The Long Highway Pt. 13

Three Stories

I told Akemi about an experience from my thirties. I had friends who lived in New Hampshire. A couple. I was friends with both of them. Then the husband died unexpectedly after a short illness. I talked to his wife, offered to come visit. I'd been there before but always when both of them were around. This would be the first time I'd be sleeping over with just the wife and me there.

It felt like a burden had been lifted or a door opened, to the sky, no less. That was how I described my response to the changed circumstance, the openness of it. The ceiling of the country house had been pulled back to give a view of stars.

I told Akemi, "This is a favorite men's fantasy, to sleep with the wife when the husband is away. Only I guess it doesn't count if he's dead. Ha ha. Or maybe it does!"

I thought Akemi would just laugh off the story or otherwise make clear I couldn't make her jealous if that was my intention.

Instead she had a comeback.

"I understand. I think what she wanted was perfection- your help too, of course. Completion, I mean. Finality."

Akemi's idiosyncratic English made this difficult to understand.

I listened as she went on, told a story of her own. "Once a guy asked me to help him finish shaving. But I looked at his face and thought he didn't need it. He conceded he'd just run a razor across his face but said there was still a flaw he could feel. So I agreed to try. And I discovered what he meant There was a place on his cheek he'd missed, yes, a flaw. You couldn't see it with your eye but could feel it with your hand and there was a bump when the blade went over it. And then it was gone, his face felt so smooth."

Who was she talking about? I had no idea (as she didn't about my suggestive story). I really didn't know about her past. She told me little and made clear my pushing for detailed answers wasn't welcome. I did the best I could to satisfy myself with the fact that I had her now.

She said things that made me want to nail down that fact that was all I had, to fuck her so she wouldn't have room to think of anyone else, finality, completion, to use her words.

Was Akemi trying to make me jealous? If so, she succeeded. I was so horny, packing a hard-on, after she finished I could barely wait to get her to the bedroom. Perfection indeed. Akemi's flawless ass.

I dreamt last night that on break in a class I walked to get something from the desk in front and it happened I was wearing only a teeshirt, white one. I walked right up the center aisle, people on both sides gaping, some nearest leaning away as if to get a clearer look, wider view. I might have been parting the Red Sea, ha ha.

A student, a woman remarked to humorous effect that my teeshirt was too short. Her tone was light, acknowledged the amusing aspects of the moment, but also had an admonishing quality, clucking her tongue kind of thing, as if to say, "You should know better than to do this."

I turned around, unfazed, and said to her and everyone else now watching, "You think my ass is the right size, you say. Well, what about the other thing? Yeah, the other thing. Do you think it's too big, too small or just right?" This brought appreciative laughter from the group.

That student had said nothing about my ass or other part of my body. Her comment touched only on my teeshirt. But in dreams such lapses of logic are accepted.

I spoke from the front of the room with full confidence in my endowment and everyone ate it up (not literally; and my self-assurance reached beyond the physical to my authority as leader of the class).

I told Akemi this story too, of course, and she laughed about it, probably found it as stupid as the first. Akemi doesn't dream. She acts. And my penis is still wet and elongated from her even as I write this.

It strikes me now and has at other times that my break-up with college girlfriend Deborah might be part of what made me hesitant to cast all my chips with Akemi, reluctant to give up Pam. At age nineteen and twenty, I was deeply in love with Deborah and went through hell when our romance ended. It was horrendous heartbreak, for want of any other description, something I never wanted to experience again and feared I might if Akemi and I got together. Pam was the safer bet. I might have chosen the woman I wasn't in love with but knew I couldn't be hurt by. But you can't manage your emotions like that.