She saw him on Saturday, the day after the Friday of the anniversary of the day her fiancé left her to be with his wife and family back in the States. He was a beautiful man, a dark man with light eyes and a glowing smile.
She had become like one of those girls she had heard about and even joked about, who met the American airmen in the bars on Bar Row, the Roppongi district of rustic Misawa. It is Misawa’s nocturnal district, a money-building abyss, lit with brightly blinking artificial lights: neon yellows, oranges, and greens.
People moved from bar to bar, some standing around waiting greedily for their turn in one of the many massage parlors where the girls, many of them foreign women, called out Massagie to the passersby. Others stood on the sides, stepping in front of drunken patrons, speaking persuasively in seductive tones, encouraging unweary airmen and contractors to meet their girls.
She was there with her girlfriends, and they had no time for the inebriated older men who likely had wives and children at home. They were also trying to avoid the drunken and boisterous young airmen whose post-World War II worldview envisioned Asian women as poor, Kimono-wearing pseudo-Geishas desperate for a danna to support them or take them out of Japan to the unattainable freedoms of America. It is a ridiculous, if not racist assumption, as Japan is a world economy with technological and social structures that rival those found in America and the rest of the Western world.
She and her friends had often talked about visiting America, maybe New York or California; however, they had no intentions of marrying their way there. They had jobs and the basic sense to save their money for the things they wanted, though they usually wanted most things they saw, which meant they did not usually have any money set aside for travel. Moreover, they had never worn kimonos except for portraits taken to satisfy their grandmothers, and the only men they sought to care for them were the men who inhabited their dreams, not the whorish men who prowled the streets.
Mika, her pretty-faced, unhappily married friend, saw that she was depressed during their Thursday lunch, and having a knack for empathizing with the love-hurt in others, quickly deduced that old memories were tormenting her and suggested that the girls go out and drink to their hopes and dreams, the very same ones that eluded them all. Mika married young to an older man who promised he would give her the stars; only she did not know that all the stars he could offer were either dim dwarfs or dead.
She had always wanted to live in a big house with a loving man who wanted her to give him beautiful children and a well-kept home. She did get her house, a two-bedroom rental that was just larger than the double garages of the Americans’ custom-built homes, and she did give him two precious children, both girls, but he rarely acknowledged them. Usually, he was at work or out at some snack bar in Hachinohe. In time, he earned a promotion for being a dedicated worker, which to her was like an institutional acknowledgment that he was rarely at home, a better company worker than a husband and father.
He lost interest in her after her young, tight body filled out and became softer following the birth of the children, even though she was still petite by Western standards. Childbearing did well for her body, filling her out in the right places, top and bottom, and had she been interested in the many Black men stationed in Misawa, she could have easily been a kokujo with curly-haired, cappuccino-skinned children in tow while her kokujin husband openly showed her the affection she craved.
However, she was not married to a Black American man, and the affection she craved, whether open or behind closed doors, continually eluded her. She had always suspected her husband was having an affair, but she had learned from her mother to compartmentalize her life and give him the space he required to live his, provided he was providing for his family, even if it meant that she spent most nights alone with only her imagination and her Rose, soft contoured miracle toy massage the disappointment from her mind and the loneliness from between her thighs.
Her suggestion to go out, though she loved Ame deeply, was more for her benefit, though she convinced herself that she was doing it for her friend. She had as much to forget as Ame, and between the two of them, there was much need and hurt that needed to be filled or drowned. The two of them sat at a glass-topped, corner table in Sean Connery’s Place, across from Keiko, the happiest among them. Having never married and with no children to tie her to one city, she had been the freest one among them, with the most shallow roots in the country. She had visited Korea and worked in Vietnam for a year as a teacher for one of the company-sponsored Japanese schools. She taught Japanese and English—her limited, broken English—to a classroom of seventh graders who were more proficient in Vietnamese than their native Japanese.
She had been gone for a year, and her friends’ lives continued, adding experience to experience like a giant snowball rolling down the steepest hill. As a result, she had missed her two friends’ relationship drama. Of course, she had heard about major events, but she missed the specifics and the emotions that cannot be expressed in letters, emails, and text messages. Saturday was her time to catch up while she provided support to Ame.
“So Ame, how have you been? Do you still think about—?” Her question was cut short by a motherly look and a swift kick from Mika.
“Keiko.” Mika had hoped that very little would remind Ame of her heartbreak, as if going out with her friends on the near anniversary of that breakup would not do enough to remind her.
Ame reached across the table to Keiko and held both of her hands, gently squeezing them as she fought the anger that had so easily come out before, careful not to transfer her tension to her friend. Keiko’s hands were warm and soft like hers, and the affectionate touch between the two warmed them more than the alcohol.
“It’s okay, Mika.” She smiled a double-sided smile, one that assured them that she was okay and helped to convince her that she was not lying. “It’s been a year, but who’s counting?” She sat back and slowly released Keiko’s hands. Her fingers slid against the table without sound and rested in her lap.
Nervously, she removed the straw from her glass and began to bend and flatten it into small rectangles. A tear displaced the grapefruit pulp in her shochu.
Keiko and Mika watched the spiraling pulp in their glasses as they drew the tangy beverage through their straws in uncomfortable and guilty silence. No one wanted to continue the conversation, but the silence felt more uncomfortable.
