When was the last time I had a good night’s sleep? I go to bed early and toss all night in a king-sized bed like I’m struggling to keep balance and comfort on a narrow cot. Then, just when sleep is so close, I wake up with the early morning Misawa sun, too tired to hide beneath my sheets and sleep and much too frustrated with fitful sleep to be productive.
Last night, I dreamed I was back at Connery’s, fighting with my ex-wife over that light Crayola-brown, Filipino bargirl with the tight ass and firm breasts. After a few words that I never heard—I rarely hear myself speak in my dreams—I let her go, and I was in my bedroom, ready to enter her, when I looked down and saw the Russian bartender, a sexual killjoy. I rolled off of her, only to be tackled as she tried to fist me. I kicked her in the face, but it wasn’t her; it was Carlton who was trying to get me to drink something that looked and smelled like piss. I dodged him and ran down the hall, which was actually the hallway in front of my classroom.
I stopped running when I saw someone a few yards in front of me, a woman staring at me. She had big, manga-like eyes, and she was pleading with me to follow her. She was naked but her nudity seemed natural, almost pure and redemptive. There was nothing sexual about any of it. I saw her and wanted to be with her, not as a lover, though; rather, I wanted to save her. I did not know if the Russian butch or Carlton or Corrine was after her, but I wanted to protect her.
When I touched her, right when I would have clearly seen her face, I woke up. There was no alarm or the typical Misawa tremor; I just woke up as if my mind did not want me to see who she was.
Now, I can hear Good Morning America’s Michael Strahan informing me that my shaving cream isn’t as safe as I thought. The picture is fuzzy and pixilated, breaking in and out because of the slow internet connection.
Behind me, the garbage trucks are idling, leaking noxious fumes into the hairline cracks of my windowsills. Typically, the green and white behemoths start gathering before the six o’clock garbage runs, garnishing their noisy stew with slamming cabin doors and the incessant beeping as they back into their parking spaces.
I rub the crust from my eyes as I struggle to open them, knowing they will not unwedge completely until warm, soapy water cleanses them of the night’s teary and drooly residue.
R. Kelly is playing from my iPod, reminding me that there’s nothing I can do when a woman’s fed up. I would prefer some I Believe I Can Fly or The World’s Greatest. I would even get up for some Bump N’ Grind or Down Low, but even my laptop reminds me that I am alone.
I walk across the cool, hardwood floor, wishing I had slipped into my Adidas flip-flops. A chill climbs up my legs, loosening my pelvis like a shot of Vodka, and tapers off as it ascends my back. I long for a hot shower, some air-thinning steam in my claustrophobic shower stall, and a hot cup of green tea.
Only half awake and even less sensible, I turn on the shower, forgetting that the pipes are filled with cold water, and that chill that faded on my back returns with a new resolve all over the front side of my body.
I’m relieved that no one is present to witness the effects of cold water on my pride. I’m shriveled up like I’d been freeze-dried below the waist. Then, still more foolish than awake, I turn the cold faucet down just before the hot water flows from the shower head. Like a puritanically raised virgin, I push it away, the way comedians on BET’s comic view said black women treat a man’s cum after they stroke and suck him to the point that he releases it in a powerful stream of satisfaction.
I adjust and balance the water temperature and relax under the Jet Stream massager head and try to conjure up images from my dream. The woman seemed real, even familiar, but with no face, she was just a ghost, an apparition that the day cut off before she could become an object in a post-pubescent wet dream, not that I wanted her to be an object, though.
Unable to determine whether she truly existed or if she was just a collection of images my mind put together, I allow my mind to go back to the Filipino bargirl with the baseball-hard implants. The warm, pulsating water against my head and the droplets of condensed steam that fall against my back from the stall’s ceiling arouse me, and for a moment, I’m tempted to join my hand with the slick, rain-like water and stroke myself to a happy beginning to an inevitably stressful day at work.
It only goes as far as a temptation because my blaring iPhone alarm tells me I have about twenty minutes before I have to meet Carlton on the track for an early morning run. He’s trying to lose a good hundred pounds so that—as he puts it—he won’t turn out to be like the other DoDEA teachers who retire and die after too much eating and drinking and too little exercise and sexual activity.
I join him because I am falling farther and farther from my old self, the me I was before divorce and a poorly executed knee surgery encouraged me to let myself go.
For his size, he is in better shape than me, even though I look like I have taken better care of myself. He used to play football, and I think he even wrestled for eight years, so a lot of that physical conditioning still lives within him.
Quickly, I dry myself off and toss a blueberry bagel in the microwave, half chewing a banana as I wait for the beep that will tell me the blueberries are plumped and steamy. I take a bite and let the hot bread warm my throat, preparing it for the even hotter tea that I will use to wash it down.
It takes me six minutes to get to the main gate, and about four minutes to get through it. Four minutes is enough time to admire the sized-zero Japanese women in their heels and long black socks shake the little bit that their mommas gave them to the aluminum doors of the American-catering insurance companies and used car lots.
Their black hair bounces lightly as they walk determined steps, smiling seductive smiles at both the gawking airmen and glaring wives trying to drop off kids to school much too early. Anyone of them could have been up late last night being groped by some American too drunk to realize he wasn’t wearing a condom and too careless with information—full name and squadron—that will make it easy for her to find him when her period doesn’t come.
