1

 

“If you’re just having sex with me, I want you to stop it,” Reina says, shoving me away once her hands are free.

Her brown hair is matted against her face and neck; wrist, red, with deep braided indentations in them, and on her tummy are drops of semen, scattered like a broken strand of pearls.

She turns away from me, and faces the wall. The sweat of our bodies has soaked through the sheets to the futon, forming an unnavigable body of perspiration between us.

It’s not that I’m “just having sex” with her, but then it’s not quite love that I am making, either.

So Peadar, what are you doing still screwing her? I don’t know. I really don’t know. 

And I don’t know what to say to calm her anger or reassure her. All I can do is try to make a gesture of affection, to kiss her tenderly on the back and pull her closer to me.

“But,” she says, softening, “if you want something more . . .”

I kiss her on the lips, then maneuver above her, gently spreading her legs and easing inside her for the third time this morning.

 

Reina and I went to the neighborhood izakaya after work the evening following that disastrous reunion with my ex-girlfriend Mié.

Feeling as if I had been pulled, emotionally and physically, through a wringer, I wasn’t in the mood to eat. I returned the menu to its holder, and told the master to just bring me a beer.

“Bottle or draught?”

“Draught. Biggest you’ve got.”

“Futsuka-yoi?” he said, asking if I had a hangover.

“Hai,” I answered, massaging my temples.

The master laughed heartily and hollered back to the kitchen, “Nama icchō!”

As if on cue, a middle-aged woman in a white kerchief and smock emerged from behind a dingy noren curtain with my personal savior in a tall mug, frosted with ice. I mumbled “Kampai” to myself, and started glug-glug-glugging away. The cold beer soothed my parched throat, tamed the nausea in my gut, loosened the screws on my temples.

Close, but not quite there yet. Waving the woman in the kerchief over, I gave her the empty mug and asked for another: “Mō ippai.”

Judging by the way Reina eyed me I could tell she wasn’t impressed.

“Trust me,” I assured her. “I know what I’m doing.”

“And that’s supposed to help?”

“Reina, it is the only thing that helps.”

I had tried their little elixirs concocted from Lord knows what, but they didn’t do a damned thing except leave a foul taste in your mouth. Beer on the other hand, worked like a charm. Nothing beat it for the hangover. Of course, I was well aware that knocking back a nama wouldn’t cancel the previous night’s debt. No, all I wanted was to break the hangover down into manageable installments.

“You know what we call that in Japanese?” Reina asked.

“What? Drinking when you’re hung-over? Mukae-zaké, of course.”

“Eh? How do you . . .?”

“I’m Irish, Reina. Things like ‘hair of the dog’ constitute basic survival phrases for us. And, I’ll also have you know, the very first Chinese character I ever learned was saké.”[1]

“Aruchū des’ne,” she said, calling me an alcoholic.

“That I am.” And, there you go: having admitted to being a drunk, I was now, the theory goes, one step closer to becoming a reformed alcoholic. But, good God, where was the fun in that?

The woman in the kerchief came to my rescue with another chilled mug of beer. One step forward, two steps back; the folks at AA would have to start their meeting without me.

Let me tell you, it was with great relief when I first learned of the Japanese tolerance for drunks. Staggering home after three or four too many seemed to be a national pastime of sorts, second only to beisuboru. And, best of all, you didn’t have to suffer through the guilt trip “concerned friends” would lay into you the way you had to in the States if you enjoyed the pint a little too much. No, here if you tell someone you like to drink, they will buy you a bottle of expensive Scotch or shōchū. Mention that you’re hung over, and they’ll kindly offer you mukae-zaké.

“Kampai,” I said with a little more life in me this time and clinked my mug against Reina’s glass of oolong tea.

“Can I have a sip?” she asked.

“Sure.”

Reina took a healthy swig of beer, let out a long sigh, and then started at it again, drinking half of my beer.

“You want to order one for yourself?”

“I do, but, um . . .” she replied.

“But, what?”

