Fuck or Fuck With

My old girlfriend in college Deborah and I started saying "fuck with" rather than just fuck. "I fucked you" sounds too one-sided. "Fucked with you" seemed better.

Which is neither here nor there, except that I've used it ever since.

Another jump-cut. That's what they might call them if this were a movie. You might just say "annoying" and leave it there, and as I said earlier I wouldn't blame you, though I hope you'll push on, stay with me. Bear in mind, we're at a safe distance. You risk nothing by our connection (and of course neither do I). You have no actual contact with me. These are only words, after all. And with Akemi you lack even that much (so do I at the moment!)

Different notebook, different time, though within the same tight frame as other events here. This isn't ancient history, which, needless to say, interests me not at all for the present purposes. I want to know why my wife is gone now, now!

Remember "Reading the Air," chapter before last about the porn team in the motel room? No of course not. It occurred to me that supplying the context might help, but I guess no dice. Really sorry about the disorientation. My writing reflects my mental state, bordering on chaos. Recent events are to blame but I "take full responsibility," as those earnestly avoiding any like to say. Give up or stick with me.. In the silence of this room I can still imagine someone out there, a companion in the realm of emotions (god, the prose turns purple so easily).

There's stuff you can tell a stranger you can't a close friend or member of your family. Think I could go into half of this with my brother Thomas, much less Gene, who's never been a confidante to me, nor I to him? Peter? Forget it. Great friend but we don't go crying on each other's shoulder.

It isn't quite an accident, by the way, that I've mentioned "context" here. That came up in conversation with the porn actress. She knew Japanese and Akemi and she'd begun speaking it together, but she switched back to English for the rest of us, her working partner beside her on the bed and me in a chair, but Akemi remained her focus- as she remains mine. I wonder if that ever feels too much to her, if she sometimes finds me scary. I'm not a stalker! This is new, tied to stuff that's really happened.

Stuff? A single event: Akemi's disappearance!

I hope someone isn't fucking Akemi or fucking with her- which, come to think of it, has another meaning I don't like either!

Back to the motel room. The discovery that she and the performer had a language in common had piqued their mutual interest.

Set the scene, the inner critic is telling me. Set the fucking scene! Help the reader out! The actress lay on the blanket- no, half-reclined on her stomach, elbows forward, hands supporting her chin. While talking, she watched us, work of eyes and mouth both in earnest.

The blanket was threadbare, a navy-blue, overused thing, the bed itself sad, slumping. Louvered windows behind Akemi and me were only half-shut and gave a partial view of the highway outside that appeared to be covered in a haze of exhaust- it may instead have been a local weather phenomenon, more to do with the time of day than pollution.

She looked toward Akemi and me, back and forth, where we sat at the front of the room- have I mentioned we were there, in running distance, by the way, from the door if we chose to make a quick exit. Yes, she'd reverted to English but the words were still addressed to Akemi. It was her face she checked when she emphasized a point. You sensed no one else's reaction mattered to her.

The actress' topic was her upcoming visit to Japan.

She was young, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine years old, and surprisingly cheerful, good-natured, given the job she did. The same, by the way, can't be said of the guy with whom she shared the bed, which slumping piece of furniture, by the way, occupied most of the space in the single room. The guy also was listening- a detail worth nailing down, I guess- but his face fogged over. You sensed he'd heard it all before and was just being nice.

While loverboy and I listened, the female lead told my wife that she'd been to her country a few times before but this trip would be different.

Remember, she was American. I, for my part, was floored by the revelation she knew anything at all about my wife's culture much less could converse fluently in her language. Akemi shared my surprise but reacted, naturally enough, with open delight.

"Do you know 'context'?" the other woman asked, establishing the word as important to what she was about to tell us, Akemi in particular.

"It's the situation, the things around you." She translated the word to Japanese, "kankyō" for Akemi, who now got it. The American porn actress then explained that the visit to Japan she was planning would be unlike those in the past because her mother had recently died.

