The Long Highway Pt. 04A

Part 4 A

Meanwhile, there's been an uptick (interpret the word as you will) in Covid at the college where I teach. In class I asked the students if they'd been vaccinated, for the hell of it went through each of the three viruses circulating, flu, Covid and SVR or whatever its called, and had students raise their hands, and a surprising number did.

Was I invading their privacy, asking an inappropriate question (another word wide open to interpretation, commonly used like "uptick")? Would someone would take offense, lodge a complaint against me to the department head? None gave that impression. In fact, those who had been vaccinated seemed proud of their action and eager to let me and their classmates know. Their faces, bearing evinced a certain defiance. Some set themselves as if in preparations for attacks, criticism they might draw. These days the world is going crazy and conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers not the least of them, can get pretty hostile, aggressive (one more time with that term of art from the therapist's couch).

A conversation ensued, one student saying to get a test of any of those viruses took only thirty minutes, "Which isn't bad."

I remembered the word for diagnosis in Akemi's language, "kenshin."

No, that's wrong. I looked it up. That means "medical examination."

Another student countered, as they invariably will, "That's if there's no line, and there always is one, so it takes much longer."

I like my students and worry about them. I recently read an essay by a coworker to the effect that human beings are a predatory species. He used that phrase and cited several examples of people exploited: the clothes we buy made in sweatshops abroad, nearer to home delivery workers and busboys in restaurants, waiters and dishwashers too. He wrote that we're all part of the chain of predation.

That colleague has a pretty dark sense of humanity and I guess I do too, and that no doubt explains our friendship.

I noted that a lot of my students are on the vulnerable end of the chain, work at low-paid jobs for long hours. I also saw that they're pretty resilient. They seem for the most part happy with their lives, studying (part-time, evenings and weekends) in a spirit of hopefulness about the future.

I worry about people who would prey on Akemi. She's strong and independent but predators are out there and she's awfully appealing.

When we were first getting together and I was wondering whether I should seriously pursue someone from such a different background I conferred with my friend Peter, who "Just fuck the hell out of her and see what happens."

Peter usually isn't so blunt as that. Maybe he was tired of listening to me. It's instead Nelson, my friend and former teacher mentioned earlier, who speaks straightforwardly, even crudely, takes pleasure in shocking people, revealing our tendency to shy away from unvarnished truth, exposing cowardice, as he sees it. His art work is designed to give you a jolt. He says it's all about overcoming preferences, whatever that may mean.

Peter was joking but serious, suggesting that the truth about Akemi and me would lie in the pudding, some decisions come not from thinking but through action. I'd know the right choice if I fucked the hell out of Akemi.

And I did and even said so in those words to a friend of Akemi's not long ago. We were leaving a restaurant, the three of us, and Hiroko said she was heading off to study or practice her music (she plays an instrument, the violin) and asked what Akemi and I were doing next, and I said, "We're going home and I'm going to fuck the hell out of her," and her friend Hiroko said, "Is that what you do to the poor girl?"

She didn't like yours truly from the beginning and I'm sure my quip didn't raise her opinion of me. She has no sense of humor. Lesbian.

I don't really get what Akemi sees in Hiroko. I guess their shared nationality is one factor sustaining their friendship that goes beyond my ken.

Sometimes I wonder if Akemi will ever learn English well. She left a note for me before leaving this morning and in it she substituted the word "with" for "wish," a mistake strongly suggesting she hadn't understood what she'd written at all. Maybe she'd copied the passage from somewhere. I'd been impressed by the writing ("No mistakes, right?" she said) and asked if it was her own work and she acknowledged, "Of course not all of it."

I pointed out the error when I found it.

"See? This shows.. "

Anyway, her note conveyed a loving sentiment, making up for our clash last night, the dumb one about the blog we'd both read and had trouble discussing.

Akemi follows social media more than I do because she's younger, and I guess it keeps her in touch with Japan. She told me about a YouTuber from abroad traveling in her country and trying to get away with stuff.

"He took a bus and didn't have enough money and asked passengers to give him some and at least one did. But it was too little and the bus driver wouldn't let him off and he made a loud commotion. 'Why won't you let me off even though I'm short only a few yen?'"

At least I think that's what Akemi said. It's a paraphrase. Her English in telling that complicated story gets hard to understand. Would the bus driver not let him off or not let him on?