To be honest, though, I wish I was one of them, minus the eighteen years of child support. Unfortunately, I could easily walk in those shoes if I would just follow Carlton’s advice and stop thinking so much.
I do think a lot, considering all the logical and possible outcomes before I make a decision. That’s the reason I slept alone last night. The girl from the bar called me a couple of times yesterday, trying to get up with me for what would likely be a regrettable booty call. I figured she would put it on me real good, and then accidentally get pregnant.
“Yeah, I think too much.”
I think too much with the wrong head.
Carlton is sweating profusely, soaking his tee-shirt with beer-tainted sweat, as he grimaces at the beginning of each lap, realizing that the previous lap isn’t the last.
After the first three, it is, “Damn.”
Then, after lap six, it is “Shit.”
“Fuck,” was two laps ago.
We jogged lap eight in silence. A couple in matching shorts and hyper-clean Nikes ran around us, kicking goblets of dewy, freshly cut grass and clover.
Carlton is sweating like an Eskimo jogging in the Sahara in a wool jumpsuit. Every pore on his body is a geyser. “Man, I got hyperhydrosis.”
I roll my eyes. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
“So you have ESP, too.”
I stumble a few steps after he jostles me with his elbow.
I can’t help but smile, doing my best to hold back a spiteful laugh. “And whose idea was this?” It’s more a statement than a question.
He speaks one level above a wheeze, “Hey, you know what…fuck you.”
I laugh and feign a stumble into him. He deliberately delivers a short and slow right hook, which I easily dodge.
Our run had long ago turned into a jog, and now it’s slowing to a brisk walk.
I’m exhausted. “Man, I’m over it.”
“You’re over it? Are you over it, you pussy?” He’s on me like he’s my coach, but he had already given up.
I answer, “Yeah, and without shame.”
“Well you know what, punk, call me a pussy and stick a dildo up my ass because I’m over it, too.”
I bend over, struggling to push breaths into my compressed lungs.
He walks around me, elbows above his head, cussing the track out for being so long.
He asks, “What the hell was I thinking?”
I reply, “I don’t know.” I stretch my legs. “But you pulled me into this shit with you.”
The couple with the matching gear returns, this time easily running over the track now that the two of us are out of the way. She looks much younger than him. Tight and lean with her blond ponytail bouncing like a limp, phallic extension of her head.
Officer. Officer’s wife. Definitely not teachers from one of the other base schools. They’re too fit to be from the rowdy civilian ranks with the cussing and beer-guzzling men—likely out of shape if they’re married—who have more tolerance than love for their round wives who struggle with happiness in the postpartum. It is a stereotype, I know; however, like all stereotypes, there are enough cases to give the illusion of truth.
Here we are, two teachers trying to break those stereotypes. Now, fresh out of just getting my ass kicked by the track, I don’t mind the stereotypes so much.
I walk toward my bag that I dropped on the other side of the track. My shoes are damp with the morning dew and moist blades of grass.
“Wait up, bitch.” Carlton caught his breath.
“Bitch? Are we women here, calling each other bitches?”
“I just call ‘em how I see ‘em.”
“You’re gay man. Crooked like the esses in Mississippi.”
“Me sissy. I pee.”
I turn back and ask, “Huh?” but I don’t stop walking.
“Like Mississippi. You know, breaking the sounds up…forget it you homophobic asshole.”
“Good idea,” I agree, “let’s forget it.”
He jogs to me, kicking me behind me knee so that I stumble. “Woa. Lost a few cool points on that one.”
I turn around and pop him in his chest, not hard enough to truly hurt him but enough to make him raise his hands in surrender.
“Hold up, man. I’m just trying to get your attention.”
“Just call my name next time.”
“Like Ami?”
“Who?”
“Amihan. The Filipino girl at Connery’s with the big, fake titties and tight ass in the tiny thong.”
“Yeah, what about her?”
“She called you, didn’t she?”
“That’s how she got my number? I thought I gave it to her.”
“Please. You wouldn’t know how to give out your number, priest. I gave it to her and told her you were rich, lonely, and horny.”
“That’s why she was calling me, blowing up my phone.”
“That and the fact that I told her your dick was longer than the O.J. trial.”
He laughs at his own joke, a metaphor he copped from the Afro Samurai soundtrack.
“Well, she must have believed you because she was working hard for that booty call.”
“Did she get it? I bet she likes it in the ass without Astroglide.”
“First of all, why are you such a Neanderthal, and secondly, no, we didn’t hook up.”
He falls back, flopping on the ground like he’s having a tantrum.
“What? You scary bastard. Her kitty was purring for you, man. She would have licked it, kissed it, and swallowed.”
“No, she would have pulled out the turkey baster, and you’d be calling me a stupid fuck in about nine months.”
“Shit. It would have been worth it. I’d let a few of my boys swim in that.” He pauses, “Yeah, I am a Neanderthal.”
I don’t disagree, “Yeah, but I’m no better. I don’t even know this woman and I can’t see her as anything outside of a character from a 1980s Vietnam War movie. We're fucking idiots. We’re supposed to be educated and refined men.”
“No, we’re dicks.” He hesitates, “But, why didn’t you hook up?”
“I was thinking about you.”
“Well, next time, be a little more selfish.”
I am not mad, but I don’t have time for that nonsense. I can still hear him slapping the ground and cussing me out.
He continues, “Man, you think too much.”
I wave goodbye and keep moving away from him. “I know. I know.”