I started collecting local stories and would test them on the boys as we drove around in the van. If they liked a story or found it surprising, I would use it in the show. I was a full-fledged director now, and I’d promised Ueno I would do my best to satisfy the “unique sensibilities” of the Japanese television audience; since I wasn’t Japanese, I used the boys as my barometer. Traveling across America, they were astonished at how deeply violence is embedded in our culture, how it has become the culture, what’s left of local color. We are a grisly nation.
In Green River, Wyoming, a bartender told us a story about a rancher who was traveling into town, when he spotted a campfire. As it was growing late, he rode closer, glad of the company and the promise of a good meal. Sitting there were two scruffy-looking men, stirring a large pot full of delicious-smelling stew. The rancher asked if he could have some, and reluctantly they agreed. He sat down and ate a bowl, then, finding it quite tasty, he asked what it was. “Pigeon stew,” they answered somewhat curtly. They were not very sociable, so rather than linger, he rode on into Green River, where he stopped at the bar for a drink. The bar was crowded. Seated to one side, he overheard some townspeople discussing a doctor back East who was looking to purchase clean human skulls. On the other side, a couple of cowhands were talking about the mysterious disappearance of a local rancher named Lloyd Pigeon.
“Sooo da ne ... ,” said Suzuki, considering. “Cannibalism is interesting to Americans.”
“We Japanese eat mostly fish,” explained Oh.
Sloan used to love this stuff. He was an entirely modern, urban musician and had never been exposed to the macabre underbelly of small-town America. The crew and I would come back from a day on the sagebrush steppes, clambering about the buttes, scrabbling down riverbeds, jumping barbed wire, hopping tracks, searching for the perfect shot of the lowering skies, and I’d find Sloan lounging in a local bar like the one in Green River, buying drinks for laid-off trona miners and railroad men. It was great, like having a researcher in the field. He’d cull stories, then feed them to me later in bed.
Bed with Sloan. He was a masterful storyteller, but that was only a small part of it. First I have to explain. I had hit my adult height by the time I was fourteen and spent most of my adolescence freakishly taller than my classmates. My first sexual experiences felt like geographical surveys; I was a continent, a landmass beset by small, brave pioneers. Like Gulliver. It was amusing, in a distant sort of way. Later I learned about pleasure, but procuring it always felt masturbatory, like my partner was a tool, something I could hold in my hands and manipulate.
Few men could make me feel diminutive. Sex became sleek and narcissistic, but I never experienced that queasy, uneasy paradox of boldness and fear. I never felt submissive and certainly I never lost control.
Until Sloan. He overwhelmed me. Is it regressive of me to talk this way? The word “masterful” comes to mind, but he could be that. In the motel room in Nebraska, with the neon spitting red and blue and turning the air electric, Sloan took charge. In life, I am the most competent person I know. It can get in the way. But Sloan was such a master of sex that my competence in life was irrelevant. He relieved me of choice. And self-consciousness.
That was the charm of it. I was a director now, in control of my crews and my shoots. Yet in hotels and motor lodges across the country, in seedy rooms or from time to time in penthouse suites, the moment the door closed behind us, the parameters of my reality would shift—violently, like the list of a ship, or, on a plane, the way your stomach pitches during a problematic descent through turbulence—that is how he would tip me.
In the quiet corridor on the way to the room, he walked behind me and his focus made me cower. The hairs on my neck would prickle and rise, and there was this moment of fear.... I’d seen nature documentaries about the sexual behavior of large felines in the wild. I’ve made nature documentaries about the sexual behavior of large felines in the wild. I’d just never felt like one before.
I just assumed that, like any dominant male, he had a harem. Okay. There was this one thing Sloan did that was antithetical to nature, at least the documented animal kind: He always wore not one but two condoms, the heavy-duty kind that seemed to be made out of synthesized latex and Kevlar, which he would secure in place before anything resembling a penetration took place. Not a nudge, not a bump or a brushing up, was allowed to happen unprotected. I assumed that his precautions reflected the peculiar exigencies of his profession: Musicians of course would have multiple partners. Still, while I was a firm believer in safe sex, and while I was grateful to him for initiating such durable care, there was something disturbingly neurotic about that second condom.
