Midnight and the Meaning of Love (87 page)

Right before sunset we stood on the pier facing the towering lighthouse, but more fascinated by the trail of pinks and oranges that the sun was painting as it prepared to set. We both had handmade fishing rods. The fishes acted in my favor and got hooked on my line and not hers. Chiasa cheered for me. The sound of her voice pierced our silence and drove the fishes away. It wasn’t a problem. We’d share my medium-sized catch.

“I can eat it raw or fry it up nice how you New Yorkers like it,” she said, squatting down and looking up toward me, her eyes sparkling and her smile so pure that her soul was shining.

After our prayer we lit the lanterns. She cooked the fish after I cleaned them up nice. She wore shorts so short she would never wear them any place again, except on a nearly deserted island in the woods in the presence of only her husband.

She crushed a dry chili pepper, added chopped onions and garlic, salt, and a splash of vinegar and made me some hot sauce. The strong scent drifted on the night breeze. She coughed.

“We Japanese don’t need this sauce, but you Africans do!” She joked.

“Yeah, us Africans do!” I told her.

She set everything out nicely. We ate on a short wooden table. Her meal tasted super-fresh and was more delicious to me because she made it, because we were outdoors, because we were alone, because the fire of the lantern was blazing, and because my feelings for her were growing and spreading.

In the bungalow with two buckets of water and her sponge, we washed each other’s bodies. Afterward she pulled a small bottle of olive oil out of her duffel. I watched.

She saw me watching and said “You’ll see.” She began dripping it onto my chest and rubbing it onto my shoulders and spreading it over my arms. I lay back and she oiled my stomach and legs and feet. The soles of my feet feeling her feminine finger sent a sensation throughout my body. She lay on me and began sliding her body back and forth.

“You want some more?” I asked her.

“Oil is expensive. I’m trying to get some oil for me off you,” she said coyly. I sat up. We were facing one another now.

“Come here,” I told her. I began spreading the oil on her incredible pretty shoulders and arms. I spread the oil over her breasts and her lips parted and began breathing seductively. I squeezed each breast with a slight roughness and she pulled in even closer to me. Still facing her, I was now moving the oil over her back and down to her buttocks. Aroused, she raised her hips and grabbed my joint and pushed it inside her and began to move her hips around. It was a soothing and sensual grind in a silent place, other than the sounds of nature and of our own moaning. She had me moaning! She really got me. I was completely open.

I liked the way she kept kissing me all over even after she had cum, and shaken, and settled. We were hugged up, our naked bodies facing one another and pressed together. Her slim arms were wrapped around my neck as though she never wanted to let go.

“Do you want to know when I fell in love with you?” Chiasa asked me. I didn’t speak. I was too caught up in the feeling. So she continued …

“My eyes were closed. I was on the plane and you were standing over me. I could feel your eyes moving over my skin. I fell in love with that feeling, of you looking me over as I pretended to sleep. I was listening to the sound of your voice. Anytime anyone asked you a question, you would turn the question around on them and ask about me instead. I liked that feeling.” She paused. Then she pulled away a bit and said:

“Then ‘
you know who
’ asked you for something and you said, ‘Every thing I have, I’m planning to keep.’ ”

“That was it for me. I think that is the greatest thing a man can say and really do with a woman—for him to really plan to keep her for a lifetime and love her well. No divorce, or abuse or any of that, just love.”

“So when you came to my hostel,
Shinjuku Uchi
, and sat down on my bed, you already loved me?” I checked her. “Well, no. I didn’t acknowledge it then,” she said. She was quite clever.

“When did you acknowledge it?” I followed up.

“When I was riding my horse at full speed. I used to think that is the greatest feeling in the world. But I was riding and my tears were
spilling all over and blurring my vision. I missed you so much, I realized nothing would ever feel good anymore if you didn’t come for me.”

“Sometimes when it comes to women, a man needs a push. You came to Korea. That was the push,” I confided.

“I waited for you to invite me. When you didn’t, my father invited me, to cheer me up. What if daddy hadn’t flown me over? What if I didn’t come?” she asked.

“You came,” I said. I kissed her lips softly. We were tonguing and touching all over again. I know she wanted me to say something strong and deep and true to her. I would, when I was ready, and could speak it out loud naturally. For now, I was just loving her and she was loving me back.

At sunrise we were up and cleaned and in prayer. We hadn’t over-slept or missed
suhoor,
our breakfast meal.

After the noon sun reached it’s hottest point and then declined some, we climbed mountains together. It seemed that nature had become a huge part of our love naturally. I didn’t want to think about Brooklyn or cement or buildings or guns when I was with Chiasa. It was so easy to push those thoughts away. She was always surrounded in the most natural beautiful scenery and I was there with her. She even made her weapons from nature.

When we reached the top of the mountain, she sat down and placed her pretty palms against the rocks. “Hmm they’re hot. I wonder how that would feel?,” she said curiously. Then she turned her head to the sky. I was watching her. It was impossible but it seemed as though I could see the sun browning her golden face right at that exact moment. Her eyes were closed and she was so silent for a while.

“What are you thinking?” I asked her.

