The Long Highway Pt. 32

from Akemi:

Hiroko translated

Thank you for understanding me and promising I can trust you.

When I sent the picture I felt I was doing it to you not my husband and I got so wet!

I trust you!

from Mitchell:

Long time no word. Akemi's been talking about you. Have you heard from her lately?

We watched a basketball game last night and Akemi got distracted on her phone. I thought maybe she was writing to you. There were less than thirty seconds left and our team hit a three-pointer to go ahead. I kept telling her, "You're going to miss this!" Ha ha.

Otherwise, everything's fine with me, my job and all going well. And you?

photo of Akemi attached (nice shot in jeans)

from Akemi:

Hiroko translated

Mitchell has a crazy imagination. "Crazy" is the word he used. He's so funny. He said he had a dream about the college class he's teaching in which he told students to pair up as man and woman and take turns giving their partners oral sex, the women sucking the men and the men "eating" the women (that's the word he said).

I guess he meant to use that as a "teaching moment" (also his phrase), lead a discussion of the "activity" afterward.

When the students had already started, he realized he should have told them before that everyone was free to say no they didn't want to take part "do or be done." But he saw none of the students seemed to mind, feel he had abridged their rights or fault him for assigning something "inappropriate."

Mitchell was very "ecchi" last night. That's Japanese for "horny."

We'd watched a show about war, close-up look at soldiers. One objected to treatment by his own men of an enemy officer. They'd recaptured territory and put the high-ranking man in a jail that until then had held their own men as prisoners. Just released, some were still present in the cell area.

"They'll tear him to pieces," the objector said of the fate awaiting the officer at the hands of the freed prisoners now in control. He thought it wasn't fair that he be brutalized. The young man felt that even in war-time right and wrong mattered, you had to maintain your basic humanity.

Mitchell found the drama exciting, enjoyed my reaction, reminded me "It's only a story" when I showed emotion about the young soldier, the hero who cared.

from Mitchell:

It is a good one, isn't it? Light touching her bare shoulders as your or my hands might. That shot of her great ass in jeans gave me an idea. It's a game. She writes a Japanese character, a difficult one with a lot of parts, and you and I both try to copy it. She looks at the results and chooses the best. She doesn't know who did which. The winner gets to go with her while the other watches.

You've won and she's going to go down on you. You're going to "fuck her face," as we jokingly say here. You want to eat her first, though. She demurs for a moment, would rather just start to suck you, but agrees when you insist.

You get her taste, her aroma. Your saliva brings it out. Your tongue plays her clitoris, like ringing a bell, then banging a gong, and make her come hard.

Next you're going to really fuck, from behind of course, that great ass. I watch as you hoist it high and drive. She's on all fours. Not doggy style but wheel-barrow style, and she's well-oiled, ready to rock and roll.

Crazy the stuff that comes up just from looking at a photo. Some might say crazy to talk about my wife this way. A human wheel-barrow? Far from it. All's fair in fiction, though. I learned that from you in college. As my teacher and a film-maker and friend to both Akemi and me you understand as probably no one else would, which is of course why I run these daydreams by you and not others. You always said, "Go for the imagination! Don't hold back!" And I know you know the limits, that the kind of game I described goes past them.

--

Thinking of the old days for some reason. Long ago, when I was in college, I briefly had a roommate. I remember coming home to our room, knocking and finding he was there and being sorry I wouldn't have the place to myself. Of course, he probably liked his privacy too, didn't welcome the interruption. It was afternoon. I'd expected to be out a while but a class had been cancelled so I'd come back. We both adjusted. Then as at other times, we tried our best and got along well pretty much always.

Years later, I talked to that same roommate about Akemi when I'd first met her, asked for his advice as an uninterested third party. I was thinking of getting Akemi a book as a gift for our second or third date and solicited his opinion on the few choices I had in mind, and he made good suggestions, not of specific titles but of things I wouldn't otherwise have thought of, taking into account Akemi's point of view, her situation and how it might have shaped her preferences.

Funny how things work out. Recently I went to get my car repaired. The mechanic explained to me the minor problem that needed fixing and listed a few options. Somehow, I don't know why, listening to that expert on cars reminded me of the talk with my old roommate, his advice about Akemi.