“But, one will just lead to two and . . .”

“And who’s the aruchū now, Reina?”

“You are! You should have seen yourself last night.”

 

I was hoping that Reina would have the decency to let me forget about the whole evening, the details of which were like disconcerting pieces to an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. Every now and then, an image would flicker through the haze just long enough for me to grab it, turn the image around, and try to guess where it fit into the big, incommodious picture.

Though I clearly remembered collapsing to the floor of a phone booth and wailing like a kicked dog after I called Reina, how I got home was still obscured in a pea soup fog. For all I know, I may have been beamed up to the Mother Ship, probed in the b-hole, and dropped like a used condom just outside my apartment building. At any rate, Reina was waiting for me at the gate of my apartment building, crouched down and playing with a stray bob-tailed cat when I arrived.

“Been here long?” I asked.

“No,” she said, standing up and straightening her skirt.

The spectacle I had made of myself in front of Mié, however, was seared into my memory. And as I revisited the awful night in my mind, sketchy details I would have preferred to forget started trickling in.

The soup thinned. I remembered collapsing to the floor of a phone booth, banging my head against the glass door, then, staggering—yes, that was how I got home—staggering, and attacking piles of garbage and yelling “Why, Mié? Why?”

 

Each time Reina ordered something, the master would echo her order in a booming voice, and remove two skewers of each from a refrigerated display case before us that ran the length of the counter.

I reminded Reina that I wasn’t hungry, but rather than listen, she added okra, asparagus and enoki mushrooms wrapped in bacon, and shishamo to the order. And, after a moment’s thought, she also asked for grilled rice balls and misosoup, making me wonder how the slim woman was planning to eat it all.

“You told me a lot of things,” She said with a queer smile.

“Oh?” I asked with a nonchalance I hoped belied my discomfort. Things? What things? I scavenged my brain for any scraps of conversation we might have had, but found none which could explain the smile on my co-worker’s face.

 

“Mié said she still loved me,” I had told Reina. I had been lying on the floor with my head in her lap, a can of beer resting on my chest. “She says, ‘I love you, Peadar, but I can’t marry you.’ What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“Do you want to marry her?” Reina had asked, brushing the bangs from my eyes. Every now and then, she would raise my head slightly, and put the can of beer to my lips for me to sip, easing the flow of difficult words.

“Yes . . . No . . . I don’t know . . . I did. I still do, I guess . . . But God, she left me twice. Two times! And now this! I don’t really know anymore . . .”

 

“Be a dear,” I said to Reina, “Refresh my memory.”

“I’m not going to tell you,” she singsonged. “But don’t you worry, Peadar. All your little secrets are safe with me.”

“Secrets? What secrets?” Curiosity was eating me. “I have no secrets.”

“No, you don’t. Not after last night,” she replied, covering her mouth with her hand and giggling.

In the end, it didn’t really matter what I may or may not have told Reina that night in my apartment so long as it enabled me to step away from the disappointing reunion with Mié and begin thinking of the relationship, firmly in the past tense, rather than pine away in the subjunctive.

 

Golden Week began at the end of April with Green Day, a national holiday commemorating the late emperor Hirohito’s birthday. Why Green, you might ask: because his majesty Shōwa Tennō was an avid environmentalist, of course. I suppose it may be suggested someday that Japan’s motives in the Pacific War were originally of an ecologicalnature. But, I digress . . .

With woefully little yen in my postal savings account and air fares prohibitively expensive, I had no choice but to spend the slew of holidays—Green Day, Constitution Day, a generic “National Holiday” and Children’s Day—in Japan. While the boss would be away in Hawaii, and our co-worker Yumi was off to a new Dutch-themed amusement park called Huis Ten Bosch, Reina didn’t have plans, so I invited her out for dinner. Unfortunately, just as I was doing so, Yumi stepped into the office, putting me in the uncomfortable position of having to extend the invitation to her, as well.

An odd thing happened when I did: the sourpuss sweetened and an uncharacteristically genuine smile, Chiclets teeth and all, cracked broadly across her face.

