8. The Wooing of Harumi
Guy has become fixated on Harumi. He wonders:What will it be like, the caresses of a woman who could be my grandmother?
He has enough experience to realize Harumi is not the usual 90-year-old. She has had the advantage of Professor Edwardes giving her a Physician's Notebooks 30 years before when she was 60 so she had been practicing all the secrets to keep youthful.
And it is working! thinks Guy who had spoken to Eddie about it. Not that she was a girl. She looks around 60 and her thinness prevents wrinkles but also de-emphasizes sex curvatures that in old age become fat bulges. Beyond this Harumi is sexy in another, deeper way.
Thinking about Harumi in bed at night, Guy experiences a hardness that must be relieved by action.
Harumi, for her part, finds herself attracted to the idea of this younger man admiring her. So she invites him home on a Sunday.
The instruction is a simple email on Friday, "You are invited to have high tea with me at my apartment in Setagaya." A small map that will guide him from the local station is included in the email. Guy immediately Googles "High Tea" and discovers it is at the start of an evening's meal, usually 5 PM.
At 4:30 PM he gets off a subway and follows the steps up into high-class Setagaya and following the map, 10 minutes later, finds the slim 7-story apartment building on a quiet, fashionable side street. He notes "The Cynthia" on the building's entrance and the fancy heavy outside double doors one of which swings open to his pull on the long shiny metal handle. He enters into a vestibule with glass door preventing further penetration. He notes the buttons and presses 3A. A TV camera records his face and seconds later the see-through glass door silently slides aside and he enters the small lobby, noting on his right a set of mailboxes. To his left the way forward heads toward a stairwell and to his right around a corner he finds an elevator waiting, enters and presses 3, and as the door opens there is Harumi, looking like a latter day Dietrich in green slacks that emphasize her slim buttocks and a red happi coat wrapped about her front. Her hair is underneath a white turban.
She looks sensaysh, Guy thinks. "Hello," he says as she leads him to her open door.
"Welcome to my small flat. Please leave your shoes in vestibule here," she advises. He steps up into a short inner hallway and notes on his immediate right a very small room with toilet seat and cover and, continuing, next on his right a bathroom with a tub that one has to sit in with legs bent at knees and in the overhead a shower part. On his left in the hall in forward order is an enclosed small washing machine; then a kitchenette counter with electric cooking range, water bowl & faucets; and then a white refrigerator following which he enters the single room where Harumi sleeps, eats, and works.
A small round, glass-top table with 2 chairs is at center and on the table is a small heated tea-maker like a miniature Russian samovar.
"Please sit," she indicates his seat and takes the other facing him. He notes at the near-end, to his left, a sliding-door closet now closed, where, he guesses, she stows her futon mattress and sheets. A work desk with small laptop computer is against the wall behind him and to his right the far wall has white shoji sliding panels now hiding the plate window to the outside.
Harumi pours 2 cups of steamy, fragrant tea, extending her arm over to place one in front of Guy and saying "It is Chinese Oolong, very stimulating." She waits for him to sip, then asks "Do you like?" In answer he tilts the small cup over his lower lip and then hands it to her for a refill.
Conversation starts: "Now, Mr America, tell me why you are pursuing, or is it wooing? this 90-year-old Old Miss." She indicates herself by her right index finger pointing at her flat chest.
"Actually, I'm Canadian."
"You all look alike to me." They both laugh at her cliche joke.
"Suppose I say, You turn me on?"
"I would not believe you."
"OK, to change the subject, I want to hear your opinion of the present U.S. President, Mr Obama."
"Oh, you mean the one they call the 'first Black president' but who is as far from being Black as I am from being an American Indian?"
"Explain yourself."
"No American Negro has a pure white mother; they are all various degrees of what used to be called Mulatto. Mr Obama's case better fits the definition of "African-American" than what is being called "African-Americans" by the ignorant Americans."
"Gotcha!"
"Please, if you wish to succeed with me, do not use slangy language."
"Oh, of course, I comprehend you. Say on."
"Mr Obama is a pure opportunist using the uneducated Negros' desires to have a "first Black president" in order to get himself rich and famous, which means powerful. But it is an unimportant subject. I am more interested in us doing that game of cards you introduced me to at the International House."
"Oh, you mean the Strip Poker?"
"Yes." Harumi gets up and goes to her desk and takes a pack of playing cards out of the top drawer. "I just bought these. Please start the deal."
He shuffles the cards several times and then deals alternately 1 card each, 5 to her and 5 to himself, face down on the table. "Look at your cards," he says, "but do not allow me to see them."
He looks at his cards and she at hers.
"From last week you know poker hands so discard what you think you won't need and I'll do the same with my hand."
