22 July 2011
22 July 2011
During most of the first year, Kumiko was consumed by her love. Fortunately, a good deal of this energy, this desire to please and I daresay possess me, was diverted to the business. With GUIs not yet practical, and PCs just starting to make their debut among experimenters, she mastered the command line interface to our Prime 300 mini-computer and went on to learn enough Fortran to write a few programs herself.
But I was even more impressed by how quickly she learned to draft building plans by hand. Although I had hired a programmer to write a suite of CAD routines specifically aimed at our type of log construction, it would be a decade before computer aided drafting would replace the stool, table, lamp, scale rules, T-squares, triangles, lettering guides, erasers, pencils, pens and big sheets of paper of the old style draftsman. My programmer and I had computerized parts of the process, such as generating the list of materials, and producing cost estimates from a “napkin sketch”, a rough sketch of a potential customer’s dream home or lake cabin or barn that was used to draw up a professional floor plan upon which most sale contracts were based. Once we had a go-ahead and a substantial down-payment, we proceeded to make a full set of working drawings which were then used to produce the cutting list and bill of materials. The cutting list was given to the plant foreman who broke it into sections and distributed these to the relevant work centers in the factory.
Often a change would have to be made in the drawings at some less than optimal time and sometimes a floor plan had to be drawn up when we were away from the office, traveling in Japan for example under the aegis of Forestry and Agriculture of the Mitsui banner. Kumiko had learned to do this. As long as she was with me, we could respond quickly, even overnight, to changing customer demands. We had been using the new Tandy Model 100 to access our mini computer by an acoustic modem (at 300 baud!) via regular voice phone lines which worked okay for lists, and plain text documents, but took a very long time at a high price per minute to transfer files for a large CAD-like drawing. To add to the inconvenience, line noise often corrupted the file and it had to be resent several times. Furthermore, we usually had no practical way to print it once we got it.
Kumiko’s ability to sit down with the portable drafting kit we’d put together, in a hotel room, ryokan, or at a desk in a Forestry and Agriculture branch office and change a drawing or produce a new one probably contributed more to our success in opening up an export trade to Japan than her skills as an interpreter and occasional translator.
In addition, I had someone to talk with, an advisor who was intimately familiar with my company— the availability of raw material, other orders in the pipeline, our current financial situation, etc.— and at the same time was sensitive to the implications, nuances, and indirect suggestions from our partner, Forestry and Agriculture, and their sub-contractors and occasionally customers, in Japanese. And she was available pretty much 24/7.
She was a boon to the company, so much so, and because we so deeply loved to fuck each other then, that I was immune to negative gossip and criticism.
I began to take her seriously when she asked me about my divorce. Maybe I should push it, make more concessions to get it done. Whereas I had previously ignored advice from friends to finalize it, considering their analysis to be the usual two-bit “Dear Abby” counseling type of crap, I now found myself toying with the idea of Kumiko not only as lover but as wife.
The matter was brought to a head when I finally sold the business. Of course I was completely burnt out by then. I needed a major rest. And I wanted to get back to my studies of ancient Chinese. What I probably should have done is take a three week vacation. If I had done so without Kumiko, it might have worked. I could have asked my plant manager to handle things for three weeks together with her. But when the opportunity to sell quite literally walked into my office one day, I was so exhausted, so bone-weary of the business world, so stupefied, I said, “Yeah. Let’s make a deal.”
I sold the company in ‘85. In ‘86, with Kumiko’s mother acting as a guarantor, I rented a 4LDK apartment in Nishiogikubo, Tokyo. We began a new life, one without the business, without a business card. I was no longer a president. I was an ex president but without the money or age to make that count for much. In fact, I had no title. And neither did she. I began to receive a stern lesson in the overriding importance of ‘position’ in the Kanji Culture world of East Asia, in contrast to the value of ‘intrinsic being’ beloved by the West. It would not be my last lesson in this topic. If that era were a novel, it would have been titled, Tokyo Without a Meishi.
