Not Quite Lavish, But . . .

Two of my works, A Woman's Nails and B-Sides received some nice reviews from, I believe, a complete stranger. 

   On A Woman's Nails, Wasatch Range writes, "It's too bad that more of the author's brilliance, discipline and classroom observations couldn't have been interspersed throughout the book. The story appeared to be one horrible grief-stricken viewpoint of what it was like to be left by the love of his life in Japan. I realize that such angst would overtake one's soul at such a point when one is 26 or 27 years old, but he actually did observe a lot of other things that were worth reading about. Some wisdom finally came out in the last 10% of the book. I think this book is best read at top speed. Then the total presence of that grief and the repetitiveness of his trying to get out of it, plus the few minor editing errors don't appear so strong. Anyway, the last 10% of the book is worth it. All the characters plus their characterizations stay with you."

   On B-Sides, she wrote, "This is a quite insightful telling of what it's like in Japan from an American's point of view ... who has been there for decades and certainly knows his way around Japan, and can represent its quirks well. For that, it's funny.

"But the major flaw is that Crowe is really, really, really out of touch with the way men in the public eye refer to their wives in the US these days. Crowe's humor about his wife is sooo 30 years ago. Men in the public eye, who want to connect to connect to their audience DO NOT REFER TO THEIR WIVES DISRESPECTFULLY these days! IT IS NOT FUNNY!

"A very good example of how nicely men are referring to their wives in public currently, is Paul Rieser's book, Familyhood. Another set of very good examples is how the married chefs refer to their spouses on the popular TV show The Chew. It may be an accurate description of the male tone in Japan, for an author to still joke disrespectfully of one's wife, but for a reader in the U.S. these days, is a real turnoff.

"Edit (at a later time): I bought Crowe's other Kindle book, A Woman's Nails, because I otherwise really like his kind of humor, his outlook on life, and his niche. I hope, by reading his other book I'll find it possible to like his work anyway, despite what I said before.

"2nd edit: I finally finished A Woman's Nails. It was tough reading the first 90% of that book, because I kept thinking he verified my original opinion of him. It wasn't until the last 10% that I realized that this was an author I really could respect, that he had a brilliant side to him (or he wouldn't have captured the reader all the way through, and he was disciplined towards women as well, despite his own natural urges). It did change my opinion of the author, so I'm putting the deserved stars back on my review."

Many thanks, Wasatch, whoever you are. I really appreciated the time you took to write the review then and still appreciate it, today.

Yoko

After a dessert of chilled amanatsu, jelly served in the half peel of the summer orange it was made from, Abazuré says she has to return to the office. Several others take the opening my boss has given them to say they, too, have to hurry home before their children come back from elementary school. So, I'm left alone with Shizuko and our hostess, Yoko. As Shizuko fills my choko with reishu sake, Yoko brings in a basket of cherries she says arrived from Yamagata just this morning.

"Did you try the sashimi, Peador?" Yoko asks placing a handful of cherries on my plate.

"Uh, no, I didn't."

"It's out of this world," she says. "Very fresh."

"I'm sure it is," I say.

"Where did you buy it, Shizuko?"

"I didn't. It was a gift from one of my husband's patients."

"You really must try it, Peador," Yoko insists, reaching for a fresh plate behind her.

"Please, I'm fine. I . . . I've really had quite a lot to eat already."

"Mottainai. What a waste. C'mon, just a little."

"It's, um . . . It's just that . . . " Should I tell her I'm allergic? That I am a vegetarian? No, that won't work; I've been eating meat all afternoon. On a Friday, no less. Religion? Nah, the only religious bone I have in my body is the asadachi (morning woody) I stroke reverently every morning. "I'm afraid I'm not that crazy about sashimi."

Yoko wags her finger at me. "Tsk, tsk. You'll never be able to marry a Japanese woman, Peador."

"Oh? And why's that?"

She takes a long sip from her wine glass leaving a dark red smudge on the rim before speaking. "I don't think two people can be truly happy together unless they grow up eating the same food. I know a couple. Oh, you know him, Shizuko, what's his name? The Canadian . . . " she says snapping her fingers as if to conjure him up.

