Low Water Mark

    Half an hour after work ended, Kei called to say that she was in the neighborhood. I told her to come on up, but she insisted that we meet outside. Whatever. I hung up the phone and clomped down the stairs where I found her at the entrance of my building. She was in a colorful skirt and jean jacket, her soft brown curls resting on denim shoulders. A warm smile appeared on her pretty face.

   "It's been a long time, hasn't it," I said.

   "Yes, it has," she replied with a quiet, girlish laugh.

   We hadn’t seen or mailed each other for almost a month and a half. The last I had heard from Kei was a short mail warning me not to contact her because her husband had become suspicious. And then two days ago she called and told me she wanted to meet.

   Kei asked me to take her to a restaurant I had mentioned several months earlier. When we arrived, however, the “restaurant”—no larger than my own living room—was full, so we went to another restaurant two blocks away.

   We took a corner table that faced the open doors of a fifth floor balcony, overlooking a desolate parking lot, the quiet Kokutai Avenue, and an ugly mishmash of condominiums and apartment buildings beyond. Not much of a view, but then I had really come to enjoy the scenery outside.

   Even before our conversation had begun, I could sense from her nonchalance that what she had written to me in the e-mail had been a lie.

   "Your husband never did suspect anything, did he?” I said after our drinks came.

   “No.”

   "And he's gone now? He's at the dorm studying?"

   “Yes.”

   Her husband was supposed to be sequestered in a dorm in the countryside to study for a promotion test. When Kei first told me half a year earlier that her husband would be out-of-town for two months, my mind filled with tantalizing possibilities.

   “He’s been gone all this time?”

   “Yes, but he comes back next week.”

   Each confession was like a soft punch. I had been looking forward to her husband’s absence for six months, eager to spend an entire night with Kei for the first time in our three-year-long affair.

   I slouched down in my seat, defeated. I never imagined that Kei could be so dishonest to me.

   "Don't you think it was a clever idea," she asked.

   "What on earth do you mean?"

   "I thought for days and days about what to write to you . . ."

   "You know, I got that mail while I was still in Thailand. I was having a damn good time until I read it. Ruined my fucking trip, it did. "

   "I'm sorry."

   "You're sorry," I replied lighting a cigarette.

   "Please don't smoke."

   Ignoring her, I took a deep, slow drag, let the smoke drift from my mouth to my nostrils.

   If only I had had some coke to smoke, instead.

   "You're sorry." I told her how much I had worried about her safety, how I had gone by her home to look for signs of life only to find none, and how I hated myself for having been so selfish. "I've always tried to tell you the truth, Kei. Always. Even when I knew that doing so might hurt my chances with you."

   The words came out slowly and painfully. My heart clung to each syllable unwilling to let them go, unwilling to let myself admit that this woman I had loved for so long could inflict so much agony.

   "I was honest, so that you would understand me and love me for who I was and not for someone you thought I was or someone I wanted you to think I was. I opened myself to you, and in the end you lied. I never thought that you could be so cruel."

   I lit a third cigarette. Smoke flowed in a long, twisting trail from my lips.

   "When you told me that you had a new girlfriend," Kei began to explain, "I was very jealous. I couldn't sleep for days."

   It amazed me how this woman could continue to try to possess me and yet at the same time keep me at a safe distance. It was unnerving at the best of times.

   "I'm very possessive," she continued. "I want things only for myself."

   I had heard this the previous summer when I told her that I had started seeing a doctor. Suddenly, Kei couldn’t see me enough. We were meeting sometimes twice a week, making love more often than ever before. And it had the desired effect: the doctor soon faded out of my life. But once Kei had me twisted nicely around her finger, she stomped on the breaks.

   "You're an only child," I replied. "What do you expect?"

   "So, when you told me that you had a new girlfriend I considered trying to make it difficult for you to meet her, to call you up at all times, so that she would end up leaving you . . ."

   "That, I have to admit, would have been a hell of a lot better that this."

   "I was also angry because you had told me that you weren't interested in other women . . . You know, I was so happy when you told me that last summer."

