The Long Highway Pt. 14A

There was a time when I thought I'd lost her. It was the end of the summer and she wasn't home and wasn't picking up her phone. I tried to reach my father- felt I had to talk to someone, he would understand, or might- couldn't get through to him either, not even in his office. It was closed when I called. I thought people would be back from their summer holiday- the place pretty much closed for a week- but apparently they weren't yet.

I spoke to my friend Peter and we hung out and then by chance I saw Akemi in the subway, a station we were walking through, Times Square, where a lot of people changed trains, so many bumping into someone you know didn't rise to the point of great coincidence- still, seeing Akemi there was unexpected and then some. The Times Square station made a sort of crossing point midtown. Akemi and a crowd entered through a corridor. A train must have arrived on the platform above and behind them and the riders poured, as if a spigot had been opened.

She stood out, of course. It took me only a moment of confusion to recognize it was her.

She was wearing a white scarf. At first I thought it was a bandage. Had something happened to her (that had been in the back of my mind, that worry, fear when she didn't get in touch).

No, she was fine. I saw she was walking all right, her usual confident bearing.

Then I no longer needed my friend, just wanted to be with Akemi, drop Peter, though he had kindly offered to keep me company in my distress. Selfish of me, but who cares? As a friend, he'd understand my feelings for Akemi.

One of the first times Akemi went down on me we'd been drinking at a party and I think my ferocity surprised her. It even did me some. I held the back of her head, gripping it with both hands from above, like a coconut, my fingers thick in her hair, clamping her skull, and moved her up and down. It almost seemed too much, but I thought, "This is how people do. This is what sex is," letting go and giving yourself unreservedly, no holding back.

The party was for my friend Nelson, who didn't attend in person. He was on the west coast but hugely present in spirit. The event was to honor his work, still very much in demand then. His celebration in film of the heroic white American man, hence of himself, the self-styled maverick, would soon fall out of favor, but that night the macho pose inspired and intimidated. He bullied even from a distance. I always wanted to live up to his example- an impossible feat, since he was famous- and sometimes took the wrong message, later for instance, when I sent those photos of Akemi he requested. It wasn't easy to establish yourself, find your own way, with a figure like that looming over you. I felt he was watching Akemi and me, making a judgment.

Let's not overcomplicate. I wanted his approval and Akemi's too. I felt jealous, as she was an artist and might compare him and me.

Nelson put in an appearance by video late (three hours earlier on his side of the country) and gave his usual cryptic and abstruse message designed to mystify and charm his friends and experimental art film devotees alike. They all went silent, hanging on his words, even or especially those they couldn't find sense in, so it seemed to me in my tipsy state, feeling no pain by then. Akemi fit in neither group, knew of Nelson only through me and found him charming, his presentation at the party, that is. They had yet to meet.

How cool and smooth her mouth felt even in all that heat. I really felt I loved her then, even as I almost brutalized her. We were people, I said to myself, and people are animals, as she wolfed it down, ferocious in turn, keeping up though overpowered. One thing I felt about her from the beginning was that she welcomed men's strength as she showed me woman's. She once openly laughed at the American concept of a "nice person."

"Don't need," she said in her unique English. I felt I had a lot to learn from her and she from me.

"'Nice person' is don't need" I think was the way she put it. In other words, being nice isn't always necessary or even good. Most people recognize that truism but who can act on it?

I'll harp on this some more- while Akemi waits for me to get back to her in the story- because I haven't really considered it much in depth before: I think the party we'd just come from had something to do with the change that came over me that night.

Until then- remember, it was early in our involvement- I'd been nothing if not nice, determined to show Akemi I was a considerate person, putting that above all, holding myself back from my new girlfriend, who was not just another in a series but the woman of my dreams, no less. That night reality burst upon the dream. Having seen Nelson, though only on video for five minutes, and with the boost of wine we'd drunk, I was determined instead to show Akemi who was boss.

Funny to put it that way, but it was how Nelson thought and he was my teacher (back in college) as well as my friend now, what's more, a potential threat where Akemi was concerned.