The man yawned and shifted his position, visibly impatient but still attentive for her benefit.

An aside about those two: As I've said before, they came across as coworkers who got along rather than a couple bound by passion- funny, considering how they made their living. The man, Tod or Ted his name, appeared uncomfortable on the bed, anyway restless, high-strung compared to his leading lady- you sensed he just wanted to get out of there, that with the day's work finished he had better things to do than hang around chatting with us.

In his boredom, he sometimes looked numbed, and for all I knew he might have been drugged, and she too. Was it post-orgasm daze? Was that filtered view outside the motel room really haze? Ha ha.

Both performers might have benefited from tips on grooming or at least a newer wardrobe. Neither seemed to be taking good care of themselves. The guy, to his credit, had obviously washed earlier. His hair shone, looked freshly shampooed, a sharp black that suited his rigid posture. In contrast, his partner's dull-brown locks hung limp, lank, as if weighted by more than a single day's accumulated oil and sweat.

She spoke on about her mother and I wondered if Akemi's feelings for her own were stirred. Does she ever miss home in Japan? She must. I would miss the U. S. if I lived abroad. Despite my criticisms bordering on despair these days, this is home. But of course we're all different, Akemi's emotions her own.

"I'll be in a context without her," Sarah or whatever her name was said. "My world isn't the same now. I used to know I could talk to her any time about anything. I probably wouldn't call her from Japan, but just knowing I could mattered. Now that's gone." 

I saw she was as complex a person as you'll find. Of course the acting sideline (or main gig) was only part of her story. Much more lay below the surface, as with everyone- though some people probably are just as simple as they look.

Don't ask me why I remember that encounter much less how it came about. There'd be no point to explaining. The whys and hows aren't important. I focus on the what. What happened takes all my available time. I can't afford to get distracted from the action at hand.

In our apartment that evening Akemi and I saw a group of young men and women in the street. They appeared to be in their twenties, some in their late teens. We became aware of them because of the noise they made and went to the bedroom window to look.

The group, gang more or less, were focused on a car and seemed to be trying to move it manually. One guy with antic energy had gotten an arm through the driver's side window and as we watched was putting the thing in gear, releasing the emergency brake or whatever, and by group effort they all propelled the vehicle from its parking space on our side of the street forward and away. Carrying it. That was the impression we got. Think of ants conveying a pebble somewhere, collaborating.

They were enjoying themselves, shouting (not whooping, though, high-spirited yes, but in a darker way), seemed unconcerned whether the racket bothered anyone- in fact the possibility might have pleased them (which, it now occurs to me, strongly suggests we weren't witnessing auto theft in progress).

All that noise wasn't necessary. I sensed in it something performative (sorry for that annoying word; no time now to find a better one).

All I'm saying is that if the block weren't so quiet, residential, the gang might have toned things down some. Here, in easy earshot of surrounding apartments, people like us, they seemed instead to be ramping it up, as if bothering people was part of their rebellious fun. The scene was strangely reminiscent of the Marlon Brando movie from the 50s, "The Wild One." 

"That's a really good car," I said to Akemi of the model they were moving (possibly stealing?) "I mean expensive."

Having grown up in a city where you take the subway, I don't know a lot about cars, but I could see that the thing two floors below us was a costly model indeed, German, also that the way it had been souped up probably reduced its value. Who defaces a classic design with racing stripes? Those dumb teenagers or twenty-year-olds had. Living with Akemi has heightened my awareness of color, and I could see they'd used bad ones, prominent among them a saccharine blue you want to see nowhere but in an aquarium, if there. Streaks of it, meant to represent flame, ran the length of the body. I won't try to describe the other needless decorations, which I took in only at a glance, except to say they included some kind of gold trim along the rocker panels (had to look that up). The defiled beauty had "grey market" lifted all over it, probably had been lifted from the street of a Western Europe capital and trafficked via Eastern Europe, Poland maybe, before ending up on sale here.

