The Long Highway Pt. 17F

And if you think Nelson gave no real cause for concern, I'm just inventing all this, let me say he'd speculated about having sex with Akemi, talked openly, man to man, congratulating me on my accomplishment in winning her and having the guts to marry someone so different- the choice was bold and could have led to spectacular failure.

No man should talk about another's wife that way. Nelson said he pictured sex with her as a white rising flame (Why? Because we're white?)

"Like kundalini yoga," he said. "There's a place for the ecstatic."

That's his thing, as a guru figure, you see, spiritual but not only ascetic, also carnal. Ascetic for sure too, he claims. He likes to confuse his acolytes (followers of his film art).

Well, it's true being with Akemi can feel otherworldly. There's something especially about when she goes down on me. I've talked about that (which is all right because she's my wife, our relationship completely different from hers with Nelson).

One of those experiences so good- yeah, ecstatic, I'll use Nelson's word- you feel it's almost more than any man should be entitled to, yet there it is, you're witnessing it. The view, I guess, is what's doing it. Film-like. Yeah. Something Nelson could relate to. With sound effects to drive you out of this world. Does Akemi know what she's giving me? Can she see herself? She's so serene.

You know the scene. Time stops and then it breaks down completely, explodes, and you're jettisoned into another galaxy. In Akemi's eyes are stars, on her cheeks flecks of white from the planet she's pulverized, driven into smithereens.

And speaking of race (the fact that Nelson and I are caucasian and Akemi Asian), I'm reading a really good book now about African-American life. It was recommended to me by a woman at work I like, a black American young woman who wears traditional African robes and headdresses, natural colors in bold prints. She's foxy, a word I've used recently about Akemi, also a great person like her. And the book is excellent, an authentic cultural history starting back in Africa with foundational legends and values and traveling to the present- you can almost taste the dust of villages with unpaved roads and the grit of urban North America where so much of the diaspora ended up, laboring in factories, driving the economy. I tell you, any time you take a train ride or have a long commute you're not looking forward to, if you bring this book you won't mind the trip at all.

But I'm digressing again. I know I do it a lot and it's by choice- because I think this stuff matters, isn't off the subject.

It all belongs, even such seemingly irrelevant details as a conversation I had with students yesterday about the bird they've been keeping in the biology lab. When I stopped in I saw the cage hadn't been cleaned. Bird itself looked pretty ruffled, it's brown-red feathers not as sleek as they ought to be. When I brought the situation up with students present they said they thought I was the one who would clean the cage- and the bird itself- necessary; things having got this far, it too needed care. I countered that the job wasn't mine but theirs. They expressed no resentment about my placing the onus on them but asked why I rejected the responsibility. I said, "For one thing, the bird will have bacteria I don't want to get." Students accepted this explanation as well unquestioningly. And it's true that Covid made me more aware than before of the risks of infection around us. The pandemic changed a lot, in ways yet to be fully understood.

A digression but short and of moment, I think. There are a surprising number of animals on campus in various research facilities- and probably some as well kept as pets- like those in the so-called "wet markets" of China, from which Covid is said to have spread to people- and there are a lot of jobs at the college for which responsibility is not clearly assigned.

But back to the birds and the bees and, for that matter, fucking like rabbits.

Speaking of birds, there was the afternoon in the country when we were walking on a farm, from one site to another, bare land right there, well-trodden, rolled, elevated, gradual hump of hard packed dark wet- anyway, damp- earth, with trees stark against the sky, black, denuded at that season. You could see how they'd bend, had been bent by wind. Behind them the sky. And we looked up and saw birds in formation, it seemed- it was- rolling, small ones that looked black because silhouette but were brown- sometimes the sun glinted one- rolling, swift. They were sleek and riding the wind, up high where it blew hard. In migration? Akemi and I saw and decided we should stop- we weren't in a hurry then, going somewhere we were needed but on vacation- stop and just look.

It was like a performance for us. They'd roll out in formation and turn as a group and roll again, like grains of metallic dust swept here and there, hurricane-like in their terrific force.

"You know what happens to you in winter," Akemi said to me. We were talking to a farm boy, who was pointing out sites and explaining them. I wasn't sure what Akemi meant. It couldn't be that I got horny in winter because I was every season. I touched her arm by the shoulder, then her cheek. I knew the contact had to feel as good to her as it did to me- in the sun.

We'd thought of buying a house in rural France. They're inexpensive. A small one by a farm maybe.