   It was still true. Even when having sex with Ryô, I still thought about and wanted to be with this stupid woman before me now.

   "The reason I started seeing Ryô,” I said, “was because the last time you and I made love, you worried so much about getting pregnant that you cut me off. Don't you remember? You said that if you ever did get pregnant, you wouldn't be able to see me again. It was just a matter of timing, is all. I wasn't really searching for someone—I was happy with you, difficult as this arrangement has been—but, someone found me. I was still looking forward to this summer and being able to spend time with you again like we did last summer. I was counting the days until my birthday when the two of us would travel to the countryside together . . . "

   "Yes, yes, yes,” she said. “I thought about what to do and decided that lying to you was the best way."

   "The best way? You're joking, right?"

   "I though that not seeing you for a while would allow you to start a new relationship. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but I'm sorry if you were hurt by it."

   The impulse to jump off the balcony to the hard asphalt five floors below clouded my thoughts. But knowing that I'd just end up in a lot of pain rather than dead caused me to slouch deeper in my chair and light another cigarette.

   "And there's another thing," she said hesitantly.

   "Hmph."

   "I'm pregnant."

   "How many weeks?"

   "Seven. I'm due in January."

   Seven weeks. We had had sex only ten or so weeks before. That the child might be mine was met with a tired indifference. I said nothing.

   An achingly long half an hour passed in silence as I drank and smoked the last of my cigarettes.

   "You haven't looked at me," she said. "You haven't congratulated me either."

   "Congratulations," I offered flatly, then left for the restroom.

   I stood before the vanity staring at my weary face and wanting to cry for the years of frustration and false hope that I had endured since meeting Kei. But I couldn't; I haven't been able to really cry for years. After regaining my composure, I returned to our table, to my drink, and after twenty minutes of awkward silence asked her if she wanted to go.

   She nodded.

   We went back to my apartment where I gave her the presents I had bought for her in Thailand.

   "Where's the basket?"

   "Huh?"

   "I asked you to buy me a basket," she said.

   "I didn't have the space, and besides there weren't any good ones. Bali's the place for that kind of thing, not Thailand."

   "Yes, but you bought all kinds of things for yourself..."

   "Of course, I did," I replied, irritation rising. "Christ, you can be incredibly selfish at times."

   With this Kei bolted out of my apartment. I chased after her barefoot down the hallway and drag her back as she kicked and slapped me. Once inside, we hugged, tears falling down our cheeks. I looked at her face, her soft almond shaped eyes and kissed her chapped lips. We dropped slowly to the tatami floor and held each other for a while, but I knew this was the end. We were writing the epilogue of a book that had already gone on far too long.

   With one final kiss and a long hug, she left.

 

   The next day, Saturday, was a busy day for me. Two lessons in the morning followed by a short break, then four more lessons in the afternoon. Saturday, which had once been my lightest day of work, one I could manage even after a long hard night of partying, was now no different from my other ball-busting workdays: lessons bumper-to-bumper for hours and hours on end. The only difference being that today the drudgery was broken up by a midday tryst with Ryô who came by, fucked me hard, letting me cum the very last drop of my strength in her mouth, then left.

   By evening, I was exhausted mentally and physically. But with my first Sunday free of work for the first time in weeks, I wanted to party, to go to some bar and find an easy lay to help alleviate the ache in my bones, but no one was out on the town tonight. Instead, I dug into my bag of tricks, pulled out a small Ziploc bag of psilocybin mushrooms, and watched videos until dawn.

   After a few hours of sleep, I woke, then left for a four-hour long exam in Japanese listening comprehension that ended up being much easier, and as a result more disappointing, than I had expected. (Despite nodding off in the middle of the test, I still managed to score in the ninetieth percentile.) Ryô met me in the evening for dinner, after which I tied her up and screwed her for an hour before conking out. When I woke the next morning, I was alone, the ropes I had tied her up with placed neatly at the head of my futon.

