9.(18-19) Sex with a Centenarian

Slim Novel 9 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage

18. Night Fishing with Tanaka

  The night fishing with Tanaka is an exciting experience. For one week in the early season, salmon enter the river to spawn and at river mouth the arriving fish stay all night waiting for the sun to signal them to streak up river. The boat follows the coast, reaches the mouth of river at midnight and makes repeated engine-stop runs across the shallow channel with two bright lanterns hanging from sides of bowsprit. Kimi, face down on the bowsprit, 2-pronged spear poised in right hand, searches the lantern-lit water for the silvery glint of a salmon attracted to the light. Now and again she plunges spear and more often than not pulls it back with a fat flipping fish. Tanaka limits catch to 25 and spends rest of night teaching fine points of fishing and spearing.

19. The Other Trick

The days of salmon run are sunset to sun-up boat work. Now, Thursday, in the still dark early AM, and she catches the last salmon of Tanaka’s limit, a large, 10 kilogram, fish and he says: “Well done, Big Daughter. Since we have finished so early, let us celebrate below.”

   Familiar with Tanaka’s ways, she goes below to the living space. She heats water for tea, sets plates for the raw salmon they will share and gets out black, paper-thin seaweed-wrap norimaki, some rice that is already cooked and still warm, a white pickled long radish for slicing and the tart-tasting mustard and soy sauce that Tanaka loves with his raw salmon.

   He joins her at table with knees folded sitting traditionally on shins and insteps of feet. He takes his knife to the fresh salmon, slitting open the belly to remove the guts then expertly beheading and filleting the still quivering fish by deft wedge-shaped removal of the flesh over the long backbone and sharp knife-assisted tearing the two main slabs of flesh off the fish's rib-bone thoracic cage. Then he prepares the slices they eat after dipping in sharp mustard mixed into the soy sauce.

   She makes to pour the potato whiskey and is surprised when he waves his hand No and says: “Big daughter let us rest together for an hour before setting out for home. Please lay the mat."

   She shows nothing to express her sudden awareness of Tanaka’s request she lie beside him alone together and, she guesses, do everything that goes with it on the mat in the dark, under the deck, in the hold of the rocking boat. She knew from Grandma that Tanaka is still interested and capable of sexual relations. But that he might try to do it, now …? 
  She muses, He can’t make me pregnant and no worry of catching disease, and he is almost like my father and I admire him so.
  And she guesses it will not be an unhappy act for her to be a source of transient pleasure for him before his curtain falls. So with no further word she unrolls the mat, lays crisply clean orange sheets with purple blossom design – one for lying on and one to cover their bodies – then places a thick sea-blue comforter on top, folding over the orange sheet at pillow level.

   Tanaka sponge washes his old body using buckets of warmed seawater. When he finishes she dries him off and holds open a clean brown yukata. It is her first time to see his nakedness and she realizes he is not just old, he is truly ancient. And despite Grandma's saying, she wonders, could he still …?  She pulls open the sheets and helps him lie down, noting he has not tied his yukata edges together. He is unusually quiet as he lies on the mat and she covers him and he closes eyes as if asleep but she knows he is not. His frail body makes almost no external ridge under the overlying comforter, only the skeletal head face-up shows his presence as her mat partner.

   She makes her decision quickly. She bends to pull off Grandma’s old black dress and removes boots. In cotton shift only with straps over shoulders and hem to mid calf, she quickly gets inside the sheets and under cover and lies quietly alongside Tanaka. No word is spoken. Tanaka knows what he wants – this young woman lying beside him, his willing helpmeet for a short pleasure at the end of a long life. He is thankful she will do it. It is only right – an act of filial love. 
   Very old people go through the motions of the sex act like doing a long remembered thing slowly. In place of vigor they are slow and most of what they do is love touch. For old men, firmness comes erratically and lasts unpredictably. Tanaka’s head goes down inside under cover and she feels movement of lips then tongue on the flat of her belly and down into her fore-bush.

   Well, Ancient Tanaka, knows where he goes, she muses. She feels surprisingly erotic. Perhaps the rocking boat does it?

   And what Tanaka, lacks in youthful vigor he makes up for in experienced craft. His old tongue is really whipping into shape now and he knows where a young woman wants it to work. In her own arousal she sighs and reaches her hand down to grasp the ancient head and moves it to her pleasure and as her hands move she is surprised to feel Tanaka’s shriveled private part standing up. Tanaka finishes licking her; now he lies back and taps her shoulder in a common in-bed signal to go down. And she does but she learns that the very old man treats that as a brief stimulus to maximal firmness and quickly moves on to penetration. Tanaka is typical of 90+ years in not topping her but instead using hand to indicate she should cover him and work herself on his spit. And she does, to her satisfaction reaching two climaxes before he finally achieves an ancient orgasm. Ancient orgasm? It is another idiosyncrasy of the very old doing sex. Slow to erection and slow to orgasm with almost dry ejaculation and once it is over no repeats for days.

Later, heading the boat homeward and Tanaka's sleeping below, she feels a quiet integrity. She has made Old Tanaka happy in a small way. She knows he will not bother her. She has done good wifely and daughterly service; the rest is for Grandma’s old box.
   To read on, click 9.(20-21) After Ancient Sex - Young Blood