The Long Highway Pt. 20B

Nelson's wife Leticia watched a video at our place.

"I remember that scene." The living room in Manila. Her cousin Dina and his musician friends. Guitar. A stand-up bass someone had brought- she said didn't recall that. Beer. Probably something stronger.

"It must have been a while ago, like six years, as much as that maybe," she said as the montage, in effect a home movie, played before them.

Nelson shook his head.

"My god," Leticia said. "You're right. It's before Mom died." The older dark-haired woman was in the picture, sometimes wandering in and out of the living room, hair uncombed, dressed for the house. "So it has to be twenty-three years ago at least. It feels like yesterday."

Leticia had raised her voice almost to a shriek, as she tends to when excited, as if no one would read her feeling without the volume, high pitch. The exaggeration stood out in our apartment, where neither Akemi nor I speak in louder than conversational tones (our feelings come through all the same).

Leticia's expressiveness was a contrast as well with Nelson, who uses understatement as often as not.

He nodded gravely, in a grim mood he told me had become familiar as he aged, acknowledged his wife's point about the passage of time, how it moves with no greater concern for our feelings than a wave engulfing us.

Leticia's mother died when she was young, though older than Akemi when her brother cast off the mortal coil.

I really saw little of Akemi's family on our visits to her country. We traveled, went off by ourselves, stopping at her parents' place only for a day or two at a time. I sensed the pressure it put on the family to have me around. The big foreigner in their midst changed the routine for everyone. Big gaijin with his big dick. I once caught Akemi's mother checking me out below the waist, wondering what her daughter had gotten, which kind of fish she'd hooked. I'd stood up from the kotatsu- living room low table- at which I'd crouched, uncomfortable as no one else was; they're all used to doing without chairs, have greater flexibility than Westerners, whom they indulge. It took me a moment to get to my feet, sort of uncoil, and there she was, from the far side of the table staring at my crotch with detached curiosity.

Or was it my imagination?

"This guy's big, bigger than a Japanese, but how big is he? How does Akemi handle him?" I saw the questions flicker behind her eyes. Or did I just imagine them.

Excited to be in Japan, I was open, eager to absorb all the new impressions even as they overwhelmed me, limiting my ability to process them.

In the entrance to a traditional inn where we stayed, a young woman who worked there said to another foreigner, "You shouldn't step on the mat with your shoes on, especially if they're wet."

I felt superior to the dolt. I'd learned some of the protocol as well as a bit of the language and proudly showed off, speaking my pidgin Japanese took the hostess' side against my own kind (what a gloating idiot I was then).

"'It's good not to do that' is a good thing thing to say." ("Sou shinai hou ga ii to iu no wa ii desu").

By "not to do that" I meant, of course, not taking your shoes off.

My command of the language then surprised me. The sentence just rolled out, perfectly formed. You know how that happens? It's a sign you're making progress toward fluency (which I have never reached, nowhere near).

The worker, in her twenties, pretty (of course!) with wavy dark brown hair long down her back and a twinkling manner, pale, almost caucasian face, bony with thick eyebrows and earnest gaze full of unexpected humor, found my ability to speak her language- at that moment at least- even more startling than I had. It wasn't what she'd expected from a foreign visitor.

She wore a light-colored roughhewn kimono with a dark sash. Okay, I liked the way it fit at the hips and waist, how her hips lent shape, set the fabric in motion. This wasn't the gorgeous, bright colored kimono of someone celebrating a holiday or special event, but the subdued version suited to a worker, in this case a good natured one who wore it and her job lightly. I found the meat of her thighs sexy as I imagined them through the robe, the patch of her bush dark brown like her eyebrows I guessed.

Did she guess what was on my mind? In any case, she clearly liked me, in a way I sensed was genuine, beyond her official duties of dispensing hospitality.

"Let's go out together!" She had a good sense of humor (matching mine?), a fun streak. I guess she was on a break from her job at the inn; that was why she'd come to the entrance then.

"The thing is, I have a wife," I said.

"Where is she?"

"She's coming."

I was waiting for Akemi, then paying the bill in the garden restaurant where we'd just had lunch. Impatient, I'd wandered off through the inn to the front entrance to look at the great outdoors, glorious day ahead of us.