At first it was a great relief. But after about three weeks our relationship began to deteriorate. I didn’t see it at the time, but now I realize that my jobless status was the same as having no status. Having no status had the effect of eroding my image in Kumiko’s heart. I don’t think she said to herself, “He’s a nobody now. Not young. Not wealthy. He was stupid to sell his business. What happens when the money runs out? What happens if the new owners fail to pay his royalty on Japan sales or Japan sales themselves dry up? And he is still legally married. I’m losing interest.” But something like that was no doubt at play, if only beneath the surface.
I had inherited my position, took it for granted, saw it mainly as a burden to bear or as an obstacle between me and “what I really wanted to do”, and did not appreciate its true value. I suspect some people gave me good advice during that period, cautioned me, but I can’t remember a word of it, so dense were the clouds of delusion.
In Nishiogikubo the sex began deviating from the previous norm. Either it was lazy, less intense, or we went to extra effort to create tension and excitement. It was no longer rolling entirely on its own volition. But this too was not clear at the time. Instead, the focal point— like a war-mongering government creates and embellishes an enemy that is only lightly based in reality— was my divorce. “If only I were legally divorced, things would be better,” the refrain ran.
But actually certain key conditions, taken for granted and not clearly acknowledged, that supported the existence of our love affair were disappearing. Just as a fire without fuel does not persist, or lacking air goes out, or meeting water is extinguished, so our love affair without the business was flickering, threatening to die. But I did not recognize this. Instead I imagined I was freer than before when in some ways the opposite was true. In Tokyo at age 45, for example, I was distinctly less free.
The problem was that, after the much-needed three weeks’ rest, the I that Kumiko had fallen in love with had left the stage, but for me, the I I loved and wanted to promote had just entered the drama. Without the concrete problems of business to focus on, we looked around and found things that resembled problems and then elaborated on these pseudo problems, my divorce being the prime example. We thereby condemed our love affair to its eventual demise.
I thought she had fallen in love with the me I thought I was. But she had fallen in love with the me she thought I was. And I had become deeply attached to the non-existent she that had fallen in love with the wrong me. If we would have been clear about this at the time, everything would have worked out well, without violence.
7 notes
20 May 2011
After our first Japan trip the distinction between work and play blurred. Kumiko spent workdays and evenings and nights with me. The first order from Forestry and Agriculture arrived bringing with it a relentless series of tasks leading up to shipping the container and meeting the deadline. I had to spend as much time at the plant as in my office in Missoula and Kumiko accompanied me on many of those 200 mile round trips and stayed with me at night in the sleeping nook of my plant office.
I remember the first time I came inside her. It was at her little apartment in graduate student housing with a view of the University golf course and the mountains to the south. In the several weeks since our Japan trip, we had either used a rubber, or I had with super-human determination and a little luck practiced coitus reservatus. But that afternoon, compelled by her pleasure as much as my own, feeling great tenderness and wanting to dissolve every difference and come together fully, I was unable to achieve in that handful of final seconds the minimum disinterest necessary to pull away from her. Like our first sexual encounter in Tokyo, it was another milestone in a journey into the depths of ordinary love.
But the warm and friendly afterglow of good sex that flooded us inside and out was destined to remain only a few minutes before the possibility of pregnancy simultaneously arose in our thoughts and rudely jerked us out of our trance and shoved us back into what the dim-witted like me erroneously call ‘the real world’. This dreaded possibility washed like ocean waves over our minds several times before we could fully appreciate its import. Once we got it, Kumiko jumped up, and I was to see for the first time a careful administration of a coca-cola douche. I watched in awe and with no small measure of erotic desire, as Kumiko shook the bottle and sprayed the dark liquid into her vaginal crevice as she squatted in the bathtub. The problem was of course that we were at that stage in a love affair where every intimate thing that occurred, be it good or bad, served but to bind us more tightly together.
In the idealized picture of business nothing could be more pernicious. In our case, however, the affair worked to the benefit of the business, mostly, I suppose, because Kumiko wanted so much to help, to prove her worth, that she went well beyond the call of duty in covering the bases, in getting done what had to be done, and always encouraged me to do the same. In fact, she had fallen in love. And if I were a normal human being, I would have too. But aside from the love-making and its post-coital repast of light, I was a trickster at best and a sadist.
