For readers who are confused by these stories, there is now a post with the title “Bridge.” It explains what this is, gives context and more, not just orientation but a deeper glimpse into the main and supporting characters.
Sorry for the many typos and other proofreading errors.
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Mitchell took a Japanese language course I taught as a volunteer, and after it ended he came to my apartment for me to show him how to make sushi- he’d voiced interest.
We reached our hands across the table to arrange from opposite sides the sashimi and seaweed- it was just a small bar with space underneath- and his hands went to my waist, seemingly inadvertently. I don’t think he intended, planned for that to happen.
There was nori (seaweed), rice, diced cucumber, vinegar and raw fish on a mat laid out between us. We sat across from each other. Our eyes attended the display on the table, bar (white plastic cutting board), the work at hand. But the contact below was unmistakable, soft yet certain and growing more so with each moment that passed. I neither encouraged nor protested, wasn’t sure what I wanted, hadn’t expected this, and he took my lack of response as approval.
Seconds of touch between two people who have never done more together than talked were full of meaning. Time slowed down. Mitchell’s hands felt bigger and bigger and I’m sure the sensation my skin brought them did too. I wore a top and jeans. The loose top reached the waist where his fingers had found a gentle purchase. He was working, tugging at something.
Though I didn’t object, move to pull away, Mitchell advanced in slow stages, unsure if I would welcome more, wanted to move our relationship along, to the physical, acknowledge and act on love feelings for each other. Mitchell wondered if I felt as he did.
He surprised me at a point by removing his hands completely, as if he were thinking: Don’t hurry. I liked the consideration he showed for my feelings. I might be scared. He was bigger than me, after all, a man. We were alone in my apartment. For all I knew he might be a rapist. Sometimes people reveal their true character in a situation like that. For all Mitchell knew, I might have accepted his touch for fear of what he’d do if I rejected him.
Mitchell told me later that in those days he felt that any time we met might be the last, that when he saw me walking away as he did then too (he didn’t spend the night!) I might never turn around and face, approach him again. His insecurity derived partly, and rightfully, from the fact that he was still seeing another woman when he met me, when I taught him Japanese- only tried to really. He gave up studying fast, complaining he didn’t have time and Japanese was too hard. He explained that he should have first started with another European language.
Of course there was a limit to how far we could go if his hard belonged to someone else.
He claimed it didn’t, but they were deeply involved. Otherwise, why would he find it so hard to leave her for me, whom he loved (I believed him when he said he did. His feelings were written all over him. You could see in his eyes and from his physical response. He came so hard with me. When I used my hands, he sprayed all the way up to his chest).
Next chance to talk- after class, the other students leaving us alone- we spoke about that day when the breakthrough happened, his visit to my place to make sushi, work we interrupted midway, conversation suddenly stopping, his hands on my grey dark mesh top. Our first physical experience of each other if you exclude that gained through the sense of sight. That day all five senses came into play, each adding to the other, the collective experience greater than the sum of its parts. Seconds passed in which nothing happened but everything had become possible. Yes, the short time seemed long. Mitchell’s hands stirred in the silence. My inertness seemed welcoming.
Two days had passed and in the hallway outside the classroom, evening with few people around and among them no one who mattered to us, Mitchell seemed to wanted to talk of those events, return to that crucial juncture, not let it slip away and hurtle into the past, be lost forever. But though we talked about the “sushi class” he didn’t raise the subject of the intimacy we achieved then. We went slowly at the beginning and, yes, part of the reason was the second woman in the background. Her presence was like an invisible wall keeping us at a distance.
Mitchell knew it wouldn’t be possible to have both of us. Staying with her would mean giving me up. Yet he delayed taking decisive action. He clearly had deep feelings for Pam (her name) despite his insistence he didn’t love her (which I believed; his sexual desire for her had cooled, in proportion to its strength with me?) Even when we separated (I told you we did in order for us both to think things over) Mitchell kept asking me to come sleep at his place one more time as I planned a trip of unknown duration home to Japan (he was helping me get ready).
I asked why I should share his bed again, given our agreement to stay apart a while. It seemed a strange request, ran against the current we were following. We’d decided together on the time apart (which might last forever), although reluctantly on Mitchell’s part- I was really okay with the idea of continuing my life without him, looking at our brief romance as a shooting star, beautiful night image impossible to capture, sustain. I was ready to see its fleeting nature as part of its glory. Some love affairs aren’t meant to last.
“What would we do?” I asked what he expected from my overnight visit he’d proposed.
“We could make love.” One more time, he seemed to mean, before swearing off each other.
I agreed, but as we walked to his apartment I said I’d changed my mind and wouldn’t stay the night after all.
I could control myself.
He and Pam had been close a while. He hadn’t told me much more than that. Eventually she and I would meet but at the time I knew little about her. She- what they had together- hovered in the background, like a cloud visible even on a sunny day or like a ghost.
I let Mitchell know it was fine with me if he chose their romance over ours. I felt light, free, ready to follow the natural way of things.
The decision weighed on him, though. And no wonder It was Mitchell not I who bore responsibility to Pam. He knew- he told me, why me?!- that leaving her would hurt her.
He saw I would be all right either way. After all, we’d known each other just a few months then.
Leaving me would be easiest.
He didn’t want to, though.
Once we were parting after an afternoon together, and while saying my goodbyes to him I added, “I hope everything’s good with your girlfriend.” Something like that. I don’t remember the words.
Mitchell nodded, frowned, lips pursed in thought, brow furrowed, and said, “I care for her.” He felt he had to say something; if he disavowed any feeling for her at all he would look to me like a bad guy and dishonest. He couldn’t plausibly claim, for example, that she was “just a friend,” I wouldn’t have laughed if he had. I felt compassion, took him and his dilemma seriously, At the same time, he stopped short of calling Pam his girlfriend. But what else was she?
He looked embarrassed. He thought any word he said then was important, if he spoke the wrong one, everything between us might break down, I might leave.
I said I’d remain his friend in any case. That reassurance didn’t seem to help, though. He seemed upset that I would find such an arrangement acceptable. He didn’t.
I didn’t actually think friendship between us possible, given what we’d already been through with each other. Our feelings would have screamed for more.
We were just speaking words and almost any would have done. They fell away, would be forgotten, were not promises. What really mattered was written in our eyes.
Soon he’d be photographing me practicing dance in my apartment, in a bra pulled down as I raced across the room low to the floor so he could shoot my breasts poking up from different angles, sometimes looking small and sometimes large. The daylight glittered and he shot the spots that reflected off my skin like stars.