 

Dinner with a punctured spare tire wasn’t half as bad as I had expected. Exfiltrated out of the pernicious shadow of our boss, Yumi wasn’t quite her dreary old self. Best of all, she couldn’t stay out late. She was leaving early the next morning for Huis Ten Bosch.

Such a pity.

After dinner, Reina and I saw Yumi off at the station. With a bright smile and a double-handed wave, she turned, stepping into, and quickly disappearing among, the throng of commuters that moved like a tidal surge towards the ticket gates.

“Yumi was certainly in a good mood,” I said to Reina. “What’s up with her?”

Reina laughed through her nose.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then why are you laughing?”

“I promised not to tell.”

“Promised who? Not to tell what?”

“Nobody and nothing,” she answered as she skipped playfully away.

“You and your little secrets,” I said, tagging after her.

It was still early and I was a few drinks shy of where I needed to be to keep the regrets and memories seeping into my mood, so I asked Reina if she would like to join me for another drink.

We made our way to a bar called Umié where several beers later Reina spilled the beans: Yumi was in love, madly in love, with me.

“Oh, you gotta be kidding,” I said. “Japanese joke, right? Ha, ha, ha.” 

“No, it’s true!” she replied. “Yu-chan was so excited about going out with you tonight she wouldn’t shut up about it all day.”

“Funny, but I was under the impression that she didn’t care much for me.”

The girl recoiled whenever I came into the office, left annoying memos on my desk rather than simply turn around and talk to me directly, and, worst of all, was constantly tattling on me. If it was love Yumi had been dishing me, I dreaded tasting her scorn.

“I’m serious, Peadar. I know men can be obtuse, but you must have noticed how dressed up she was tonight.”

Well, yes, I had noticed that. Yumi had been dolled up, in her own funereal way. The make-up had been more theatrical than usual and her long black hair had been let down rather than pulled back into the thick ponytail she normally wore at work.

Graduating from beer, Reina and I moved onto cocktails, and with each drink moved our seats closer towards each other. Where we had been sitting across a small table from each other at first, we were now side-by-side, legs touching, hands waiting to be held. There had been chemistry between us from the beginning, a strong affinity that would have brought us together sooner or later. Alcohol was merely providing the catalyst.

It was well past two when we left Umié, and the trains had long stopped running. Looking back, it had probably been Reina’s intention all along to have sex with me that night, but as decorticated of confidence as I was, I didn’t take anything for granted. When Reina asked if she could spend the night at my place until the subway resumed service in the morning, I didn’t run excitedly through an inventory of the delightfully decadent possibilities; I merely considered myself fortunate that one of the better nights I’d been having in a dear long time didn’t need to end yet. I took Reina’s hand and we walked, chatting and laughing, all the back to my apartment.

 

At my apartment, Reina asked if there was something she could change into.

There were, of course, the cotton shorts and tank top that Mié had left, among other things, neatly folded in a sacristy of sorts at the back of my top drawer. It seemed a sacrilege to disturb them and awaken the memories, so I gave Reina an oversized T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, instead.

After changing, Reina lay next to me on my futon, nuzzling into my chest. I put my arm around her slim body, and kissed her broad forehead, her fine nose, her lips. There was a familiarity in our caresses and kisses, as if we had been sleeping together for years. And yet, it still came as surprise to me when she said: “You can have sex with me, if you want, Peadar.”

Never before had sex been solicited to me so dispassionately by someone. I didn’t quite know what to say. Yes, I wanted to have sex. An erection you could crack walnuts with was testament to that. But, much more than the sex Reina was offering, I just wanted to forget Mié.

Before I could reply, Reina was already raising her arms above her head and whispering, “Banzai!”[2] so that I could remove her T-shirt. She slipped the boxer shorts over her bottom and down her slim legs to her ankles, where she kicked them off, and lay completely naked, stripped even of her modesty. As the rising sun began to fill my apartment with golden warmth and the chirping of birds filtered through the morning’s silence, she undressed me.