"John," Shizuko says. "John Williams. Works at Kyûshû University."

"Yes, well, John married a Japanese girl," Yoko continues. "When he met the family for the first time, they served him sashimi. They asked, 'John-san, can you eat sashimi?' And of course he says, he loves sashimi, but actually he couldn't stand fish. Like you, Peador."

"I didn't say I . . . "

"So, the poor girl's parents think 'Yokatta, he's just like a Japanese!' After the marriage, though, this John won't eat a bite of fish and, yappari, now they're getting divorced." Keiko takes another long drink, leaving another red smudge on the rim of the glass. "No, if you don't eat the same food, you'll have all kinds of problems. And that's why foreigners and Japanese don't get along well. I mean, if they can't eat the same food, how do they expect to be able to do anything together, desho?"

She concludes her argument as she often does with a smug look and a broad sweep of her hand slicing through any disagreement.

After all I've eaten and drunk, I don't have the energy to argue. Besides, people like Yoko, who love dominating conversations, tend not to listen to anything but their own sweet voices.

"I really like these hashi oki," I say to myself. "I didn't know you could see fireflies around here."

"You know, international marriages are bound to fail because the cultures are so different," Shizuko says. "You know that JAL pilot, Barker-san, don't you?"

"Oh, yes," Yoko says putting her wine glass down. "I had him and his wife, the poor girl, over last week." You get the feeling Yoko's home is in a perpetual state of hospitality, inviting and feeding guests, then assuring them to come again. Once gone, however, they become the fodder for that red-lipsticked, tirelessly booming cannon of hers.

She picks up a cherry, removes the stem with her long bony fingers then sucks it into the venomous red hole in her gaunt face. "I didn't tell you, Shizuko, but while Barker-san and my husband were out getting a massage, I talked with his wife. The poor girl said she didn't know what to do with him. 'He always wants to do something on his day off . . . go out, jog or hike . . . All I want to do is stay home and rest.' And just as the poor girl was sighing, Barker-san and my husband came back. And Barker, he went right up to his wife, gave her a big hug and kiss and said, 'We're so happy together!'" Yoko fills my choko with more sake, and shakes her head. "I felt so sorry for her."

"So, the fireflies,” I say. “Know any good places I can see them around here?"

"The problem with young people today," Shizuko says with contempt, "is that they want to marry for love."

This surprises me enough to bring me back into the conversation, and I ask Shizuko if she loves her husband. The two women laugh at me, making me feel foolish for asking. I didn’t know the question was so silly.

"Love," Shizuko scoffs. "Tell me, Peador, why do half of all Americans get divorced?"

I could offer her a number of reasons. Many really. But, I'm really not in the mood to go head to head with these two half-drunk, half-bitter housewives.

"It's very important to know the person you're marrying," Shizuko warns. "Love confuses you."

"Do you want to marry a Japanese girl?" Yoko asks me.

"I haven't given it much thought, to be honest. Anyways, marriage isn't the object. It's the result. If I find someone I love, who also happens to be Japanese, who knows? Maybe I'll marry her."

"You'll never be able to marry one," Yoko says refilling my choko. "You have to eat miso and rice and soy sauce as a child."

Maybe I'm blind or a sentimental dolt, but, somehow, I just cannot accept the idea that what went wrong between Mie and myself was rooted in my dislike of sashimi.

"Everyone wants to marry someone funny and cheerful," Yoko continues, spilling a drop of wine onto her linen tablecloth. "Tsk, tsk . . . She's cheerful but she couldn't cook if her life depended upon it. She buys everything from the convenience store and puts it in the microwave. Ching! Boys want girls that are fun, but they don't understand that what they really need is a wife who can cook real food and take care of children. Young people these days!"

 It was almost as if she was speaking specifically about Mie. My Mie who woke early in one morning, and walked in her pajamas to the nearest convenience store to get something for our bento. She wasn't as hopeless as Yoko might contend; she fried the chicken herself, then packed our lunches and bags before I had even gotten out of bed. When I finally stopped knitting my nightly dream, put down my needles and woke up, everything for our day at the beach had been prepared.