Before any of them could speak, maybe with a joke or some trivial chitchat to soften the harsh silence, an opening door distracted them. It was a combination of the air leaving the room and the dark man who had entered and captured their attention. His skin was the color of roasted almonds, a little darker than the sesame sauce into which they had dipped their spring rolls. It was even-toned, smooth looking like a baby’s, only stronger, tighter. Beneath it was a layer of braided muscle bulging like a male stripper’s penis beneath a latex thong.
He was beautiful if nature could be described as such, comely in the way that men are: strong and handsome.
Like a fresh and vibrant horizon painted spectacularly in a way that only nature is capable of, he caused the three friends, especially Ame, to forget their stressful and painful lives and imagine foreign love in the arms of a dark, foreign man.
A soft sigh escaped Ame’s lips, and as she exhaled, she closed her eyes, tilting her head to fully expose her slender neckline and the tip of her tongue.
She imagined him naked, an exposed and bare earth, moon, and sun: fertile, cool, and fiery.
“Lover.” The word escaped her lips unnoticed, stealthily like an ancient ninja stealing into the home of his target.
She crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders, controlling a tingling chill that started between her thighs and moved up and around her back.
Just the merest sight of him had moved her to amnesia, and though she was with friends for yet another intervention-like meal, she wished she was all alone and free to give in to the yearning she was feeling deep inside her yoni.
Mika asked, “What did you say?”
She saw the fine and soft hairs that covered his firm forearms, and she followed the tributary-like veins that thickened and disappeared whenever he moved his arms.
Leaning closer, Mika tried again. “Ame?”
He walked to the bar with his companion and ordered drinks. A bargirl almost obstructed her view, but whatever he looked like was burned into her mind, and she would never forget him.
She remembered a saying she had heard: love is an imprint. Caught up in those words, she uttered two more, “You’re beautiful.”
“Huh?”
Mika and Keiko, just beginning to follow her eyes and fully understand what was going on smiled and then laughed, happy for the distraction of a man, something to take Ame away from her painful past.
Mika asked, “So you like him? Do you want to meet him?”
“Yes,” she moaned, still deep in her fantasy, too lost in her imagination to fully understand that she had confessed.
Keiko stood, giving little thought to Ame’s love trance.
“Come on.” She motioned Mika toward the bar, pulling Ame by the hands. The smile on her face was devilish and playful. “Let’s go meet your enchanting man.”
Entranced, Ame followed, each step pulling her farther out from under his spell. Her eyes began to take in the décor, the sculpted ceilings employed to make the ceiling higher, and the dimly lit crystal chandeliers that hung close to the tables, too low for anyone to walk underneath them.
She could smell cigarette smoke and beer, Yebisu and Sapporo, and various sweet alcoholic concoctions with colors ranging from violet to green. They had names like Pink Passion and Yellow Celebrity. She had tasted most, having frequented the bar and the owner’s other bars in the duplex. Only, at that moment, they seemed more vibrant and real, like she was awakening to them, seeing them for the first time in a steadily narrowing tunnel.
Then she wondered why tables filled with patrons disappeared behind her, like a town vanishing and shrinking out of a rearview mirror.
She did not remember being so close to him, almost within reach of the dark man, the black American with the light brown eyes—she was closer, closer enough to see them—and his muscular, athletic build.
Then it dawned on her; she was moving toward him. Then her legs stiffened, and her feet got heavier like her silver pumps had transformed into a pair of too-small snowshoes in deep snowpack.
“Wait. Where are we going?”
Again, Keiko smiled devilishly, a flashback to her teenage years when she would push her friends into talking to their crushes.
“To meet your beautiful koko-jin.”
Mika shook a firm no, much more assertive and definite than the soft no that escaped her lips.
She wanted to meet him, to get close enough to touch him, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t ready; a tear was still in her eyes, and painful memories still shifted in her mind.
Another time, she thought to herself. If they were to meet, she knew it would have to be later, when she was ready.
“I can’t meet him.”
“But you said—.”
“I can’t.”
Her supplicative expression had its desired effect, her eyes as wide as the Sea of Japan—its waters were already collecting in the corners of her eyes.
Smaller but far more determined, she redirected her girlfriends toward the door, glancing back toward the deep shadow of the man too occupied with drinks and the exciting woman who seemed much younger and more attractive than she could ever hope to be.
She wished that she had been prepared to get over her hurt and forever stop counting the days since her ex-fiancé had left. Then she could have met the attractive American who had momentarily helped her forget the anniversary of her rejection.
The door opened, and they were immediately swathed by cool, pissy air. They stepped into an alley with shop walls in various dingy hues of yellow, orange, and white. Though no trash littered the broken and worn asphalt walkway, dirty filth lay just below the surface of the walls and ground, as if lewd acts were performed against their surface where dust and grime were swept beneath the path and underneath the paint.
A group of wobbling gaijin passed by, some United Nations ensemble of French engineers and American JET teachers who had probably met at some bar or one of the many language exchange groups that typically turned out to be dating schemes.
Ame thought about how she might have flirted with her enchanting man, how she would have smiled and feigned ignorance of his language. She would have laughed and talked with him, flirting as all the amejos or American-hungry girls did, and if she was good enough and tipsy enough, he would have accepted an invitation back to her house, or she might have been asked to follow him back to his barracks. Instead, she caught a taxi home and accepted that she would sleep in the middle of her bed, feeling the familiar cool tendrils of the white, cottony sheets against her naked body, imagining they were the warmer and darker hands of a foreign lover.