 

Reina and I spent most of the Golden Week holiday together, either at my empty little apartment or hers, having sex two or three times in the evening, once or twice in the morning, occasionally in the afternoon. She would then go on to spend the following weeks, first wondering, and later fretting over, what meaning there was in my penis poking in and out of her vagina. 

A lot happened during those early weeks; and yet, something more important did not. Two weeks into the relationship, I was just as ambivalent about falling in love with the woman as I had been in having sex with her the first time.

“You can love me, if you want,” she would eventually tell me, offering her heart as matter-of-factly as she had first offered up her slim, naked body. Before I could reply, Reina was already raising the bar, whispering, “Peadar, aishiteru.” I love you.

 

We would spend our mornings lying on my futon or hers, having slow, lazy sex until it was time to get ready for work. Once in the office, we would hide our complicity, try to keep our minds from returning to thoughts about what we had been doing in the shower only hours earlier.

She would worry if our hair smelt of the same shampoo, our bodies of the same soap. I’d grow increasingly concerned about Yumi and the boss sensing the overly familiar way in which Reina and I spoke to one another or how she would sometimes gaze longingly at me. During a weekend camp with students, Reina and I stole away in the evening to fuck in a bamboo thicket where her ecstatic screams startled both wildlife and our co-worker. The following morning at breakfast, Yumi mentioned hearing the screams and being too terrified to leave her room.

“I think someone was being raped,” she said with a gravity that caused Reina and me to burst out laughing. “What on earth could be so funny about being raped?” she asked.

“It was probably just some cats in heat,” Reina replied. “I wouldn’t give it another thought.”

 

At work, I would sit at my desk, my mind full with the images of the last twenty-four hours. I would see Reina lying below me, wide-eyed with wonder and excitement as I ejaculated onto her breasts. She would play with it, finger it, and massage her nipples with it. I would be distracted from my work when I would remember her kneeling before me in the shower, flashing me that charming, slightly crooked, smile of hers before taking me into her mouth and sucking me off. After swallowing, she would say, “You love this, don’t you?” Too lightheaded to reply, I would nod.

I did love it. I really did. Trouble was, my heart wasn’t into it nearly as enthusiastically as my testicles were. I was still missing Mié. More than ever it was Mié that I wanted.

Reina would eventually come to ask for and eventually demand the contents of my heart, expecting a sentimental treasure to be hidden behind my reticence. She had taken the silence for bashfulness, but, the truth be told, there wasn’t anything there. I was bankrupt in that regard. You could no more extract blood from a stone than an emotion from my cold heart. I liked Reina, but I couldn’t bring myself to love her no matter how many times she endeared herself to my cock. I was enjoying the time I spent with her, the futon we were sharing and the sex we were having. And, though, I had come to depend upon her for companionship and warmth, I just couldn’t bring myself to love her.

 

“If you’re just having sex with me, I want you to stop it,” she says, shoving me away angrily. She turns and faces the wall.

It’s not that I am “just having sex” with Reina, but during the last three weeks I have never once “made love” to her.

I kiss her gently on the back, put my arm around her and hold her close to me.

“But, if you want something more . . .,” she says.

I do want something more. The problem is that Reina will never be able to provide it. So, the next morning I let her go.

 

In the following weeks, I wonder if I have made a mistake breaking up with Reina. Here is an attractive woman, both ravishingly sexy and intelligent. Men are literally tripping over each other trying to woo her. And yet, of all the men she could have been with, Reina gave herself, body and soul, to me even though she had found me at my worst—drunk and dejected and broke. But, as much as I came to rely upon Reina to distract me from my loneliness, I know I had little choice but to release her from a relationship that would only disappoint her so long as my heart remained on the sideline.

We still talk frankly about the things on our mind, and continue to share the occasional dinner together after work, but an uncomfortable tension has started to grow between us. Humor and small acts of kindness are no longer the palliative they once were.