   The following Tuesday, Ryô and I went to a local amusement park for the day where she ended up blowing me on the Ferris wheel.

   If it weren’t for the distraction Ryô was providing me, I don’t know how I’d manage. Kei was right all along: the timing for us to finally part after so many frustrating years couldn’t have been better.

   Ryô called me a few days later.

   "Why were you born?" she asked.

   “Why was I born?”

   "Yes, why were you born?" she asked again.

   “I, uh, I . . .”

   "To love me of course."

   And to think I had always thought the reason I was born was to feel the pain of solitude.

   “So, I was. So, I was.”

   “I love you,” she said.

   “Thank you.”

Pandora's Box

Reading an old journal entry can be like opening Pandora’s box:

    Wednesday, 23 May 2000

   One of my favorite students, Ikumi, will be moving to Osaka soon. When you're in my line of business you get used to seeing people come and go. Still, with someone like Ikumi, it's not always easy to say good-bye.

   I still remember the day she began studying about two and a half years ago. A 28 years old newlywed, Ikumi was so charming that I often fantasized about something developing between us. We definitely had chemistry, but nothing ever happened. Perhaps, if her husband hadn't been the only son of the president of a large company, it might have been a possibility. The man, despite his other charms, is, after all, fat and balding. Ikumi has put on some weight over the years herself, but I still find her as attractive as ever.

   Six women came over last night, four of whom, including Ikumi, I wouldn’t mind dating. Unfortunately, only one of them, Eri, is what might be considered "available". At 25, she's been dating the same doctor for years and years and if she's not thinking about getting married anytime soon, is probably open to a liaison. I've always had something of a crush on the cute, narrow-faced woman since she began last summer, but never had the chance to make a move. I may, though, now that Ikumi is leaving and the others have changed classes.

   Eri's charm lies in her fresh, natural beauty. Despite working as the receptionist at a cosmetic surgeon’s office of all places, she never wears make up and usually keeps her short, black hair tucked behind her ears. She dresses modestly, too: simple white blouses and jeans.

   The other two are Tomoka and Yûka. Both are the nicest of girls. Tomoka, the more beautiful of the two, recently announced that she would finally marry her boyfriend of some seven or eight years. Tomoka, like Eri, is a natural beauty, with a complexion that has never known so much as a zit. She’s so lovely that it has been difficult for me to get excited about the hints that Yûka, her best friend and co-worker, has been giving me for over a year. Yûka is a real sweetheart and rather pretty in her own way but she just can’t compare to Tomoka. I jus know that if I ever did go out with Yûka I would always wish it were Tomoka I was with and that wouldn’t be fair to a girl as nice as Yûka.

   I cooked several different dishes—a variety of satay with peanut sauce, a mild yellow curry, a Balinese rice known as nasi uduk, a spicy beef salad called Nua Yang Nam Tok, and three different stir-fry dishes. Three hours of preparation and cooking, and all of it—forgive me for boasting—was pretty damn good.

   We sat down to eat at around eight. Having not eaten much recently, my stomach was much too small for the kind of meal I had prepared, so I drank, instead—beer, Bombay Sapphire, Linie Aquavit, Cinzano, Tres Generaciones tequila—enough alcohol to make me worry that I'd be in my own private hell the next morning. (As luck would have it, I would wake early without a hangover—I must have still been drunk.)

   Misao was the first to leave, then Eri, Yumi and Ikumi, leaving me alone with Tomoka and Yûka. We had a nice talk about marriage and boyfriends. Tomoka can be surprisingly frank at times. When I asked Yûka whether or not she would get married this year as she had originally planned, she replied that now that Tomo-chan was marrying in July, the pressure was off. One would think the very opposite would be true.

   Yûka never seemed too enthusiastic about her own boyfriend. They’d been together for nearly as long, and like Tomo, Yûka had also moved in with her boyfriend. She continued to keep her company dorm, though, out of fear, perhaps, of making the leap. If she does eventually marry the guy, I imagine it will be from inertia more than anything.