I began, often as not, to regard her ready offerings of assistance as intrusions, and her keen interest in every aspect of my current life as constricting.
One trick I played was disappearing. I had ceased to rent the downtown office and instead had purchased a large two-story house in the University area and converted half of the downstairs into an office and lived in the other half upstairs. The house was old and had undergone several remodeling projects over the decades. I was using a room next to my office to house the copy machine and printers. A closet had been built there, the back of which opened into a large crawl space that provided access to the plumbing in the bathroom. The crawlspace was hidden by a flimsy plywood door which itself was hidden behind the boxes, bags, and clothing that filled the closet. In a few seconds I could quickly leave my main office in the adjoining room, close the bathroom door so it sounded like I was going there, enter the copy room, slip into the closet and finally retreat into the crawl space where I could sit down. So when Kumiko came charging in either the front or back door of the house, I was gone by the time she got to my office. Since she never saw me leave the house, she had to assume that I had left before she arrived or was still inside the house. My secretary (which she had hired for me) would simply tell her the truth— that I was right here a minute ago. If I weren’t in the bathroom, she didn’t know where I was.
I don’t know why exactly, and somehow I don’t think most American women would have done it, but Kumiko would then proceed to frantically search the house, upstairs and down, calling my name throughout. When my secretary, an honest and straightforward country girl, described this, while perhaps mildly amused, it was clear her sympathies lay with Kumiko, a sign that I failed to properly assess at the time.
I guess Kumiko was border-line crazy during those months, and my mean game of disappearing only made it worse for her. But the more she wanted to have access to every aspect of me, the more I resisted and toyed with her passion, using cheap devices like the disappearing trick to torment her. On the other hand, her cloying compulsion to be with me or to know where I was at all times became unbearable and I needed some form of comic relief.
Little did I realize then how much the tables would later turn.
1 note
14 May 2011
14 May 2011
There is always a turning point, a pivotal action that propels the relationship in a certain irreversible direction. Ours occurred two nights later in the Daiichi Hotel in Tokyo. Giddy with the prospect of major export sales to Forestry and Agriculture, we shut down the bar and, as we started to say our drunken Goodnights, Kumiko impulsively invited me into her room for tea. “Just give me a few minutes to take a shower,” I said. I tapped on her door twenty minutes later wearing the yukata provided by the hotel. She too had showered and was wearing a yukata.
Bear in mind that until I had hesitantly extended my left hand across the foot of naked tatami to find and softly cradle her right hand as we lay in semi-darkness in our separate futon in the ryokan at Morioka, our relationship had been strictly business. I had avoided any sensual contact or innuendo and she too had initiated nothing. In that context, a little thing like holding hands took on enhanced significance. It seemed ingenuous somehow and pure. And prescient.
She offered me the one chair, a stool really, and sat on the narrow bed. We tried to sustain our gloat but the hour and the alcohol were taking their toll, and I started stretching and rolling my head around in a futile effort to undo a few knots in my neck and shoulders. She asked in uncharacteristically awkward English if I wanted her to help. “Ee”, I said, which simply means Yes in Japanese but sounds non-committal in English. I pretended that it also conveyed some kind of Japanese macho, but I was probably wrong.
She squeezed by my side, briefly rubbing against my arm and leg, to get around back of me, and I felt a powerful urge to embrace her which I translated into capturing her forearm in my hand and bringing her hand to my lips and teeth. She closed her eyes and momentarily froze. Fully aroused, I stood up and as I wrapped her in my arms she responded in kind and we slid down upon her narrow bed, our yukata loosening and pulling away in front, so that my erection could proceed on its salmon-like journey upstream. We rubbed against each other, kissed, and Kumiko released a torrent of vital juices of a quantity that, frankly, I had not previously experienced. It was slippery everywhere down there, and soon she had her knees up and I was testing the waters— finding, anticipating, and finding pleasure again. I reached down to pilot the ship into the channel but the silky, frictionless surfaces made it hard to be sure where I was going. Finally, I found the channel and remained there a while, exercising our God-given right to fuck each other’s eyes out.
