Chapter 18

Mitchell worried about the fact that he was older than Akemi, tried to discount it. Once in Japan he was waiting outside the sento (public bath) with others at the inn where he and Akemi were staying with her cousins Aya and Sayaka. He was seated on a ledge, with a towel around his waist, bare above it, and Akemi’s older cousin Sayaka came along- she too would be taking a turn at the bath. At first she didn’t recognize Mitchell and when she did, sat beside him, she said, “You’re so good-looking.” It was an observation not a personal reaction- her assessment was mostly of him as a foreigner rather than a man- but still Mitchell felt good. Maybe he wasn’t so old after all. He found Sayaka attractive in turn, by the way, but of course he would never make a play for Akemi’s cousin. Whatever feelings they might have for each other were between them only. Mitchell couldn’t help wondering what Sayaka would think if she saw his cock, feel about it.

On a bus in New York he saw a guy staring at him, big, black, blubbery guy with a too-intense gaze that did not waver when Mitchell met it. Big wet luminous eyes. Shiny, glowing, sticky-looking skin. Was he threatening, menacing, Mitchell wondered. The direct stare, deliberately intrusive, suggested as much. No, the guy was gay, Mitchell realized. Or maybe threatening, menacing as well as gay.

He’d heard the guy and his friend or relative listening on their phone to a speech by a black politician, a good speech. Mitchell heard in it the double negative, saw that wasn’t a grammatical mistake (as an ESL teacher he noticed) but part of how he and his people spoke, the strength of the language they used. Mitchell also noted that he couldn’t speak that way as a white person. It would ring false. And it occurred to him that if he wanted to create great language like they had, used in their speech and music, he’d have to invent a new form of expression, or someone would- he himself might not have enough time for such a project.

The gay (apparently) heavy black guy came and took the seat that had opened directly behind Mitchell. To be closer to him? Mitchell felt the guy put something on his head. It was a plastic hair clip, the kind like a claw. Green. Doing that had been his purpose in changing seats and having achieved it he returned to the seat he’d occupied before, before several rows in front of Mitchell. Seeing him walk past again confirmed to Mitchell that he was gay. The way he moved- despite the limits imposed by the weight he carried, almost waddling- left little doubt. Something melodic, feminine, even flower-like about it. Mitchell promptly removed the hair clip from his own head and put it on the head of the guy sitting to his right, also black, part of the same group. Mitchell affixed the hard plastic green clip to his kinky hair. He was sleeping and didn’t notice. A guy to their right did, though. Younger, scrawny, he asked Mitchell what he was doing.