 

2

 

One Saturday evening in late May, Reina, Yumi and I, along with another American, Mike, go out for dinner at an izakaya that is having a special on nama beer, only five yen a mug. Five yen! It’s as if I have died and gone straight to heaven.

Despite my complete lack of interest, Yumi is still very much in love with me and is starting to grow impatient. Amusing at first, her infatuation has started to wear on Reina’s nerves, all the more so now that we are no longer sleeping together. As a result, Reina has in turn been breaking my balls, pleading on a daily basis for me to do something to make Yumi stop hounding her for advice on how to woo me.

And if that isn’t enough melodrama for you, Mike is enamored of Reina and not the least bit shy about concealing his feelings. His interest in Reina was like a festering wound we all would have preferred to be bandaged, kept out of sight.

Mike is a head taller than me, and several years older. Yet, watching how he behaves around Reina—petting her hand with the tips of his long, hairy fingers, and flattering her in his deep voice with trite romanticism—strikes me as comical and sophomoric. It’s depressing to realize how inexperienced he is when it comes to women. It wouldn’t surprise me if I were to learn that at thirty-three years of age, he is still a virgin.

While the girls are in the restroom, Mike says, “Yu-chan likes you.” 

“Yes, well, it’s no state secret,” I reply.

“She’s a nice girl.”

If you think so, why don’t you date her? “Yes, she is,” I say. But so the fuck what?

“Are you interested in her?”

I almost laugh. “No, I’m afraid I’m a little too preoccupied with myself at the moment to even think about dating someone.”

“Ah, that’s too bad,” he says, pursing his lips in a show of genuine disappointment. “You two would make a nice couple.”

Where is he getting this crap? “Too bad for her,” I correct.

I finish my beer, and ordered another. Waste not, want not.

Mike doesn’t drink. He’s a Seventh Day Adventist or something. No alcohol, no tobacco, no drugs, no pork, no shellfish, no caffeine, no sex before marriage, no fun. The man is a wet blanket.

“So, what about you? I take it you’re interested in Reina?” I say.

“Yeah. There’s something about her. She’s not like other Japanese girls,” he says, his eyes glazing over dreamily. “She’s feisty, speaks her mind, you know. She’s not afraid to get her hands dirty. So blue collar and down to earth. What’s not to like about her?”

A broad, contented smile spreads across his homely face.

 

I suppose another person might have been jealous of the way Mike was holding Reina’s hand earlier. But then, I knew Reina wasn’t attracted to him. Still, I couldn’t tell whether she was just being polite, or trying to provoke a response from me. She’ll be disappointed if that’s the case; it wouldn’t bother me in the least if Mike took Reina home and the two of them had wild sex till dawn. But then, knowing that Mike’s incapable of giving in to such passion without succumbing to an intense guilt trip afterwards nullifies any threat he might otherwise pose.

That said, I’m not quite sure whether I want to leave the playing field altogether. Reina was a good lay, and it was precisely her insatiability in the sack that was helping me keep my mind off the very things I want to forget. Even though I didn’t particularly miss sleeping with her, the absence of anyone in my life at the moment has made me reevaluate the relationship Reina and I had and start second-guessing my decision to prematurely end it.

So, I say to Mike, “Don’t tell Reina that I mentioned this, but, um, her boyfriend recently left her and now she seems, well, confused about a lot of things.”

There is some truth to what I’m telling Mike. Reina’s boyfriend of several years did leave her, which is why I suspect so little effort was involved in getting into her pants in the first place.

“I hear he left her hoping she’d follow him to Tōkyō,” I add.

I guess nothing was ever meant to happen between Reina and myself, but after drinking too much and talking too much she probably came to realize that, like me, she too had her own vulnerabilities and loneliness. When you place two people like us together, they’ll end up burning and burning and burning.

On the morning after we first slept together, Reina confessed that she could fall in love with me. I kissed her on the lips and on her forehead, then manufactured some gentle words that conveyed similar feelings. She held me even tighter and confessed that she was falling for me.

