Bedtime Eyes

BEDTIME EYES

Spoon made me feel fantastic—by that I mean he made my body feel good, but not my mind. He could make love to me, but no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t make love to him. I wanted to know what other people did in the same situation, so I asked my friend Maria, but she wouldn’t tell me. I wanted someone to tell me what to do, to give me a list of instructions to follow.

It took me too long to realize that it was far more difficult to lick his wounds than to suck his cock. Now I wonder why I didn’t start practicing earlier.

Even now his empty bottle of Brut aftershave and his vitamin-E tablets (without which he swore he wouldn’t be able to fuck) are on the counter of my bathroom sink. I can’t bring myself to throw his stuff away, I can’t even put it in one of the suitcases he left behind and hide it away in the back of the closet.

When Spoon ran away from the Yokosuka Naval Base, he packed all his things neatly and came to my place, bags in hand. He rang the doorbell politely before coming in, so it almost felt like I had a semipermanent houseguest staying with me. In one of his suitcases were twenty Hershey bars he’d brought for me, but I felt strangely uneasy; it didn’t seem right to accept them all just for putting him up.

The first time I saw him was at a bar on the base. For some reason he was wearing a tuxedo with a bow tie, and he looked cooler than cool among all the other guys playing pool in their jeans or overalls.

While my boyfriend was wrapped up in his pool game, a dollar bill in his cueing hand as he played, I kept stealing glances at Spoon. I remember the glass he was drinking his bourbon and 7-Up from, glittering gold, like honey dripping between his black fingers. Now when I see a glass like that it just reminds me of one of those little cups you get at the hospital for a urine sample.

His other hand was thrust deep into his trouser pocket and he seemed to be touching something. I could see from the way his hand was moving that he had long, bony fingers. He seemed to be gently caressing the lining of his pocket with his fingertips, and I blushed as I wondered how it would feel to have those same lustful fingers probing my slit, him still wearing that cool expression on his face.

The moment our eyes met, I felt as though he had read my mind, and I looked down at the floor. When I looked up again, he caught my gaze and motioned toward the door. I stood up like I was possessed, told my boyfriend I was going to the ladies’ room, and left the game room.

Spoon was waiting for me right outside the door, both hands thrust in his pockets now, leaning against the wall and looking like some kind of small-time gangster.

He took me by the arm and led me to a door at the very corner of the building. The sign on the door read: KEEP OUT! It was the boiler room. Inside, it smelled old and dusty, and bare pipes were sticking out everywhere.

As soon as the door closed behind us, I was alone with Spoon, the two of us in that room together.

I opened my mouth to speak. I guess Spoon took it as a sign of urgency, of my desire for him. Or maybe he simply thought there was no need to talk, I don’t know, but he just forced his tongue between my hips and into my mouth. His tongue was alive with passion and clearly intent on overwhelming me.

I clawed desperately at his jacket and tore at his shirt buttons. I couldn’t wait to have his scent on me. But there was no letup from his hands or his tongue, and I was so excited that I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking long enough to undo the buttons. I finally gave up and ripped the shirt open.

The black skin of his chest was thickly covered with hair and he wore a gold chain around his neck.

I pressed my lips to his chest, tugging at his chest hair and enjoying the smell of his body. It was a familiar smell, one I recognized from long ago. It was both pungent and sweet, like cocoa butter. A strange smell came from under his arms, too. It was musty, not offensive, but at the same time not pleasant either. It was the kind of smell that made me aware of our primal attraction. Maybe it had the same effect that the musk of wild animals had on each other when in heat.

In contrast to my raw aggression, Spoon was quite gentle as he skillfully undressed me.

There wasn’t enough room to lie down, so I stood with one leg raised high, my high-heeled foot braced against the wall, my tiny panties hanging like a handkerchief around my ankle. His black arm was twined around my leg, and the light sparkled off my anklet.

His dick wasn’t the kind of disgusting, red cock that white men have, nor was it the pathetic, infantile thing of Japanese men, the kind that doesn’t do a thing for you until it’s inside you. With Japanese men, anyway, I always worry that I’m going to get myself tangled up in their pubic hair because it looks so much like seaweed floating on the surface of the sea.

With Spoon, maybe it was just that his pubic hair was the same color as his skin, but I was totally in awe of his dick. It was gorgeous, like a big chocolate bar, and as I stared at it excitedly I couldn’t stop my mouth from watering.

We spoke only in gasps and sighs. I was too excited even to call out.

In the midst of this wonderful mixture of pleasure and pain, all I could do was cling tightly to his jacket. My hand brushed against his pocket and touched whatever it was he had been caressing at the end of the pool table. It seemed to be made of metal; a familiar, everyday object… but then my orgasm began to build and I lost all sense of what was going on around me.