   Personally, I think Yûka is secretly hoping someone will come along and make it easy for her to leave her boyfriend, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were me that she was waiting for. There was a time and, good Lord, many, many chances when something could have happened, but the window is now closed.

   Not long after saying good-bye, the front doorbell rang. Opening the door and expecting to find someone from the dinner party returning to claim, say, a forgotten scarf, I found my lover Ryô, instead, wobbling slightly and her face flush with red.

   Having just come from a party with co-workers, Ryô was three sheets to the wind, far drunker than I had ever seen her. "I want you to fuck me,” she said, kicking her shoes off at the entry and stepping into my arms. “I want you inside me."

   She removed her own clothes, dropping her dress in the hallway, her stockings in the dining room, her pants and bra in the living room, and for the next hour got what she had come for.

   When Ryô was done, she got herself dressed and, telling me she how much she loved me, staggered out my apartment.

   Around midnight, I got a call from Canada. It was my wife.

   “You drunk?” she asked annoyed.

   “No, no,” I replied. “Only half asleep.”

   “Well, you sound drunk.”

   “I sound like someone who should be asleep in bed and not on the phone.”

   We chatted for a few minutes after which she reminded me to not forget to deposit money into her bank account.

   “I won’t, I won’t,” I replied irritably. The woman went through cash like a goat through paper.

   “Anyways, I was wondering,” she began hesitantly, “if you would mind my staying . . . a full year in Canada.” She had originally planned to stay seven months.

   Mind? No, I didn’t mind at all. I wondered, though, if our marriage would survive it.

Almost Famous

Tatami

   Tatami comes to my place with an apology and a present. She never fails to bring either.

   This time, as she is begging forgiveness for the impertinence of her unannounced visit, she pulls out some pastries and sweet rolls from an impractically frilly bag and places them on my coffee table. She also produces a bottle of mineral water, and some apple juice. Tatami's pedigree and upbringing ensured that no matter how physically unattractive a woman she may have become, she would still have the manners and grace to allow her to move among the most exclusive of Japanese social circles. In the presence of the bourgeoisie, I suspect, she is something of a curious anachronism, but among working class boors like myself, who have little use for the formalisms imposed by privilege, she seems to be adrift in the sea, weighed down by too much baggage.

   Tatami sits down next to me on the sofa and tries for the next hour to engage me in conversation, by which I mean, several minutes of niceties followed by anodyne chit-chat.

   There is something on her mind, something she seems to be eager to say, or something she wants me to do, but she won’t come out with it. It has always been that way with her: she expects me to read it in the subtle signals of her body language.

   Sweet as Tatami is, she can be annoying as hell, and so I feign illiteracy.

   When I’ve had my fill of her snacks and there is little left that her company can offer aside from irritation, I politely suggest that she leave.

   She stands reluctantly and straightens her dress. She picks the frilly bag up and moves with reluctant steps towards the door where she takes her time putting her shoes on. Suddenly, she pulls me into me into those bony pale arms of hers, presses her face into my chest, and sighs, "I don't want to leave."

   Oh dear!

   "Well, as a matter of fact I was rather busy when you ca..."

   "J-just let me sit for a moment."

   What can I do? I have little choice, but to say yes, just as I said yes when she had first asked me in the most pained and circumlocutory manner to sleep with her a week ago.

   That, I realize, like so many things in life—far, far too late—was a grave mistake. My friend Shinobu had been right: the poor girl was indeed a virgin. A thirty year old virgin. I didn't think there were any left. Much like devout Christians back in the States, girls from good Japanese families tended to keep their pants on until marriage.

   How Tatami had gone from insisting that, in spite of my intransigent lack of interest in her, she could never be my girlfriend to her insisting upon my popping that long neglected cherry of hers boggles the mind. I had merely been going with the flow, expecting and wanting nothing more than friendship, someone to talk to. How the devil did I end up becoming a debutante's boy-toy?

   There had been no forewarning. None so ever.

