Okinawa On Line

It was Okinawa in the Year of Our Lyndon, 1968.

The long line of bars glimmered
in a mirror within a mirror vision of Edison’s insanity.

Bars with names spelled in a child’s English
trolled for fish in a sea of multi-hued young men
in the Service of Their Country.

At 19, I was carried along in drunken abandon
by friends eager to see the “nuug” taken by
bar girls, skilled in the craft, as they themselves
had all been taken.

I was hard and fragile in the knowledge
of death and war.

I was hard and fragile in the ignorance and need
of a woman.

Ache-Ohh was taller than the other girls.
Younger, I would guess, for she only
served the drinks the other girls earned.

Ache-Ohh did not know how beautiful
she was.

While she walked in that same curious half-step, open slippered shuffle…
While she giggled in the same rapid sing song cadence of the other girls…
She was not of them.

A bastard child of an earlier war
Ache-Ohh lived on the fringe of her society.
Pale in a land of the tawny.
Tall in a land of hobbit height.
Hazel round in a land of almond eyes.

But in My Land, she was all we ask of beauty.

Ache-Ohh and I had few words in common.
Her English was like my High School French.

We could only mumble, in any case, through
our embarrassed attraction.

I did not think, then, we needed the words.
We communicated in those oldest of tongues,
Lust and Desire.

When I came again to her the next night,
she called me Michael. I almost laughed.
It was not my name.

It was a mistake born of my mangled language lessons for her.
I could not find the words to tell her my smile was not
just for the pleasure of seeing her.

In the weeks to come, I could not find the heart to tell her she was mistaken.

I became Michael.

It was on an early walk to Ache-Ohh’s home.
Dark Alleys, flimsy with thin, wood dwellings
crowded in endless array.

I wanted her. I pulled her to me.
I found her lips open for me.

We began to move against each other.
Her sex meeting my sex in grinding anticipation.
My shirt damp in the humid night
became wet with the feel of her breasts against me.

I brought her hand down to me.

I fumbled my belt and button
as she brought my cock,
slick and red with anticipation,
into the dim light.

I had no thought except her fingers
gripping and sliding on me.

I came hard; pulsing streams of would be seed
across the haiku night.

In the selfish arrogance and ignorance of youth
I had no thought of her needs.

I only clung to her, weak and trembling.
My murmured gratitude washed across her
in words she could not follow.

In the flash of time paced by my desire for her,
passing weeks brought us together again.

In the universal tradition of fevered youth, Ache-Ohh conspired
to “visit her friend” for the weekend,
so that we could be together,
safe from her Mamasan’s protective gaze.

For two days, we never left our nest of soft linen
in the small hotel at Island’s end.

I do not know how often I was in her.
I did not count the time.

I had no knowledge, yet, of the endless
possibilities for pleasure I was to explore
with a vengeance in the years of my future.

We had only the simplest of sex.

But I had her.

And each time I woke from drowsy sleep against her, it would start.

I traced tender trails along her body
to the damp, silky hair of her sex,
until she awoke, languid and writhing beside me.

Her nipples,
soft in sleep,
grew dark brown and hard
in my insistent and fascinated mouth.

Ache-Ohh’s body was thin and hard;
she was soft only where I needed her most.

I entered her slowly and deliberately,
eyes closed with the exquisite pleasure of her.

I held myself deep in her, trembling to each tiny movement within.

And when my eyes opened, there was Ache-Ohh,
mouth open, staring at me with wonder in her eyes.

I want those minutes to stay with me forever.

Then it would build, as build it must.

The trembling became motion,
The motion became pounding
and brought my liquid to hers.

In the daze of the days which followed,
I savored the sweet musk scent of her on my hand.
I felt Ache-Ohh with me in the constant arousal of my thoughts and body.

I called it love.

Ache-Ohh, in half words and with the help of her friends,
invited me to the House of her Mother in the celebration
of her New Year.

I was to see her in her Kimono.
I was to be seen by her Mamasan.
I was to be with Ache-Ohh.

But the day before I was to go to her,
the day I was to be with her,
another Tet was rising in the tropical winter sky.

Death a thousand miles away meant panic in the
orderly world of green and brass.
I was restricted to base.

There were not enough words between us
for Ache-Ohh to understand my phone call.
Just this:
I would not see her in her Kimono.
I would not be seen by her Mamasan.
I would not be with Ache-Ohh.

And in her sadness, I was to learn,
she turned to her friend.
A friend of my friend.
Who told her I was lying to her.

My name was not even Michael.

It broke her heart.

Ache-Ohh would not, could not
talk with me again.

There were never enough words.

……………………………………

Ache-Ohh became a bar girl,
and honed her craft.

I became a soldier,
drunk in the corner of the bar.

And like all the bar girls
and all the soldiers,
we danced the cruel dance
of glib and tease and promises broken.

And when those fleeting moments
of exposed, sweet desire
lay quivering
and open
before us,
we wounded it with cruel jest
or lonely silence.

In this Okinawa of 1968.

……………………………………

I came to this site of sights and words,
like most, I would guess,
to cum.

Safe behind these screens and wires and nets of ether,
I expose nothing of me.

Except that which is the deepest and most honest raw of me: my sex, my lust, my desire.

These I lay before you,

Quivering and Open.

Do not, gentle user,
treat them with
cruel jest
or lonely silence.

Do not make this place…

Okinawa On Line.