We talked about the city, noting those who broke in and robbed, also those who so readily opened themselves, are surprisingly generous with their humanity. Akemi talked about a time she was followed into the building where she lived and arrived at her apartment without incident only because the guy took a different door to the corridor, thinking he could head her off, and failed. She noticed that poor people here are often the most giving, which isn't a surprise since they have the least to lose.

But that's really another book.

I told Akemi that I liked going down on her in the middle of the night, "quietly at first, so you almost don't feel it, like whispering." From silence bringing her to thrilling, loud climax.

I realized that the only way I could survive emotionally in Japan was to connect with an expatriate community. A lot of people did and lived there happily. But out of pride, desire to prove my independence, which itself was probably proof of the opposite, I tried not to rely on foreigners like me. Keeping company with people who shared my background would be a defeat, I thought. Abroad, you should give yourself over to the unknown, operate without a net. I wanted to be different from other Americans in Japan. Yet it was clear that if I had contact only with Akemi and her friends I'd go crazy. They and I were too different in how we thought, expressed ourselves. So I ended up instead dropping my plans of moving to Akemi's country for a year or more and came home, inviting her to follow me later, which she did, not without hesitancy. I'd assured her everything would work out, though I myself wasn't sure. Akemi does have a Japanese community here, connected with them as a matter of course, saw that as natural, and of course she was right.

On her first weekend here, we went to the beach but were, with everyone else, prohibited from swimming because of an influx of sharks- or was it jellyfish? Instead, I took photos of Akemi, which was also part of the plan, arguably the more important from my point of view. Her skin smelled like honey from the sun.

When she went down on me, while we were still just touching, I reached my hand deep into her cleavage to feel the full breadth of it, the fineness or her skin on the way to her nipple- speaking of good feelings.

I don't know why that night- the one I was writing about that started with cunnilingus and ended with fellatio, fucking sandwiched between, stands out so much, seemed such a breakthrough, but it did, so I went ahead and attempted a reproduction in words. I wonder how much of the truth the sentences convey. I see them like the sound of Akemi's orgasm, trying to break through.

The night of the jazz club I'm not going to devote any more words. Get on with the story, to the present.

One thing writing this does is help me forget my job and problems there, the boss who sometimes seems to have it in for me, checking out my office space as if for contraband, aspects of life that definitely don't belong here.

Truth is, I sometimes feel trapped at the job, want to escape the office, dig a hole in the floor or something (I don't imagine anything as neat as sawing, sledge-hammering more what I have in mind).

A friend of mine was talking about retirement, and you'd better believe I was envious though he too isn't near the end of his career. He spoke of plans he's already making to have enough money then, income that will last as long as he does- which I haven't even thought of yet, don't know if it'll be possible.

Akemi clearly doesn't think of anything like that. She didn't marry me for future security, given how little I can provide now. On the other hand, I was an in here, route to a Green Card.

The philtre of Akemi's pussy. Isn't that a great word, by the way? Yeah, I enjoy writing, trying to find the right one, though it's impossible. None can match the reality, but some can make a simulacrum (another good choice, lol).

The guys in the jazz band had an entertaining repartee, banter between numbers, joked self-effacingly that they weren't perfect (while acknowledging applause from the audience) and elaborated their shortcomings, both as musicians and as people, light-hearted stuff, just for fun, and I remembered Akemi once said, "I suck his cock," meaning mine of course, to a friend, a Japanese. She told me later. They- we- were laughing. I don't know how it had come up or if that's the exact translation, lol.

Maybe this is like nightclub entertainment. This thing you're reading.

My former Vietnamese friend said the sounds of our lovemaking were like water buffalo. She must have meant me, my bellowing when I came. Not to show off or anything.

It's all cultural, is my point. Not.

"Not really" is one of Akemi's favorite phrases in English and she says it languorously, letting the words elide, roll off her tongue. She knows about culture, having lived in two very different ones, and would agree it isn't the most important thing but definitely adds something, in bed and elsewhere. Akemi, with her different language and the rest, can be a hard nut to crack but I wouldn't have it any other way. 

Beyond words, Akemi's sounds are something else again. If mine are like a beast of burden, hers are ethereal, yes otherworldly. She's small but loud, break-your-eardrums high-pitched loud if she's coming up close. Someone meeting Akemi in the hall of our building would have a hard time guessing the noises that woke them last night were from her.