Looking for Mr. Wang
A true story of obsession, Chinatown NYC, 4.21.23
For 42 years, my mind and body was probably a lot like yours—everything just ticked along without my doing very much. But about ten years ago, God made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
“I’m going to let you live,” They said, “but now you’ve gotta manage everything.” Suddenly there was a whole new instrument panel inside me, as cramped and serious as the helm of a nuclear submarine, with dials and readouts, a wobbling horizon for balance, a thing that occasionally goes ‘ping’ in the presence of serious alcoholics.
God being God, They didn’t allow me the ability to really read all these instruments. No matter how much I squint, the numbers stay blurry. The best I can do is listen for that ‘ping,’ or notice when some indicator light changes from green to yellow to red.
Friday morning, April 21st, I was laying in bed having just woken up. I’d slept well, eight hours; I was safe and warm and reasonably happy…but something was definitely flashing RED.
This was understandable on the last day of a 10-day trip East. Any kind of traveling takes something out of me, but the outlay for this journey had been immense, the kind of sustained effort I hadn’t mustered since my twenties. And it didn’t help that, for reasons known only to God, I’d been unable to eat much for a month. My calorie count for the 72 hours before I boarded Southwest #2325 had been two small Granny Smith apples. Neither of which had stayed in me long enough to even change color.
Just get there, I thought. It will mean a lot to people just to see you. And if you end up in Yale-New Haven Hospital, well, it will be part of Record lore, like that alum who joined the CIA, didn’t get a promotion, then went berserk, killed his family and disappeared. He was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List for decades. They just took him off a couple of years ago.
How come, I thought, that guy could eat?
In New Haven, they’d worked me like a dray horse—and within an hour of hitting campus, I’d twisted my ankle, a custom among my people (people with cerebral palsy). Hoofing it gingerly around the picturesque, pre-ADA quadrangles, I’d given one extemporaneous talk on the smoldering wreckage that is my once-promising professional existence; moderated a panel full of extremely accomplished people who, to my amazement, seemed to digest finger foods without effort; conducted a speed run through the history of a 150-year-old humor magazine; and given a speech that had managed to sum up the last 34 years of my life with only occasional profanity.
To recover, I’d limped off to the wilds of Pennsylvania, where I found I could tolerate (of all things) Whoopie Pies. Emboldened, I’d eaten more weird food at a sports bar in a strip mall in rural Maryland, and finally been smuggled into one of the most exclusive Preppy clubs in the U.S. In finest Anglophilic fashion, the entrée was mediocre, but the dessert quite tasty.
So I’d done the circuit and lived to tell the tale, but only just—and when a bunch of college students high on uncrushed dreams and cheap chardonnay ask you to come out until 3 a.m., you don’t mumble something about your gut and beg off. You don’t explain the shortness of your telomeres and turn in. You go out and CELEBRATE. Or maybe you don’t, but I did. And now I was paying for it. A light was flashing red, some fuel tank was almost empty, and I was scared, because I didn’t know how to fill it.
When this new body of mine collapses, it’s no joke. It’s total bedrest for as long as it takes. And I had to get home—I had a 6:25 flight from LGA to catch, connecting through St. Louis, landing in LA about 2 am New York time. Kate would meet me at LAX with a hug and some In ‘n’ Out burger, but how was I ever going to make it?
As I laid there, I prayed for help. And my prayers were answered. “Walk down to Chinatown,” the inner voice said, “and go buy a dick.”
• • •
The first time Michael Pershan and I met, he was ten and I was pressing my parody of Harry Potter into his impressionable hands. Now, twenty five years later, he leaned down and hugged me. I guess he liked the book.
“Mike,” I said, “I’m going to give you a choice. We can either have coffee like normal people, or you can come with me to Chinatown and help me buy a large soapstone penis.”
Young Pershan did not hesitate. “Let’s go get that penis!”
This, ladies and gents, is the kind of spirit behind The American Bystander.
The day was bright, and the temperature perfect, and going on a quest for a deeply inappropriate object is just about the most Mike Gerber afternoon imaginable. As we walked south, I told Mike the story of Mr. Wang. “It was 2016, and I was just getting over some pretty severe agoraphobia,” I said. “After two years of not being able to travel east of the 405 (about a mile from my house), I had decided to fly the 3000 miles to New York.”
“That sounds intense.”
“It was,” I said. “I stayed with my friend on Prince Street, who is the kindest most loving person. I knew with Kate on one end of the trip, and her on the other, everything would be all right. Thanks to their love and support, I took the trip and my agoraphobia was dead, never to return.”
“Aw.” Mike fiddled with his bike helmet. “What does this have to do with a soapstone dick?”
“That trip was just blessed,” I said, narrowly avoiding being hit by a delivery guy on a scooter. “All my meetings went great, and we had a big party for all the Bystanders at an Italian joint uptown. There was even some talk of getting big investors behind the magazine. Six months later Trump got elected, everybody freaked out, and all our momentum vanished. But that first trip—my God, the sky was the limit! Excuse me”—I dodged a Chinese woman with a cart—“and so the last day of the trip, before I went to the airport I walked down here. In my twenties, I used to wander Chinatown a lot, dreaming dreams of success, and all those years later, it seemed like it was all finally happening. I was floating.