Lying in bed in Fly, Oregon, I asked him about it. He was stunned at my assumptions regarding his promiscuity. On the contrary, he protested, he was protecting himself from me. Standard precaution. And thus we arrived at a juncture of sorts.
“Takagi, where I grew up, people are careless. All the guys I went to high school with got their girlfriends pregnant and are stuck working shitty factory jobs in Akron, trying to pay child support....”
“I’m not your girlfriend, Sloan. And I don’t get pregnant.”
“And then with AIDS and all ... I’m a musician; a lot of my friends have died. And you’re in the film business, for Christ’s sake. For all I know, you’ve got a Commissioner in every port.”
“Sloan, that’s the most insane ... How could I? Getting you in and out of these backwater towns is hard enough.”
“Yes, but once you figure out the logistics for one Commissioner, it’s simple to bring in a second or third....”
“I don’t have the time—”
“Or you could just hire locally....”
“Never mind the energy—”
“Or you could get a travel model, something compact and portable, like your flight attendant? I always thought that he ...”
“That’s disgusting. Anyway, it was never my intention to be monogamous with you, believe me. I never even intended to like you, but that’s just the way it’s turned out.”
From the parking lot outside the motel window, the air brakes of an enormous semi squealed and decompressed. The motel was in a strip mall by the interstate.
“Is that comment significant?” Sloan asked.
The truckdriver checked into the unit next to ours. He slammed the door and went straight into the bathroom. I listened to him urinate.
“I don’t know, Sloan ... Do you want it to be? And if it is, can we go to the next level of intimacy—you know, use just one condom?”
“We could get tested.”
“I have. Repeatedly. Well, twice since you ... I’m fine.”
The truckdriver flushed. I listened to him reenter the bedroom and turn on the television, flipping through the channels. Looking for porn.
Sloan rolled over onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow. “Me too.”
The driver turned off the television and turned on the radio. Surprisingly, the sounds of Mahler filtered through the hollow Sheetrock. I looked over at Sloan.
“It’s Mahler’s Sixth,” he said, “his most completely personal symphony, according to his wife. Listen, it’s his old orchestra too—the Boston Philharmonic—but it’s Tilson Thomas conducting.” He was watching me. “So, that means we’re safe,” he concluded tentatively. “At least from the disease standpoint, right? I haven’t slept with anyone else since you, either.”
“So ... ?” I didn’t know what he was getting at. He had this wicked grin on his face as he rolled on top of me.
“Takagi, do you mind if I ... I mean, could we ... Here, just for a moment ... I won’t come inside you, I promise.”
“Sloan, what are you ... ?”
He had lowered himself, half laughing, and was whispering relentlessly in my ear. “It’s perfect, Jane, please.... Come on, it’s such a personal moment....”
“Sloan, you’re crazy.”
“Jane, I trust you completel
y.”
“Yeah, well, I trust you too....”
Which was a lie. I mean, I trusted him about testing negative because I knew him to be scrupulous in areas of empirical truths and health care. But emotionally he was an enigma. I didn’t understand him, so how could I trust him?
And maybe that’s why I went along with it. I was curious. Suddenly I needed to know things: Why did he want this? What did it mean? I needed to know if, unprotected, he would be different, if he would lose his control, if he would suddenly fall in love with me, and if he did, would I fall in love with him? And just as suddenly, the need for answers turned physical, and I found myself craving the heightened contact of total nakedness and the thrill of the truth or dare. Suddenly it seemed so personal.
