more”). This is absolutely untrue. I perform in that seedy role solely to raise money for charity. And they bend over for the same reason. (See our final show in Anaheim in June 2012 at Book Expo.)
Okay, here’s what the courtesans would have said to market this story:
The story is sold on Amazon as a Kindle Single, as well as on Google, Barnes & Noble, and Apple’s iBooks.
Caveat emptor: It is a single story, albeit, a long one, 42 pages, but it is not a novel. I saw readers had complained about other Kindle Singles because they thought they were getting a whole novel and not a single story. (Come on, a new novel by Stephen King for $2.99?)
Additional caveat emptor: This not a tender mother-daughter tale. It is “not suitable for children due to mature subject, explicit sex, and adult language.” If I could get Herman Cain and DSK to denounce it, it would be great for sales.
Happy advice: A number of friends asked if they could buy it in a paper format because they don’t have a Kindle or iPad. Alas, it is not available in any format, except digital. But, happily, you don’t need a Kindle to download. You can read it on any computer or device that can do downloads. Simply go to the website for Amazon or Google or Barnes and Noble, then download the free software for their eReader format. On an iPhone or iPad, just download the Kindle or iBooks app. Either one works.
If you do buy it, thanks. It’s good to be back.