"It's a shame what some of the mothers fix for their children at the International School. My daughter used to trade her tempura that I woke early to make because she felt sorry for her friends. They were eating sandwiches!"

It was an outrage.

When I woke, Mie was gently stroking my head. I pulled her into my arms and kissed her soft lips. She laid down upon me, legs to each side of me, then punched the remote to invite Vivaldi into bed with us. As the hot morning sun began to brighten up the room, we made love, made love throughout the Four Seasons.

Later that morning, we drove with the top of her car open, windows down and music blaring to Umi-no-Nakamichi, a long narrow strand of sand and pines that continued for several miles until it reached a small island forming the northern edge of the Hakata Bay. Pine, sand, and sea lay on either side of the derelict two-lane road. We arrived at a small inlet, which had been roped off to keep the jellyfish away and paid a few hundred yen to one of the old women running one of the umi-no-e beach houses. Passing through the makeshift hut with old tatami floors and low folding tables we walked out to the beach which was crowded with hundreds of others who had came to do the same.

By eleven the sun was burning down on us, burning indelible tans into the backs of children. The only refuge was either the crowded umi-n0-e hut or the sea, so Mie and I took a long swim, waded in each others' arms or floated on our backs in the warm, shallow water.

Although I'd eventually get such a severe sunburn that I'd lie awake at night trembling in agony, it was one of my happiest days in Japan. On the way back to Mie’s apartment with my lobster red hand resting between her tanned thighs, I sang along to the Chagé and Aska songs playing on her stereo, making her laugh the whole way.

"I love you," she'd tell me with a long kiss when we arrived back at her place.

"What men need," Yoko repeats, "is a woman who can cook and take care of the home. Someone like your Yu-chan in the office."

The absurdity of what Yoko has just said snaps me out of my daydream. Yu, grayest of gray, as cold and bitchy as they came, may make a suitable Eva Braun for an Al Hitler, but suggesting that she'd make a good wife for me, why, that was insulting.

Yoko, reading the disagreement in my face, says, "See, Yu-chan's gloomy and, well, she isn't much to look at, but she really would make a very good wife for you, Peador. You just don't know it yet."

---

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Woman's Nails is now available on Amazon's Kindle.

Kindling for the Fire

You never know where the idea for a novel will come from. Sometimes, it comes in a brilliant flash of inspiration; more often than not from long, deliberate meditation. Occasionally, however, a story will be borne out of personal experience. Writing a novel based on things that really happened can be tricky in that life doesn’t always provide a convenient denouement drawing all the strands of a plot together. Relationships usually fade without drama, without leaving that niggling feeling of What if? Real people seldom die, are killed, or commit suicide in a timely manner, plot devices that are overused in novels. And sadly, there are few happily-ever-afters in real life.

That said, something happened a few weeks ago that had me remembering a past life of sorts, a time when I was thirty and dating a number of women. One of them would become my first wife, another would become the quintessential woman scorned, and a third would become the wretched casualty of my capricious heart. Fifteen years later that poor woman would write to tell me that she would never ever forgive me. As I read that letter, I felt a fresh pang of guilt and murmured quietly: “Darling, I haven’t forgiven myself, either.”

And so a third novel based in Japan about relationships is begat. It will be my Act of Contrition.

The above was written several years ago and the finished product was the oddly written A Woman’s Hand.

Speak of the Devil and she's . . .

As a rule, I try to avoid former girlfriends, particularly the ones I cared for.

Such as Mié?

Such as Mié, yes.

So, the two of you never met again after that night?

No, not even once. 

And if you were given the opportunity?

To meet Mié again? I would probably take a pass on that.

Why?

Because old girlfriends (past flings, too) are in a sense time capsules, vessels containing the memories, hopes, desires, and pains of the time you dated or slept with them. And anytime you meet an old girlfriend it’s as if you are uncorking the capsule and letting it all come spewing out again. It can be . . .

