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One angry man's resolution to change his life. |
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AN APOLOGY I experienced a revelation. I will change my life. I will shine, as my wife told me to. I will have my revenge. |
| Two bits of positive news: the company the runs the wedding services just offered m a few more Sunday gigs, with a possibility of more in the future if I can manage it. I'll have to use my paid holidays (and possibly unpaid), but I should be able to. Also, the Thursday night gigs teaching ESL, which went away because the company I was working at was absorbed by another company, are coming back, and they might need me for Monday nights, as well. That would be a bit of trouble, given I drive the kid to sports club on Monday, but we'll see. We'll see. Have applied to a dozen writing gigs, a part-time position teaching at a university in Idaho (ESL), and will apply to another position at a university here in Japan. Must keep trying. Must figure out what to do next. |
| This still reduces us to past observation, and obliges us to compare the instances of the violation of truth in the testimony of men, with those of the violation of the laws of nature by miracles, in order to judge which of them is most likely and probable. Which said, and reasoned, does not obviate the chance, verified by observation foremost, by second-hand testimony less so, by first-hand attestation least of all, that said man, ignored by his spouses for upwards of six years, did not, in point of fact, fuck every woman who crossed his path--or even one. The likelihood, however improbable and against all past observations corroborated by no concurring testimony, that he remained faithful, though laughably minute, cannot be discounted as null, as said spouse seems to have accounted this unfortunate husband's desire for her specifically or his innate sex drive. |
| Well, three weeks in the Sates went by too fast, but at the same time we were exhausted with running around and doing everything we could to enjoy ourselves. It was a wonderful trip. Everyone--including the wife--had a great time. My son, especially, just had a ball. He referred to it as "paradise." The wife even had fun, and managed to become a little kinder, and even a little intimate with me. So much so, that by the time she left (two weeks earlier than us), she wrote an email saying, "I love you." Now, this threw me, and I wasn't sure how to respond, so I said nothing about it. But when she wrote it again, I assured her that I loved her, that I always had, but then reminded her that I would have loved to have heard something like this in person, and sooner. When we returned to Japan, she was friendly, but tired from the long drive. One day passed, and then another, without so much as a kind word, though, or an expression of her being happy I was home. I told her this in a message, and she said she was happy--in a message, not face to face. This was bothering me. And then, on day three of being back, she just started criticizing me for everything I did or didn't do on the trip, and complaining how tired she was, and how busy her life was, and complaining about how my family, and I seemingly, were trying to exclude her even though everyone acted friendly and welcoming to her. She can't trust anyone. Next day, it got worse and worse. I've shut down. I had come back hoping to repair the marriage, to get back something of what we'd had before, to end my loneliness and try to make her happy again. It's not going to happen. She has said nothing nice to me in the five days since our return. All of my family in the States wants my son and I to live there--they'd even like her to live there as well. She talks about our future together--but completely ignores the fact, which I have often told he, that I am miserable and lonely. Seems the plan must go forward. |
| Tomorrow, we leave for a three week vacation to visit family in the U.S. Wife will stay for about six days, and then it is just son and I. Many things will be decided after this. I can't keep living like this, but I will have my revenge first. Meiku is playing a strange and dangerous game, coming over and being friendly with wife while at the same time meeting with me in secret. She says she likes the danger--and I am not one to dissuade her. I am enjoying this, too, in a way, but she plays the game too much and all hell will break loose before I am ready for it. My experiment at the park is going strange. You would be surprised how many people will walk up to a stranger in the dark, one wearing a skull mask, holding a sign which reads "Free Hugs are Freeing," perhaps not understanding the sign or the message, but giving/taking a hug anyway. Mostly, it's drunk young men, but sometimes it is old men, and even young women out for a giggle. No one knows who I am--a few have tried to peek behind the mask; one guy even tried to take it off, but I was too fast and walked away before things got weird. When I come back, when the weather is cooler, I will continue. There is something so liberating about this. And so far, the police seem to have taken no interest. Son is really looking forward to vacation. We need to relax. We need time away from all this. He has no idea. |