He'd once talked of his wife letting him sleep with an old girlfriend visiting their place for a week in the country. Leticia was tolerant of him. Nelson spoke to me of "emptying" himself. He was into Buddhism, new age stuff from his era. His line was a strange mix of peace/love idealism and bullying. He would have made a good guru, come to think of it. I doubted Akemi would go for that, but she might be more impressionable than I thought, and Nelson could be persuasive.

They hadn't met but he'd already seen her photo, commented on her breasts. I'd hoped they wouldn't attract his notice, but no such luck. They're superb and any man with eyes can see that. I imagined his hands crushing them. His worker's hands. Nelson has always lived in the countryside. His callouses on Akemi's skewed, silken flesh.

My cock went deep in her mouth. I couldn't see it, just the top of her head, but I could feel it, and I didn't hold back, drove on deep as I could. Akemi would have to have opened her throat to let it in so far.

That felt okay. I mean I sensed she was all right. Motion all smooth, continuous, no hesitation, like an oiled wheel.

Slop, slop, slop. Deep wet sounds, gurgling, almost inaudible.

Akemi's hair not just black but brown in the light, like a coconut. Sounds funny, but that was the impression her hair made on me, combination of alcohol and how mussed it was.

Was I also in a sense punishing her for my suspicion of her interest in, admiration of Nelson and his of her (though they hadn't even met at that point!) Was I acting out my insecurity, saying, "See, this is who you belong to, who your mouth belongs on"?

Was I that kind of person?

Akemi isn't just a beautiful thing. She has a mind and soul of her own. When she went for a physical to enroll at the college the nurse practitioner spoke of treating not only the body but the whole person and said to Akemi (she told me when she got back) that she ought to be more involved with the community, it would make her happier. The health care worker, a young woman like Akemi, even said there was an event that evening at the community center where the clinic was and Akemi ought to consider coming to it.

Frankly, I worried about her being led away from me. Akemi was happy. The doctor (practitioner) was well-meaning but wrong. Maybe Akemi's difficulty with English led her to think she needed the kind of help she offered. In fact, Akemi has plenty of social connections, more, frankly, than I do. Of course, almost all her friends are Japanese. She does keep a bit aloof of the society in which she lives. But connections? She's got at least as many as me. I mean, I have a community at the college, but my students aren't friends, at least with the exception of Akemi, ha ha, and a few I met before her.

Thinking of this drunk, while jamming my cock into Akemi's mouth, I mean really jamming, so she frothed. I'm not joking when I say I was out of control that night- or you could say ceding control to feelings stronger than the part that tried to keep control. Yeah, you could say it, if you can find the sense in it.

Jamming her face. It even sounds bad. I don't like guys who do that, gang members who rape and laugh about it. But it wasn't as if she and I didn't know each other. And if she'd told me to stop, really told me, I would have.

Did she like it? You'd have to ask her. As for me, I get hard just thinking about it, as I do a lot when I write about us or just about her. Damn! Frothing! Makes me want to be drunk all the time, even at breakfast, except then I have to go to work.

And Akemi did go to the community event, by the way, bicycled there, out of curiosity (or feeling the stand-in doctor had given her orders? She'd said people Akemi would find interesting would be there, among them a few artists like her.

I was a little annoyed by the whole thing. I walked her partway. We parted company on the road- she rode off on her bike. She was in a good mood, better than mine, didn't need community events.

What's the point of my writing this? I guess so that by the end you'll know her the way I do, you'll know both of us.

Also, I like writing about this stuff, even though some of it isn't easy (a lot of it sure is!) I guess I like challenges. If I'd wanted safe, I could have stayed with Pam, lol.

By the way, I could have joined Akemi at the meeting, but I chose not to. I was curious how she'd do on her own in the English-only all-American context.

By the way, as I accompanied Akemi on the road, she walking her bike until we separated, I was wearing a coat and nothing under it. I'd left on the spur of the moment, not realizing Akemi was serious about attending the event till she announced it nearly halfway out the door. She asked a few times if I didn't want to go back and put on some clothes. I said I didn't care, lol. Strange mood, dream-like in the sense you don't know what's going to happen.

I like writing about the whole thing, the present state of our marriage and the period leading up to it, as I'm doing in this chapter, the foreplay, you could say.