Discomfiting?

Unsightly is more like it.

Why so?

Well, suppose I bumped into Nahoko.

That was the young college girl who dumped you after sleeping with you once . . .

Yeah, that’s the one. The girl just vanished right off the face of the earth, and, well, as hard as that was to take for a few weeks, it really was for the best. Nice and clean, like a surgical cut. Now, suppose I had bumped into Nahoko six months or so later, after I had gotten over the disappointment. Meeting her again, I’d probably discover that she wasn’t nearly as pretty or intelligent or engaging as I had built her up to be. That reminds me of a saying in Japanese—nigeta sakana-wa ōkii (逃げた魚は大きい)—which means “The fish that get away are big.” Well, this fish, Nahoko, that wiggled out of my arms starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger in my mind and the regret of not being able to reel her in, so to speak, also grows and grows. But then I bump into her and, now that I can look at her with fresh, objective eyes, I see that I had been tormenting myself all this time over a girl who was at best mediocre.

Mediocre? That’s a tad severe, isn’t it?

Reality is fucking severe.

And Mié?

As for Mié . . . Mié, on the other hand, truly was a lovely thing . . . special . . . But, let’s not kid ourselves: over two decades have passed since we parted and Time is not very kind—it can be especially cruel to a woman after she’s had children. But that Mié I fell in love with, that Mié who broke my heart all those years ago, she is, in my mind at least, still a woman only twenty-six years of age, full of life, hopes and potential; she is still agonizingly beautiful. The reality, I fear, is probably very, very different.

___________________________________________

Speak of the Devil and she’s sure to appear.

I had no sooner written the above piece for a novella I’m working on when I noticed that Facebook was suggesting one of my ex-girlfriends as a friend. Not sure what algorithm Facebook was using, but in spite of “Umé” and I not having any mutual friends nor my having worked at the university where she studied, we were being asked whether we knew each other, and if so, whether we would like to “friend" one another. Yes, we did know each other, in the biblical sense, but, no, I was not interested in friending her. 

It’s been over ten years since Umé and I dated. It was during a rocky patch I was going through with the woman who would become my wife, that Umé and I had our little fling. She was going through her own rough patch with the man, I assume, became her husband. He was a resident at the time, terribly busy with his training to see Umé who turned to me out of loneliness. (Or was it desperation?) At any rate, Umé is now a mother of three.

The last time I saw Umé was about two years after we parted. She was pregnant, about to explode, and my first thought was: “Aonghas, you dodged a bullet there."

Seeing her in photos again after all these years, I must admit that she has aged fairly well despite the three kids. (I wish I could say the same about myself after only two.) Funny thing, though, as I looked at her photo I kept saying things to myself like “Was her chin always that pointy?” “Was her mouth always so small?” At the time, Umé seemed like the cutest thing I’d come across in years. I just wanted to eat her up. As for now? I’d have to say, my wife was a much better catch. 

---

Just yesterday, I came across yet another former girlfriend, one I dated Lord only knows how many years ago. (I am reluctant to specify as I don’t want to needlessly self-incriminate myself.) 

“Miki” and I dated briefly and sporadically. Nevertheless, there are things about her that I will never forget. One of the lasting images I have of Miki is when she stripped down to her bra and panties which had a dalmatian pattern on them and barked playfully, “Wan-wan! Wan-wan!”

Miki, in spite of the years, hasn’t changed much either, though she is not quite as slim as she once was. As for wanting to stop her and talk about old times, I passed. The very last thing she said to me was “Hikyō!” (卑怯)

I didn’t know what the word meant at the time and had to look it up. The dictionary will tell you it means “cowardice”, but, judging from her body language, a better translation might be: “You fucking arsehole!”

It’s true. I was an arsehole back then. But no more! Mark my word; I am no longer an arsehole.

Trimming Nails

If novels had director's cuts, this chapter would be in it. 