| A couple of quick notes: 1) I will be traveling to the U.S. from the end of August to the middle of September, three weeks of visiting family and teaching the kid English while having as much fun and relaxing as possible. 2) Meiku has neither accepted my advances, nor has she really rejected them. She has, in fact, taken the opportunity to invite herself over to our place more often, and to, apparently, make her relationship with my wife closer than it ever was before while, at the same time, making me squirm in my own living room as she and wife laugh and chat together over drinks, sometimes stealing looks at me. This is fucking insane. |
| "What did I do to deserve this?" I've heard that self-pitying refrain pop up in my brain a few times these past few weeks as things at home have gotten worse and worse. Wife is distancing herself more, and saying nasty things. I am sure she feels I am doing the same--but that is delusional. I, at least, have been offering to help, asking how's she's been, doing everything I can to help, even complimenting her. None of that has happened to me, though I have received several insults and complaints. Whee! "What did I do to deserve this?" Nothing. I chose this. I chose this. I chose this. But that doesn't make it okay for her to treat me this way. There is no good reason to treat someone this way. And that doesn't stop that little voice from popping up and asking the pointless question. But it isn't pointless, is it? It is so human. We want to think there is a reason, an origin, a beginning to our troubles, that it couldn't just be random, by chance, bad luck. We want to rationalize it, and thereby make it bearable, whatever injustice we believe ourselves to be the victims of. No. What makes it bearable, in the end, is knowing we chose it, that we are responsible for it--and for walking away from it. Meiku and I have met twice since we kissed. Furtive. Nervous. Exciting. Leaves me smiling (her and me). Priesting: Like being Mickey Mouse. Just smile and mutter the words: no one is really listening. Just the motions are important for stirring the emotions and opening the pocket books. Done three. A nice 45,000 yen in my secret account. Should things go bad, that will be there--and enough to have a couple of beers this weekend while family is out of town. My only problem is I am finding these women in their wedding dresses rather fetching, and it is no good for the priest to be popping a woody in front of the duly gathered. Meanwhile: some yahoo I was out drinking with the other night got arrested for molesting a 17 year-old girl at the train station late at night. Fucking idiot: handsome, young, foreign, has a wife and one baby, and another baby on the way. Fucking idiot. |
| Not sure I can do this anymore. Not sure I can give up doing this. Last night, she tried to blame me for mold growing on her makeup case. The reasoning being that I had brought my suitcase in from outside, and she had smelled mold on it. I took it back outside. That was a couple days ago. Last night, she found mold on the shelves--several weeks' worth by the look of it. When I finally got her to see reason, I asked her to apologize. She couldn't. I've given up. I don't know why I keep trying. Why the hell do I try to be friendly to this person? Why do I try to help them? I even cleaned off the shelves today, just to help her and be nice. I feel like I am going to explode. But, then, inexplicably, I feel light and smilely. It's not because of Meiku--Meiku is acting a bit strange, distant. I feel like I've passed beyond despair and am now floating in this strange world where nothing worse can possibly happen to me. Maybe that is the case, the reality of my situation, and I've just started realizing it. An incredibly freeing feeling. So, I have an idea: I will wear a skull mask. I will go to the park at the center of town at night. I will carry a sign: "free hugs are freeing." I will see what happens, hug those who want them, and never speak, and never reveal who I am. I will do this late at night when I take my walks--which the wife has finally become accustomed to me doing. The moss garden I planted died. Depressing me. |
