I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like

by Isis, Justin

  Long before cancer finished our mother, Makiko took her place — cooking, cleaning, and eventually taking over the family finances, though still only in her teens. Imagine a studious girl, friendless but not unattractive, if always unadorned. No doubt the girls around her seemed frivolous and conventional. Precocious to a fault, she married at seventeen, to a blandly handsome salaryman — his name is not important — who must have seemed appealing to the serious but naive girl Makiko was. Their marriage lasted twenty years and produced a single child. This girl, Kaho — my niece — joined the Defense Forces, where I believe she is a pilot. I haven’t heard from her in years, but I expect her to live a fully capable life, more or less hating her mother while more or less coming to resemble her.

  My sister’s divorce didn’t come as a surprise. No one knew exactly what was wrong with Makiko’s husband, but everyone sensed some form of inadequacy. Although outwardly impeccable, he gradually became less efficient, less necessary. At work he was passed up for promotion and made no effort to improve his circumstances. At home he distanced himself from his wife and daughter. He lacked Makiko’s drive, and so an irresolvable conflict developed between them — a conflict I think of in terms of hardness and softness. The hardness in Makiko became allergic to the softness of her husband, the contagious softness that had been creeping into her for years. Unsuited to resignation, Makiko waited until Kaho was old enough to take care of herself, then made her intentions clear to her husband.

  I learned all this through hearsay. I was six when my sister met her husband, and I witnessed the deterioration of her marriage from a distance. In our household Makiko had the status of a celebrity, even after she left. News of her accomplishments — Kaho’s birth, her activities with women’s groups — overshadowed anything I could have achieved. No matter how hard I applied myself in school, I was never able to match my sister’s standard, never able to earn any praise from my parents. My castrated nothing of a father must have realized, if only subconsciously, that siring Makiko was the only worthwhile thing he ever accomplished. Did he want to fuck his own daughter? I have to take this into account, since he never paid any attention to my mother.

  Once newly single, Makiko realized the toll taken by two decades of marriage. My sister, perhaps anticipating her future independence, had insisted on retaining a part-time job, even while taking care of the housework and making sure little Kaho was first in all her classes. With what she’d saved she was able to set herself up in an apartment in Saitama, but financially she was worse off than before. Makiko had married in order to attach herself to the adult world, and by the time she realized what that entailed, the adult world had already blunted her strength. Divorced and aging, with little chance of promotion, she needed a new direction.

  You already know how my sister resolved the situation. You've seen her aerobics commercials on television, and I've shown you her website, with its professional photographs and intrusive music. Now they want her to appear in a television drama, playing a version of herself. Next month she will tour Korea, will lecture Korean housewives on how to eat properly, how to shed the fat from their thighs. My plain and practical sister has become a creature of lean, hard angles. The garden inside her is a Zen garden, a series of carefully mapped paths and artfully placed stones. At forty she is, at last, a self-sufficient organism.

  Should I criticize Makiko for putting her career before her family? For not being content as a conventional mother and housewife? No. Her career is more exceptional than her family, notwithstanding my sympathy for Kaho. The truth is, I wish I were Makiko. I have no career and no family, and little chance of either. Self-directed individuals are rare, and more valuable than my sort. My only talent, as you know, is for hopeless love.

  It would be unfair of me to complain, since Makiko's money is what keeps me alive. I tell my father I'm looking for work, but I haven't picked up a paper since the bookstore closed. I take care of my father, or at least I exist beside him, and each month a certain sum appears in the bank. I know how lucky I am to have a sister like Makiko. Still, I always hoped you could save me from her.

  Now I want to remember the first time we met. It was an ordinary night in the Kawamura bookstore, which was by that point already near death. If I had had any business sense, any initiative, I could have made Mr. Kawamura realize there was no market for old books and magazines in the neighborhood. Our location was the problem — if we’d moved to Naka-Meguro in time, there would have been enough interest from young people and the foreign crowd to keep us going. But as it was, the scribbled-up children’s books and moldering periodicals remained untouched no matter how much we marked them down. I came to regard any customers with something close to contempt, and I almost looked forward to Kawamura’s bankruptcy, as if I could pretend it wouldn’t put me out of work too.

  That night I was behind the counter, reading a book — Takamoto’s The Aesthetic of Chogen, I recall — when I heard movement and looked up to see you standing by one of the stacks. When I think of your face at that moment, I feel a strange tenderness. In that pale, chrysalitic face I immediately sensed something remarkable. It was a face calling for decoration — long and angular, with thin lips and wide, lucid eyes, it seemed strangely bereft, naked. You were wearing girls’ jeans and a form-fitting V-neck top: cocoon clothes, a minimalist disguise. The empty space of the bookstore seemed to drown us. You wandered uncertainly to a different stack.

  I asked if you needed anything. You wanted to know if we had any old fashion magazines — Egg, Cawaii, Ranzuki, Ego System, anything from the late ‘90s. We had some, I said. I took you to the back of the store and opened a box. You took out an issue of Egg with Kaoru Watanabe on the cover, and the lost look left your face at once.

