The Long Highway Pt. 31

Someone spit on me. It happened in front of the college yesterday morning. He was riding a bicycle, arriving, and I was walking away right outside the building. No one was around then, anyway not looking.

It might have been a hate crime, because of my race or because I'm a woman.

I told Mitchell. We went to the police, and I actually found out who the man was by looking in the catalogue and by finding out what classes were running that morning. By one chance in a thousand I was able to find his name and his picture.

He was middle-aged, in his early forties, wearing a light all-weather yellow squash-colored coat. His hair was longish and stringy, I could see even with the bike helmet, dark or wet as if he'd just washed it, and uncombed, but that might have been from wind. He was a lecturer at the college, on his way to a class, to lecture!

I saw him by chance again today, same time. I was a little further away from the college building. He was rounding a corner, arriving again, and our eyes met.

Later I told Mitchell.

"How did you know it was him?" he asked.

"From the photo and from seeing him before." Also, something about how he moved, the expression of his watery round brown eyes was unforgettable.

He looked strange, his face unreadable. I thought he might attack me. He would have been enraged if he'd known I went to the police, but he couldn't have yet.

I hadn't decided whether to press charges. If I did, he could lose his job, lose everything. It wasn't a major crime, but what kind of person would do that?

Mitchell and I went to a park near the college to walk and talk, not about what happened, to change the subject. On the open tree-lined path that runs by the river, where nothing blocks the view of water and the light on it and the sky looks so big, Mitchell ran into a student he knows from Vietnam and stopped and talked with her. She was tall and pretty, very slim not voluptuous but pretty, even beautiful. Afterward, he told me she was from Hanoi and that he'd like to visit there. Then he talked about the neighborhood where he went to elementary school. The name of the street sounded a little like Hanoi, I guess that had reminded him.

Mitchell knows a lot of people at the college- of course, he's taught there a long time- and in the coffee shop we returned to from the park he ran into someone else, his dentist who works on campus. We went to join him. On our approach, before Mitchell put his cup of coffee down, the dentist, a chunky young man, placed a napkin on the white table top, like a coaster for it.

"I see you're very careful," Mitchell said.

The dentist, blond with spiky hair, sort of a brush cut, and a fresh-scrubbed face, began to explain his action, a little defensively.

"I don't mean it in a bad way," Mitchell said. "I understand. At your job, that's important. You establish a routine, and it sustains." In other words, he'd developed habits of cleanliness, Mitchell seemed to be saying.

I guess I think of this because of the spit, which really didn't get on me or barely, just a little.

Spitting on someone is different from spit, for example, from a kiss or my spit on you when I go down on you. That's good, don't you think? Charging up and down, smooth slide.

Later Mitchell suggested I try teaching one of his college classes so he can take a break. He was joking but said it isn't fair that I paint while he works. I understand. Painting is my work but it's my choice, not for money.

I said that I don't know English well enough to give the students the examples they need, but he said it didn't matter. "Just follow the curriculum." But I don't think I could even fill out the forms to start the beginning of the term.

"Ask another teacher to help you," Mitchell said,

It was a joking conversation. He also talked with me and friends about our moving to France. He said he knows a perfect village where housing prices are reasonable.

"I saw a place two hundred dollars cheaper than we pay here. We could afford it."

But how, since he wouldn't have a job there?

"I could work remotely," he said.

It sounds unrealistic, to him too, is just a dream. First of all, why would I want to live in France? I'd have to learn a new language from the beginning. There's also that to think of.

He tried to draw a picture for his friends of the French village and surrounding landscape, hills, the ideal place to live, just for fun. He started a contour drawing, black pen on white paper. The lines were soft, shapes unclear. "Is that really a house?" someone asked, pointing to a lump suggestive of a prehistoric dwelling. Europe is old but not ancient (and so is Japan). We all laughed.

On our way back from taking our friends to the station, we stopped and talked to an old Chinese man we know in the neighborhood. He always says hello in passing, not much more- I thought because he didn't know much English- but yesterday for the first time he paused and talked, told us about his past, how he'd once been married to a beautiful woman. He described her as if he'd seen her only yesterday, talked about her face, her smooth cheeks, touching his own to illustrate- as if feeling hers again- for a moment, just an instant, his normally inert expression became rapturous. He said she was tall. He smiled remembering other parts of her he didn't talk about. Nor did he tell why he and she weren't together now, and we didn't ask.

He added after the description of the woman who remained an ideal for him, "But she had trouble before we married, had been pregnant." He didn't tell the whole story, too long of course. What he did reveal was sad but also beautiful, if you understand.

Mitchell took more pictures of me sucking him. I got so excited imagining it was you. Is that bad? He played my breasts. I want you to do that to me. I want to make the cream come out so strong!

First, I'll hold my hand flat on you. I'll move my hand in a wide circle. I'll watch you get excited.

I get so wet!

I'll kiss your chest. My mouth open like a koi fish will slide down inch by inch. Can you enjoy a hungry koi fish?

Can you make me do it? Can you pet my face, hold my cheeks, watch me smile at you with my mouth open?

Can you watch my eyes, bright and darting but staying on yours obediently? Can you reach out and play my breasts, squeeze and work them?

Can you watch my mouth foam on you from my saliva, my spit, as your cream gets ready to spring, to spring?

I want to push my mouth all the way down you, from the top to the bottom and then draw it slowly off again. You are so hard!

You want me to go fast and slow. You tell me to slow down. You don't want to hurry.