I had the cash, mind you. During the trip, we didn't use Akemi's money more than mine. It was the actually paying, dealing with the check and communicating with staff I couldn't manage, preferred leaving to her. And I'd stepped away to avoid the awkwardness of just standing there like an idiot while Akemi handled the chore. I know, in a foreign country there's nothing strange about a woman who's a native taking care of a man who isn't but I still felt my passivity as a weakness.

"Let's go to her!" said the hostess. And we did. About face! Grinning, the hostess followed me, eager to see the woman I'd chosen. Had she guessed she was Japanese like her?

Akemi was just leaving our table beside the hanging vines when I reached the restaurant. She didn't mind I'd arrived in the company of the yukata (summer kimono)-clad companion, her obi (sash) a startling indigo blue. After all, I wasn't doing anything behind Akemi's back. And it was just fun, flirting the inn worker and I were up to- though if I hadn't been married I wonder what would have happened.

Akemi might have thought the hostess was leading me back, that I'd lost my way. I was so out of my element, easily disoriented in Japan it would have been no surprise.

To be honest, the behavior of the young woman inn employee confused me some. She'd all but taken my arm as we walked together, yet here she was, glad to see my wife, as open to her as to me.

Thinking back on the scene now, of course I see she probably hadn't been flirting at all. My misunderstanding owed, by the way, not to a conception of myself as god's gift to women- I knew better- but even worse, a suspicion- call it wishful thinking- that Japanese women would be interested in any American or European as a novelty. I'd had enough of Akemi's friends say to me I resembled such and such handsome movie star, though I didn't at all, to suspect we all looked pretty much the same to them. It didn't seem such a stretch to imagine that as a reasonably presentable American guy I might stand as good a chance as any authentic Romeo.

At the time, I'd wondered if there was something I didn't know about going on under the surface of the smiles the pretty purple obi-sashed hostess directed at Akemi, who of course would have been her competition if she really meant for us to "go out together" as she'd said, given my understanding of the expression.

I credit myself for at least recognizing how little I understood Japanese behavior, thinking.

We (Akemi and I) went to the movies, saw a Japanese film about people who were half human and half machine. A beautiful blond, wavy-haired woman bit into the side of a man, handsome beefy as she was beautiful- both of them cartoonish- and opened a gash in his midriff; through it which red meat showed. But when he died (only in need of repair, it turned out) the inside of his head, opened from the top- flipped as if on a hinge- revealed electrical circuitry.

I tried to find my way and eventually gave up, at least saw the limits of the project, realized Akemi's world was too different from mine. I wasn't even sure she wanted me to learn much about Japan. She certainly did not rush to help me with the language (which I eventually gave up).

Fortunately, Akemi was content to live in The U.S. She'd decided to move here before we met, of course, so there was no question of my having forced the choice on her. She could adapt as I hadn't. She came to New York already knowing quite a bit more about the place than I ever would about Tokyo.

I'd go back again and enjoy myself, accepting my status as an outsider. I found each stay exciting, thrilling, invigorating. My energy was on high the whole time. But they were only visits- and knowing I wouldn't live there may have been part of what made them so intoxicating, kept me seeing the place as other-worldly. Was that only an illusion? If so, what a great one! And why not? All the world is an illusion, according to Buddhist thought, isn't it? I'm no expert, but I've heard that.

I'm tempted to recount the daily sights and sounds, not only of Akemi- but of course of her too. What do you want me to say? It all comes back so vivid, and I'd like it vivid for you too, as that makes me feel good. Life is like the kind of brush that has the painting loaded onto it. You draw the bristles over the canvas and the image comes on its own, stroke by stroke, all the lines, planes, color, as if predestined. The past is like an inverted future, a predestined one. The present, my life at home and at the college, I'll get to that too. I know I've talked plenty but it really has only touched the surface.

There was the boat ride on Tokyo Bay, the view of the city from the water, and the time I helped two tourists, Western like me. Having grown a little, gained some genuine confidence, I extended to these Westerners kindness I'd withheld from the guest at the inn, the blameless one I'd dismissed as a dolt for keeping his shoes on where they weren't allowed. I helped the pair find food they wanted, a meal, on a shopping street we were entering at the same time, descending.

You see, I hadn't completely abandoned my efforts to acclimate. I wasn't trying to fit in but to survive. Being able to was important for me. The weeks, months in Japan had an importance beyond my involvement with Akemi. I saw challenges in daily life there. As Akemi said about marriage, one should "keep oneself."