I held on tightly, too. I wish I could have told Reina the same, but the words were not to be found anywhere within me. I liked her and enjoyed the sex we’d just had. I was fond of her company and I respected her, but I was nowhere near love.

Not even in the ballpark.

It was as if she were sinking, hand raised and praying I would grab onto it and rescue her, but I didn’t. In the end I would watch her sink alone, because it was I who needed rescuing.

“Reina is special,” I tell Mike as the girls emerge from the restroom. “Word of advice: walk, don’t run.”

 

After dinner, the four of us part ways. Yumi heads for the train station to catch the last train, and Mike walks away after giving Reina a close, inviting hug. Reina and I make our way for the subway station.

On the train, we sit next to each other, shoulders touching. When my stop comes, the door opening with a hydraulic hiss, I ask whether I can spend the night at her place. Reina gives an almost imperceptible nod. Bells ring, doors close, and the train jerks forward. I offer her my hand—it’s been weeks since I’ve done so—and she takes it with both hands and rests her head on my shoulder. When I kiss the top of her head, she raises her face and kisses me on the lips.

We walk hand in hand from the station to her apartment not speaking a word.

The apartment is a mess as always, books and magazines on the floor, clothing piled on the table and chairs, open bags of recyclables in the kitchen. Cleanliness is not one of Reina’s virtues. To make matters worse, everything, including my bowl of rice the next morning, is covered with her goddamn cat Marvy’s gray hairs. It’s a miracle the cat isn’t bald.

Her bathroom, too, where we’ve often had sex in the morning is a horror: black mold has spread malignantly from the base of the walls upward towards and across the ceiling to the vent in the center from where it looks intent upon mounting a raid on the world outside.

Reina pours me a beer then sits down beside me on the living room floor and begins massaging my shoulders. I take a sip from my beer and wonder what Mike is up to, whether he’s home or at a gaijin bar drinking orange juice. I wonder what he thinks of tonight, whether he feels as if he’s made any progress along the meandering path to Reina’s heart. Despite all the men who adore Reina and want to be with her, I am the one she is with, the one she is massaging, the one she is undressing, the one whose cock she is now sucking.

“The next time you spend the night,” she tells me, “I want you to bring condoms.”

We have unprotected sex not once, but several times throughout the night. I sink so deeply inside her and screw her so hard that she eventually bleeds. All the same, she continues to move her hips above me, back arched, her round breasts flushed, nails digging into my chest, breaking the skin.

“Don’t you love this?” she says as she comes and comes and comes.

 

When hints of dawn begin to break through the kitchen window, she falls asleep in my arms. Dust and cat hairs are airborne in the warm light. After a while, I manage to fall asleep myself. I dream of talking Mié out of her marriage with Tetsu. It is so vivid, so believable, that when I wake I am almost disappointed to find Reina naked and asleep besides me.

 

Reina and I continue to sleep with each other for another month out of mutual loneliness and convenience. Though she must know the day will come when we no longer share our futon, she continues all the same to search my heart and thoughts for something that just isn’t there.

[1] The Chinese character for saké, I’m sure you’re dying to know is 酒. The right-hand side looks like a bottle that is half full and has a stopper in it, liquid is trickling out of it on the left side. The word saké, incidentally, does not refer exclusively to “rice wine” (though it can be used to mean that); rather, it means “alcohol” or “liquor”. If you want to drink “rice wine” in Japan, you should ask for nihon-shu (日本酒) which translate literally as “Japanese liquor” or seishu (清酒). Also, if you order “saké” in certain parts of Japan, you may find that sweet potato shōchū (in Kagoshima) and awamōri (in Okinawa) are served, instead of nihon-shu.

[2] A reader once asked me what banzai meant. The Japanese equivalent to Hoorah, many people will shout “Banzai!” while throwing their hands high above their heads in an act of celebration. Parents also say “Banzai!” to their children when they want to undress them.

Click here for Chapter One

© 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.

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