Foreigner

Crazy dreams, maybe brought on by writing about the car theft scene we witnessed.   

Akemi and I were visiting Serbia, of all places, had just arrived, as tourists, I guess, and someone told us about a related travel deal. A bus to Switzerland was available for a very low cost, the price of so and so many bottles of slivovitz, the tout said. I explained to Akemi what that was, a strong liquor favored in the Baltics. I'd always wanted to show Akemi Switzerland, where I spent some time after college.

I added with humor, "They wouldn't want to see us." Meaning a bus full of Serbians would be unwelcome. Western Europeans didn't like migrants from Eastern Europe.  

That dream was short and to the point.

Another followed. It involved a conversation with a Western European, a woman. She was talking about America, Japan and her country- Germany my best guess. She had the manner of someone who knew a lot and was used to asking questions, a little annoyingly. I sensed a slightly imperious attitude, a hint of arrogance, but may have been judging too harshly. She was a nice person, I guess, just curious (anyway, only a dream!)

She said it was her impression that sentences were long in English prose (I dreamt this, no doubt, because I've been producing some). I thought about the question and answered, "It depends on the writer." (I'd heard German sentences were notorious for their length, with all the verbs stuffed in the end.

I added, "English is nothing compared to Japanese writing, where the sentences just go on and on, one long clause after another."

It turned out we were waiting for the woman's boyfriend who was coming to have sex with Akemi! She went down on him while we watched as audience, and it really was like an endless run-on sentence. Akemi didn't stop, The seamless rhythm had to impress you no matter who you were, even if you happened to be her husband. I wondered in the dream if I even was anymore. I mean she sent that guy out of this world. I've taken pictures of her but never gotten that objective view before.

My wife! Where is she?

Hell, what a dream. Funny thing is it was all very cool, matter of fact, like only some kind of experiment, theater. A cultural reckoning? Ha ha. Hell of a thing. Can't figure out where this stuff comes from (I have a few ideas). The guy was also nice, the way, like his analytical girlfriend, seemingly German same as her, square of frame, handsome enough.  

I stayed late at the college the other night, catching up on paperwork, with another teacher, a woman from Vietnam, she and I finally the only ones in the teachers room. When I got to my feet at last and gathered my stuff, she asked if I was leaving. We both saw it was later than we'd thought.  

I said, "Yeah, after a minute," and she said, "We can go together." I was reluctant, like to have time alone to unwind on my commute, and I told her I might be a while before actually departing.

We ended up walking out of the teachers room together, the plan still being to leave the building separately. But as we chatted it occurred to me she wanted company on the walk from there to the train station. The area was a bit desolate, ground a woman might not feel comfortable covering alone at that hour. And I offered to accompany her after all, said I would take care of those last-minute chores at the college some other time.  

"All right," she said, looking surprised, looking at me in her mild way. I didn't know Lang well but she'd always impressed she as unflappable, used to life's hazards and calm in the face of them.

Lang was on the stocky side, had a good face, pleasant rather than conventionally beautiful, tended to wear loose, flowing clothing and was that evening, a long skirt, chiffon or something, and similar top in which her breasts sort of flopped, I couldn't help noticing. I liked her and saw that sharing a train ride, making conversation for an hour rather than keeping company with my own thoughts would not be so bad- on the contrary. And I was glad to keep Lang from the hands of a bad guy.

That wasn't a dream, but it may have led to the other one. And in the morning I woke up shaking, breathing hard, thinking immediately of Akemi, what might have prevented her from coming home, what the hell had happened. Yeah, the possibility of foul play was there, is there.  

--

Distract myself with other thoughts, time in her country, where sake is the drink of choice (no, I've never tasted slivovitz).

We were in bed (Akemi was really into sex on that trip, keeping up with me and then some, "all wet all the time") and said, "Maybe staying here really is a good idea." We'd been talking about whether to return to the U. S. or live in Japan. She now said she wanted to or at least could entertain the idea of being there with a foreigner. But I wasn't feeling it. The life felt kind of empty to me because I wasn't part of the culture. I looked at the light coming through the window onto the dark laminate (fake hardwood) floorboards from the bed some twelve inches away, near enough to reach out my hand and feel every dust speck on that glossy surface, of which there were few, and wanted to go home.

But I didn't tell Akemi then. After all, it was I who'd been lobbying for us to stay in Japan, a proposal she'd initially resisted. When push came to shove, I found I wasn't up for it. Which was embarrassing and just wrong. You don't jerk someone around that way.  

And it wasn't as if Tokyo wasn't a lot of fun. We'd been going places. Akemi introduced me to friends and her workplace (designing). We'd been fucking and sucking at every chance, on breaks between activities in that busy vacation, semester I'd taken off from work with an option to not return, find a job in Japan. I was welcomed but felt somehow distant from things and people there except Akemi. Because I was a foreigner.  

A message had come from the visa office. They wanted to talk to me about the request I'd submitted to extend mine. I was to arrange an appointment between the eighth and the nineteenth of the month. And the Japanese bureaucracy doesn't mess around. Those dates weren't flexible.

"We'll be traveling then," I said. Our trip was all planned, destination Hiroshima. Not near. I would have to come back for a day. And I'd make the journey alone, no easy feat for me. The Japanese railroad system is fantastic but nothing if not complex, a language in itself.  

Akemi nodded, her lips pressed together, resolute, unfazed by the order we hadn't been expecting. She's a problem solver rather than a complainer like me, and she addressed this one without hesitation. While I groaned about the inconvenience of it (also unfairness, in my view), she opened her Google Maps or whatever to look at train schedules. Determined, serious but cheerful. She is a person who faces challenges directly, doesn't shy away from reality.

I wanted to ignore it, just stay in bed and fuck again.  

I could understand why she might have second thoughts about aligning her fate with mine, even as she lay on top of me, her ass juddering in my hands.  

But she has and now isn't in my hands but those of Immigration Customs Enforcement. And she hasn't committed a crime, even overstayed her visa! I'm the one in the wrong for inviting her here!