跳脱衣舞的少女

一种隐蔽而高效的机器，像管控着广场上的女性雕像一样，管控着我们的身体，具体可以落实到每一个以家庭为核心的微小单位。Our bodies were controlled, as rigidly as if we were statues of women displayed on the square, by a hidden but highly effective mechanism which reached right down to the micro level, to our families.

Nicky Harman翻译了我的一个非虚构小故事，发表在这周的Asian Books Blog上。 翻得太好，处处体现了文学翻译的顶级水平。读完泪目，想用英语写作，只怕遥遥无期。

The Girl who did a Strip-Dance

The thing that completely changed my relationship with my body was not losing my virginity, but watching a private striptease. It happened one hot day during the summer holidays, when I met Star. We had a lot in common: we were both at the ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ age; and she, like me, had dark skin, and came from a single-parent family. From then on, I used to tell my mum that I was going to a classmate's home to do my homework and hang out with Star instead.

There was something particularly fascinating about her body. It seemed to be softer and lither than anyone else's. I remember we found a dress in the suitcase her mother had left behind – round-necked, with an A-line skirt – and took turns to try it on. I got it tangled around my neck and then my elbows got stuck, but she just wriggled like an eel and the woollen fabric, shrunk from the wash, slid down over her body.

That summer holiday, Star seemed obsessed with trying on clothes. It was as if she was desperately trying to find her grown-up self in this jumble of fabrics and fibres. One evening, she drew the curtains and whispered to me that she was going to show me something special. With a mischievous smile, she began to pull her shirt up, then stopped half-way, pouted, and made a pretence of pulling her shirt down again, all the time swaying her hips. Finally, she pulled it up to reveal her small, flat belly… And she danced her way through taking her clothes off. There was no soundtrack, but her body seemed to open and close rhythmically, the way a seashell does. It was its own musical box. There was no stage lighting, but countless beads of sweat at her hairline caught the light instead.

Her dancing was naughty and provocative. It seemed to me then that she had made it up herself, though thinking back now, it was a lot like the striptease in a black and white photo of the American burlesque dancer Mae Dix. Mae Dix wears a hat with sparkly tassels, and holds a slender wand between her fingertips. Her silky dress has fallen to her hips, showing her alabaster backbone, her pert, fleshy buttocks, shaped a bit like a French snail, and her bum crack. She wears a neat pair of dance shoes, with copper-plated soles designed for tip-tapping around the dance floor.

Mae Dix’s act became a sensation. In those days, few women even wore trousers, and hardly anyone had heard of ‘striptease’. Instead, the mainstream media dubbed her teasing, flirty dance moves ‘burlesque’. The male reporters sent to cover the shows practically mobbed the stage, even if afterwards, they wrote about it with scorn.

As girls, Star and I were separated from Mae Dix by nearly a century, but the society in which we lived did not seem to have grown much more tolerant towards women. My space, growing up, felt flat, crude and rigid, like a cardboard straitjacket. After I developed physically, I seemed to lose any right to do anything with my body apart from gymnastics to the radio broadcasts, sprinting and skipping. We had to sit bolt upright, walk with our toes turned in, and wear skirts down over our knees. It was a sin to touch ourselves in private, let alone make a spectacle of ourselves in public. Only the beautiful were allowed to dance, because only they qualified to join the dance troupes that added glamour to every public celebration. And only bad girls combed their hair into giant quiffs, wore bat sleeves and jeans, and sneaked into pop-up discos in basement fire tunnels. Our bodies were controlled, as rigidly as if we were statues of women displayed on the square, by a hidden but highly effective mechanism which reached right down to the micro level, to our families.

‘You should stop showing off your body every time you go out, okay?’ my mother would say, casting a stern, anxious eye over the sleeveless top I liked to wear because it was hot. ‘You’re asking for some hoodlum to slash your back. Have you any idea how many perverts there are out there, just waiting to slash a girl who’s showing a bit of back?’ My mother tried to teach me that clothes fell into two categories: ordinary, workaday, old clothes, were one sort. The other sort were for special occasions, when it was permissible to wear something a bit prettier. Jeanette Winterson writes in her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal about her mother: ‘She had two sets of false teeth, matt for everyday, and a pearlised set for “best”.’ Every time I read this, I smile wryly.

If I hadn’t met Star, I would never have had the guts to stand in front of the mirror, examine my body, caress it, dance with it, go with it, let alone set off with it to cross continents and find my own way in life. No matter how critical other people are about my body, I have learned to accept it. I’m in love with all the ways it allows me to express myself. I think of it as a musical instrument, its every movement performing a dance. And I am the only person with the right to play it.