Now it was many years later in a discussion, the proximate causes of which are long forgotten, that Kumiko revealed to me that we had gone up the back channel, not the main one, on that night of our first sexual excursion.
“What did you think about that?” I had asked her.
“I thought it was what you liked.”
“Oh,” I said. “I was probably just drunk and didn’t notice.”
I was amazed at this revelation since I thought I remembered it well, and that feature, if it were true, was never part of my version. But many years after that, when Kumiko and the company were both things of the distant past, while conjuring images of that night, I began to recall thinking amidst the fumes of the spirits, the testosterone surges, the crescendos of fleshly pleasures, the atonement of a man and a woman— that a pregnancy here would not be quite fair, that it’d be prudent to reposition slightly and yes, explore the passage next door. Having some memory of thinking along those lines, I am now prepared to believe the Kumiko version as orthodox.
Of course there were disingenuous aspects to the beginning of the eight Kumiko years as well. Enough time has gone by now to look back and fess up to some.
3 notes
11 May 2011
Kumiko was the only lover intimately involved in my business. Like any red-blooded profligate of my generation I had had sex with a secretary or two, and at least once I ended up hiring a woman I slept with. But only in Kumiko were my private and business lives inextricably entwined. My first wife positively disliked anything to do with the company, and by the time I married again, both Kumiko and the business were gone. We met about two years into the nine-year gap between wives.
I had asked the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana to pass along my request for a Japanese-speaking assistant. I urgently needed someone to prepare for a critical trip to Tokyo. Four applicants called the same day, but Kumiko was the only one with a relatively free schedule; also, the other three seemed too young for the job. I asked her to come to my office for an interview and hired her immediately. I then scheduled the Tokyo trip for the following week. I expected her to start the next morning and work through the weekend right up to departure. She responded to the challenge with gusto. It was as if she had been looking for an excuse to stop studying for her MA and do some “real” work.
If L__ took first prize in wisdom, Kumiko took first prize in praxis. None of my other lovers could match her sustained energy or her penchant for mastering practical things. She demonstrated this conclusively in the first three weeks. She virtually memorized a two-hour lecture I gave her on what we manufactured and how we did it. She learned quickly how to create and manipulate files from a command line prompt on our Prime 300 minicomputer both directly at a terminal and by means of a Tandy 100 over an acoustically-coupled modem. (No PCs yet.) She asked detailed questions about who my Japanese contacts were and what I had discussed with them so far. She booked the trip, and that was the last time I had to deal with travel arrangements, by myself or through an agent. From then on, she did it.
We flew business class on Thai. It was probably on that first flight together that I told her I was separated but that the divorce was not happening because of the uncompromising opposition of my estranged wife who had categorically refused every arrangement I offered for the past six years. I imagine that even at that early point Kumiko, who had entered the panic age of 28 when Japanese women felt they were about to be forever doomed to becoming old maids, salivated slightly over the fact that I was or soon could be entirely eligible. For my part, I was still hooked up with L__ although I had always been an ‘any port in a storm’ kind of man.
Kumiko had a physiological condition whereby she would sweat like a stuck pig when even mildly nervous. And she was more than mildly nervous at the meetings we had with Forestry and Agriculture, the vassal company under the Mitsui banner that I had previously selected from a field of six to represent our products in Japan. Sweat would ooze out of the pores along her nose, form giant beads and then, if not daubed quickly away, run to its tip and slide off, much to the well-concealed amusement of the other side, fourteen in all. At our first meeting we had the help of Mr. Otaki, a world class skier who, in his search for a supplier of log cabins for a ski resort, had made first contact with me in Montana a few months earlier. But after that initial meeting, Kumiko and I were on our own.
I was sweating too, thanks to a wool shirt with a tie, contrary to my usual habit. I had forgotten how much warmer Tokyo is than Montana, a typical mistake for a country bumpkin. So she and I sweated away under several hour-long grill sessions about prices, quality control, shipping methods and schedules, rate of production, construction details, engineering data and prices again. Sophisticates we were not. But later I would learn that we had impressed them, especially the top dogs, precisely because we were just who we were. Similar to the way most Americans have a soft spot in their hearts for the underdog, maybe most Japanese are naturally empathetic to the ineloquent, unadorned, the gauche.