I learned something about myself as an outsider in her country, saw that as my confidence grew I behave less like an idiot, didn't feel the need to show off, demonstrate knowledge I hadn't fully grasped- or really grasped at all- such as simple greetings in Japanese; that kind of formulaic language always defeated me.

There was (still is) a guy at work, a teacher, new one, who spoke fluent Japanese, and he didn't make a big deal about it- the knowledge, the skill was just something he had (which I didn't- I felt envy, unease around him, hoped he wouldn't stay long at the college, would move on to better things of which he was capable).

When Akemi and I were alone together, how glad I was of our privacy. As I sat on the foot of the bed and Akemi knelt between my open legs. Her skin shone, luminous in the dim bedroom. The quiet itself was luxuriant, so different from the day at work where an administrator had been talking loudly on her phone just outside my classroom- it was hard teaching with the noise. I could have interrupted to close the door but some, including the administrator, preferred it remain open. I couldn't act on my own behalf only, had to consider as well what others found comfortable.

The silence in the bedroom would soon stir with the sounds Akemi's mouth made- so I hoped anyway. Was she serious about doing that then or had she knelt down just for a playful moment?

It had started as a game. We were going out, getting ready. That was why I found Akemi partially undressed, both of us in the bedroom of a quiet mid-afternoon, her tan, pale leaf-colored upper body bared above the waist, her fine sculpted shoulders, her breasts rounded, smoothed, pointed as she faced me standing, as we faced each other and I lay back on the bed and she sank down before it. We laughed, quiet, Akemi's laugh like a cat cry, the way a cat meows when it wants something so badly it can't bother using its voice, thinks you'll understand, and you do; those exquisite needle-like teeth that would never bite me, that textured tongue, Akemi's not rough like a cat's at all.

I'd once said to her, "I want you to serve me" in a moment of passion and she said, "What?" It had sounded bad, like I was racist, taking the part of an imperialist with a colonial subject- and yeah, maybe that notion did turn me on.

In fact, Japan and other Asian countries had good reason to be wary of Westerners, keep us at arm's length, given the history of colonialism in the hemisphere. Speaking of arms, how golden, smooth, columnar Akemi's looked where they had alit on the tops of my thighs, how heavenly her scent, which I felt as my scent, ours, shared.

Just thinking about it, I can feel the wet of her mouth on me. That cool wet would stay even after she finished, all the rest of the day, in and out of the house.

I spent all my seed, like a plant hit by gale-force wind. I've said it before and will again because it never stopped. Akemi made me feel good, even my work life lighter, everything better. She reminded me of the good we search for as a purpose of our lives and sometimes find.

I took pleasure in shopping I did by myself in Tokyo. At an outdoor produce market on the street where I'd led the two fellow foreigners I bought persimmons, which I never would have at home- the break away from my usual habits seemed proof just being in that environment had changed me. I was even able to lend a hand to a Japanese woman at the same fruit and vegetable stand. She was having trouble paying, lacked change she needed that I provided. It felt good doing something useful, even very simple, in a context so foreign, felt like an accomplishment. She thanked me, as she was freed from the need to search her purse while holding a shopping bag; I'd spared her that trouble. She lived nearby, in the neighborhood, was older but you could see she'd been beautiful. She looked Korean, I thought; her hair was curly, different from most Japanese. Maybe I guessed wrong about that. It didn't matter of course. She had shorter legs than a Westerner but was still a knockout. Those high cheekbones, the broad V-shaped face, the velvet skin did it to me every time. And those eyes, the way she looked at me, like she could see right through me and no language difference mattered at all.

Exciting.

Yeah, I found myself surrounded by attractive women and had to consciously rein in the impulse to make the most of the opportunity with Akemi's friends (it's true some Japanese women are as curious, eager to experiment with foreign men as we are to offer up our services).

Abroad, you feel both limited and free, as Akemi must here, her experience shaded toward the latter. She really is independent and from the start didn't need me to teach her how to navigate the city. She figured out stuff I couldn't in Japan. Remember in the first class I was going to give the students instructions on dealing with the bureaucracy? No, in Tokyo I wouldn't have been able to use a notary public or whatever the local equivalent. I depended on Akemi for most things, another reason I wasn't about to betray her if given a chance, not even if a welcome was extended (it would, I imagine, have been unspoken, like a cat's cry).