She discards 3 cards and he 2. Then he deals her 3 replacement cards and himself 2. Both peek at the newly dealt cards.
Guy says, "The rules of the game are that each dealing will cause the loser to take off one piece of clothing - any piece he or she chooses. Also there is the strategy of the bluff. It means if one player either thinks he or she has an unbeatable hand or tries to bluff the other player into believing that, the player will bid up a 2nd piece of clothing and not only is it additional but the winner is allowed to choose it and remove it from the loser."
Harumi says nothing, getting ready to turn over her 5 cards and show she has three 8's but Guy stops her with a wave of hand. "I bid you up. I think I have an unbeatable hand and if I am correct I want to take off that top and see your bare chest or if you have a brassiere, which I doubt.
Harumi frowns. She is naive to the game and considers her three 8's not a very strong hand. She turns over her cards saying,"I guess you win this hand?" and unwinds her white turban from her head revealing a Joan of Arc pot-shaped haircut and jet black hair.
Guy chuckles and turns over his cards, saying "Bluff! All I really have is 2 deuces." She sees a 2 of spades and 2 of clubs. She frowns heavily and he learns that Harumi does not like to lose. But she also has integrity: she abides by rules, standing up and saying with hands outstretched "Your choice. Take my shirt off."
Guy suddenly feels embarrassed. He stutters "Y, you don't have to. We can stop now; it's enough." She shakes her head and unbuttons her black silk shirt at the wrists first and then frontal, pulls it off, folds it neatly and hands it to him. "Your trophy, sir." They stand looking at each other. Guy is surprised. Instead of wrinkled, mole-marked old flesh hanging off the bones even in a thin old person, Harumi's skin is white with a yellow tinge of her race, her breasts are flat and muscular, her nipples are flat and brown.
"Have you seen enough?" she asks unemotionally and sits. He does too.
The game continues.
Ten minutes later, she removes her slacks and he sees no underpants. She is not hairy even for a Japanese woman. Her body is sleek, the skin rather white, and buttocks have only a small droop in the rear.
Guy has won every deal. His opponent's clothes are neatly piled beside his chair. He says, "You are the most beautiful body I have ever seen."
"What! I thought you American men are enamored of big busts? I've seen someone called Kim Kardashian. Isn't she preferable to me with my flats and my very old age that cannot satisfy your procreative urge?"
"That monstrous piece of siliconed flab! Only the lonely, like the uneducated American Negroes think that attractive." Guy laughs. As for me, "I saw you and at once I thought, That's for me".
"Oh you allusionist!" Harumi exclaims. Then, going to her closet sliding door, she asks "Where do we go from here?"
Guy has decided this is a case where a powerful woman has made a strong decision and the best thing for him to do is go with her flow. He stands and starts stripping while she pulls aside the sliding panel and starts removing the futon mat. "Can you please push the table to the side? I am not a 21st century American and that includes your Canada. I believe in romance before sex. I do not wish to be treated as a sexual object; I want to be loved romantically before. I want to be held gently and whispered to."
She turns her face to his and almost breathes the words like a poem.
"Do you get me?"
Guy is stopped in his tracks. Sex has always been an almost mechanical decision. Now he is being told by a woman that she wants to be loved first.
In the silence they lie together.
End of Chapter 8
9. What a Really Intelligent, Perfect-Health Preserved Woman Wants from Sexual Intercourse at Age 90
An hour later, Guy and Harumi, shoulders touching, she on his left. He is thinking, Wow! This is something I never experienced before.
And she is thinking Now he knows he's got to love me with desperation before any kisses.
They sleep a while and she awakens him several times for more.
In the morning, Guy cooks breakfast for 2 in the small kitchenette. He learns that Harumi is in process of starving self to help her eventual old age death. She explains, "When it comes, I want to die quickly, or as I heard an American say once 'Stop on a dime!' So I am preparing my body by starving down. I do not want vitamin or mineral deficiencies. so ..." She swallows a multivitamin, multi-mineral pill and chugs it down with 750-ml bottled water. "My Physician's Notebooks tells me that high water intake is most important to keep vigor in old age."
"You are real juicy inside, Babe!"
"Please, stop your slang, young fellow."
"I will if you stop your 'young fellow'.
"Touché."
They are seated across the glass-top table which she has replaced into the center of the room after folding up the futon parts and stowing them in the sliding doors closet.
"Now, I should like to offer you co-habitation with me."
"When can I move in?"
"I said 'Now!' I never use a superfluous word."
"Well, you certainly are bossy, but I accept your offer."
Guy travels very light. He came to Japan almost solely with the clothes on his back and a credit card that has a "Plus" on its reverse, meaning unlimited cash from the machine.
