女々しい―Effeminate

To say the least, the next day at work was not pleasant. The eight innings I played last night, including 3 shutout innings thrown by whatshername left me with a DEFCON 1 hangover and a permanent scar on my conscious. Like all severe hangover days the sky was a shady blur of grey, and I could not look into my computer screen for longer than three minutes without becoming nauseous, I vomited my breakfast, my lunch and heaved my viscous, hateful bile at half past two in the afternoon. That’s when she emailed me.

東山祥子
今日大丈夫かな？　二日酔い？　女の子を部屋に誘うときは男は酔っ払ったらだめですよ。
お元気で。
Shouko Touyama
Are you okay today? Hungover? When a man invites a girl back to his room, he shouldn’t be drunker than she is.
Take care

I’d remembered getting her number. I didn’t know she had mine. I checked my outbox, no messages to her address. Maybe it means something…good? Don’t know. I sat down in the stall and went over the three sentences again. It was so painfully embarrassing, I almost cried. I wanted to throw my phone and this time, break it for good. And then, I could not resist the counter-impulse to read, and read again. Something in the core of my superego wanted me to feel punishment. To revel in the foul I’d committed. To live there- -forever. Yet something far below that wanted to see how low it was that I could go. To dig below rock’s-bottom. To problematize?- -To confound. To love the rot that I am. Human beings are cursed with stellar aspirations that only the historians are able to realize of their idols. If there is to be any reality at all, it exists only inches above the slimy gutters we built for ourselves in our concrete paradises. I knew she was nothing but slutty trouble, and that I should just forget her but some monster in the pit of id reached forth and compelled me to reply.

Miss Touyama…are you the girl from BarR? I’m sorry about yesterday I don’t usually do things like that. See, I just broke up with my girlfriend and
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No that sounds like I’m lying. How do I tell the truth without making it sound like a lie? I’m usually pretty good at making the opposite work. “Untranslatable nuance”…goddamnit.

I am so so sorry about last night. I was a wreck, I don’t usually get that drunk. I’m kind of weak with alcohol. Are you all right? I didn’t do anything too awful did I?

That’s good: Truth, lie, lie, question I already know the answer too. Send. I got up, looked at myself in the mirror. The color was returning to my face. I was beginning to look alive again. I returned to my desk and started today’s work.

Shouko Touyama
It’s all right. It was pretty funny. You should be careful though. Girls are delicate, and they don’t like drunks. Next time make sure she’s more drunk than you are. Goodbye.

If I was really sorry for what happened. I would simply restate my remorse and then never speak to her again. Delete her number, or maybe keep it as a reminder of what a jackass I can be, and move on with my life. I wasn’t though. I didn’t want to make an apology, I wanted to redress our first meeting. - -More than less, to continue flirting with her, see where that went.

Thanks for the advice, I’ll keep it in mind. If you have any spare time, maybe I’ll take it you up on that drink you offered and you can teach me more.

Send. That last part’s a total lie, or at least I think so. She never actually offered to buy me a drink to return the one I bought her, but by planting that thought in her head, it’s likely to become a memory of hers. The last clause is designed to complement her and simultaneously humble me but still preserve the arrogant humor that Bar-skanks seem to fall for. Unless their Kelly McGillises. …The f**k am I saying? She’s never going to respond to that. You’re an idiot Ted Smith. And a sleaze you should hate yourself.

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The work bell came, but I only stepped out to get a quick bite and resumed my work. I stayed till seven to try and make up for the time lost to the toilet and left for home in the red blaze of the sunset, longing for the sweaty refuge of my bedsheets so my little hell called “today” could be over. My sleep lasted me half an hour before Soon-Mi called. As we made pleasantries the remnants of my hangover and fragments of guilt slid easily back into my head. My phone was low on minutes. I suggested we switch to the web-phone. She complied.

The instant I saw her face in the monitor I burst into tears. She couldn’t get half way through a basic greeting before I was sobbing and confessing all my self-loathing, slimy sin to her and begging her absolution. ‘I need to stop drinking. I can’t control myself. I need help.’ Uttering another self-imperative between every sob and sniffle.

