The Long Highway Pt. 30

Part 30

Hiroko translated

Mitchell took a class I'd told him I'd be in. This was before we knew each other well. As a faculty member, Mitchell could take up to two classes a semester tuition free but he hadn't taken any yet.

He told me about registration day. On the way in to the hall where students and teachers and administrators were gathered for the event, he saw two magazines on one of the card tables he passed and they struck him, their titles and content did.

They were "the New Yorker" and "New York." Mitchell said that when he looked at them side by side he realized they showed the difference in the city now and in the past.

"'The New Yorker' was about art and literature. 'New York' is just money," he explained to me.

The latter magazine, now the more popular of the two, focused on the surface of things, restaurants, prices, entertainment, didn't explore culture.

He said that at the time he'd wanted to tell someone about his idea, which he found meaningful, one of those that bring together others.

And he did talk about it while waiting on line to register for the class, chatted with two students he didn't know. As an example of the shallower, more materialistic outlook of new residents of the city compared to the old, he described a recent encounter with a person who'd behaved badly.

One of the pair he was talking with on the line ahead of him responded to the anecdote knowingly.

"That was a Sarah," she said dismissing any notion of complexity with that single word.

"I think you mean a Karen," Mitchell corrected, referring to the name used to designate a certain type of woman found annoying by others, one in her thirties, white, self-righteous, high-handed in her dealings with others. He thought the student had mistaken that name for another.

But she hadn't.

"No, I mean a Sarah," she said, and the friend on line with her confirmed her objection.

Mitchell realized that the name Sarah was now also used critically but about a type found annoying in a different way than a Karen. He seized on the moment.

"You see, that's the thing about no longer being young. You- I mean I- don't know these new things any longer."

He'd never heard anyone use Sarah as that college student had. He'd thought it just a name like any other, not a shortcut for a character simplified, a caricature, and singled out for ridicule.

He decided the content of that conversation would be good to use on the first day of the class he was taking, for his self-introduction, which he knew everyone would be called on to present. It would be a way to comment on his presence as the oldest person in the group.

He stood in front of the class, directing his words mostly to me, he said, though I don't remember that.

But he ran out of time before he got to the points he wanted to make. He'd barely finished giving general details about himself, background and the rest, when someone interrupted to say something unrelated and when they finished, before he started again, he saw he'd run over. The clock read seven minutes after the hour. For college students even one minute past the time a class should finish is too late. No one would wait for him to complete his extended monologue. He couldn't get to his point about Sarah and Karen and how as a no longer young person he missed such pop culture phenomena, much less talk about "New York" and "the New Yorker" and changes in the city in his experience, which went beyond his classmates.'

He stopped. "I'll continue next time," he told them and the teacher, but he knew that wouldn't happen. Introductions were over.

A friend asked him later if I was in the class and he said, "Yes, she is!" He told me he'd been about to say, "What a body. What a face" but checked himself and just said, "Great person."

After all, he and I weren't together then. He looked at me after delivering the narrative and his eyes seemed full of questions, as if even now he isn't completely sure we are.

Unsure of himself? Insecure about me? Sometimes I sense he actually enjoys that state. He's always excited, on edge.

Is it possible to have strong feelings, ideas about both you and Mitchell?

You're calm, steady in comparison to him. And that makes me feel good too!

By the way, around the time Mitchell took the same class I did, there was a scandal at the college, large-scale drug dealing and behind it a money-laundering scheme police uncovered by looking at the complex transactions involved. I heard details later. The actions of an Ecuadorian student in particular had cued investigators to the financial subterfuge. The student supplied a large amount of dollars- the currency of his country then and probably also now- that was clearly unnecessary, served no purpose other than to conceal illegal profits. Some people who participated unwittingly in the crimes were held to account, arrested along with the "ring leaders."

I guess I mention this, it's on my mind at the moment as you are, because the scandal, the surprise and obviousness of it and the sweeping effect, reminds me somehow of my marriage- no, I mean my involvement with you during it, which is also complicated, outside the law but in our case necessary, don't you think?

I want to tell you: You look good in dark blue. It goes with your skin color. I have a dark blue top I like and want to give you a dark blue shirt next time we meet.

Which reminds me of this: Mitchell's friend came out of the room where he'd been talking to me. Mitchell nodded to him knowingly and said, "34D."

"What's that?" someone asked.

"Men's talk."

I was wearing a light top- not the dark blue one but a white teeshirt- and it made my breasts prominent. Mitchell knew his friend would have noticed and been impressed and Mitchell was proud.

In fact, my breasts are not as big as that. But they're large for my proportions. I'm smaller than an American woman. So Mitchell had told the other man the equivalent American breast size.

Mitchell said later that just from talking about me his penis was hard and bouncy like a sponge.

Why? I'm not so special. Why didn't he choose an American woman, the voluptuous kind Japanese guys dream about?

People are strange! Everybody wants what they don't have. And if they can get it..?

Anyway, I like this picture! (attached)