Mitchell's Story Pt 3 "Gathering"

Hiroko translated

I am busy but like your pictures and wanna say!

I know you're busy too and I don't need your messages often. I really appreciate them and thank you for even a bit of your time. Your messages  are like long sex, each one a new thrust from you. After looking again yesterday I felt so much I did to my husband what I want to do to you and make you feel so good, not for the first time.   Of course I didn't tell him. It was silent except for the sound of my mouth and then him calling out.

We'd been to a film showing of Hiroko's friend Tetsuo, a film artist. Evening staying light later and afterward Mitchell thrust and thrust his penis like a construction site crane stretched to the limit so it might break extended fully and smooth dripping with oil.

I don't know why I want to put you in my mouth so much to cover you to comfort you to make you feel good to make it angry and shoot in me. I like your way so much!

When we first knew each other my husband used to put his fist in my hand like a dog's paw, friendly funny greeting. That was a little what his penis was like in my mouth lol. Embarrassed to tell you. He liked feeling my breast, the outer inward curve. He made my nipples hard. He put my hand on him.

The theater was nice (even better in the summer when it's half open with brick walls and ivy). We had reservations so entering was easy. But on the way in Mitchell saw a woman he recognized and went to her and said "You look as cute as ever"- he said it was someone he knew from high school and she hadn't changed and told her- and then realized he'd mistaken someone else for her, someone who looked like her with blond bangs and oval round face and tan, freckles. He came back to our seats and told me and I laughed and he said. "And the people she was with didn't look happy about it either" and he laughed too.

Mitchell felt my excitement and we made love a second time in the middle of the night. Mitchell held me on top of him my bottom in his hands bouncing again and again.

I got orgasm and afterward was like in an old movie saying "my hero" and kissing over and over  closing my eyes  dreamed of you, I felt your heartbeat, our rhythm like a heartbeat. I made my husband come again. Really your message excited me! You know!

I like you in dark of night and dawn light. After husband went to work I got another orgasm before writing this with sticky fingers. I don't need to feel embarrassed! Just fun!

--

Akemi had a part-time temporary job at an art supply store where events involving local artists, some well-known, took place regularly. I was there when a photographer had come to photograph one. He'd arrived early as preparations were underway, the crowd not gathered yet. I was outside, meaning to go in and see Akemi, when she appeared with the photographer, leading him through the door to the sidewalk.

"Sorry, you need an appointment," she said.

"But there's time now." Friendly, not combative but making a common sense argument, the photographer, a guy in his twenties and already well into his life, no longer a student but concerned with using his photography work to earn a living, said "And I have my equipment." He indicated the tripod he carried in his right hand- it seemed to be a light one. He said that he could set up somewhere that both gave him a good view and didn't bother any of the other onlookers.

Akemi listened, nodded, not impatiently as someone else might have, and said. "Yes, but you have to make an appointment and come back."

When she speaks firmly like that she can become as impenetrable as a wall, neutral colored. It might as well be invisible, can't be passed. You know that if you try bump against the force field again and again, and you give up finally, defer. There's nothing you can do but smile, admire how formidable she is in her quiet way, that wall always there to put forth when needed. Akemi's small, even delicate but a strong woman. I'd match her against anyone for sheer strength of will and courage of convictions. It's true she likes rules- they're what make society possible, she says. She's from Japan, where people follow them. Americans don't so much and some bump up against her.

At the same time- and this is weird and also awesome in its way- she looks up to some American outlaw types in this country, reveres the creative innovator. Like my friend Nelson, the film poet and self-styled maverick. She's wowed by him. As fellow artists, they hit it off when they met. Sometimes it seems she's smitten. I mean when she talks about him in bed, their latest video conversation or whatever. Then I wonder why he's on her mind then and it crosses mine she might still be thinking about him when she's on top, wet on me, her eyes looking up, lost in the moment. You don't know where she is. Only of course you do. She's with me. She has great orgasms, starting with- what? panting, squeals squeezed out of her from some deep place, high-pitched, then shattering, showing her strength. I like to think I'm breaking the wall then.

After she and the photo pro finished talking and Akemi came to me, I asked her why she had stood on ceremony that way when he could have gone in and gotten the shots of the event he wanted without interfering at all in the process.

Akemi acknowledged the illogic even stupidity of sticking to a rule that served no purpose in this case and said, "That's how things are done in America."

Adaptable. Learning this culture, like she's learned my cock. Idiotic as I realize that sounds.

I pledged to write the truth, which includes a lot of, maybe mostly, stupid stuff.

I photograph too, not professionally like the twenty-year old at the gathering (he's got a head start) but I still felt for him as he walked off, shrugging his shoulders, slight of figure, lightweight like the tripod he held. Judging from his manner throughout the exchange with Akemi, he didn't seem like someone who held grudges.

And I thought of Akemi's country. On our trips there I've seen that the Japanese really do like doing things by the book. Though Akemi had just cited a local rule, there's no question her compatriots adhere to theirs more rigidly than we do. I suppose the difference is that they follow the dictates of common sense and don't keep rules that are nonsensical, also don't derive a sense of personal power from imposing them on others, as some Americans do.

Or am I wrong about that?

Akemi's not rigid where it counts.

She is too polite to criticize things she finds foolish, although she might mention some to me in private. She recognizes she's here now and has to act in accord with the customs the rest of us accept. Anyway, she put her feelings aside in her handling of the photographer who had tried his best to do his work unobtrusively, just hadn't gone so far as to call ahead of time for an appointment and as a result been denied his chance.

I saw in an old journal I kept I that I happened to glance through last night (because I've begun writing this?) that a colleague had once said I looked tense, there was tightness in my upper body. We were walking together between classes when she pointed that out. I'd forgotten all about it in the ensuing years. So much else has claimed my attention. The colleague and I still work together, and it was strange feeling that someone had been seeing through me all along without my realizing it.

True the job is stressful, but I'm enjoying it, the connection, sense of belonging- yet the tension remains for sure. Even correcting students' papers can tighten the shoulder muscles or whatever. Sometimes it feels as if I myself were taking a test and stuck on questions, unable to advance. There are times when I lose focus and wish there were someone to consult who knew better than me, as well as I should but don't. Of course I can't openly reveal the trouble I have. Have to to keep up the appearance of competence both in front of the students and with colleagues. You can't just say, "I don't know this." I wonder how many others experience similar moments of being at sea and don't talk about it. Correcting test papers. Hell. Makes my eyes burn. Maybe I need glasses. If not now, probably will later. Maybe I can find a different line of work before that happens.

And there was that colleague, friendly to me as ever, seemingly no different than with anyone else, but did she handle me with kid gloves, sympathy because of the tension she saw that one time and never brought up again?

At home two birds had gotten into our apartment. Small sparrows. So small that at first I thought they might be bugs. They enjoyed the sill where they had a view through the window and could feel free as if outside and also the warmth of indoors, be protected. It actually felt like a rare gift, was like having a tropical bird, yellow parrot or at least a parakeet there in our apartment, on the window sill in front of us. It was good being with Akemi and looking at that together. It made the things I didn't like beyond those walls seem unimportant, only the good stuff was, as if the warmth between us pushed everything else away. The pressures at work, the uncertainty about the future, self-doubt, none of it seemed to matter as much when we were together at home, at least in some moments, like when we were looking at the birds, talking about them, Akemi seeing how close she could approach, backing off when they began to retreat.

It would sound stupid if I said the scene, the need to keep distance, reminded me of the wall Akemi sometimes puts up, but I'd be lying if I said that didn't cross my mind.