  —I love these magazines, you said. The old ones from the ‘90s. I cut out all the pictures and put them up in my room.

  You told me this calmly, but I did not at first believe you. I wondered why a boy your age would know or care about fashions dating from my own teenage years. The truth is, at the time I hated that style — hated it as I hated anything that reminded me of my youth.

  —How much for all of them? you asked.

  I ended up giving you the entire box for free. It wasn’t worth more than a thousand yen, I reasoned, and Kawamura would be too senile to notice it was gone. As you picked up the box I lit a cigarette and contemplated the empty space. I felt like giving our whole inventory away in this fashion.

  I followed you to the exit, where you asked me for a cigarette. We sat on the corner, and as I held out my lighter I studied your face again. You seemed, if not malnourished, at least neglected. There were some faint bruises on your neck, and your clothes were dirty. I wondered if you had been living on the street, but it didn’t seem worth it to ask. You intrigued me, Ayumu, but I had not yet fallen in love with you. At the time it was enough to talk, and so I asked you about the magazines. You answered directly but did not meet my eyes.

  —I wish I was a girl, you said. I wish I could be beautiful like that. I don’t want to be a man.

  A responsible adult, I suppose, would not have continued this conversation. But I have never felt very responsible, and I want to be an adult about as much as you want to be a man.

  —I don’t blame you, I said.

  —I’ve tried dressing up. I get girls’ clothes all the time. But I don’t know what else to do.

  Perhaps you could say these things because you weren’t expecting to see me again. I wondered if you confessed like this often, and perhaps it is only vanity that made me doubt it. But I still don’t believe you had confided in anyone before. If this is an illusion, allow me to keep it.

  —There’s surgery, I said. If you want to go that far.

  —No, I don’t want to get surgery... I just want to be a girl. But I’m too scared to go outside like that... I just do it in my room.

  I opened the box and took out a copy of Blenda.

  —That’s Hitomi, you said, pointing to th
e model on the cover. She used to be in PopTeen too, but then she got married.

  —What about this one?

  —Her? Natsumi Yoshida...

  A fifteen year old boy and a thirty year old man, we sat outside the bookstore discussing the great models of the gyaru era. You felt that girls’ style wasn’t what it used to be, that things had been better before Koakuma Ageha took off and linked it all to hostesses. You wanted to be behind the times in a way that suggested effort: a common teenage strategy, but not one I had expected to find applied to my youth just yet. You made me feel old, Ayumu.

  —You could come back some time, I said. We get old magazines in all the time, and no one else seems to want them.

  You put out your cigarette and pulled the box to your chest. For the first time you looked me in the eye.

  —Okay, I will.

  You said this as plainly as you had said everything else, but I didn’t take you seriously. By the time I closed up the store an hour later I had already dismissed our conversation. It had been memorable, but it wouldn’t lead anywhere: nothing led anywhere. That was what I told myself. So when you entered the store the next day — wearing the same clothes and looking as if you hadn't slept — I was surprised, even afraid. Is it absurd to say that you frightened me? I was frightened because you interested me, and I had not been interested in anything or anyone for years. I was interested, and I did not understand you. I didn’t know why you had come back, why you wanted to talk to me. Now I know the terrible loneliness you must have felt — the loneliness I shared, although I never thought of it as such. But at the time you were a mystery.

  There were no new magazines, but during my lunch break I went with you to a cafe and bought us coffee. I didn’t ask why you weren’t in school, and you didn’t tell me. Instead, we discussed your project — what new magazines you’d found around the city, what new items you’d bought or stolen. It seems difficult to believe, but I still hadn’t asked your name.

  —I got the new Egg, you said. It’s not as good as it was, but it’s still good. I used to have all of the issues from ‘99, but my father threw them out.

  I took the magazine from you and paged through the winter fashions.

  —What would you do if you looked like this? I asked.

  —Nothing. I’d just walk around and everyone would look at me.

  I sipped my coffee and looked at you.

  —Hey, I got this too...

  You opened your school bag and took out a white one-piece with the price tag still attached.

  —Can you wear that? It’s so small.

  —I can wear anything girls can, you said, smiling for the first time that day. I’m on a diet, I don’t eat at school or anything. I’m thinner than all the girls in my class.

  I looked at my watch. My break was almost over. As we parted in front of the store, you said:

  —I’m going tanning in Shibuya later. But I don’t have any money. Can I borrow a thousand yen?

  —If you come and see me tomorrow.

  —Okay.

  I gave you the money, not expecting to see you again — but you came back the next day, and the day after. That fourth day you were in uniform, and there was a fresh bruise on the side of your face, the same color as the dark circles under your eyes. That day you showed me a small circular case containing a sparkling golden fluid.

  —What is it? I asked.

  —Gloss. The brand is Aube.