Aya

I thought an evening at home for a change would do me some good. I'd cook myself some dinner, then settle down to write the pages which had remained unwritten for too long. They'd collected in the course of days and weeks, so much so, they'd become a growing nuissance, cluttering my mind. And so, a warm meal in my belly, I sat down at my table to the long neglected task of writing another chapter in a novel that seemed to constantly rewrite itself. Pages of digressions and tangents, of love and hope, hate and despair. I opened a bottle of cheap vodka and placed it within easy reach in case inspiration became elusive. I wrote as quickly as the words could be dragged unwillingly across the sheets of paper. When I'd come to the end of the bottle and the end of my thoughts, I stretched my aching back, uncurled my numb legs from beneath me and read what had flown out of me over the last few hours.

With a rare sense of satisfaction in my heart and beginning to lose myself in the fog of drink, I retired to my futon to reread what I had written and dream of things bigger than myself lying on that thin cotton pad. I thought about the friends I missed, the friends about whom I often dreamt, about the Saturday nights two, three years before when I'd scrape together what little money I could, buy something cheap to drink then head downtown where I'd soon be staggering on all fours on the dancefloor. I missed my old friends so badly that merely visiting them in my thoughts was painful. It was even worse on nights such as these when I'd wanted nothing more than to stay at home with my thoughts and compose. Little by little the confidence I'd so strongly held on to would slip through my fingers, and the itch to get out of the thoughts that clouded my head and into the night would be enough to drive me mad.

I finished the last of my vodka and walked into town. It was an unusually warm November night, so I took my time meandering the dark and narrow streets that I had trudged/treaded in various states of insobriety a hundred or more times before in the sad, concise history of my miserable life in this city of Fukuoka.

I followed my nose, my heal and toes, to The Big Apple, a bar I hated for all the memories I wanted to disown. How many months had I tried to avoid the place? Since my heart had been thoroughly and unequivocally broken by Mie? Oh, I'd been there since then, in times not so much of weakness, but for a lack of anywhere better to go. A group of gregarious Australians brought be back into the gaijin fold and there I was gravitating to the bar as natural as if I'd always been going there. From then on, I'd pass, stick my head in from time to time to see if I knew anyone, and stay if I did. Little by little over the course of several months going would become a kind of  habit, drinking with aquaintances because real friends were not to be had, drink until five a.m. only to walk home alone, again, sometimes with the burden of heartbreak lightened, sometimes feeling as if its weight would crush me.

By the time I arrived the vodka I'd drunk had befriended me enough to warm a smile on my face and soften the furrow in my brow. I entered through the tinted glass door, then squeezed through the press of black sailor trying to endear themselves to the young Japanese girls, back on through to toilet in the rear where I found Mario. 

He gave me a genuine smile when I greeted him. We talked about things that didn't matter, insignificant things, then I asked him whether he was really Italian. He admitted that he wasn't, that he was Iranian, something that neither the Japanese nor the Americans would easily accept. I sat down next to him on the step and talked to him about history and culture, the Japanese and ignorance. It was one of the best conversations I'd had with another foreigner, though we'd had it in Japanese, and when I stood up to go I felt as if I'd broken through the insufferably thick layer of ice that most foreigners protected themselves with.

Many foreigners maintain a distance between themselves and others, perhaps from arrogance, perhaps from the knowledge that most of us in Japan are only here for a short time and developing any friendships outside the usual circle is a waste of time and energy. I wasn't innocent, I'd been harboring similar sentiments and had been handicapped by a selectivity that had prevented me from investing myself in relationships often because of severely limited choices. Therein lay the root of my problems. Torn between a real and concrete loneliness and a paucity of acquaintances from which to develop friendships. 

When I went back into the mob of mutually exclusive groups, dancing couples and the occasional loner like myself, I found Brian, an American whom I'd met in my neighborhood only a few weeks earlier. I'd thought he'd left and told him so. "Nah, I can't leave until I've sold everything." By everything, he meant drugs. Hash, X, pot. The night we first met in my neighborhood, I invited him back to my apartment where he got me high for the first time in ages. He offered to treat me again. I couldn't refuse and followed him out of the Big Apple and across the street to a different building where we took the elevator to the top floor, ascended a short flight of stairs to the roof and smoked hash for the next half hour.