She was- -at a loss. When I was done all I heard was a sigh. The same sigh she let out every time I said something idiotic. She expressed that she didn’t know what to do with me. That it sounded to her like I was just making excuses. That I said one thing and I was doing another. She was very calm. This only made me cry more. I asked her if I could come see her tonight, and failing that, if she thought there was any chance of us getting back together. She said, that at this point, she really didn’t see how. I asked her if I quit drinking and got help- -and she cut me off there. And it’s probably a good thing too because if you start begging any self-respecting woman, you’re not going to get the result you want.

She changed the subject and asked me instead how I was feeling- -other than hating myself and being hungover. As in, how did I feel about her. That was difficult, if not impossible to answer. The fact that I am still trying to write about this 11 months after it happened should give you somewhat of an idea. If only my writer’s block were only as complicated as she was… She wanted to set things straight, she wanted it done tonight. She was firm, but she allowed me the necessary time for my waffling. I felt my only recourse at that minute was story-telling. - -Not that I intended for a second to lie my way out of this. I was still convinced at this point that my habit of telling-stories was equivalent to making excuses and was exactly what got me into this series of messes I was in right now. If I could avoid excusing, euphemizing and retell the story of how I met her and what made her so great for me, that hearing it would be therapeutic for both of us, and that I could make up my answer more easily.

We went back to the beginning. She held my hand through it every step of the way, even though I could tell all she wanted was an answer to her simple question. Our fateful first meeting, her bizarre energy, my obsession with her nominal crisis, my obsession with her music, my obsession with her problematic ethnicity, my obsession with her image, the trouble we went through when I landed, the renaissance of my love for her. I lauded her, expounded her virtues, extolled her in pliant grief. She said she thought I might’ve just made all that sh*t up. It was probably all in my head. I was just idealizing her. Her faced seemed to indicate a despair that I ever even knew her at all.

Yet she persisted for an answer.

How did I feel about her?

I told her that every day I swung back and forth to varying extremes. Sometimes I knew that I loved her, and that other times she made me so mad, and I had trouble communicating my anger with her because when it came out of my mouth I thought I sounded selfish and undeserving, so I mostly just kept it up inside me somewhere.

「女々しい」She said.
‘- -What does that mean?’ I asked.
‘It means you’re like a girl.’
‘Hold on a second.’ I looked it up in the dictionary. “Effeminate”. God damnit.
‘Is that how you deal with your problems? You just fulminate over the things that get you upset and then cool off on your own? Is that why you write that stupid blog of yours? Did it ever occur to you to talk to me about it when you’re mad at me for something?’
‘I- -‘ That last one pissed me off especially. It silenced all the thoughts I had brewing in response, specifically because it’s something I had told Soon-Mi to do instead of flipping out at me in public. I made some specious excuses.
‘It’s true. You’re a woman…Pathetic.’
There- -see, that’s why I feel like I can’t talk to you about things like this because every time I make a complaint or an off-color suggestion you make me feel stupid. Because you’re mean to me… Holy f**k she’s right. I am a woman. I’m a gay black woman trapped inside a small white man’s body who thinks she’s Asian (see picture). Well that solves it. Funny thing…you think I’m not learning, when actually, I can catechismatically list something new I learn about myself with every failed episode with a woman. Try me sometime.

What does he want?

At this point. He does not know. No Vulcan mind-meld could remove an answer from him. Though he does have a premonition.

Shall we go back then?

How far? I already answered most of these.

Who was the one who taught him love?

Alice ****.

And what else did she teach him?

Loneliness. Confusion. One of the meanings of “Maladroit”. That music has the power of love inside of it. Not to wait, or to hesitate to tell somebody you love them. And finally, Heartbreak.

Who was the next one?

The one known as “Broom Closet Girl”.

And why was she called that?

So named for spacious repository of household sanitary items including (but certainly not limited to) brooms, mops, dusters, electronically generated vacuums, solvents, linens, detergents, bandages, antiseptics, hair-care products, absorbent paper of various sizes and textures, and napkins of the sanitary and unsanitary varieties wherein Ted Smith first sequestered her with a preposterous proposal, leading eventually to their seldom mentioned relationship.

And what was learned from her?

That it takes merely the will (and the will alone) to lean in and kiss a girl. That good things can happen to me. That good things do indeed come to an end. That there are things I could come to regret for taking the road less travelled. That divergent paths sometimes intersect again in strange and amazing ways. That old wounds reopened can hurt worse than new ones. That the blade that cuts our wounds most lasting is forged of the same steel as friendship and the fires of love.