   Okay, so I had twice joked about taking her to a love hotel, but I had only been only joking, trying to get a bit of a rise out of the woman. I hadn't been serious about it at all, yet somehow those two jokes, mentioned off-handedly and soon forgotten by myself, had been crafty little seeds which would by and by germinate in her mind and grow into a verdant, lascivious fantasy. 

   On her thirty-first birthday, I took her to a Spanish restaurant where—surprise, surprise—I ended up having a bit too much to drink. It was then that Tatami asked me to have sex with her.

   Not that she put it so directly. She could never have said, "Peador, I want you to fuck my brains out right this minute!" No, all she could do was offer some vague hints and hope they would be concrete enough for me to catch them.

   “It’s my birthday, so I’d like you to do something special for me.”

   “Oh? And what would that be?”

   “I’ll give you two hints.”

   “This a game?”

   “Please listen,” she said. “The first hint: you said it when we were walking in Ôhori Park last month.”

   “Last month in Ôhori Park?”

   “Yes. We were near the Boat House and I asked you where you’d like to go and . . .”

   Gulp! And I said, How’s about we pop into the Love Hotel over there?

   The first hint was as concrete as the sidewalk leading all the way back to my place, as concrete as the steps we climbed to my fourth floor apartment, where for the third time in my life I spread the legs of a virgin, trembling with fear and excitement, and slowly violated her sanctity with the profanity of a semi-hard cock.

   Let me tell you, I'll never understand why some men desire virgins. As far as I'm concerned, they're not worth the trouble.

   Tatami manages to coax me back to the sofa, where she then pesters me until I embrace her. I put my arms around her and give her a cold, perfunctory hug. With my arms hanging loosely around her, she presses her cheek against my chest, and moves her thin fingers towards my crotch. Finding a half-enthusiastic bulge there, she grabs it softly. Then, ever so gingerly and cautiously, as if she was afraid of letting something feral out of its cage, she unzips my pants.

   I’m not really in the mood, and can't get too worked up about doing it with her of all people, but what can you do when you’ve got a defiant boner? It’s high treason! Mutiny, I say! And, Tatami gleefully commandeers it. She slips her hands into the front of my pants, fumbles around as if she is searching for a pen in her handbag--an exceptionally large pen I might add—and, finding it, clamps onto it tightly in case it changes it's fickle mind.

   Tatami then lets out a deep sigh. Is this what she has been after all along? Turning her face to mine and with her eyes closed, she parts her lips, inviting me to kiss her. As enthusiastic as my backstabbing little friend has become, I just can’t get fired up about kissing her. When I hesitate, she takes the initiative and starts kissing me. Big, sloppy, clumsy kisses. She puts her tongue down my throat and is now squeezing Lil' Paddy for all it’s worth. If she isn't going to pleasure the sperm out of me, then it appears that she is going to force it out of me the way you might get the last bits of toothpaste out of an old tube.

   Though the effort will prove futile, it is nevertheless amusing to watch a woman give head for the first time.

   Holding my cock in her thin, pale fingers, Tatami eyes it with caution and wonder. She lowers her head towards my erection, pauses for a moment as she deliberates whether or not to go through with it, and then, mustering all the courage her thin frame contains, gives Paddy a preliminary lick.

   It has been nearly month since someone last fellatiated me. Not long for most men, I suppose, but long enough to make Paddy stand at stiff attention, as if he’s been defibrillated back to life.

   Tatami flinches and jerks quickly away, worried, I can only guess, that overwhelmed with ecstasy I might ejaculate right then and there. She lowers her head again, my cock twitches. She hesitates. But once she is reassured that I won't spontaneously blow the contents of my viscera all over her face, she takes the head into her mouth and waits again. She hasn't yet figured out that fellatio is something to be performed, not something which is going to just happen all by itself. I guide her head down until she nearly chocks on it, and let her come up gasping. I shove my cock back into her mouth, then guide it in gradually. Only then does she begin to understand that some movement is required.

   She works at it for about thirty minutes, up and down, up and down, and yet never quite getting me to the station on time, always missing the train. After a while, I've had enough. I pull my cock out of her mouth, holster it, and zip up my pants.