Stolen, that is, but not by the kids around it now, dancing, laughing as they tried to hoist it. Again, my best guess. Those were locals, a world away from organized crime. I may be wrong.

Speaking of aquariums, writing about Akemi and me like this, it's a little as if we live in one. I'm not an exhibitionist! (standing at the window with her). It's the context!

Of course Akemi would understand without my having to spell it out that by "really good car" I'd been talking about everything but the gaudy add-ons. Still I felt I'd better make sure. Americans aren't known for their great taste as Japanese are, and Akemi might still have doubts about mine.

A day that could happen to anyone, anytime. Look out the window. See something. Why does it stay in your mind? Because Akemi is gone like that car, in some unknown place now? A ridiculous thought? Because she too might be defiled, even put up for sale(!?) Trafficked? Lifted from the street?

I didn't know how close I was to the truth. But who could have guessed law enforcement, so-called ICE, immigration police, were behind it?

I know. Pretty archaic language. Who uses the word "defiled" any more? My thoughts are a throwback, primitive.  I never thought of my wife as some sort of pristine object, treasured possession, but I didn't want some other guy to get his dirty hands on her. Would you?

The block was narrow, long, with modest three or four-story brick-front apartment buildings that seemed to press forward, impinging on the already limited sidewalk space. The residents filling it at all hours were a somewhat beleaguered-looking bunch (including myself here), heading to or from the subway station a long four blocks away, wearied from the rigors of the day and the prospect of it.

The fatigue showed in their stride, rather, how they dragged their feet, apparently in no rush to reach their destination or else too low on energy to quicken their pace. The air pollution, even the lack of visible relief- no flowers, few trees in view- wore at you.

I was feeling pretty well worn-out before Akemi arrived. The area had been built early in the last century to house workers in local industries and was still at an early stage of gentrification. Absence of ostentatious wealth was another reason the sleek Audi stood out there. One could identify some with the youths crowded around the thing, circling in constant motion, wonder, as if examining a vehicle alit from out of space or lavishing attention on a visiting deity. The thing was really an eyesore, luxury model or not.

Was it stolen? Had Akemi been?

--

We'd chosen to live in one of the least descript zones of the city, an elevated subway ride away from Manhattan. Low rents had drawn us there, but I suppose you could say we were part of the gentrification wave slowly but inexorably destroying the place.

Living with Akemi made the bland neighborhood feel better. Remember, she didn't see anything wrong with it. She was from Japan. To her this was a new world. America. New York New York. I tried to view things through her eyes and to an extent succeeded. And just the view of her at our kitchen table, standing there looking out the window, made me feel great. She was dressed in something light green- think lettuce leaves- like the tree rising on the other side of the window pane, slightly filtered by dust or kitchen grime. Her loose top, a white man's shirt buttoned only at the middle, left plenty of room for her breasts to move in the light or in my hands if I reached in. Ha Ha. Back there again. Yeah, I can't get enough of her.

Akemi bears no responsibility at all for the gentrification taking place, though she's an artist and art galleries are definitely a hallmark of the change that leads to the ouster of longtime residents. The other day I met somebody opening a new one near here, just a few blocks distant, on a corner of the commercial avenue you pass to reach the train station. I saw the place through the storefront in which glass had yet to be installed. The interior was under construction, finishing touches being applied.

The rough delineaments of the exhibition space were visible through the scattered tools and building materials, a level gauge, a hand plane, etc. Some lumber, pale two-by-fours, leaned upright, precariously, it seemed to me, against a fiberboard divider.

Drawn by curiosity and the good smell of sawdust and possibly linseed oil (familiar from Akemi's studio), I stopped and looked and talked to the guy idling outside. He appeared not to be a worker but waiting to confer with one or another of them.