And what was learned from Yuki Saitoh?

Many of the same lessons as with BCG.

What lessons of human capability did she have in her?

That I can be good enough for those big-breasted, dress-wearing, hair-dye-and-makeup types that I always wanted. That those types can be too good for me. That triple-headers are difficult. That I can make women cry, and not for want of my presence. That I can find human suffering amusing in more than a mere statistical or voyeuristic sense. That I too am capable of using and discarding someone; that I can be [and am] the man we all hate from her stories. That a 20 year old boy has no capacity for discerning what he wants.

Any prior statements validated?

Context is everything, my mouth gets always gets me in trouble, girls with daddy issues keep coming back for more, I have a firmer understanding of the word “commitment” than twenty-something girl, I am the master illusionist, I am a slave to my impulses.

Any prior statements disproven?

Stupid girls are not worth your while, nothing worth doing is easy, those who think more are smarter, I have a more advanced concept of Love than a twenty-something girl, I am not the type of person to be hung-up on past girlfriends and let it affect my future relationships.

You call that progress?

You want me to say “I haven’t learned anything”. You want me to come to the profound realization that I have foolishly travelled in a circle without knowing it and then restate the order of events so I can make something worthwhile of my struggle. You want me to conquer my folly. You want me to build a history. You want me to admit that history is a series of epiphanic moments, that I can trace the lessons learned in a straight line from start to finish, slightly inclined as to point towards a vague futurestate of near-perfection. I’m here to tell you history doesn’t work that way. History- -real history (if you permit me usage of the word “real”) is not lateral. It is vertical. You dig. You do not stack, or line up. You accrete. Lessons are learned through repetition of trite, often singularly insignificant episodes. School works the same way. So does the novel. Why should relationships be any different? The learning is accumulated. It is active. This―all 114 entries of it(and more to come!)―is not progress in any sense. But your notion of progress is flawed. Making an account of things that happened some months ago between a few idiots is as relevant as things any archeologically dig for things that happened between idiots that died thousands of years before the present idiots were born. It is a part of the history of the place you are. The point is not to know all, to conclude- -but to follow the trope, to keep gaining, to get lower, closer to the birthplace of buried metaphor

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The aphorism?

It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

And what of Soon-Mi Kim?

What about her?

She’s waiting for you answer.

Oh yeah, back to the narrative present.

Does he want her?

Yes.

Does he need her?

At this moment, more than ever.

Will he starve without her?

Yes.

And does he love her?
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And does he love her??


We had spoken for over two and a half hours that evening, and with her calm, sad (or perhaps only tired) eyes, black in the dim resolution of my internet-phone window, she asked me a second and a third time for an answer. I had explored the depths of my soul in every way I'd known how to no yield. Failing that, I attacked the problem from her angle. I went over her words, her conduct; looked long and hard into her eyes, though about the many moods I'd seen those eyes in before. Perhaps there was an answer she wanted? Perhaps she was the one stalling, making me make the difficult decision. Perhaps her grace was just a facade. Inside she was like me- -perhaps worse?
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Nothing.
I could feel the blood pounding in the veins of my red ears, and my face was hot. My heart seemed to sink and surge upwards between the polar refuge of ‘freedom’ and ‘loveinrelationship’. Now I could not, for minutes on end, look at her patient eyes in the moniter. And everywhere, the ceiling, the floor, the dark of my narrow hallway was hot, and thick with the pros on cons of my two blasted alternatives. I knew no choice which I would not immediately regret and I knew no way out of this dilemma. She expressed that had already given me enough information . It was time for me to choose.

I reached an answer.
‘I’m probably going to call you back and change my answer tomorrow morning.’ She snorted. ‘But…
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Please be my friend.’ I blurted.
‘…I understand.’ She said. In a sad, dry tone.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘...Don’t be.’
‘...Good night.’
‘Good night.’

I hung up
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I awoke, my phone was buzzing. The noisy dialogue of choices came back to my head. Expecting (or perhaps hoping) Soon-Mi to be calling me asking for a reversal, I noticed it was an email. The name on the screen. 東山祥子 - -The bar skank.

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Part of trip: The Summer of Lame

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