   Tatami protests at first, insists on her wanting to make me “feel good”, but I just wave her off. All I want is for her to leave so that I can have some Q.T. with a girlie magazine and the “lascivious hand” and go to bed.

   She lies on the floor at my feet. Her blouse is half open, revealing an elaborate pink brassier. She raises her white, boney arms towards me and beckons me to join her. I’m not interested. When she raises her dress and spreads her legs invitingly, I turn and look out the window into the dark night.

   "Who is the most important person in your life?" she asks from the floor.

   "My sister."

   "And then?"

   I know what she is playing at, so I decide to have a bit of fun. "That's tough,” I say. “Maybe one of my closer friends—André, Dave, Brad, Geoff, Rowland. I don't know."

   "And then?" Disappointment rises in her voice.

   "My brother. Yeah, probably my brother . . ."

   "What about me?" she whines. “What about Tatami?”

   From the depths of my generous heart, I reply: “Tatami, don't whine. It drives me up the feckin’ wall."

   "But what about me," she asks again.

   "Look, Tatami, I like you. Like you. I have always liked you, but I have never loved you."

   "Why not?"

   "Why not?" This tickles me up and it is all I can do to restrain myself, to keep from laughing at her.

   "I want to be your girlfriend!"

   "No!"

   "Why? Mie was your girlfriend. Why can't you love me?"

   That simple question threatens to dredge up a wealth of memories and emotions. I don’t really want to get into it. Not with Tatami. She wouldn't understand.

   "Why can't you love me?"

   Why can’t I? Why couldn't I love Yumi? Why couldn't I love Aya or even Reina for that matter? Why couldn't I love any of the women I’ve met over the past seven months? Is my heart no longer capable of love? Was my love only meant for one person, and now that she is gone I am no longer able to love anyone again? I don't want to believe it. I still have faith, however tarnished it may have become, that I will meet someone I can love, but as far as I can tell this woman who is half naked at my feet with her pale arms reaching out for me will never be the one. She will never be the more I have been searching for. She will never be the enough that Philip Roth wrote about in The Professor of Desire. She isn't anything to me but another regret at the end of a long string of regrets. And, all I want from her now is to watch the wiggling of her bony little arse as she pads out the door and down the steps.

   "Why can't you love me?" she asks for the third time.

   "I'm sorry, Tatami, but you're not my type."

   "Hidoi", she whimpers. "You're terrible!"

   A genuine tear collects at the base of her right eye, such a small tear, so cute, so her, that it makes me smile. Whenever Yumi cried, the Self Defense Forces were put on alert, ready with bulldozers to act in case any innocent bystanders got caught up in the relentless flow of gunk that would ran down those heavily concealed cheeks of hers. But Tatami's tear, that solitary tear clinging to the lower edge of her eyelid, grows slowly in size, then rolls like a drop of mercury down her soft white cheek.

   When the tear falls, I giggle at the novelty of it. I've never seen someone cry this way, so controlled. I laugh again, but not out of cruelty, for I don’t mean to be cruel. I laugh at the silliness of life. Sometimes that's all you can do is laugh to help you forget how much pain you’re in.

   Tatami reiterates her low opinion of me, but rather than decide that she is wasting her time, she chooses to try endearing herself to me by lunging for my cock. When that fails, she starts swinging at me, pitiful punches that fail to connect and serve only to frustrate her further. When I wonder aloud if she was taught these tactics at finishing school, she kicks me.

   It is just too much and I start roaring with laughter.

  With great difficulty, I finally manage to push her towards the front door. She kicks and screams, her arms flail about wildly, and then just when I’ve got her halfway out the door, she tells me that she is pregnant.

  "Yeah, right!" I scoff and give her a final push out of the door.

   As I am shutting the door on her, she threatens to quit the school and to tell everyone that I am the father of her child. She threatens to follow me to America.

   It is pathetic and ugly. It is opera, very, very bad opera.