"You mean he thought the driver was being unfair?" I asked.

"Yes."

"But there's a fixed fare."

"He acted as if there weren't."

I thought maybe in his country people haggled over prices. But for public transportation?

Akemi read the confusion on my face and I saw on hers frustration at not being able to smoothly express herself.

I let it go. She resumed the story.

"He bragged he wanted to travel all the way from the south of Japan to the north for free."

She said he was from Montenegro- I think so, anyway. It turns out her pronunciation of that country name is completely different from the English, which Akemi didn't know. Maybe the Japanese is closer to the original.

"He has tens of thousands of followers."

She told me a few other of his exploits, with a mixture of amusement and outrage- she doesn't like people messing with or making fun of her country.

"He rode the shinkansen" (bullet train) "and when the conductor came in to take the tickets he hid in the bathroom, ha ha, and shot video of himself there and posted it."

She went on. "Hotels give free buffet meals and he went in and took food."

Akemi shook her head at the audacity of it.

"Even though he wasn't a guest," I supposed.

"Yes."

"That's actually a good idea," I joked but meaning it. We Americans break rules as Japanese don't.

Akemi said, "He puts his name and background online, so I don't know why they can't find and arrest him."

I got lost again as she continued, until she said, "He's here now."

"In America?"

"Yes."

"He can't get away with that stuff in this country."

"No it's much more strict."

"This isn't a high-trust society, like Japan's." Akemi and I have talked about the difference.

"No," she agreed and laughed.

That's the thing. The country she's from has a phenomenally low crime rate. She lacks a sense of the danger in this one, laughs when I warn her to watch herself, coming home late at night from friends, for instance. She seems not to get that bad stuff really can happen.

"So young and attractive like her.." Outside the subway waiting for her to arrive one night, I contended with a middle-aged woman- late middle-aged- dark wiry hair, pinched face, really like a rat's I have to say, ungenerous as that might sound, stranger who pretty much scared the shit out of me. She spoke familiarly, must have seen us together there before- I came sometimes to pick Akemi up at the same time- expressed concern for her safety, not, I sensed, sincerely. Her expression suggested a craven interest in mayhem no less. The tightly pursed lips, wrinkles radiating from them like spokes, the hard keen look in her eyes, evinced malice, envy of Akemi's youth and artless, unselfconscious beauty.

She didn't wish the best for either of us, was instead jealous and disapproving. "Young and attractive like her. Things happen.. this late." Akemi shouldn't be out having so much fun, that crone's scornful wordly-wise gaze said. Worse of all, it seemed to see right through me and through events. I felt I'd met a freaking fortune teller giving an unsolicited reading, one not of good import. Maybe she was from some backward country in Eastern Europe where people still believed in the evil eye or whatnot. Superstitious stuff. Nonsense I ordinarily wouldn't credit. But standing with her in the dark at midnight in that forlorn place, subway station on the elevated line nowhere to hang out then, she was right, I felt her evil vibes would rub off on Akemi and me and wanted to get away. I suspected she wished ill on Akemi in particular, would like nothing better than for her to get waylaid, found illicit pleasure in the thought.

"Bad things happen." I'm quoting, paraphrasing. The certainty and faint disapproval of her tone sickened me. Imagine an oracle capable of bringing on mayhem by predicting it, casting a sort of curse. I did. Crazy, paranoid on my part, of course. But if you saw her face, you might understand. She was beaming, all but leering at the thought of Akemi coming to harm.

Or picture a city rat who'd crawled out of the crevices and come too close for comfort, a person who had a lot in common with that loathsome rodent, the type who lives and breathes filth, reads tabloids for the sensational stuff, the crime pages, especially the sex crimes. I wanted her nowhere near us but sometimes later saw her in the neighborhood and she always seemed to be gazing right through me and seeing a future, not a good one. In those smug shining eyes reflecting the most narrow of minds, ignorance, infinite space and time seemed to open, dark, full of mayhem.

Akemi saw nothing concerning in that stranger when I pointed her out, stifling a shudder each time as we passed on the sidewalk- I tried not to turn around, look back. Akemi wasn't bogged down by the weight of the horror in the world. She all but skipped over the surface, light on her feet, and found my worries funny, touching, maybe a little sad. She felt for me, attributing the angst I carried to approaching middle age. And she may be half right.