| Dinner with Meiku last night. We went to "Charie's," the closest thing this town has to an upscale cocktail bar. She admitted this was the first time she(d been there on a "date" in 15 years--made me feel pretty damn proud of my choice, a feeling compounded by the excellent food and the long, lingering talk we had after our meal. Very comfortable, with lots of light flirtation, even though we caught each other's eyes darting occasionally to the door. We were both worried about someone we knew walking in--it is a fairly popular place. She talked a lot about her job (nurse), her family (mother, father, younger sister married and living in the U.S.), and the difficulties of being an older, single woman in Japan--essentially, most men are not interested in women her age, and those that are are usually a bit strange. Years of being a conversation teacher taught me how to listen and to ask just the right questions at just the right time. We were holding hands before we decided to get the check (my treat, against her wishes) and head to a bar called "Leon." At least, it was called that the last time either of us had been there two years before. The name had changed, but the bar had not. Attached to a second-floor Italian restaurant, "Wall" (formerly "Leon") could only be accessed through an unassuming, chest-high, Alice in Wonderland reminiscent door halfway down the entrance hallway to the restaurant. The inside is all dark woods, leathers, and crystal--very classy, very comfortable, and never busy. It's a rather secret location, with an even more surprising attachment: set in the bookshelf of one wall is a small statue of a swan. Pulling on the swan swings the bookshelf inward, revealing an even smaller bar inside, overlooking the street. Here, Meiku and I sat for two more hours, talking, flirting, and, yes, kissing. The bartender only came in when we called, leaving us in privacy the rest of the time. We kissed--it was like breathing after nearly drowning, like honey after crossing a dessert, like music lifting you up from a long, deep depression. We kissed, pressing our lips together, hungering for more, sensing the same hunger in each other but knowing enough--fearing enough--to pull back after several minutes, just to look into each others eyes, smile, even giggle awkwardly. Call for the bartender, entwined fingers separating just before he entered. And Meiku was mature enough to sense, and to see, undoubtedly, the stiffness in my movements pulsing outward from inside my slacks, and that I was reluctant to stand and go to the toilet. The question almost came up of where to go next--but I headed it off before it got awkward. I told her the truth: I had to get home, so I could get some sleep and help my son get up in time for his last day of school before summer vacation. She almost looked relieved--or perhaps that was of my imagining. I was floating--but only to be shot down the next day. With several hours the next afternoon free, and with the wife home, and myself feeling good, I decided to do something nice for my wife. We have a small yard--nothing more than a sand-and-gravel patch about two-by-four meters off the back of our condo. Ever since we moved in, she'd complained that the yard would get damp and weedy, that moss and mold would grow in it and make it look terrible. Okay, I say "ever since," but it was probably just a few times. And she was right: moss started growing in it several months ago. So, just a couple days ago, I decided to get rid of the moss. Twenty minutes work with a small spatula had most of it removed. Midway through, wife stuff her head out the door and demanded to know what I was doing. I told her. All hell broke loose. She had decided she wanted to keep the moss. Moss was precious to Japanese people. Why hadn't I consulted with her before doing this? She was right. I tried to explain that she had complained about it before, but that didn't change the fact that I hadn't asked her before doing it--but, hey, it was my place, too, right? Wrong. "You don't like this place, so you can't change anything. You ask me first. You are so stupid. You are ruining my life!!" On and on in that vein for several hours. Wouldn't speak to me for the next day--fine. Finally told me to fix it however I wanted. So I did. I selected a strip of the yard next to the porch and spent two hours carefully placing bits of moss I had removed (but not thrown away), into a solid pattern, like a carpet, bordered by small rocks, with differing textures running through. Despite my depression and anger at her for what she had said about me ruining her life (and several claims, which I won't repeat her, because they are tedious and, above all, untrue, that I'd done such things before that also ruined her life), I felt good upon completion because, well, this little patch of moss garden looked good. Well, she saw it today, two days after I finished it. "You did it again! You did something without asking me! I hate it! It looks terrible!" Yeah. Goddamn I want to go. But I will not. I will cling with gritted teeth. Just a few months more at least. To shine. To shine. |
