"Reading the Air"

Reading the Air

I was with two porn actors, a man and a woman, both with brown-black hair, late-twenties, young but at an age where people are started on their careers, and they were going to perform for me, but they wouldn't look at me, only at each other. It seemed they'd been working as a team a while. This was routine for them, even rote. Their expressionlessness lowered my spirits. I can put it that way.  

It felt to me important that there be some eye contact, human connection, recognition.  

They hadn't started yet but were about to and knowing that turned me on some, despite the less than inspiring atmosphere, a seedy motel room, and their lackluster attitude toward it and each other. On impulse, I reached out to touch the woman's back. I was sitting behind her- the two sat face to face by the window with its shades half-drawn letting in dreary light, their stuff on the radiator there. She wore a dark jersey made of thin nubbly fabric. She was thin, her back bony under my hand.  

You often hear the performers in adult films referred to as "porn stars." These weren't that. They were professionals doing a job, a journeyman and woman you could say. Neither especially attractive but slim enough, all right, just ordinary. Would they shine in bed? The evidence suggested otherwise.

You could see something of the road outside, not a major thoroughfare but close enough the passing cars might keep you up at night, the sad roar of anonymous others approaching and then gone forever (and good riddance, you'd think, tossing and turning).  

My attempt to join the fun, unpromising as it might be, my impulsive touch, start of a caress, didn't go over well. The pair stopped me. "That isn't the deal," the guy said. I couldn't participate. Our agreement didn't include that. They were there to perform, weren't prostitutes. There was a distinction.

It wasn't me they'd come to have sex with but only each other. I was audience. And for the first time they looked at me, our eyes met.  

I remembered then a newspaper story I'd read that had stayed in my memory because it was so unusual, disturbing. A sex crime. A couple were brought by the criminal (two, actually, I think it was, man and woman) to a motel room, where they were forced to have sex with each other while the assailants looked on, filming too, I believe. How could they do it, manage the physical act, I mean? Presumably the rape followed.

That wasn't happening here, of course, had nothing to do with it.

But not a story to forget, at least not if you're me.

I said, "You're actors." I wanted to show them respect, also really did wonder about their lives beyond this. What did they do? Was this a sideline or "it" for them, the main thing, the only thing? Porn acting was fun you might have to help finish your education, but they were past school age. What was with them? Of course I wouldn't ask. None of my business. My question derived from concern on their behalf, almost a paternal sentiment rather than idle curiosity (maybe some of that too), but it wasn't as if I was about to help them, offer either a job.  

The comment brought no reaction. "You're actors" barely registered. I saw again that they weren't interested in me, didn't need my approval. They seemed a bit jaded or else full of confidence in themselves, either that or had reached a point in their lives where they'd accepted their lot, hardened. They looked incapable of emotion, undesirous of it.

Anyway, I didn't matter to them. The whole scene was a little dispiriting- yeah, that's the right word, not disillusioning, as I'd never imagined the porn world wonderful in any sense, assumed it wasn't glamorous but banal.

Akemi came in and then the four of us talked a bit (no, she and I weren't going to have sex there). Akemi mentioned Japan, a town in it, and the actress with her straight dark brown hair said, "I know that." She pronounced the town name perfectly, as I couldn't.  

"Shima" something was the name (town or neighborhood), "shima" followed by four or five quick syllables I never quite picked up. "Shima" was all I got for sure (and maybe "shimo"?)

It turned out that very American actress who appeared the most local of locals, sounded that way too with her regional accent, had lived in Japan and spoke Japanese, some at least, more than me- by that I mean hers was fluent, probably with some mistakes, while mine was halting at best and full of mistakes. She and Akemi began conversing in that idiom beyond my ken and I felt estranged, to put it mildly.  

Here I'd been thinking I was better than her, at least more successful, thought I could pity- that is, look down on- her. Yet she'd mastered one of the most difficult languages that exists, one in which I'd barely managed to get a foothold. She ran/spoke circles around me.

Her hair was on the stringy side, his too. They didn't take the best care of themselves. That came through in their clothing- "undistinguished" as good a word as any. Were they into drugs? Was that going on? Another part of the mystery.

Neither she nor the guy came across as exactly worldly. I felt outdone, always the case when someone from my world engages Akemi in the language of hers, going with her places I can't follow.