  You applied some to your eyes, and when you blinked a galaxy of shimmering motes settled across your lashes. I reached over to remove a stray one from your cheek, and my hand came away speckled with gold. I looked again at the bruise on your face. What kind of adventures did you have on the streets at night? I never asked, because it was more fun for me to imagine them. Or did the bruise come from your father? You never told me anything in detail, but it was more than I told you of myself. Is that why I’m writing this? Do I hope that, at last, you will understand me?

  Our lunch meetings continued for two weeks. We went to cafes and restaurants, each time moving further away from the bookstore. I gave you money when you asked, because I had nothing else to spend it on. You always brought something new to show me — usually cheap cosmetics, but sometimes a scarf or bracelet or necklace. Every object, no matter how tawdry or worthless, became an offering placed on the shrine to your future self. During these lunches we gave birth to the person you are now, imagining her in every detail. You wanted to look like Shiho Fujita, or a young Tsubasa Masuwaka: Tsubasa’s face, so perfectly inorganic in its assemblage of foundation and false eyelashes, white eyeliner and plastic contact lenses, embodied the mineral kind of beauty you could attain only after numerous trips to salons and the coffin-shaped tanning bed. You wanted to look like girls who attached reality to themselves and mercifully relieved those around them of their own existence.

  Would you believe that when I was younger I also tried to become a different person? I would dye my hair, buy new clothes and then look at old photos of myself, examining them with affected detachment. I imagine Makiko must have gone through a more rigorous version of this process as she made herself into the thing she is now. But for me the feeling of having shed my past never lasted longer than a day, and I lacked any definite ideal to move towards. My mind, my garden, was as bare as it is now. But while I never had any potential, I am convinced you were born with your present self inside you — it only needed to be excavated. In this world there are some who are born beautiful, and others who become beautiful only after great effort. You, like Makiko, are one of the latter; I, unfortunately, am neither. This is not to say that I am ugly — if only that were the case. Ugliness, you will learn, is only a negative form of beauty, and is often a comfort to those for whom conventional pleasures have grown too familiar. My father, for example, is quite remarkable in his ugliness: with his old, lined face, his dull eyes and patchy tan, I could stare at him all day. But I am perfectly average in everything, which is the only true ugliness.

  It was the end of the second week when you first invited me over: a Saturday. We were sitting in Royal Host sharing a salad — the only thing you would eat — and discussing nail art. After a while the conversation stalled. You have a habit of speaking your thoughts abruptly, and you are not, I am afraid, a great conversationalist. But I had come to appreciate your silences, the times when I could hold your gaze, studying the shape of your nose and the upturned corners of your smile. That smile — always practiced and deliberate, careful never to show your teeth — for me assumed a sphinxlike quality.

  —You should come to my house, you said at last.

  —Won’t someone be home?

  —Not during the day.

  You lived closer to the city than I’d imagined. We rode the train to Asagaya and I followed you up the hill until we came to your doorstep. As we stepped over the threshold, I still expected someone to appear — your parents, or any siblings you hadn’t mentioned. I can’t imagine what I would have done had this happened, but you moved into the living room and turned on the lights, and there was no sound or movement. You showed me into your room, which was not decorated in the way you’d described. I’d expected a rat’s nest of treasures, all clothes and colors and posters; instead it had the genderless austerity of a hotel room. There were no photos, no personal items, just a bed, a mirror and a closet.

  —Where is everything? I asked.

  —In boxes under the bed.

  —Because of your father?

  —Yeah.

  There was another of your silences.

  —Well, show me something, I said.

  You went to the closet and took out a white plastic bag, then stopped and looked at me.

  —Do you want me to wear them?

  —What?

  You opened the bag and took out a dark blonde wig. A sudden gleam passed across its golden strands.

  —My clothes, you said. I could put them on...

  I nodded, but you continued looking at me expectantl
y.

  —Do you want me to leave the room? I asked.

  —Yeah.

  Outside, as I inspected the house (the photographs above the television: your father’s thin grey hair; your mother’s round and distant face), I felt a strange excitement, as if the door to your room was closing on a kind of tomb, a sacrificial chamber, and the person who emerged would be someone else entirely. When I at last heard a gentle knock from within, my excitement reached its height, and my hand trembled as I opened the door.

  You were standing by the window when I came in. I felt a terror at the sight of you. You were nothing like the parody of a girl I had feared; instead you stood transfigured in black leggings and the white one-piece you had shown me earlier. Your makeup was light, expertly applied, your light blue contacts matching your golden hair. There were faint white shadows around your eyes, their lashes outlined in black; but these details faded into the total impression of youthful beauty. You smiled shyly — the smile I have described as sphinxlike, which now seems the only appropriate description of you at that moment.

  —You’ll have to practice your walk, I said. I could think of nothing else to say.

  —I can do that already, you said. That’s easy. I always look at how girls walk.

  You crossed the room and stood before me. I watched your legs, your shoulders, the way you carried your weight. Here again I feared a kind of burlesque, that your movements would be stylized, excessively pronounced, but if anything you seemed more relaxed and less affected than before. Your posture and your walk had changed to match your appearance, had taken on a new lightness.