The first part involved me ranting about women - something I understand upset a few people... including myself, as I locked away my brain and exposed myself to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It was all about me lamenting life with women here in Japan, and how you can still get what you want and not be happy. RAVING MAD. I've tried to re-read it a few times, since I posted it, but I stop before I finish. Don't read it. I think I come across looking like a dick. I wrote it because that was the way I felt at the time. Messed up.
The second part involved me successfully going out on my own about town to get a key made. THE KEY. This one is fun. Read it. I've re-read it, and I think I'm feeling a little less like a gaijin (outsider), and more like a gaijin (foreigner). Yes... I wrote that correctly. The word gaijin actually means outsider, and the work gaikokujin and its slang version gaijin means foreigner.
This is part three.
I'm now home in my apartment here in Ohtawara-shi, Tochigi-ken, Japan. I've been home for a couple of hours after spending the afternoon getting drunk with an old man who made a duplicate key for my apartment - 307 Zuiko Haitsu.
It's probably the fourth such duplicate made of my one house key - none of which I actually went out to have made... always someone from my Ohtawara Board of Education (OBOE) office went out and did that for me. but after 16 months of sitting on my ass and having people do things for me, I decided I would do something for me by myself.
I have a great feeling of satisfaction for having got that key made, and the ensuing fun afterwards. At least this time, the key will be given to a Japanese person... a local and good friend, Nakamura Munaio (surname first), who also doubles as my barber/hairstylist. I love my hair. He's a hairstylist.
The other three duplicate keys were all given to my girlfriend at the time, Ashley. A new one was always required after I would request my key back after she would break-up with me because of her own insecurities, and I would always throw it away while standing in front of her in some meaningless but appropriate gesture.One probably sits amongst the railway ties at Nikko train station - another at Utsunomiya station, and a third probably hit a nearby neighbor's balcony stationed opposite my apartment.
I'm sucking on a nice cold glass of Coca-Cola huddled under my kotatsu (a low heated table with a quilt to keep you warm in the poorly insulated Japanese houses and apartment buildings), with my back up against the front of my divan.
I recently gave away my kerosene heater to Mr. Hanazaki, my OBOE boss. I don't want it and would rather freeze to death than die from inhaling kerosene fumes or from having to keep a door open to thin out the kerosene fumes. I hate the wind in the winter.
As I watch a rented video of the Silence of the Lambs--a movie adaption of a great serial killer novel , the doorbell rings.
It's Ashley. She still has a key to this apartment... but I broke up with her despite her having broken up with me months earlier. It's complicated. Or immature. Toe-may-toe, Toe-mah-toe depending on which way the wind blows.
In my head, I had expected her to bring over a box of all of the stuff she had borrowed from me and to give me back my key.
But no.
She does return a solitary book of mine (title long since forgotten - sorry... go have a bag of popcorn and stop calling me names), but has also come to lend me a book of hers that she thinks I might like. She wants it back when I'm done, however.
It's the book entitled '69' by Murakami Ryu (surname first). Hmmm. A peace offering.
I'm not rude. Or at least I don't mean or want to be. I invite her in, once more into the abyss.
As we sit side by side on top of the couch with the television off, we chat about fascinating things I cared enough to not remember. I still wasn't a writer yet.
Uh... you kids should stop reading now.
Ashley says this huge groping penis was pulsating beside her while she stood at a bus stop.
Not sure what type of penis she was describing, I try to solve the mystery by showing her some of the uncut illegal Japanese and American porno video tapes I have acquired. I know none of them will have a huge anime penis moving about like a disembodied tentacle, but she doesn't seem to mind.
She asks questions about porn and about sex. Me, the virgin until she popped my cherry some 16 months ago, provides the answers. She looks stunned. I have no idea why. I've been doing this sort of stuff to her since we met.
So... why ask questions... unless you are trying to make nice-nice?
She continues to watch. She excites me more than the porno does. I know because I'm not watching the porno.
I know she knows that it's been a hard days night (keeping it clean), but just in case, I tell her I've been working like a dog on his bone.
Not sure if I need to unveil my latest work of art to the audience, I decide to wait awhile longer.
Instead, I pull out all the stops and perform a classic ploy of mine that I use here for the first time: I ask Ashley if my hands are cold.
She has to touch them to give an answer. Apparently my hands are not cold, and she allows herself to hold on to for warmth. Hmmm.
I let go, get up and get us more Coke to drink, place our glasses on the kotatsu's table top and then scrunch under the kotatsu I had turned on earlier to get warmer. I take off my pants, which makes me colder, but I figure not for long.
Asking Ashley to join me, I watch as she hesitates just a fraction too long before saying okay. She tells me she knows I am pantless and panting, but allows me to take care of the business at hand myself. She just holds my hand.
I'm an animal now, and lean in and kiss her and lick her fingers, hands, neck and face. She's not holding back, either. Despite her hesitation. Soon enough, she's naked too... and we're going to town in the same manner as that book I mentioned previously, but needing to catch her breath she gets a grip on the situation and ends things spasmodically for me.
All over, she sits there stunned at what has over come her. Grabbing a box of tissue, we use up a half box just to clean up the spilled frothy coke.
Lying there a while, we talk about meaningless stuff I am too bored to remember, as all of the blood has stopped flowing to my brain for some reason. But I notice we never mention last Friday.
We dress, and I ride her home... on our bicycles, back along the dark unlighted streets, through the lonely, cold roads that seem to meander aimlessly through rice field after rice field, an old dry and rustling corn field and more rice fields.
Arriving at her door 30 minutes later in Nishinasuno-machi, we peck at each others lips in a clumsy good night manner as smile at each other in acknowledgement that we are far too tired and embarrassed about that spilled drink earlier... though she does mention how my apartment always seems to be permeated with the smell of sex.
I don't mention that its not always hers, but she knows I have slept with countless other women since our multiple, multiple break-ups. Though like a blood-sucking vampire and his victims, I have kept count.
I slowly wander home with the winter wind blowing like a hurricane in my face - forcing me back into reality... wondering just what the hell I was thinking or not thinking this evening.
I was free. I had escaped my fetters. The old ball and chain. And then I allowed myself to get caught - caught up in the moment again.
It was never my intention to have anything to do with Ashley again. Did she mean to give me a book called '69'? Did I read something more into that title? Did I judge a book by its cover? She hesitated dammit! That meant she wasn't sure if she wanted in or out, and instead took both... though, sexually, that never happened... now going on for several months.
Back home, I toss away the used tissues, pull out the book she wants back and read a few pages, pausing to wish upon a falling star that I was stronger in my resolve.
Welcome to the beginning of the end of this chapter of my life.
Somewhere it's a weak day for
Andrew Joseph
Tomorrow... different day, and different crap.
Today's blog title is by the Janis Joplin led Big Brother And The Holding Company. I had thought about doing the title/song 1969 by the Iggy Stooge (now Iggy Pop) led Stooges, but 20 years later, maybe this is a song that fits Ashley's hidden thoughts better. Man... Janis was such a beautiful and powerful singer.
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