Once that former college friend came over while Akemi was visiting and he and she ended up going into the bedroom to watch a television show. True, it was one I didn't find interesting and Akemi and I were not committed to each other yet then. But still that felt strange. It was an early test of my propensity for jealousy and ability to trust, let well enough alone.

And I remember this from our time apart, the months when I was back with Pam, Akemi having asked me to make up my mind about my old girlfriend before she and I went ahead. She didn't deliver the request as an ultimatum, wasn't angry that I might still have feelings for Pam. People come to new love affairs with a past, after all. She understood but was protecting herself, and I in turn understood that she didn't want our connection to deepen if I was still attached to the woman I'd been with before her.

So I returned to Pam to work things out, really to find the right way, best timing to let her down, if I could. Yes, months passed, all the time Akemi on my mind.

If I tell you it was a hard time, understand that's an understatement.

I didn't want to hurt Pam and I did have feelings for her. But Akemi brought the change that was inevitable.

--

We were in a party, anyway a gathering, and she was with a group of people, friends, family there who gave her support, and I saw I had no chance. After all, we'd agreed to be separate. It was a while since we'd met. And she looked happy enough, as if she'd accepted our separation and begun to adjust, live her life on her own.  

But when I saw an opportunity, that she had stood up, was by herself a moment, about to take steps somewhere, I approached until we stood face to face, made our own space of communion, apart from the group whose conversation went on, no one noticing us.

"What?" she asked me with wonder. 

"Are we still friends?" I asked. 

"Yes!" she whispered forcefully. 

"Forever?"

"Forever!" she said. 

Enamored of each other, we advanced, still face to face, close, and lay down to talk, not caring who saw or if it was rude to ignore everyone else. 

We'd regained our intimacy and were determined not to give it up again. I saw that other women in my life- Pam- would understand, would manage my withdrawal. It was clear that this, Akemi and I together, loving each other, was right, how things were meant to be.

Her long, slim body, smaller than mine but powerful, pressed to mine. I felt her shoulders, arms, even the size of her foot, on the long side proportionate to the rest of her body, maybe her only physical flaw and an endearing one. I saw I could and should be with her, that we would manage to mesh, find a way for our lives to work together because our love demanded it, would welcome who we were, she to me and me to her. 

She was wearing something soft, dark grey, knit. Through it I felt the angularity of her shoulders I gripped gently, appreciating the remembered sensation, the quiet joy, the humming happiness of our being friends again, lovers still, as we lay on our sides, communing, talking but not needing many words- everything we had to say poured through us, was there in our closeness.

I remembered her feeling for words, especially those in English she was learning, how she felt their depth as a native who took them for granted wouldn't, how she used to say the word "forever," drawing forth all the poetry of it to hover in the air between us and drift off ever so slowly- no, it didn't dissipate; it remained part of the world we inhabited, atmosphere we breathed, invisible but there all around us, how her eyes looked then- opening her sense of wonder to mine, welcoming me in- then and now. 

Our warmth, the softness and hardness connected gently and with full, unbridled strength.

Then I woke up to find I was in bed with Pam beside me. It was two in the morning and I was slightly feverish, light-headed as I often was those days, especially at night. And I thought: This isn't good. This can't go on. The person I'm with, the one person who might help me with my feelings, the emotional chaos I'm going through, is, given its nature, the one person who can't. All I can do is write it down, try to make an art of it. How sad for her too.

Hiroko translated

I sent the picture because I thought when you look at it even though I'm not with you I'll make the cream come out the way Mitchell's does, the way any man's does. Did yours? For me, you are any man on the street who sees me and takes me home. Is that bad? You are also you and so strong, I know. I want to kneel down in front of you and do it, make the sounds I know you like. You hold my shoulders from above while my head moves up and down. Then you hold my head still while you move, fuck my open mouth. You say, "I want to fuck your mouth," and you do, like Mitchell does, but he doesn't know and he doesn't know I sent the picture.

You build such a strong, smooth rhythm that when the cream shoots it's like a sling released into the universe, to the wet, dark depths where there's only starlight, and it's so much, a Milky Way!