And, at the end of the day, as a ‘Son Of a Boss’, (my dad built the company from scratch), I did know my subject: the design and manufacture of log house kits—from the timber still on the stump, to scaling in the yard, to turning a ‘napkin schetch’ into a complete set of working drawings, to dealing with the lathes, boring machines, and cut-off saws in the plant, to handling the computer system, to dealing with the workers, to the on-site construction itself. And I knew my place in the hierarchy of the feudal system known as business in Japan, i.e., my position was ‘permanent outsider’ and ‘low on the totem pole’.
After our meetings at Forestry and Agriculture’s headquarters in Tokyo we were taken to a number of potential building sites in the country and were able to stay overnight a couple times at ryokan with onsen. On those occasions Kumiko and I slept in the same room, and on the last night, I reached out from my futon, across the tatami, and lightly took her hand. This was our first intentional physical contact. She told me later that it had driven her crazy and that she didn’t get any sleep. Initially, I was aware of the electricity flowing between us but, exhausted by the trip and having convinced myself that I should allow any sexual relationship that may develop to do so without the slightest coercion, I fell asleep. Although nothing happened, that ‘nothing’ set the stage for what would transpire a few nights later, in our business hotel in Tokyo.
9 May 2011
“It was sudden. I don’t know what caused it.” I sat down, put my feet on the coffee table and stared out the window at the snow. The only light in the room was coming from the faux gas lamp outside.
“One day a few months ago, when I started to get a hard-on, I found my penis was bent. Before that I had noticed it was shrinking.” I surveyed her face for signs of amusement. Finding none, I continued. “It continued to shrink.”
“L__, you know better than most that I didn’t start out with much.” I had a sudden urge to drink whiskey but I slurped my tea instead.
She seemed about to say something, but stopped.
“I attributed the cause to sexual misconduct.” She smiled at that, but I was plumb serious. “Just like I attribute the cause of my periodontitis to bad-mouthing people for forty years. Karma-results.”
She straighten up and stretched her back. Then she stood up and while beginning to remove her blouse said, “Peyronie’s Disease. CITA.”
“What in the hell is that? There’s a name for it?”
“Yes, Peter.” She tossed her blouse over a luggage rack at the end of the bed. “Would you mind turning up the heat a bunch?”
I found the thermostat and bumped it up six degrees.
“It ended sex for me,” I said. She reached behind her and unhooked her bra. She let it drop and threw it lightly on top of her blouse. Yes, they were sagging a little— thirty years and two kids worth— but they were pure yin. At that moment they were the most beautiful titties in the world. And the reason was simple: she appeared wide open, ready to give, unconditionally. The mind behind them was beautiful and so they were too. I didn’t say anything.
I felt I was being impolite imposing so much ugliness on a friend, but I began to undress as ordered.
“I had forgotten who you are,” I said quietly. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“What’s worse, is this,” I pointed to my crotch, “has put an end to the possibility of sex with a woman. And that’s worse than not being able to do it right now.” I was not being clear. I took a deep breath and removed my pants. “Can I just leave these on?” I asked referring to my boxer shorts.
“No,” she said and she took off her slacks. Then she pushed down her panties. “Could you help?”
L__ sat on the bed and I went over and kneeled in front of her. I slowly tugged her panties down her legs and over her feet and laid them on top of her other clothes. Completely naked, she pulled herself up to the pillow and lay her head back. ”Thanks, Peter.” I stood up.
“Take them off,” she said.
I gritted my teeth and yanked down my shorts, stepping out of them as they fell to the carpet. “Well, there it is,” I said. “What’s left.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Yeah.” I took a couple deep breaths.