“I was thinking that if anyone ever tried to harm Ryoshi, I will sever his head from his neck with my katana, my longest, sharpest blade.”

Her eyes were still closed and her words were spoken without humor. They were swirling in my mind and stirring in my chest.

“It’s my job to protect you, Chiasa.” I told her solemly.

Staring at the sky I could see only her pretty profile. “We will protect each other and Chiasa Hiyoku Brown will never betray you in love, in life, or in war.” She said the heaviest words with the lightest tongue and softest sound.

* * *

We prayed together and broke our fast for the day with water and sweet tropical fruits that made her lips pucker.

In the back yard between two lanterns, I washed her hair with some shampoo that smelled like strawberries.

Later we washed our clothes outdoors behind the bungalow in a huge round bucket filled with water. We did it Korean style. We washed our clothes with our feet.

Wearing a thin silk dress and no panties, she began hanging our clothes on the clothing line that I ran across our bungalow. I came up on her from behind. I began to move the soft cloth of her short dress and use it to caress her. I moved both hands around front and squeezed her breasts. She pulled her hands down from the clothing line gracefully like the ballerina she is. She turned to me and pressed her body against mine. “Ryoshi, how come we can’t stop fucking?” she asked me softly. We both smiled.

“Because we don’t want to,” I told her.

“Oh my God,” she was whispering. We were on the floor now, beneath the dripping wet clothing. I held her long leg over her head and pushed in her.

“Oh my God.”

Late night in our bungalow, I could feel in her emotion and in her body that this was our third and last night together on “our island.” It was a warm night, without the familiar relief of a night breeze. I was working out. She was reading. She looked up from her book. “It’s a powerful thing, this love. It can make your whole world shift. How will I go back to Japan?,” she asked suddenly. It shot a shock through my body even though I already knew that she was scheduled to begin flight school next week. I didn’t tell her straight out that I wanted her to come to New York with me, that she is my wife now, and belonged at my side with me. I knew that was the only right way, but even when I repeated it to myself it sounded unreasonable because of all of the loose ends she had left behind without knowing that she would see me in Seoul and that I would step up, be honest, and bold, and true enough to make her my wife.

Now I felt panic. I felt so close to her. I was not worried even one bit about her loyalty to me. I felt certain she would never allow any
other man to go in her. I was sure. Still, I couldn’t “break up,” as she once called it. I couldn’t have her on one side of the world and me on the other because I love her and had loved her from the moment I first saw her and loved her every second afterward, and loved her even more right now, this second.

“Ryoshi,” was all she said. I was sitting on the floor thinking deeply after pulling up out of a sit up. She had come behind me and was now seated there, her lips against the back of my neck. Her legs were opened. My body was seated between them. She pressed her breasts against my back. She linked her fingers together on my stomach, holding me from behind. She would kiss my neck, wait some seconds, and kiss my neck again.

I turned to face her. Throwing my legs over hers.

The inside of Chiasa’s mouth was warm and soft and clean and fresh. Her kisses had somehow become as passionate as her pussy. The feeling of love and motion and the pull of her tongue, her sucking and breathing, and the sincerity of her intent blew my mind and moved my soul. The intensity frightened me.

As I began sucking her neck and moved my kisses across her beautiful collarbone, she said, “suck them for me.” Her left hand was holding her left nipple between her pretty fingers. She pulled her dress up, I pulled it over her head, and tossed it. I began sucking each nipple, softly at first, then pulling more. She began to moan. Her words, “suck them for me” repeated in my mind rising up the heat in me so strong.

I flipped her over and kissed the back of her neck moving my kisses down over her spine. The back of her body was cut and curved so crazy, her butt round, and raised up just enough. I entered her pussy from behind. Rubbing up against her clitoris from the opposite side made her feel more good. I could feel her pussy walls throbbing rapidly, wildly. I rode her this way smoothly. Then I wanted more to see her pretty face, the expression in her eyes. I pulled out and gently flipped her over. As soon as her back hit the floor she spread her legs some to let me know she was waiting. I slid my tongue into her mouth and my joint rushed back in her pushing deep and hard and repeatedly.

Me and my ballerina danced like that until tears streamed down from her eyes. Her tears moved me. “Comrade,” was all I said. Her
pussy walls contracted musically, like percussion. As she came, I spilled more sperm in her than stars in the sky and my body collapsed on top of her.

Speaking from my soul I said to her out loud so she could hear it and know it for sure.

“Chiasa, I love you. I love you more than I love myself.” I said it. I meant it.

“Don’t go. Stay with me. Let’s stay together.”

I was feeling something stronger than I had ever felt. It was something divine, stronger, and more influential than sex. It was something beautiful, perfect, and extremely dangerous.

I ticketed Akemi and Chiasa together and sat myself separated from them by a few rows and aisles, purposely. I knew I couldn’t shift continents without shifting my posture, getting my mind right, and restoring my instincts and edge. What was necessary in Asia was different from what surviving the United States of America required. The USA, New York, in particular, Brooklyn specifically was much more stressful. My reactions would have to be as precise and sharp as they had been when I originally flew out from JFK. My eyes had to be more carefully focused to each detail, not for the sake of art, but for the sake of staying alive.