We fucked without a condom, which sounds banal, but fueled by the urgency of all those ifs, it was as if the sex opened up and swallowed us. And I let him come inside me because I knew I was safe, and when it was over and the shuddering had slowed but the trembling was still raw and sporadic, Sloan raised his damp head from my sweaty breast and thanked me politely. In the desultory conversation that followed, I discovered that in the two decades he’d spent developing his sexual connoisseurship, he had never once fucked without a condom. He’d been curious—and so, of course, had I. But afterward, curiosity sated, I was only terribly aware of the sounds that filled the room: the distant whine of cars on the interstate; the soft exhalations of Sloan sleeping; the muted movements of the truckdriver next door, padding back and forth across the stained carpet, popping the flip top of a can of Budweiser, opening and closing drawers, all the while listening to Mahler’s most completely personal symphony on NPR, which was a reminder to me that maybe I didn’t know so much about musicians or truckdrivers after all.
AKIKO
A light, reassuring tone was what the editor wanted, but Akiko found this difficult to achieve. It was, after all, an article on complications.
Toxemia of Pregnancy: This is a serious condition, but happily these days, because of our modern and superior prenatal care in Japan, the condition can be detected early and treated. So it is very important to be on the lookout for these symptoms: swelling or bloating of your fingers, face, and legs, caused by water retention; raised blood pressure; excessive weight gain; blurry vision; severe headaches; fits, followed by unconsciousness or coma. If you experience any of these symptoms, don’t be ashamed, but tell your husband and your doctor immediately.
Writing this article was not an exercise in the type of positive thinking that John was so adamant about. It was not putting her in a good frame of mind for pregnancy at all.
It was no good, Akiko thought. She just didn’t enjoy writing magazine pieces like this. It wasn’t that she didn’t like writing. She used to enjoy her old job at the manga publishing house, filling in gory details in the serial stories for the illustrators to put pictures to. She had hoped to have a strip of her own one day. But that was before her marriage.
Akiko’s marriage to John was proposed by John’s boss at the advertising agency to Akiko’s boss at the manga house. They were business associates and drinking companions, and one night, at a small, intimate members’ club in Shinjuku, John’s boss had confided to his friend that he had a promising young employee who needed a wife, and he asked for help. Akiko’s boss had thought for a minute, accepted another watery scotch from the hostess, and shook his head. He couldn’t think of anyone appropriate at his company, he said regretfully. The hostess nudged him with her blunt elbow and chided him. How untruthful and ungenerous you are, she said. A handsome man like you must have many pretty young ladies working under you, but you are so selfish you want to keep them all to yourself. The two elderly men chuckled, and Akiko’s boss laid a hand on her leg. He slipped his fingers under the edge of her miniskirt. You’ve gained some weight, he said, squeezing her plump thigh, and that’s when he remembered Akiko. The hostess slapped his hand and he withdrew it, then offered his friend a bride.
Akiko wasn’t exactly fat. On the heavy side was how people described her. She was very aware of this, especially on her first date with John. It wasn’t a date, exactly. More like a meeting she’d been required by her boss to attend. He had walked by her desk one day and stopped, as though remembering something, then turned back and stood beside her. He had never done this before, and she was terrified. Her heart was thumping and she didn’t dare to look up.
“Tanaka ... Akiko, isn’t it?”
“Hai,” Akiko whispered.
“Mmm. What are you working on?” he asked.
She mumbled the name of the strip.
“Good, good. How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“About time to marry, don’t you think? Any prospects?”
Akiko’s face turned crimson. “No,” she gasped.
“Good. Good. I have someone in mind for you. A good, solid salaryman, works for my friend’s company. We’ll have tea with them tomorrow. We’ll leave here at three.”
The meeting took place at an elegant tea parlor in the Ginza, decorated all in aqua blue, with huge fish tanks built into the partitions separating the deep cushioned booths and a shimmery ceiling above. John and his boss sat on one side, Akiko and her boss faced them.
