Wah! We were going fake-crazy in the hutongs – fake upside-down Nike logos, fake cigarettes, fake yawns, fake camo gear etc. We looked on incredulously as the steamed bun seller stared at the sky through a one Yuan note, making sure it was counterfeited. Even then, the buns were just a mass of fake air but who cared? Not me, I’d already made my approximation of a weather report. Sunshine? Yeah, sure, you replied, then went back to sleep. Snored. In a city where blue sky was an annual event we walked & walked all day, through a dubious metropolis, till our feet were a mess of fake blood & blisters. Yeah, it was all faked, down to the final Band-Aid. Wow, my tan felt fake & it was but who was I to know or truly care? For the fact of the fake matter is that I was born to be a fake, in my crazy Rolex way. My springs & coils went boing! as we expressed our way through the Carrefour aisles of Hello Fakitty. Someone slipped me a cold can of fake cherry beer, whose froth alone could kill ants from a mile or so away. Even Bette Midler was fake. Yes, it’s true. The bicycle pedals faked their own suicides & the buses were truly not real. Our kamikaze route through intersections that defied gravity & the smell of smoked da Vinci cod was brave but fake. I cried, “Must I bake my own buns in order to escape this giant clamfake of Take On Me?” The Canadian backpacker’s diamontes were fake, but we still called her Dame Edna. Hello Possum was similarly fake. I don’t expect anyone else to understand but it pains me to point out that all of my allusions & anecdotes had been perpared earlier – i.e. fake as the colour of margarine, or the crazy parade of musical instrument-players serenading the faked-dust pavements at dusk. Beautiful sounds, though made by fakirs. I faked out on the bed & turned towards the wall, from behind which the fake crunching of motorised mice entranced me. When beer is cheaper than water & better for you, it’s difficult to find the real appealing, unless you’re craving powdered milk. Don’t stand so close to the Great Wall. It may contain fake sticky rice. Fake me a map & a highway & I’ll travel it with you. Just don’t try to tell me the explosions were fake, or else I’ll have to fake your death according to one of the ten thousand ways we catalogued earlier. You choose.
