“No, not at all, but there may be a kind of a… a reaction on your skin,” Yoshi was all grins showing that he was up to something. In the end a gate was put on the bridge to the island so their chocolate labs Hestia and Nyx wouldn’t get near the Hentai Sago Palm.
When working with or near a Sago getting a prick is guaranteed and sure enough, Dennis got a prick. It’s a shame he never really pressed Yoshi what “Hentai” means, he did ask once, and Yoshi said “Oh, it kind of means eechi,” (it’s pronounced eh-chi), Dennis thought he said “itchy” and left it at that. Eechi is how the Japanese pronounce the letter H, which stands for Hentai. Yoshi was being playful; at best he was being circular. It’s like asking what “Confused” means and you get the answer, “Disoriented.” Ok, what does “Disoriented” mean? And the answer given is “It means “Confused.”
In Japanese culture eechi and hentai are two variations of the same theme, and that theme is porn. You can safely consider eechi anime (cartoons) and manga (comic books) to be the equivalent of an R rating for nudity, and most of the time it’s playful nudity. Meanwhile Hentai is a good old fashion X rating for graphic sex. And while Japanese women are mostly petite with sweet teacup shaped breasts maybe hitting a B cup, in eechi and hentai the women depicted look like Dolly Parton in zero G. It’s also said that no matter how successful the eechi anime or manga artist is, they probably still live at home with mom and dad. However, the word Hentai, no matter in what context it’s used, meant one thing: Pervert.
One afternoon Dennis got stabbed pretty good by the Hentai Sago, those little sword shaped leaves are stiff, long, and very pointy. The puncture hurt, but it didn’t bleed, the ache went away quickly, and Dennis went back to work pulling weeds, the bane of gardeners. Eventually Linda May came out with a tall cool glass of sweet tea and found Dennis working on the island. When she got over there, she found Dennis working completely in the nude! “Dennis Jefferson Delaney! What on God’s green earth has gotten into you! You don’t have the common sense the good lord gave a dead mule!”
“What are you carrying on about woman?”
“YOU! You’re out here nekkid as the day you were born! An’ you’re acting like it’s no big thing!”
“Naked? What are you talking about…” then he looked down at himself, “Holeeee Cow!” He didn’t notice that at some point he had taken off all his clothes and folded them up neatly and placed them on his old Radio Flyer wagon that he uses to haul around his gardening tools.
Linda May stormed off in a huff yelling, “You can get your own sweet tea! I never in all my days…” and she headed off back to the house.
Dennis wracked his brain trying to remember when he took his clothes off, he did remember them seeming to rub a lot. That was so weird! Then he tried to put his clothes back on, but they didn’t feel right, his skin was too sensitive. The clothes didn’t hurt, they just rubbed too much. Since he was naked anyhow, he decided to take a dip in the pond, after working in the hot sun it felt cool and refreshing and kind of sexy, like the time he went skinny dipping in the Shenandoah river with Bobbie Jane McGillicuddy one hot August night.
The next day he went to visit the boys at Darnell’s Five and Dime. He went to Yoshi who was saying goodbye to his friends. “Where are you going Yoshi?” asked Dennis.
Yoshi shrugged, “Moving to Indiana, our daughter is having a baby and her husband just got a remote assignment to Korea. Chima and I are going back to help with the baby coming and all.”
“I understand,” said Dennis, but in truth he really didn’t. He and Linda May weren’t blessed with kids, so they spent their 20’s and 30’s watching their friends raise their kids, spending their free time alone with each other. “Hey, Yoshi, an odd thing happened the other day…”
Yoshi didn’t let him get the rest of the sentence out, “Did you get poked by that Hentai Sago?”
“Yes, I did, why?”
Yoshi grinned, “Just make sure that Linda May doesn’t get poked by that thing, you never know what might happen!” and with that Yoshi headed north to his daughter and future grandchildren.
Life is a funny thing, considered Dennis. Thirty years ago, young Private Delaney was island hopping in the south pacific, following the orders of Doug McArthur, protecting Australia from invasion, and looking to gun down Yoshi’s countrymen in the jungles of New Guinea. Now his best friend is Japanese, and oddly, while Dennis was fighting the Japanese in the pacific, Yoshi was also in the US Army, a member of the 8th Air Force’s intelligence unit analyzing targets for our bombers in Germany. Dennis sighed; Sergeant Delaney is certainly going to miss Captain Nakamura.
A couple of weeks later, Dennis was on their island setting flagstone for a walkway he was installing when Linda May came out to inspect his work. It was a beautiful South Georgia/North Florida day, not too hot, not too humid, the songbirds were singing their little heads off. Dennis decided to see what Yoshi had implied, and he plucked a single sword off the Hentai Sago and tucked it between two fingers and positioned himself so Linda May would end up close to the Sago. “How is it going dear?” she asked.
Dennis turned and grabbed her leg sticking her with the Sago sword between his fingers and cried out, “Careful darling! You could have gotten stuck by that thing.”
“I think I did,” said Linda May, “look, see? That’s where it got me.”
Dennis couldn’t really see a mark, but he said, “Maybe you should go put some Bactine on that.” He knew that Linda May was a believer in the near mystical healing powers of Bactine spray.
“I think I will, sure you won’t miss me?”
“If I do, I’ll come hunt you down,” he said and went back to work. About 30 minutes later he looked over toward the house and even though it was a good distance away, he could swear that Linda May was sunning herself in the nude! He pulled a sword off the Hentai Sago and stuck himself before he started walking back to the house. He crossed over the bridge and got a better view of the house and sure enough, he could see that she had spread out a towel on the deck and was sunning herself face down like she was at a nude beach, a place she would never go.
By the time Dennis got to the house, he was carrying his clothes and wearing only his sneakers and his straw hat. Sure enough, there she was, naked as the day she was born. It wasn’t anything weird or kinky, they were married, on their own sun deck and they just weren’t wearing any clothes, nothing wrong with that. They were safe from being seen, the neighbors would have to have Telescopic X-Ray Vision to see through the trees between their houses, but still, that was his girl laying there which made it even more sexy. He knew every inch of Linda May’s body and had for over thirty years, and he loved every moment of it. But he’s never seen her naked outdoors but one thing he knows for sure, she doesn’t appreciate the burning rays of the South Georgia sun.