“The last shop I floated into was magical—like something out of a Woody Allen movie. Three aisles with high shelves crammed full of all sorts of trinkets and amulets and statues. Kitsch, yes, but also real Taoist objects of devotion. The kind of stuff Chinese grandmothers have instead of statues of the Virgin Mary or a menorah. Except for one thing,” I said. “It was carved of blue stone, and was about as big as this”—I presented my forearm. “Mr. Wang. It stopped you in your tracks. I don’t know why I didn’t buy it then. I was going to buy it for Jon, but I didn’t, and I’ve always regretted it. Now I want it for my desk, sitting right next to my Mac. For encouragement.”
“Do you know what street this shop is on?”
“No.”
“Do you know what it’s called?”
“Oh no,” I said, totally unconcerned.
“Well, it’s a nice day for a walk.”
I loped ahead, hoping my still-healing ankle would stand up to all this uneven pavement. “I’m sure I’ll recognize it,” I said. “I remember ‘Import-Export’ being in the title.” Suddenly the flimsiness of this whole quest hit me. To encourage myself, I stopped and said, “Let’s go in here.”
Mike and I ducked into a store packed with…Chinatown. Flags and banners and pennants and pencils and notebooks and stuff-stuff-stuff, all red and gold, none in English. (I find not being able to read things very relaxing.) The two Chinese women in their forties manning the shop spoke Mandarin and looked right through us.
I took in their wares in a few furious sweeps. “No, no, this isn’t it!” I said forcefully enough for the Mandarin to pause. “This store is too narrow!”
There followed several other stores, on Elizabeth, on Mott, each too narrow, or too modern, or too well-lit. “That has sundries,” I said, the first time I’d ever used “sundries” in a sentence. “My place was—is—a kind of treasure-house.”
“Of big blue dicks.”
“When you say it like that, Mike, it sounds vulgar.” We stepped back into the sunshine; I took my leather jacket off and slung it over my shoulder. My red gingko-leaf tie flapped in the breeze.
“Mike,” Mike said gently, “do you think you might have dreamed it?” (He has three children.)
“Absolutely not.”
“Well, I think it’s very optimistic of you, that you’d think it would still be here, after the pandemic,” Mike said. “Lots of things closed.”
“Not this store,” I said with conviction. “This store has been around for decades.”
“How could you tell?”
“Mike, think about it,” I said as if the whole thing was self-evident. “A store needs a steady clientele to sell a large stone johnson.”
“I suppose it does show a certain confidence,” Mike said.
My phone vibrated; my old writing partner Jon, the man who I’d wanted to purchase the dong for originally, had arrived. We met him at the southeast corner of Canal and Mott. I looked at him from across the street; we hadn’t seen each other in the flesh since 2019, or maybe earlier. He looked an awful lot like his father.
A big hug, and then I made introductions.
Mike offered his hand. “Nice to meet you, Jon,” Mike said. “Gerber here is hunting for a large stone wang—”
“Ah, aren’t we all,” Jon said.
“—In a store that doesn’t exist.”
I whirled. “It DOES exist, infidels! You’ll see!” I said this with such force I almost knocked an old man into a fruit stand.
“Okay, Ahab,” Jon said.
I shrugged off their nonsense. “Onward!”
Four more shops, and no Mr. Wang. “At least it’s a beautiful day,” Jon said as we ducked through some scaffolding. (Jesus, is there any city more scaffolded than New York?) “Agreed.” I looked up at the bright blue, cloudless sky. “Days like this always remind me of September 11th.”
Jon changed the subject. “There are four seasons in New York: Fall, Suicide Winter, Mini Spring, and Stench of Garbage.”
“Which one are we in now?” Mike asked.
“We are very fortunate,” Jon said. “This is one of the ten days of Spring that occur annually in New York.”
Mike laughed then said, “How’s it going, Mike?”
“Fuck it. I’m Googling it.”
“Try ‘white whale’ and ‘last seen’,” Jon said.
“Use the plus sign before whale,” Mike offered helpfully.
“You’ll see, you malcontents. You’ll be singling a whole different tune when I have my wang. A tune like this one!”
We were walking by a park, and there was a quartet playing Chinese music. We stopped to listen and Google.
As Mike and Jon chatted—plotting mutiny, no doubt—I spied an awning across the street. “Jade statues!” I said. “That could be it! Did you guys know that jade is the frozen semen of dragons?”
What last words those would’ve been—as I hobbled across the street, my unseemly haste nearly got me clipped by a FIAT. But this was the place, it had to be. There were all sorts of rare and beautiful things—jade items of all description, bracelets, beads, carved wood, Buddhas, dragons; a world of treasures I’d festoon my apartment with, if my wife weren’t sane. In its natural state, my decorating style is half Edwardian gentleman’s club, half Dr. Strange.
But in this treasure house of delights, I didn’t see any stone dicks, not even a small one.
“How about this?” Jon said, holding up a palm-sized obelisk.