| "You stayed only to have a place to live and to have someone to cook for you. You don't love me." Yes, I let you quit working at our worst time financially so you could, as you said, "pursue your dream," return to college, and finish your advanced degree--only to find, once your finished, it was a lie, it wasn't your dream, but just a way to make more money. Yes, I started working seven days a week to support that "dream." Yes, I did everything I could at home, including most of the housework and cooking, helping you with your homework, driving you here and there whenever you needed, and letting you take off for days at a time--just because I wanted a place to live and someone to cook for me. Yes, I agreed to your request to not bother you for love or signs of affection while you were studying. And again while you were looking for work. And again when you started work. And again when you decided we needed to move into a condominium--just because I wanted a place to live and someone to cook for me. Yes, I did all of those special preparations for our tenth anniversary--reserving the restaurant where we got married, ordering the perfect ten red roses plus the pink one for our next year together, and writing ten things I was thankful to you for--even though you demanded a divorce the night before (for the umpteenth time, only to pretend you'd never said that the next morning). Yes, I didn't walk out when you forgot our ninth anniversary. Nor did I walk out when for the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth anniversaries you couldn't summon up enough affection to even hug me without me asking for it. Didn't walk out when you interpreted "let's do nothing special for our twelfth anniversary" as to do nothing at all--just because I wanted a place to live and someone to cook for me. Yes, I have reached the depths of loneliness and depression numerous times in the last seven years, hiding it from everyone so I could keep working and helping you and our son at home--only to be insulted by you for not making enough money or whatever else entered your mind when you lost your temper. Yes, I put up with your insults about how I am a bad husband, a bad father, the son of bad parents, an idiot, stupid, retarded, not a real man. Yes, I held your hand, listened to your problems, and your fear and worries, and comforted you when you came crying to me in the lonely, crushing night. Yes, I stayed and complimented you uncountable times, for your intelligence, for your beauty, for your determination, for your strength, and for your dedication to your child. Yes, I helped you buy a new condominium, giving up paying my debts in America and with them most chances to return to my home country without a huge barrier standing in my way, hoping beyond reason you would take that, finally, as a sign of my dedication and love for you and our family, to follow your decisions no matter my own reservations, to support your dreams though you have done nothing but belittle my own. All because I wanted a place to live and someone to cook for me? Yes, you are fucking nuts. But so it seems am I. Perhaps that is the source of this smile. They've said yes. I will start working as a priest on Saturdays, once I've gotten the schedule change approval from work. What hours I will lose that day will be more than made up for with these weddings. I'm going to learn the Latin for "You've no idea what's standing in front of you," and add it to the ceremonies as my own personal touch. No one will notice. Only me. It will give me a little giggle. Mieku has agreed to have dinner with me in a couple weeks while the family is away for a tournament. All is proceeding nicely. But I am tired. Sick. Last week, I couldn't go to the gym because of a typhoon, and for the last two days I've had a cold. |
| "Too strong," she said. "It was too strong." "Maybe, but it was the truth." She shook her head. The table between us masked our legs entangled from view. She gave a weak smile. "You shouldn't say things like that." I shrugged, speech lost in the electric rush as the skin of her ankle touched mine. Several conversations flit around us, none of them nesting Neither of us hear. Neither of us are here; journeying, perhaps, through private musings, worries, fantasies, disaster scenarios. One pops up now. "What if she finds out?" "What if she finds out?" I want to tell her that I decided long ago that the only good reason to ever cheat in a marriage was if you found someone so worth it that even if you were caught and lost you family, even if it meant hurting the ones you loved by betraying them, you would still be okay because of what you have gained. In a word: perfection. Almost impossible, I know. But, Meiku, you are perfect, and I can't believe you are sitting here with me, making me feel like a king, despite being so secretly paranoid about my wife walking in the door behind me, or of someone she knows sitting nearby taking a picture on their cellphone. God, I want to say these things to you Meiku. I want you to know how I feel. No, I don't love you. It's far too soon for that. But I want you, want to be close to you, want you to be close to me, to trust me. But how can you? |
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