I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like (9 page)

Would you believe that when I was younger I also tried to become a different person? I would dye my hair, buy new clothes and then look at old photos of myself, examining them with affected detachment. I imagine Makiko must have gone through a more rigorous version of this process as she made herself into the thing she is now. But for me the feeling of having shed my past never lasted longer than a day, and I lacked any definite ideal to move towards. My mind, my garden, was as bare as it is now. But while I never had any potential, I am convinced you were born with your present self inside you — it only needed to be excavated. In this world there are some who are born beautiful, and others who become beautiful only after great effort. You, like Makiko, are one of the latter; I, unfortunately, am neither. This is not to say that I am ugly — if only that were the case. Ugliness, you will learn, is only a negative form of beauty, and is often a comfort to those for whom conventional pleasures have grown too familiar. My father, for example, is quite remarkable in his ugliness: with his old, lined face, his dull eyes and patchy tan, I could stare at him all day. But I am perfectly average in everything, which is the only true ugliness.

It was the end of the second week when you first invited me over: a Saturday. We were sitting in Royal Host sharing a salad — the only thing you would eat — and discussing nail art. After a while the conversation stalled. You have a habit of speaking your thoughts abruptly, and you are not, I am afraid, a great conversationalist. But I had come to appreciate your silences, the times when I could hold your gaze, studying the shape of your nose and the upturned corners of your smile. That smile — always practiced and deliberate, careful never to show your teeth — for me assumed a sphinxlike quality.

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You should come to my house, you said at last.

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Won’t someone be home?

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Not during the day.

You lived closer to the city than I’d imagined. We rode the train to Asagaya and I followed you up the hill until we came to your doorstep. As we stepped over the threshold, I still expected someone to appear — your parents, or any siblings you hadn’t mentioned. I can’t imagine what I would have done had this happened, but you moved into the living room and turned on the lights, and there was no sound or movement. You showed me into your room, which was not decorated in the way you’d described. I’d expected a rat’s nest of treasures, all clothes and colors and posters; instead it had the genderless austerity of a hotel room. There were no photos, no personal items, just a bed, a mirror and a closet.

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Where is everything? I asked.

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In boxes under the bed.

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Because of your father?

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Yeah.

There was another of your silences.

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Well, show me something, I said.

You went to the closet and took out a white plastic bag, then stopped and looked at me.

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Do you want me to wear them?

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What?

You opened the bag and took out a dark blonde wig. A sudden gleam passed across its golden strands.

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My clothes, you said. I could put them on...

I nodded, but you continued looking at me expectantly.

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Do you want me to leave the room? I asked.

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Yeah.

Outside, as I inspected the house (the photographs above the television: your father’s thin grey hair; your mother’s round and distant face), I felt a strange excitement, as if the door to your room was closing on a kind of tomb, a sacrificial chamber, and the person who emerged would be someone else entirely. When I at last heard a gentle knock from within, my excitement reached its height, and my hand trembled as I opened the door.

You were standing by the window when I came in. I felt a terror at the sight of you. You were nothing like the parody of a girl I had feared; instead you stood transfigured in black leggings and the white one-piece you had shown me earlier. Your makeup was light, expertly applied, your light blue contacts matching your golden hair. There were faint white shadows around your eyes, their lashes outlined in black; but these details faded into the total impression of youthful beauty. You smiled shyly — the smile I have described as sphinxlike, which now seems the only appropriate description of you at that moment.

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You’ll have to practice your walk, I said. I could think of nothing else to say.

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I can do that already, you said. That’s easy. I always look at how girls walk.

You crossed the room and stood before me. I watched your legs, your shoulders, the way you carried your weight. Here again I feared a kind of burlesque, that your movements would be stylized, excessively pronounced, but if anything you seemed more relaxed and less affected than before. Your posture and your walk had changed to match your appearance, had taken on a new lightness.

I did not tell you that you were beautiful. Instead I took your hand and drew you down to the bed. You made no resistance.

My thoughts on first loving you — really loving you — are more or less indescribable. It was painful for both of us, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. When it was over you were bleeding, and I wiped you off with a tissue. Still I couldn’t leave you alone. Enraptured with your cheeks, your knees, your shoulders, I wanted to kiss every part of you. Your bare arms had the thinness of a young girl’s; as I focused on them I thought of you as some fantastical being or angel. I had never imagined a joy like this could be possible.

We lay together for what must have been hours, although it felt much shorter. We spoke at times, but mostly I held you in silence. At some point you got up and checked the time on your phone. Someone would be home soon, you said. I rose from the bed and put on my clothes. Still naked, you saw me to the door.

From then on I tried to see you every day, although I was often disappointed. I thought of you constantly, afraid you would vanish. Still, I did not at first think in terms of love, which seemed a feeble word for what I had experienced with you. But I am not a great imaginer, and I have no other way to describe it. I only knew that I wanted to follow you into some other world. Does this sound naive? Between us we had dreamed you — a dream you originated, but one I am convinced you could not have finished alone. You needed someone to encompass you, to reflect you in their eyes and hold your gaze as you walked towards them. For all my faults, I am warmer than a mirror.

This period coincided with Makiko’s rising success. Flushed with new money, she would buy me and my father presents, and I did my best to take advantage of her generosity. When the bookstore closed and I lost my job, I asked her for a large loan. I was working on a business plan, I told her. Surely she of all people understood the need for initiative, of striking out on one’s own?

With my sister’s money we were able to complete your transformation, and you became what you had always been on the inside, a beautiful young girl. I took you shopping in Shibuya and Machida, bought you handbags, hair extensions, any piece of jewellery that caught your eye. Now you had boots, dresses, fashionable winter coats. You lost all trace of shyness and walked at my side in public with the same grace you had shown me in your room.

