HONG KONG: April-May, 2004 (Part 11)

One more block and we landed at Temple Street and the market itself, where merchandise hung on racks and overlapped on rickety tables. I bought a pashmina-type shawl and a pair of Ray Ban-style sunglasses. A week later the lenses popped out of the frames. Yes sir, you get what you pay for. Maybe I was lousy at shopping.

I took a pass on the wigs, watches, T-shirts, dresses, teapots...well, they have everything. Temple Street, a blinding and atmospheric adventure, is worth the view. We sucked in the tangy smoke rising from grill carts piled with barbecued meats. I bought a crepe, stuffed with ham and melting cheese, wrapped in a wax paper cone.

Around another corner we came to the goldfish market, where hundreds of bags of the minnows hung outside storefronts. Many children own the little fish as pets because it's difficult to own a puppy in a tiny high-rise apartment.

As William and I ducked in and around the hordes I asked if he could ever live here. His answer was a firm no. We agreed Hong Kong was dazzling but claustrophobic. Also, for William the experience held myriad strange touchstones. He looked like a local, but there all cultural similarity ended because William was born in New York and grew up in Southern California.

William described his time in Hong Kong as Roots meets Lost in Translation. Waiters in restaurants addressed William in Cantonese and when he responded with a blank stare the shock on their faces was obvious. William's fish-out-of-water experience was even more palpable than mine. I was supposed to be out of water while he was supposed to be swimming — but had never learned how.

Did I ever tell you what a friend said to me when he heard we were dating?

What?

He said, I never knew you were into Asian men.

Really?

I know, weird, huh? Like you're a fetish.

What did you say?

I said, I'm into this one, that's all I know.

We took to pointing out what we called "CLUs" when we were in public. Couples Like Us. It was a rare thing to see an Asian man with a white woman, although the opposite was commonplace. In two months in Hong Kong we saw exactly two CLUs.

Sometimes I'd daydream about getting out of Los Angeles and living in the country in another state. If we sold our small house in Los Angeles, we could get a mansion in somewhere like Iowa. On television I'd seen commercials of happy, rich couples raising llamas in Idaho and think, We could do that. Llamas look nice enough.

And llamas are likely nice enough...but we'd be so far out of our league when it came to CLUs. And I'd ponder what that would really be like. It would be way too weird for me, for us.

I squeezed William's hand as we walked through Temple Market. We would probably always be city folk. Swimming in pools of mixed-up fish was where we belonged.