Despite his generosity, he was in a sour mood. He mentioned that Patrick, the Swede I had originally met him with, had ripped him off, but that really wasn't what was bothering him. In his line of business, he was used to people trying to rip him off. He'd never trusted the guy in the first place, and besides it was only money, something he seemed to have no shortage of. 

We talked about all sort of things, going off on tangeants to see where they'd take us, and suddenly in the middle of our discussion on biblical myths such as the virgin birth he said, "God, what am I doing with my life? I haven't been home in eight years. I'm a fucking drug-dealer. Sometimes I just wish the police would fucking arrest me . . . "

There was nothing I could say but suggest we go back to the bar and get another drink.

When we returned to the Big Apple, we found Patrick dancing with two foreign women. I suspect that someone as tall, blonde and gregarious as him had little trouble getting laid by the sexually frustrated foreign women you inevitably found in the gaijin bars. He could have them as far as I was concerned; I'd lost interest long ago.

Brian and I got our drinks and stood to the side of the dance area continuing the conversation we'd been having earlier. "Nothing interests me anymore . . . I've seen it, I've done it, I've been there already . . . Eighty countries, man. I've been to eighty countries in the last eight years, but I haven't been home . . . "

"Wooh!" Patrick was dancing with the two foreign girls, with bare arms raised above him twirling in the air. "Yeah!"

"Look at that idiot," Brian scoffed. "Thinks he's the reincarnation of Jim Morrison."

Patrick took turns kissing the two girls who clung on him. If the girls had been remotely attractive, I might have been envious of the tall Swede rather than merely disgusted. 

"Oh, Yeah!" he said and began clapping above his head. "Mmmm, yeah!"  I suppose he wanted us to clap along with him, but no one did. Even the others who'd been dancing stopped, turning away as if they were embarrassed by the spectacle he was making of himself. A lack of audience was no matter; he continued hamming it up all the same. 

"A true artist is never really appreciated," I said to Brian. 

"Especially, a con artist."

 Just then someone tapped my shoulder. When I turned around, I found Aya. I didn't think I'd ever see her again after I'd moved closer into town. Six months had passed since we last met when she had tried to communicate through a verse in the Book of Mormon that she was in love with me. 

2

"I lost your address when I moved," I said hugging her. "It's so good to see you again."

I bought her a drink, then sat down at the bar with her so we could talk about everything that had happened since that warm Sunday afternoon in April.

"I often thought about you," I said taking her hand. It wasn't entirely true, though. I couldn't say that I had really consciously thought of her. I wondered what she was doing or where she was. And it wasn't that often that curiosity would make me wonder about her. No, it was on only the rarest of occasions that she would visit my passing thoughts. Drunk as I was, it was tempting to even say that I'd missed her. But then the thin veil of credibility I was wearing would have been torn off.

Why hadn't I contacted her? Was it because of her age? She was only fifteen the first time we met, sixteen when I ejaculated all over her breasts six months ago. No, age never factored into the equation. Too young wasn't necessarily a minus. Not in Aya's case, at least. Had she been older, I might not have given her the time of day. No, Aya's age, and the breasts she'd been so generously endowed with were all that had ever interested me. But at the time my heart still carried the unhealed wound of Mie's departure from my life. Though the wound hadn't quite healed, time had allowed me to put her absence further and further from my mind. I'd grown used to the feeling nothing the way you can get used to the silence. I suppose I hadn't contacted Aya because I still wanted desperately to fall in love with someone again, but now all I wanted was to fuck like a dog.

"I had a birthday," she said.

"Oh, you did? Congratulations! So, you're now what? Twelve? Thirteen?" She punched me softly in the shoulder. Really, what did another birthday mean when you were so young? Only that you were still young. I turned twenty-seven since we had last met. A year closer to thirty. A year closer to death.

"You don't know how old I am, do you?" she asked.