Biding his time on the sunlit pavement, close to the curb, where he'd moved to avoid blocking people crossing the street around us. An owner, I guessed, though he didn't match the stereotype of art entrepreneur. Rather than the standard-issue all-black outfit and close-cropped hair thing, he wore a freaking plaid shirt, red and white number, and had a pencil tucked behind his ear. Looked like someone's uncle from Podunk, that is. Ha ha. Out-of-towner, I figured, and conjectured that he'd heard the neighborhood was up-and-coming and deemed the gallery business a lucrative one.

He proved fun to talk to, though, glad-handed, as open to strangers as anyone on the main street of a small town. His type is vanishingly rare among native New Yorkers (themselves something of an endangered species now), and I found our give and take refreshing.

I asked how he'd made his way here, and he answered colorfully, and as his explication started (you sensed it would be a long one) a second man approached, holding a hammer. This guy I did take for a worker but turned out to be wrong again. He was the co-owner and proved good company in his own right, every bit as engaging as the other. Funnier. His sardonic sense of humor suggested a more cosmopolitan outlook than that of his business partner. When I asked about the origin of their collaboration, he laughed wryly. "Don't get me started." The word "frenemies" comes to mind. Genuine mutual affection showed.

Okay, commerce rather than pure love of art may have motivated those two, but that doesn't make them rotten people. Even Akemi, an art purist if I've ever met one, wouldn't judge their type harshly. She's pretty clear-eyed about life in general, I'd say much more than I am. And she's right that no one is completely good or bad.

Take it from me. I know.

Yeah, me and my friend Nelson, who had an affair with my wife Akemi- I'm almost sure of that.

I realize, by the way, how clunky the prose gets. It's a description of something ordinary. You try. Not easy.

Back to it!

As the man with the tool belt, the hammer, suggested, the pair of entrepreneurs made a very unlikely team. He (the second guy) was from Nigeria and wore a blue and white shirt like a dashiki, striking thing, ocean blue and cloud white, and had a bold character to match, the kind of bright, can-do, optimistic attitude that puts you to shame for thinking about him in anything less than glowing terms.

He was physically large, with a frame that commanded respect bordering on awe- you instinctively took a step back to better take in this human specimen, near-giant, tall with broad shoulders yet able to move lightly on his feet, thirty-something-year-old with a worldly-wise strong face that conveyed along with humor a peace with the world and his ability to operate in it.

What can I say about the other one? And why say it? I will for the sake of thoroughness. He was older, approaching fifty, white, wizened, tall and bony, with thinning reddish hair, wraithlike in comparison to his robust partner. He had the pale, slightly gaunt face of a recovering alcoholic.

They were really different but one thing stood out as similar: cluelessness when it came to art.

A few paintings already hung in the gallery for the inaugural show, and at just a glance from the sidewalk I could see that they weren't good. All the same, I decided to use the opportunity to put in a word for Akemi's work, recommend her. She needed a showcase and here one was. The benefit would be mutual. Akemi's paintings would look great on those walls, raise the level of the whole enterprise, might even keep it from failing right away.

But I almost didn't say so. To be honest, I worried about Akemi spending time on her own with two guys we didn't know, as of course would have to happen. I couldn't chaperone her! I fought- and not for the first time- to keep my jealousy from screwing up Akemi's life.

Who knows if she'll get a show or even want one there? I wouldn't blame her for rejecting the gallery as the wrong forum. She'd be justified in voting against having her paintings seen in bad company. This is all speculative anyway, premised on her return, which, though likely, isn't guaranteed. Not knowing where she is, I can't say with certainty that she's ever coming back. Ever! The thought is too crazy to contemplate, yet it pushes out all others!

No, no one's completely bad. Those gallery owners seemed basically good, benign. But for sure there are some pretty terrible people out there. I sorely hope Akemi isn't in the hands of one now.  

And sore is what my cock is from lying in bed rubbing it, thinking of her, unable to get to sleep. Who knew things would reach this point!?