“At least it’s pink,” Mike said helpfully.
“No!” I said. “You’ll know it when you see it, I promise you.” Exasperated, I walked up to the counter. Hair askew, sweaty from my walk, and doubtless exuding the uneasy intensity of the obsessive, I arranged my fierce features into what I hoped was their most harmless configuration.
“Hello,” I said, straining to be pleasant, pretending as if EVERYTHING wasn’t riding on this, “I’m not seeing something. I wonder if you might help me?”
“Yes?” the young Chinese lady behind the counter seemed nice.
“I’m looking for a large stone…(gulp) phallus.”
A blank look.
“Um, a penis? Made of blue soapstone? Probably some sort of object of veneration?”
Puzzled look.
How could I make myself understood without coming off as a creep? “Perhaps it’s a Taoist fertility symbol? About as big as my forearm?”
The guys were snickering behind me, I could hear them. Then it dawned on me—maybe I was a creep and just didn’t know it? That’s what makes people creeps, true creeps—they think they’re normal. I should just leave this poor woman alone, leave her shop, and…
No. I was so close. The dial had glowed red, my intuition had told me to do this, and I needed something cool for my desk. So I screwed up my courage and said, “A large blue stone…” then as casually and non-creepily as possible, pointed to my penis.
Complete puzzlement…which was better than calling a cop. “C’mon, guys,” I said. No name, no location, probably gone—and now an insurmountable language barrier? I was licked.
• • •
There was one place left, on Mulberry Street. We’d go there, then have a quick bite at the vegetarian place next door.
“It must’ve closed,” I said glumly.
“‘He always claimed it really existed,’” Jon said, “‘seeking that one mystical shop with its stone dicks for the rest of his days.’”
We went into our last shop. It…seemed close. There were large shelves of kitsch and religious figures, a bit lighter on Mao than the other stores, and heavier on the dragons and heroes of Chinese mythology. We browsed up and down the aisles, and while we saw a lot of wonderful things, there were no stone phalluses to be found. I was beaten, and knew it. At least I spared myself the indignity of pigeonholing the poor elderly lady behind the counter, and pointing at my thoroughly disheartened johnson.
Determined to commemorate this day, this trip, I spied a glass globe with a floating lotus; when you plugged it in, the lotus turned colors—pink, green, blue, yellow. My hostess on Prince is a devoted Buddhist, so I bought it for her, as a thank you for letting me crash.
As we ate some spring rolls next door, the guys were very kind. “Sorry you didn’t find Mr. Wang,” Jon said.
“I had high hopes for the jade shop,” Mike said.
“Thanks, guys,” I chewed, mouth full of ashes. “It probably hasn’t been there for years. If it existed at all.”
We walked north, through Lil’ Italy (it’s a lot smaller than it used to be), telling stories and jokes and making plans to meet up again here in the fall. “There’s talk of a mini-Reunion for the Yale-Harvard Game,” I said. “I’ll come in on Friday, we’ll go to the Game, and then come down here Saturday night.” Two men less interested in football you could not imagine, but my impulses towards ringleading would not be denied. “Mike, we’ll introduce you to a bunch of Record people.”
Back at Prince, we said our goodbyes, Jon and Mike going their way and me going mine. My Quest for Wang had made me seventeen minutes late—my natural state—so I dropped off my friend’s present, grabbed my bag, and called a Lyft.
• • •
Sitting in LaGuardia, the afternoon already seemed like a dream—so much like my entire life in New York: glittering, half-remembered fantasies turning into an obsession, driving me up and down narrow streets, a few friends in tow, with no reward at the end but laughter and friendship. I love New York—or, rather I loved the dreams I had with New York as a backdrop; now, the city tends to wear me out just looking at it. At least those windy narrow Chinatown streets are mostly the same; as we tromped up and down the humped and patchy pavements I could imagine that it was still April 2016, or even better, April 1996, when Jon and I were young men surviving on the only thing young people really need, those dreams.
I suddenly had a thought—could it be? I flipped open my leather valise, and dug into the outer pocket, past the ancient Lactaids I used to take before any food passed my lips, past the playing cards I bought in Las Vegas when Kate and I moved out to Los Angeles in 2005, past even the dried up disinfectant wipes I threw into my bag in 2022 when I flew for the first time post-COVID.
There it was—a business card, with an old Aleve stuck to it, in my luggage since that first trip seven years ago.
“WAH YEUNG (USA) CO. LTD
Import & Wholesale & Retail
ANTIQUE—ART ACCESSORIES—ASIAN FURNITURE—GIFTS”
So it HAD existed! Then I looked at the address:
“81MULBERRY STREET”
We had visited it. The last shop of the day. No Great Stone Wang, but I was vindicated.
“Gents,” I texted. “Found this old business card in my valise. This was the last store we went to. VINDICATION.”
“Ha!” Mike texted back.
Jon was laconic, as ever. “All right, Ahab.”
Luckily for me, my story had a happier ending. :-)
Did you know this was the original title for Judith Rossner's "Looking for Mr. Goodbar." Strange but not true!