I knew. How could I forget coming on the breasts of a sixteen year old? Coming on a girl ten years younger than myself. The thought had made me smile, had even warmed me on the odd cold night. She was seventeen now. "Yeah, I know," I replied. "You're seventeen."

 She asked me where I was living now. She asked me if I had a girlfriend, but didn't believe me when I said I didn't. I didn't believe myself, to tell the truth. It'd been more than a year since I'd had a proper one.

"I have a boyfriend," she confessed. "He's black."

I took Aya by the hand to the back of the bar, then through the fire escape to the exposed stairwell then led her up the ten flights to the roof where I tried to kiss her. 

"You just want to have sex with me," she said, pushing me away.

"What ever gave you that idea?" I asked. I turned away from her and looked across Oyafukô-dôri to the building where Brian and I had shared a spliff earlier. I could barely make out what looked like the ember of a joint rising, glowing brightly, then dimming and falling slightly. It looked like a firefly. 

Aya had accused me of just wanting to screw her. Of course, I wanted to have sex. Would I have been up on the roof catching a cold with the girl I didn't really care a whole hell about if I weren't interested in sex? No way! Wake up, Aya! Reality awaits you! 

"Aya, I don't want to have sex. I just want to be with you." I took her into my arms again and held her tightly. "I don't want to have sex," I said kissing her neck. "I don't want to have sex," I said biting her neck and feeling the weight of her breast in my hand.

I did want to have sex. But I wanted something more, too. Something that she would have never been able to give me. Aya would never know anything about that, of course. I wasn't about to open up a Pandoran box of emotions before the girl.

3

We descended the stairs and walked hand in hand back to the bar which was deserted all but for the staff who were starting to clean up. Looking at the clock I saw that it was almost five. Where the hell had the time gone? We couldn't have been on the roof for more than half an hour and I'd arrived at the bar around midnight so I had two, no three hours that I couldn't account for. Or could I? Had they merely drifted off into heaven with the smoke each time I took a hit off Brian's spliff? No, time had only been slightly compromised by the hash I had smoked, and been made completely forgetable by the drinks that Aya had been ordering and placing one after the other before me. A few weeks later Brian would say, "It's not often you see a chick trying so hard to get a guy drunk so she could fuck him." 

"Live and learn." I would reply.

Aya and I jumped into a taxi and headed back to my place where I lost no time in getting undressed, lying in bed and falling fast asleep.

A few hours later I was woken by Aya. 

"Wh-what the fu . . . ?"

"You're snoring and I can't sleep."

"Huh? Me? Snoring?"

"Yeah, you. You're really loud."

"Nah, not me."

"Yes, you."

"I don't snore."

"You do, too!" She imitated me. It sounded like a boar in the throes of death. She crawled above me and grabbed my neck. "I want to kill you."

"So kill me," I said slowly pulling her sweater up and over her head. 

Although her forhead and nose were just as tan as they'd been in April, her shoulders were milky white as if they had never once been kissed by the sun. Under the sweater her huge breasts were held in place by a simple cream colored bra. Some girls with smaller breasts were able to get by with a single clasp, others with more shapely figures reguired two. Aya's breasts, however, were precariously contained with three industrial sized clasps which groaned with stress fatigue. While I might have been able to undo a single clasp bra with a adroit snap of my thumb and index, undoing Aya's bra was a major undertaking requiring a foreman, joices, pullies and hard hats. When the last of the third clasp had given way, I could feel the weight of her generous bosom drop heavily onto my chest. 

It was amazing how firm they were, how small and pink her nipples were, but then she was only sixteen. Seventeen, that is. What was the age of consent in Japan? Who knew? Who cared? Why was I even asking questions? All I wanted was to fuck Aya, but not necessarily because I wanted her. No, I wanted to fuck so that I might forget, to fuck myself into a reprieve, to put yet another body between the memory of Mie and myself. And so we fucked, fucked for hours, fucked as the morning light was beginning to sneak into my room, as the sound of pidgeons and crows was beginning to break the silence of a Sunday morning, fucked until the odd car could be heard passing slowly by, fucked until the voices of children and their mothers reminded us of the time, fucked until I came again into the deep valley between those majestic peaks.