“It wants to fill with blood but it can’t. When the blood comes, it hurts, when it recedes, it feels better. Kinda like an ‘anti hard-on pump’.” I forced a smile. “Look how pathetic it looks!” I was rattling on. “It’s only happy when it’s soft anymore. And I’m not kidding, when the possibility of sex is gone, it’s hard to go on. I never realized how big a thing this is. By having all hope of an affair forcibly removed, in each and every case, I’ve learned what a slave I am, and have always been, to this desire. With no exceptions. For men who think they shouldn’t see women as sex objects, cut off their balls, liposuction their testosterone and see how that works out. Fuck, shit, cunt, whore!” I was starting to pace, and walking there naked with a half hard half bent cock, I presented the perfect picture of The Fool.
“Come here.”
“Okay. Just give me a minute.” I sat down on the bed and tried to meditate a little, to calm down. After I regained my equilibrium, I crawled in beside her. As I lay down she sat up. “Does this make it feel better?” She had straightened it with one hand while she ran her fingers over the corona with the other.
“Your interest makes it feel better L__, no matter what you do.” I said shutting my eyes and letting go of one distinction after another. “Whatever you do L__, it is better.”
***
I awoke early as usual. But L__ had gone. There was a note on the bedside table:
Dear Peter,
I’m so happy we had one left-over chit that we could redeem like this.
I would have stayed longer but your snoring drove me away. <g> God, it’s loud!
Anyway, Ralph’s worrying I’m sure.
Until we met again,
Love,
L__
I left for home at noon. The sun was out again, the plows had cleared the roads. In spite of all the aches and pains of old age, I felt great. It took some gentle urging, but by the time I was back at the ranch, I had begun to realize that this was probably the last time for me. It was a miracle it was with L__. Anything less would only demean it.
[[[My uncle died eight months later. No further mention of sex during 2010 occurs in the manuscript. The rich and varied sex life he describes in subsequent chapters occurred in previous years. Richard Love.]]]
2 notes
8 May 2011
I ran into L___ last February on a run to Missoula for a periodontist appointment. I had stopped at the Good Food Store to pick up some groceries, mouth still anesthetized and swollen. It was late February, the weather had been clear, the roads fortuitously bare, but it would be dark soon and snow was predicted. The temperature was in the low 20s, and would drop into the single digits after sundown. The glare of on-coming headlights would momentarily blind me and the scintillating snow in the light from my own beams would bring visibility to near zero at times. I was already exhausted from the two-hour drive in, the two hour gig in the chair, and a trip to a hardware store. Ibuprofen had dulled my arthritic pain earlier, but it was wearing off and I hated to take more for fear of damaging my liver. The thought of my return trip, part of which would be after dark even if I left right then, had triggered ‘survival mode’— a glum mood of patient acceptance and persistence focused on a single goal: to get home in one piece. Nothing in town interested me. For years I either disliked or regarded with indifference anything in urban life. I would just run in and go down my short-list as quickly as possible. Then head back.
L___ seemed to recognize me right way, but it took a second or two for my brain to work.
“Peter,” she said under her breath. She was directly alongside me in front of the brussels sprouts. I pivoted, alarmed. No one knew me in Missoula anymore. I had changed beyond recognition and for my part, I didn’t look around.
“Ah! L___,” I said.
“Peter, this is my husband Ralph.” Ralph said Hi and extended his hand, looking down from what seemed to be an enormous height, a trim, clean-shaven, Caucasian, and maybe ten years younger than L___.
“Pleased to met you,” I said.
“Me, too,” Ralph said. He seemed harmless and unlike me I could detect no animosity, no edge. I relaxed.
L___ and I went through the “How many years has it been?” bit and I determined it had been nearly twenty, thinking I was exaggerating; it had probably been only ten.
“Twenty-eight,” she said smiling.
“Ah, fuck,” I said.
“Let’s get a table and sit down.” I agreed and we went to area where they served lunch.
We began to gingerly broach the subject of what each of us had been doing over the past twenty-eight years. To his credit, Ralph had the good sense to excuse himself, to set off on errand that had to do with whatever project they were engaged in before our chance encounter. L__ said he should take the car and that, if it was okay with me, I would take her home, a five minute drive. I had the impression he was well-trained. Like a good Confucian, she accepted full responsibility for him in exchange for fundamental loyalty to her. It appeared to be a long-established, well-oiled, mutually satisfactory relationship.