We went to restaurants, stayed in hotels, had picnics in Yoyogi Park. Sometimes we wandered the streets at random — I can remember one Sunday afternoon with you, walking between Asagaya and Ogikubo, when some combination of breeze and clouds and sunlight affected me strongly. As I walked with your hand in mine, I felt completely at peace: the entire span of my life seemed to have passed in a few moments, and now it all seemed weightless and unreal, departing from memory as quickly as the fragments of an unpleasant dream. To have endured childhood, and one’s teens and twenties, and then to realize how little it all meant — for this I owe you everything.

I want to recall one night in particular, which seems both representative of our time together and perhaps the culmination of it. It was not long after that first day in your room. You wanted to go dancing, and so we arranged to meet at your station in the evening. I stood waiting by the ticket gate, checking the time incessantly, overcome with nervous excitement. You had changed your hair, and when you arrived I noticed you without at first recognizing you, so that you seemed as distant and inaccessible as any other figure in the crowd. But then you smiled and walked towards me, and in that moment of recognition our shared world established itself again.

The brief train ride remains fixed in my mind. It could not have been more than fifteen minutes, but while it lasted I became intensely conscious of each passing moment. You were seated next to me, so that I was able to examine your reflection in the window across from us. Your long silver-blonde hair fell around your shoulders. You were wearing heels and a black sleeveless dress, its silk surface broken by a silver pendant I had bought you. That day you had gone to a nail salon in Omotesando, and now your hands were beautiful jewelled claws, ornamental and useless, the hands of an empress: each inch-long silver nail encrusted with plastic gems and tiny pink roses. As always you sat with your back perfectly straight.

I was so focused on your reflection that I did not at first notice a wasp had flown into the train and was now buzzing around your head in wide, lazy circles. In a gesture of complete passivity you allowed this insect to drift closer and closer until it landed and began crawling across your face. Afraid that it would sting, I could do nothing but watch as it traced a course up your cheek, towards the bridge of your nose. As I watched it climb that great summit I felt an unbearable jealousy. Again I imagine myself in the wasp’s place, and in my memory your face appears as a voluptuous garden of flesh, the line of your lips and the curve of your jaw the features of some enormous living landscape. Your nose slopes gently, complementing the raised ground of your cheekbones, and your irises float like lilies on the white pools of your eyes, each lash a thick black reed. I imagine myself wandering for hours in this warm and fragrant garden, perhaps lying down at last and entering a dreamless sleep.

My primary memory of our trip from the station to the club is of a smell: the smell of the streets, the smell of cigarette smoke, sewage flowing under Shibuya, vomited alcohol running into the gutters; the smell of lion-haired host boys, of artificial girls with metallic mannequin faces and Cecil McBee bags... this smell brings that night back to me, the smell of giddy sickness and new love, which you know are one and the same. When the light changed we crossed the intersection and walked up the hill hand in hand. You bought a carton of milk from Lawson and drank it in between drags from your cigarette, the burning tip creeping towards the shimmering wetness of your mouth, its white glaze of milk and lip gloss. I gripped your hand and the points of your nails pressed into my palm.

When we arrived a crowd had gathered outside. As we took our place in line I observed those present, and I am certain none of them shared your style and poise. Many of them turned to stare as you passed, and I could sense their barely-veiled jealousy. In the line you stood up straight with your shoulders held back, keeping your gaze focused on the club entrance in front of you. As even your barest movement commanded attention, you were careful never to move more than necessary.

After waiting in line for half an hour we at last passed through the doors. The club consisted of three levels, and at least fifty bodies were crowded together on the first. The smoky darkness of the interior, broken by the strobing displays of the LED system, gave you the appearance of an apparition. Hard, focused beams of green light radiated from the projector horizontal with the floor, while other projectors overhead pinned kaleidoscopic flowers to your hair and dress. You wandered onto the floor and took up a central position, not dancing as such, only nodding your head to the beat. I stood a few feet away, drink in hand, content to watch. Soon the beat subsumed the conversations around me, and I felt visually deafened as well, my impression of your face fading into a general haze of light and color.

We had been on the floor for around an hour when I excused myself to go to the bathroom. When I returned I found you standing by the bar, talking to a man in a black blazer and white shirt, its collar unbuttoned. His features were fine and unlined, and he looked to be in his early thirties at the latest, although I couldn’t see his eyes, which were hidden by a pair of blue mirrored sunglasses.

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Your friend? he said as I approached.

I smiled and introduced myself.

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She’s very beautiful, he said.

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Yes.

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Has she considered modelling?

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No, but she’s interested in that sort of thing.

The man removed his sunglasses and gave me an almost conspiratorial look.

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She has a very special quality. With her height and body she’d do well.

I accepted this compliment as if it referred to me; this was how intensely I felt our connection. The man gave us each one of his cards and returned to his table, where a large group was seated. Over the course of the night several other people introduced themselves to us and — perhaps out of your usual reticence, perhaps out of a new imperious detachment — you let me speak for both of us. I did not specify our relationship, leaving those interested to infer it for themselves.

We left the club some time in the early morning and made our way to a manga cafe. Once inside our cubicle I turned off the lamp and seated you on my lap. In this cramped cell I pulled you close and let the darkness concentrate the feel of your body and the sour-sweet taste of your sweat, your flesh smelling faintly of coconut oil. Though I couldn’t see you clearly I felt my other senses sharpening, so that each impression — each touch, each breath and subtle movement — carried a heightened intensity. I moved inside you and felt sick with happiness, as if I had gorged myself on raw sugar. If these emotions form a spectrum, then my happiness in its excess slanted towards revulsion, although I knew that just beyond it was an even more concentrated joy, a nameless state of intimate contact with the impossible.