I rolled off of Aya and fell asleep. When I woke up, she was dressed and in the kitchenette doing my dishes. Great country, I thought. When she finished, she hung up the dish towel on its hook and sat down on the bed beside me. 

"You have gray hairs," she said running her fingers through my hair.

"Thank you!"

"I'm supposed to meet my boyfriend today, but I don't feel like it."

"So don't." I pulled her towards me and kissed her, then took her hand and bringing it under the covers, placed it on my cock. "Why don't you stay with me?"  She nodded her head slightly, then proceeded to remove her clothes.

I suppose it was her age. This poor girl had been blessed with a body that demanded and got your attention, yet lack of experience meant that she hadn't yet learned how to use the gifts the gods had given her. She straddled me, then waited for sex to happen. When it did, she never let go of her composure the way that Rika would. Rika was lost in epiphanies each time we had sex. One day, I thought as Aya whimpered softly above me, she'd be a great lover, but I didn't have the patience to teach her. The excitement you might feel screwing someone so much younger than yourself fades sooner than you'd think. I lay Aya down on her side and tried to evoke something more than the pathetic whimpering, but success was elusive so I gave up and consentrated on myself, instead, and before long my own pleasure produced a short strand of pearls on her back. 

We took a shower together to wash the smell of each other's sex off our skins. I shampooed her hair, then later dried her body with a towel. We returned to my bed where she cleaned my ears with a mimikaki. It was the first time since I'd dated Mie that anyone had done that for me. It was one less memory Mie could no longer monopolise. 

4

We spent the afternoon in Dazaifu, visiting the famous Tenmangû Shrine. I'd suggested going as I'd been wanting to see the Japanese maples at the nearby Komyoji temple. And with the Shichi Go San soon approaching, I knew there'd be many parents taking their dolled up children to the shrine to pray for their health and happiness. More than anything, I wanted to go to Dazaifu ostensibly to see these children and take their photos, but there was a deeper wish, too, a wound that hadn't yet healed. Looking at the little girls in their colorful kimono, with their black hair combed up in hoops and ornaments and flowers dangling out in every which way, their skin white with powder and small lips as red as pickled plums on a bowl of steamed rice. Looking at them when they were so adorable like this made me think of the children I could have had, but had so far chosen not to. The reasons for past decisions, though made with the best intentions, and often the only choices I could make at the time, could hardly comfort when I look into the bright eyes of these children.

"They're so cute," I said to Aya. Would she have understood how the regret stung when I looked into their precious faces? 

We sat down on a low bench that was covered with red carpeting and ordered umegamochi manjû and green tea. Aya ran her fingers through my gray hairs.

"Everytime you do that you make me feel old."

"I like older men."

"Yeah? Why's that?"

"I don't know. They're more interesting, I guess." She placed her hand on mine and rested her cheek on my shoulder. "I think you're interesting, too."

A three-year-old girl walked clumsily by in her platform zori. Her kimono was more decorative than the others I'd seen and there was a collar of white fur around her neck. She looked at me, turning her head as she passed, then paused and waved her short fingers before continuing awkwardly on her way.

When I told Aya that I wanted a child she replied, "You are a child." It was true and I knew it, knew it all too well, but coming from a high school girl ten years my junior made it all the more ironic. Hardly a day passed when I didn't ask myself if I would ever manage to grow up and do the things that I, myself, and so many others had been expecting me to do. But as often as I thought about it I could never quite come to choose between living life one day at a time without regard to the consequences of my actions and without concern for what others were expecting, and giving in to those pressures and leading a responsible, normal life. As lonely as I was, as keenly as I still felt the solitude of being so far from family, friends and love, I did not live entirely within a vaccuum isolated from the world and people around me. My breath fell upon others both near and remote, upon Aya next to me on my shoulder and Mie so far away, but still in my heart. My thoughts return to the fulcrum upon which my emotions are balanced. Love. Love found. Love lost. Love killed. Love desired. Love. Love. Love.

© Aonghas Crowe, 2011. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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