The question is: What will Guy do in Tokyo?
Harumi solves his problem. Through her extensive upper level connections and with the help of Kimura the emeritus chief editor of the Japan Times, he gets an appointment as lecturer in psychology at Sophia University the Jesuit-founded, English language university in the Yotsuya Section near central Tokyo.
10. The Psychology Course
In Japan, the new school year, equivalent to the USA's September's starts at the beginning of April and by good coincidence, Guy's arrival in Tokyo and connection with Harumi happened in March 2015. And by further coincidence, Sophia University had an immediate need for an instructor in Psychology. So Guy found himself with a good job in his specialty and was raring to go come 1 April, a Wednesday, when he meets the opening class in the lecture room.
Guy is assigned to lead seminars on psychology as part of Neuroscience. The seminar room is the first floor of a pre World War Two 4-story creme-color faded brick building facing Yotsuya Park on the Sophia University campus. Sophia had been an anomalous university in Japan where all universities are part of the Japanese education system, even if private, and thus require fluency in Japanese in which most courses are held and also entry through the Japanese system of testing high school students. Sophia was part of the worldwide Jesuit schools, founded by Roman Catholic priests of the order but especially in modern times having a secular approach to education and being truly catholic in its essential meaning. Thus, religion is not a main focus and subjects like Marxism, evolution, etc. which religion often abhors are dealt with respectfully. Even atheists like Guy could be hired without inquiring into his lack of religious belief. By 2015, Sophia University is sought after by a mix of the population: Japanese youth who plan to live or work abroad and want to integrate into the worldwide foreign university system and foreign dwellers in Japan - expatriates and children of workers from abroad. Even a few US soldiers stationed in Tokyo audit the courses.
On the Wednesday, 1 April, at 10 AM, Guy sits at the head of a long oval walnut-color table with, he counts, 6 students who have signed for this seminar series. He has already studied the list but this is his first viewing in the flesh. Slowing time, his gaze and thought fixes on each student starting from his left clockwise about the table.
1. A light-brown-skin Negro girl with straight black hair in a light green dress that shows a slight overweight Guy has come to expect with Americans. He knows from her record she is age 18 and her name Cynthia, the daughter of a U.S. Embassy official; she is an honors high school graduate from Saint Mary's the Roman Catholic high school in Tokyo.
2. Next, on Cynthia's left is a blonde white girl that Guy knows to be Russian, and her name Marina, daughter of a USSR Embassy official and age 16, having skipped 2 grades in high school because of her brilliance. She is also a bit overweight, as most Russians are.
3. Next to her and completing the table side to his left is a U.S. Army Private Joe who is auditing the course as part of his Army-supplied education toward a college degree. He is a blonde, blue eyed, western farmer family type, surprisingly slim for an American, with a thin darker color mustache he keeps well groomed.
To Guy's right side at the table are as follows:
1. A postgraduate Japanese 30-year-old woman, Yoko, who is auditing the course from the Chuo University as an elective, in preparation for a year fellowship in experimental psychology at Stanford University in California.
2. Ken (shortening of his Japanese "Kenichi") a 19-year-old, 2nd year student who is interested in learning how his mind works. He is slim, dark, straight hair and dressed like a hippie with old Levi pants that have many holes.
3. "Little fatso" is Guy's glance name for short, 5 by 5 rounded Junko, a rich girl from a banking family who could not get high enough scores on the high school tests for a Japanese University so is going to Sophia to round out her marriage-ability chances. She is taking the course on orders from her mother because it may mean encountering a potential husband.
Looking at his watch, 10 AM, and Guy calls the seminar to order with an opening blurb. 'Hi folks, I am your seminar leader, Guy. We are keeping it informal but it is still hierarchical, which needs a leader. However, it does not mean you just dully sit and listen to my Moses from the Mount. We need interruption, questions, disagreement with assertions."
OK. Now to start: Neuroscience? What is it?
Soldier Joe interrupts, "I never heard of it. I thought this was a psychology course."
"Good! I like that," Guy says. "You should know that our bodies are composed of systems that contain organs and the tissue of the organs is made up of cells. Well, the most important system from the standpoint of one's consciousness, which is what one's life is all about, is the Nervous System. Its main part is the Central nervous System, or CNS, which is Brain and attached Spinal Cord and, what I call the addenda, or attachment, is the Peripheral Nervous System, or PNS, what most persons call the nerves of the body.'
"The study of the nervous system started with the philosophers before there was science speculating about the nature of consciousness. Cogito ergo est. And so on and so forth," he continues semi-jokingly but the students do not get the joke and slavishly scribble his every word in notebooks.
So goes the seminar.
To read next chapter, click 18.(11-13) A Trip
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