I decided to stay in town overnight, itself a marginally better option than two hours of misery on a snowy night road. But the additional incentive of talking with L__ made it a no-brainer.
After Ralph left, I told her I was going to book a room at the Sheraton and drive home in daylight the next day. She said I could stay at their house, but I had no interest in it. For one thing, I snored like a mother-fucker.
“I’ll just book a room tonight,” I said. “I was thinking about it anyway ‘cause of the snow and my bad eyes. Also, Perio-gal wore me out.”
“Perio-gal?” And I was about to go into details about one more health problem, one more rotting body part. Ah, to be young! When the body appears as a gift not a burden.
“My dentist,” I said.
“Oh, a periodontist. I see.”
“Yeah. The anesthetic hasn’t worn off and my jaw won’t move right.”
There was pause, and determined not to go further into the subject of physical health, I abruptly changed the subject. I hadn’t really wanted to bring it up, but…
“Do you remember our agreement. We still have one left, right?”
L__ turned her head to the side with a laugh. “I remember it.”
“Well, I can’t make good on it. Even if you, we, want to.”
“You’re married?”
“Yeah, I was. But that’s not the problem.” Shit, here I was again, ready to be gobbled up by the subject of health, medicine, doctors, clinics, bodily ills, the perennial conversation topic of the nouveau old.
She waited.
“Oh, forget it. The point is I can’t do it. Now, ever, with anybody.” I adjusted my ass on the chair and took a drink from my water glass.
I called the hotel and booked a room.
“Would you like to accompany me to dinner?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’ll have to go home first and take care of Ralph’s meal and tell him I’m going eat with you. What time?”
“Let’s eat at the Perl, across from the hotel, at 6:30?”
“Yes. Okay.”
“I’ll drop you off at your place now then,” I said. “I’ll get stuff here tomorrow before I leave. Let’s go.”
That evening, after dinner and two glasses of wine, we went to my room to chat. I brewed some lychee black tea that I kept in the car for “emergencies”, along with my kit: a change of underwear, medium weight wool socks, a pair of light-weight wool pajamas, an ultra-soft toothbrush and prescription toothpaste from Perio-gal, my ‘computer’ glasses, my reading glasses, and a cheap laptop running Linux— an old man’s effects. I also dragged in a ratty cashmere scarf and a novel in Japanese by Takagi Nobuko.
At dinner we had caught up on each others lovers, kids, and business pursuits, but had skirted the subject of our time together. Old lovers were fun, but it was hard to keep mine straight, let alone hers. And kids.. I sketched out a perfunctory list of their above-average accomplishments against a half-imaginary timeline, and L__ explained how she had successfully handled certain problems with hers. I found I was paying more attention to her face, her expressions, her lips, etc., than her words. And business… Of course I was running the company at the time we were together and she wanted to know how that had worked out. I told her I’d sold it and mentioned a few of the subsequent business problems, including the lawsuit. I summed up my eight years with Kumiko, the woman who had drawn me away from L__, and how at the end of the day we had not married. When she wanted to, I didn’t. When I wanted to, she didn’t, having found a “pure boy” from Hokkaido, implying correctly that I was neither pure nor young. I told L__ that I ended up living in Tokyo, with a woman from Hiroshima, and that after seven years together she quit her job and came here to Missoula, where she got an MBA and we got married. And then we lived on the ranch. And how after Aiko died of stomach cancer in 2002, I continued to live there, alone, with occasional long-term visits from my nephew, Richard Alcock.
I stood up and looked out the third floor window at the snow swirling in the street lamp, glad I wasn’t out on the road. There had been a comfortable lull in the conversation as we sipped our tea. I thought she was about to bring up something more intimate, but I was not prepared when she said in a soft voice, ”Take off your clothes.”
I turned and looked her in the eye. She had on a pleasant expression, but she was serious.
“God, L___. No. No. No. No. I can’t. No.” I also shook my head No.
“I know you look like a sack of potatoes. Take off your clothes.”
I shook my head No.
“Can I tell you what happened to me?” I asked, pleading.
She nodded. “I want you to.”
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