A Woman's Nails (36 page)

It isn’
t until
we near each other
t
hat I realize he’
s be
en watching me as intently as I’
ve been watching him. With surpris
ing agility, he lurches and yells,
“
Kus
o
gaijin
!”

I grab him by the
shoulder and turn him around. “
Nani
?”
I ask again. He slurs someth
ing in hard Japanese that I can’
t catch. I p
ull him closer by the lapel. “
What did you say
?”

“Fuckin-gu
gaijin
!”

All the frustrations of the past few months come to a head, I begin raining blow after blow on his face. I hit him once f
or all the unanswered letters I ha
ve sent to Mie, hit again
him for all the lonely nights I ha
ve
spent
since she left me. I drive my fist into his u
gly face for the tears that will no
t fall, punch him once more for the disappoint
ingly truncated relationships I’
ve had.
The
salaryman’s
head snaps back, knees buckle
,
and
he
drops heavily to the pavement. I kick h
im for all the times I’
ve been made to feel like a deaf and dumb nigger, knee him for all the petty, incompetent bos
ses and vindictive co-workers I’
ve had to endure. I kick him on
e last time for all the times I’
ve felt derailed since coming to Japan.

“Fuckin-gu Jap!”

16

TATAMI

Tatami
comes
to my place with an apology and a present. She never fails
to bring either.

This time, as she
is
begg
ing
forgiveness for
the impertinence of her unannounced visit,
she pulls out some
pastries
and
sweet
rolls from an impractically frilly bag
and places them on my coffee table. She also produces a bottle of
mineral water
,
and
some
apple juice. Tatami
’
s
pedigree and
upbringing ensured that no matter how physically una
ttractive
a woman
she may have become
, she
would
still ha
ve
the manners and grace to allow her to move among the most exclusive of
Japanese social
circles. In the presence of the bourgeoisie,
I suspect,
she is something of a
curious anachronism
, but among working class boors like myself
,
who have little use for the formalisms imposed by privilege, she
seems to be
adrift in the sea
, weighed down by too much baggage.

Tatami sits down next to me on the sofa and tries
for
the next
hour
to engage me in conversation
,
by which I mean,
several minutes of niceties followed by
anodyne
chit-chat.

There is something on her mind, something she seems to
be eager
to say, or
something she
wants me to do, but she
won’t
c
o
me out with it.
It has always been that way with her: s
he expects me to
read it
in the subtle signals
of
her body language
.

S
weet
as Tatami is, she can be
annoying a
s hell, and so I feign i
llitera
cy
.

When
I’ve had my fill of her
snacks and there
is little left
that her company
can
offer
aside from
irritation
, I
politely suggest
that
she leave.

She
stands
reluctantly and straightens her dress. She picks the frilly bag
up
and moves
with reluctant steps
toward
s
the door
where
she
takes her time
put
ting
her shoes on
. Suddenly,
she
pulls
me into me into
those
bony pale arms
of hers
, presses her face into my chest
,
and sighs
,
“
I don't want to leave.
”

Oh dear!

“
Well,
as a matter of fact
I
was rather
busy
when you . .
.
”

“
J
-j
ust let me sit for a moment.
”

What can I do?
I have little choice, but
to
say
yes
, just as I
said
yes
when she
had
first asked me in the most pained and
circumlocutory
manner to sleep with her
a week ago
.

That, I realize
,
like so many things in life
—far, far
too late
—was
a
grave
mistake
.
My friend Shinobu had been right: the poor girl was indeed
a virgin. A thirty year old virgin. I didn't
think
there were any left.
M
uch like
devout
Christians back
in the States
,
I discovered unwittingly that
girls from good
Japanese
families
tended to keep
their pants on until marriage.

How Tatami had gone from insisting that, in spite
of
my intransigent
lack of interest in
her, she could never be my girlfriend to her
insisting upon my popping
that long neglected
cherry
of hers
b
oggles
the mind. I had merely been going with the flow, expecting and wanting nothing more than
friendship,
someone to
talk to. How the devil did I end up
becoming
a
debutante's boy-toy?

There had been no forewarning. N
one so ever
.

Okay
, so I had
twice
joked about taking her to a love hotel, but I had only been only joking, trying to get a bit of a rise out of the woman. I hadn't been serious about it at all, yet somehow those two jokes, mentioned off-handedly and
soon
forgotten by myself, had been
crafty little
seeds
which would by and by
germinate
in her mind
and grow into
a verdant, lascivious fantasy.

On
her
thirty-first
birthday
, I took her
to a Spanish restaurant where
—
surprise,
surprise—
I
ended up having
a bit too much to drink
. It was then that
Tatami
asked me to have sex with her.

Not that she put it so directly. She could never have said
,
“
Peador, I want you to fuck my brains out
right this minute
!
”
No, all she could do was offer
some
vague hints and hope they
would be
concrete enough for me to catch
them
.

“It’s my birthday, so I’d like you to do something special for me.”

“Oh? And what would that be?”

“I’ll give you two hints.”

“This a game?”

“Please listen,” she said. “The first hint: you said it when we were walking in Ôhori Park last month.”

“Last month in Ôhori Park?”

“Yes. We were near the Boat House and I asked you where you’d like to go and . . .”

Gulp!
And I said,
How’
s about we pop into that
Love Hotel over there?

The first hint was as
concrete as the sidewalk leading all the way back to my
place
, as concrete as the steps
we climbed to my fourth floor apartment
,
where
for the third time in my life I spread
the legs of a virgin,
tre
m
bling with fear
and excitement,
and slowly violated her sanctity with the profanity of
a
semi-hard cock.

Let me tell you,
I'll never understand why some men
desire
virgins. As far as I'm concerned,
they're not worth the trouble.

Tatami manages to
coax
me back
to
the sofa
, where she then
pesters me until I embrace her. I put my arms around her and
give
her a
cold
, perfunctory hug. With my arms hanging loosely around her, she presses her cheek against my chest, and moves her thin fingers towards my crotch. Finding a half-enthusiastic bulge there, she grabs it softly. Then, ever so gingerly and cautiously, as if she was afraid of letting something
feral
out of its cage, she unzips
my pants.

I
’m not
really in the mood, and c
a
n
’
t
get
too worked up about doing it with
her
of all people
, but what
can you
do
when you’ve got
a defiant boner? It
’
s high treason! Mutiny
, I say
!
A
nd
,
Tatami
gleefully
commandeers it. She slips her hands into the front of my pants, fumbles around as if she
is
searc
hing for a pen in her handbag
—
a
n exceptionally large pen I might add
—
and
,
finding it
,
clamps onto it tightly in ca
se it changes it
’
s fickle mind.

Tatami
then
let
s
out a deep sigh.
I
s
this
what she ha
s
been after all along?
T
urn
ing
her face to mine and with her eyes closed
, she
parts her lips
,
invit
ing
me to kiss her. As enthusiastic as my backstabbing little friend has become, I
just
can’t
get fired up
about
kissing her
.
When
I hesitate, she
takes the initiative and starts
kiss
ing
me
. Big, sloppy, clumsy
kisses
. She put
s
her
tongue down my throat and
is now
squeezing Lil' Paddy for all
it’s
worth. If she i
sn
’
t going to pleasure the sperm out of me, then
it appears that
she is going to force it out of me the way you might get the last bits of toothpaste out of an old tube.