I thought again of how different people were in Japan, superior to Americans in some ways, certainly when it came to manners, consideration of others. I recalled a walk with Akemi and her nephew Toru and a friend of his when we were staying at her family's house. The boy steered his friend  toward the stream below the path we were on, and the two children proceeded to walk there, with us but at a distance, on the way inspecting some reeds by the bank, having fun as kids do, everything a discovery. At only ten or eleven, the nephew knew to leave Akemi and me to ourselves. Toru didn't know what we meant to talk about, only that there was something and we needed time alone, distant from their noise and out of their earshot. He could sense that, "read the air" as the Japanese phrase has it, and acted accordingly, as Americans never would. We are raised to be selfish.  

It was our first day and the children were excited about the visitors, one a foreigner. I was fatigued that morning by the twelve hour time difference, and there was a lot to do in the day, too much it seemed, not the least meeting Akemi's family and friends who would stop by to see us. I even meant to get some writing in. Didn't know if I would manage it all without succumbing to jet lag. I almost felt feverish, as if I were coming down with something 

And when we traveled in Japan, lodgings were definitely a step up from that crummy U. S. motel room. Sometimes I wondered how Akemi could stand living here.  

And where was she now?  

My brother Thomas showed me a list he'd come across in my apartment, one I'd made and printed out of my photos. He asked about markings on it.  

I explained "N" meant ones I'd sent to my friend Nelson and "Ge" meant "general" for the rest of the shots. Some of those to Nelson were of my wife Akemi.  

Later I came home and found Thomas and his friends looking with interest at another print-out he'd found. I looked and saw it was actual messages I sent Nelson accompanying the photos. I took my brother aside and said, "Those are private, not for showing to people." Thomas could sometimes be pretty dumb- good brother and all but occasionally surprising in his cluelessness.

I'd been trying to take my cue from Akemi's example and put my things in order (making lists isn't usual for me), but it really didn't work out. She's very organized, but I'm just not.  

Akemi and I walked in an area of Tokyo new to us both. I remarked, "What makes this good is that there are a lot of trees." Akemi conceded cheerfully, "It's true that where I live" (Shima... or Shimo...) "doesn't have many." It too was nice, though, a cool area, known, I learned later, for its avant-garde theater scene.  

"We've been here before," Akemi said, noting a corner park we'd come to, brown with autumn leaves. I didn't recognize it or the neighborhood though she assured me we'd passed through recently; she recognized sites we'd seen only days earlier. I was disoriented in Japan and often missed even familiar landmarks, just couldn't find my bearings in the place as in the language.  

Akemi said, "Let me find the name." Of that locale, for future reference, she meant.  

I watched her walking ahead, looking around with avid interest, excited by discoveries, gazing up at structures she stood before. I realized I'd better keep an eye on her. If I lost sight of her figure in those labyrinthine streets, I'd really be lost.  I didn't even have train fare in my pocket for the ride back. She took care of transportation in her country where even the simplest tasks left me flummoxed and people waiting behind us at a train station, for instance, impatient.

In museums, small ones of local cultural treasures, staff, often as not old men (Japan has an aging population) would yell angrily at foreigners who neglected to remove their shoes before stepping up from the entranceway to the exhibition space- but it was too late; they were already inside. The depth of the anger surprised me and suggested an abiding resentment, dislike of those who deigned to visit their country, as if tourists were seen as invading barbarians.  

I, who hadn't entered the museum proper yet and stood forewarned, took off my shoes, apologized on my fellow gaijins' behalf. I felt for them. They just hadn't known any better. After all, they didn't live there. Sure some might be arrogant and not give a damn about the culture and customs, but those were the rare exception.  

Akemi, by contrast, had acclimated fairly easily to the U. S. Japanese knew all about America from pop songs and movies. They'd also studied the country to whom they'd lost the war, as we, the victors, hadn't bothered to learn about them. New York was a relatively easy adjustment, welcoming to newcomers, but dangerous; violent crime and political divisiveness made it so. I worried constantly on Akemi's behalf, tried not to burden her with my concern, harp on the need to be wary etc- that could spoil her enjoyment- but worry I did, not least because of the Nelsons of the world.