Akiko had worn a navy-blue suit because dark colors were slimming. She ordered Earl Grey tea because she’d read it was worldly, but her hands were trembling so hard she couldn’t lift her cup. She sat with her hands clenched in her lap, picking at the edges of her lace handkerchief. She dared look up only once at the heavyset young man with slicked-down hair who was being proposed as her future husband. Bright-tailed fish swam back and forth behind his head and she felt herself mesmerized by their flitting and darting, so she looked back down again quickly. She could feel the men’s eyes fixed upon her. The two bosses tried to keep a conversation going, asking each of them questions. John answered his tersely; she could only nod or shake her head. She knew she was making a bad impression, but her throat had constricted and she could barely swallow. Words were impossible. Have some pastries, John’s boss urged. Have some more tea. But it was no good. She was bloated, she had a terrible headache, and the blood pounded in her brain with such force she felt like she was deeply submerged, far underwater, diving past the fishes for pearl oysters at the bottom of the sea. She was afraid she would lose consciousness before she reached the surface again. She also felt like she needed to pee.
A sudden gush of water generally means that the amniotic bubble where your baby is growing has burst and the fluid is leaking down your leg. If this occurs between the 28th and 36th week, you will have to go immediately to the hospital, where you will be given modern, superior sedatives and drugs to halt premature labor. If it happens after the 36th week, then your doctor will most likely decide to allow the labor to continue, and before you know it, you will be a mother!
In the taxi on the way home from the meeting, Akiko’s boss had reproached her for her silence.
“Why are you so shy?” he asked. “You must make more of an effort or you will never be successful in finding a good husband.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You do want to get married, don’t you?”
She nodded silently.
He sighed. “Oh, well. You never know.”
It was true. You never knew. How could you know if you wanted to get married or not? At the time, when the prospect of a good marriage was offered to her, she’d never even considered the possibility of an alternative desire. She had been simply grateful. But now, after more than three years of marriage, she realized she might have had plenty of desires, but she gave them all up before she even knew what they were.
The following day her boss stopped by her desk again and chuckled.
“Well, we got lucky this time. Ueno liked you after all. He wants to see more of you. He’s going to call you for a date.”
Akiko again felt her throat constrict.
“Now listen. It’s f
ine for a girl to be shy, it’s attractive, even, but a man likes a wife he can talk to. Eventually you are going to have to learn to be more outgoing, understand?”
Akiko nodded. But on that date, and on subsequent ones, it turned out not to matter, because John was able to fill up any conversational spaces with his own words and opinions, and Akiko was grateful to him for that. They would go out to dinner together, but she could never eat much. After that first meeting and long into the marriage, her throat frequently clenched and went into spasms, making it difficult for her to swallow. That’s when she started to lose weight. She managed to train herself to relax enough to get the food down, but in order to do that she had to eat very quickly and think about something else. The problem was that most of the time, the food wouldn’t stay down for long, but the way she figured it, at least it looked like she was eating. She knew she was deceiving John, but she didn’t want him to worry.
Severe abdominal pain accompanied by bleeding can indicate abrupto placenta, or separation of the placenta prematurely from the uterus, but you needn’t worry. In most cases of abrupto placenta the child survives. Only 25% result in termination.
When Akiko stood up from her desk, the severe abdominal pain continued. She limped into the bathroom to get a drink of water. She stared at her face in the mirror above the sink. The scab above her eye had come off, leaving a thin white indentation.
The day she visited the specialist in the Ginza, she had come home expecting the worst. The doctor had threatened to call John at work with his diagnosis. John had been acting strange and the last thing he needed was the news that his wife was sabotaging her own fertility. Akiko attributed his edginess to stress at work and problems with the meat campaign. She had been doing her best to be supportive, to watch the programs and give her opinions for what they were worth, and to cook the meat as best she could. But it wasn’t easy. Most of the recipes were crude, inaccurate, and not at all delicious. She found herself cheating more and more, cribbing from other cookbooks and adding ingredients that the original American wives had never heard of.
My Year of Meats Page 9