（Wang Bang’s column was written for RNW Media, Netherlands radio station, Love Matters Chinese website）

原文

彻底改变我的身体的，不是初夜，而是一次私密的观舞体验。那是一个炎热的暑假，我认识了小星，她和我一样处在“你好，忧愁（Bonjour Tristesse）”的年龄，和我一样皮肤黝黑，和我一样来自离异单亲家庭，我总是借口到同学家做作业，和她厮混在一起。

她身上要说有什么特别迷人之处，就是她的身体似乎比任何人的都要柔软灵敏，一条从她母亲留下的衣箱里淘出来的圆领A字裙，我俩一起试穿，我不是勒住脖子就是卡着胳膊肘，而她只需像青蛇似地微微扭动一下腰身，窄紧缩水的针织面料，就舒缓地贴在皮肤上了。

那个暑假，小星试衣服试上了瘾，仿佛要在一堆混沌的纤维中，迫切地找出那个未来的自己。有一天黄昏，她拉下窗帘，神秘地对我说，我要给你看一件宝贝，然后她就俏皮地掀起了衬衣衣角，掀起一半，又嘟噜着嘴，假装犹疑地扯下来，配合着一摇一摆的胯部动作，然后又将衣角再次掀起，露出半截平窄的小肚皮……她就这样边脱衣服，边跳起舞来。没有配乐，她那随着节奏像海贝一样时开时闭的身体，便是音乐盒；没有镁光，她汗毛上的上亿颗汗珠就是光。

她跳的那种舞，淘气，任性又充满挑逗感，当时只觉得像是她的一项新发明。现在回想起来，它和黑白照片里美国舞蹈艳星Mae Dix跳的脱衣舞竟十分神似。Mae Dix顶着流苏闪边的帽子，指尖中夹着一根纤细的魔杖，半裸雪脊，翘起法国蜗牛般肉质紧密的丰臀，薄丝碎花吊带裙褪到股沟隐没的位置，一双小巧如簧，底部镶了铜片的舞鞋，将整个华丽的舞池敲得踢跶作响。Mae Dix红极一时的年代，穿裤子的女人仍寥寥无几，脱衣舞（Striptease）这个词还未普及，主流媒体把那种“欲掩弥彰，扭捏作态”的舞姿叫“Burlesque Dance（滑稽舞）”，派去的男记者们，当下趋之若鹜，事后疯狂吐槽。

我和小星的少女时代，与Mae Dix相距近一个世纪，我们那个社会对女性却似乎仍宽容不到哪儿去，我的成长空间一直是平面，粗糙和僵硬的，像一件用纸板缝制的紧身衣。我的身体自从发育健全以后，除了用来作广播体操，短跑和跳绳以外，几乎就不允许有其他的权利。坐要坐直，走路要内八，不能穿短过膝盖的裙子，私下抚摸自己是罪过，更不能在公共场合扰首弄姿。舞蹈是漂亮的女生的专利，因为只有她们才有资格加入为大型庆典增色的舞蹈队；也只有学坏的女生，才会顶着一个吹得高高的鸡冠，穿上蝙蝠袖和牛仔裤，潜入地下消防洞改装的迪厅。一种隐蔽而高效的机器，像管控着广场上的女性雕像一样，管控着我们的身体，具体可以落实到每一个以家庭为核心的微小单位。

“你不要总是穿得这么暴露好吗？”天气热，我爱穿吊带背心，出门前，母亲总是甩来一个焦虑的冷眼：“穿成这样，是故意要那些流氓在你背上划一刀吗？你知道这社会上有多少变态佬，专挑年轻姑娘的露背来划吗？”为了给我竖立起一个榜样，母亲把衣服分成两类：粗活装，旧衣服；日常装，普通衣服。只有“重大特殊场合”，才会穿“漂亮一点的衣服”。英国作家Jeanette Winterson有一篇自传体小说《错误的婴儿床（The Wrong Crib）》，谈到她的母亲，她写道：“我的母亲有两副假牙，一副是哑光的，供日常使用，一副是珍珠色的，供良辰美景(two sets of false teeth — matte for everyday, and a pearlized set for ‘best’)。”每次读到这里，我就苦笑。

如果不是遇到小星，我可能永远也不敢站在镜子面前，审视自己的身体，爱抚它，舞动它，放任它，更不敢在成年以后，携带着它，穿洲过省，去外面的世界寻找自己的人生方向。不管别人对它有多苛刻，我对学会了对它的宽容。我爱上了一切可以用它表白的方式。我把它当成乐器（Instruments），全身每一个动作合奏起来，便是“舞蹈（Dance）”，而我，则是那个唯一拥有弹奏权的人。

（荷兰广播电台Love Matters 中文网专栏）