   Realizing that her threats are having little impact, Tatami changes her tone and says, "What would you do if I died?" Tears are now steaming down her cheeks. "What would you do if I died?"

   "Well, for one, I'd probably get to bed sooner."

   "Hidoi!" she screams and runs down the stairs. I can hear her steps grow distant, followed by the angry slam of the gate downstairs.

____________________________________________________________

   The above was edited out of a longer version of my second novel, A Woman's Nails, the first several chapters from which can be read for free here. I am debating whether or not to reintroduce the chapter into the novel. If you have read the novel in its entirety, your imput would be greatly appreciated. 

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Woman's Nails is now available on Amazon's Kindle.

Boys Be Ambitious!

   They say youth is wasted on the young and you need no further evidence of this than the dismal results of an impromptu poll I conducted in some of my classes recently.

   The above is a poll of 39 university sophomores, all boys, at a local national university dedicated to information technology. 28 of them were single at the time of the survey, and, well, when you take into account that the university is only about five percent girls (biologically speaking, that is), it's hard to blame the guys. While there is the occasional knock-out among the co-eds--scarce as hen's teeth, though--the vast majority of women studying at the university will not be winning any beauty contests.

   What surprised me the most was that more than a third (35.9%) had never in their 19-odd years on this planet dated. That's pretty sad.

   You'd think that the situation would be better with women studying English at the famous co-educational private university where I teach part-time, but no, the figures are equally dismal. Of the 18 freshmen girls surveyed, only three had boyfriends. Two met their sweethearts in high school; the third was introduced to hers only a few months ago by a friend. Two claimed to be "lovey-dovey" at the time of they survey.

   In this class and another freshman class there was a handful of boys, as rare a commodity as girls at the public engineering college mentioned above. Nevertheless, none of lads had a lassie they could warm themselves with in the coming months of autumn and winter.

   A year ago, I invited a Nepali student at the engineering school and now a good friend of mine named Adi to come down to Fukuoka to observe some of my classes at the private university. I had the girls ask him questions--where are you from, why are you in Japan, what is your hobby, and so on--first. Later it was Adi's turn to ask the questions. He pointed to one of the few boys among the third year English literature students and asked if he had a girlfriend. No was the answer.

   Adi came down on the guy like a ton of bricks: "Shame on you! Man, you're surrounded by women and you haven't got a girlfriend? Shame on you!"

   The boy hung his head in defeat.

   Adi was right, of course.

   Yesterday morning, I asked the three boys (English Lit. majors) in my freshman class at the private university if any of them had girlfriends. None did. When class ended, I took the boys aside and said, "You're all reasonably good-looking. I mean it. When you're surrounded by women like this, there is no reason why you shouldn't have two or three girlfriends each. Seriously. So, I'm giving you some homework: get a girl before next Monday's class."

   "Will we fail the class if we don't?"

   "No, of course not. You'll still get an A, but you'll fail in life."

   One of the services I provide these hopeless boys is to show them what women are looking for in a partner. In the above, I asked the boys what they thought girls wanted. Then, I asked the girls what they were hoping to find in a boyfriend. It's funny that so many of them said chose "kindness" but, as I told the boys, girls will run all over you if you're too kind. Be cold, distant, uninterested, aloof, and the girls will flock to you. Nothing turns a girl off more than a guy who's desperate.

   Oh, yeah, be sure to make them laugh.

   The above was a survey of about ten freshmen women studying English literature. Below is a survey of twenty freshmen girls, all English majors, who were told to choose the three most important aspects from a list they provided. "Kind", "taller than me", and "funny" were the most popular answers. I suspect that the first two garnered the most votes because they were at the top of the list. In every single one of these surveys that I have conducted over the years humor has been found to be one of the most sought after attributes in a prospective partner. 

   Make 'em laugh, and you're halfway up their leg.

   Note: sawayaka, near the bottom of the first column, means "fresh", "refreshing". I suppose it refers to someone who isn't stuffy, gloomy, or introverted. Sociable, but not overly so. Cheerful, but not gratingly optimistic.

   Good luck, lads!