I stared at him, still standing with one leg raised high against the wall.

He brushed the hair stuck to my sweaty forehead away from my eyes, and said, “From now on I’ll probably feel like jerking off whenever I think of you.”

It was kind of sad to think of him masturbating with a picture of me in his mind.

“What’s your name?”

“Spoon.”

I remembered the cold, hard object in his pocket, and the English phrase about children born into wealthy families: “born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” Friends probably nicknamed him Spoon from a mixture of affection and derision for his comical habit.

Why would anyone born with a silver spoon in their mouth want to walk around with it in their pocket? It seemed so unfair that God would make someone like him, with such a wonderful body, so unsure of himself that he couldn’t help overdressing and clinging to a spoon.

“You’ve been sad sometimes, haven’t you?”

“No, I’m always happy.”

I knew he was lying.

“Come home with me,” I said.

I wonder whether, at that time, I wanted to be a martyr or something. Perhaps I had some wacky idea that I could make him happy. But he soon put me right on that score.

“Put your leg down! Doesn’t that make you tired? You’ve had it up there the whole time. If you want to fuck some more, let’s do the second round between the sheets.”

He winked at me the way only black guys can, one eyebrow slightly raised and his eye shut tight. It felt like a flame leaping between us. The feeling started in my mouth and settled down inside me, then gradually melted and spread, sweet and warm, throughout my whole body.

Maria kept pigs in her dressing room. There were lots of I them and they were all really fat. There were always a few I sprawled out on the tatami floor, their flabby, white legs spread wide, stuffing themselves with curry rice. Maria told me I shouldn’t call them pigs, but the resemblance was striking. They were nothing like Maria at all. But I shut up about it when she told me to cut it out.

Maria walked around the dressing room in stylish slippers, wearing a black silk dressing gown. When she did her makeup, she would tie the sash around her waist, let the upper half of the dressing gown fall, and sit cross-legged, half-naked, in front of the mirror. The lining of the gown was scarlet.

“After I’ve done my spot, I’d like to go out for a drink. What about you, Kim? If you want to watch me onstage, go up to the lighting box and ask the guy in there to let you watch. Or would you rather wait here?”

“No, I’ll watch.”

Although I enjoyed being around Maria and the other Filipino dancers, chatting with them in English and swapping funny stories, felt out of place when I was alone with all those women dressed only in their underwear, half sitting, half kneeling, sprawled out on the floor.

Anyway, they were probably thinking I was out of place, too, just a kid.

Maria stubbed out a cigarette in her black ceramic ashtray and began to change into a long, white dress with a back slit running all the way up to her ass. I watched her from the corner of my eye as I moved toward the dressing room door. As I waited for Maria’s turn onstage, I began to get excited—like I was the one who was going on, not her.

Of all the women milling around in the dressing room, for me she was the only one who had the ability to create a really horny atmosphere onstage. She was the only one who could drive the men wild with lust.

Watching Maria onstage, swaying to the sound of blues music and spreading her legs, I was overwhelmed by the sheer presence of her pussy. Sometimes I sold mine cheap; the pitiful thing between my legs was nothing compared with Maria’s—mine could never be art. Sometimes I wallowed in self-pity just thinking about it, but then I would remember the graffiti Spoon had sprayed on our bathroom wall: PUSSY IS GOD!!!

Maria came back onstage wearing nothing but high heels and a soft hat. Her supple body writhing slowly, she began her masturbation routine. Her expression was one of ecstasy, but underneath she was completely cool. I wondered what it must be like to be able to perform like that in bed. Not to be absorbed in my own feelings, but to drive a man to ecstasy. I wanted to drive the cool look out of Spoon’s eyes with my own private peep show. I wanted to perform just for him, and like Maria did onstage, I wanted to push him away when he came close to me. I started to get hot with anticipation, just thinking about the next time we would make love. But I was always the one to lose myself first, and I was always the one to cry out, “I want you!”

We were beginning to get too used to each other, me and Spoon. I was always left with a sense of sweet defeat after we made love. Watching Maria perform was similar to the way I used to study for exams in the days when I still had some small hope for the future. Each time I was sure that this time I was going to get a good grade. But for some reason I was always so nervous when I saw the exam that my hands would shake so badly I couldn’t even hold a pencil. And then my confidence would take another blow when the graded tests were returned.

“Spoon? You’ve picked a guy with a strange name this time. Is that his nickname?”

We were sitting at a nearby bar. Maria took a cigarette from her gold cigarette case and lit up. She carried the cigarette case with her everywhere, filling it from a can of Peace cigarettes.

“Has he got a good body, this guy?”

I looked up at her nervously—she seemed to have read my mind.

She looked at me, smiling, from beneath the brim of the soft, black hat she used for her show.

“Are you going to ask me to make love to this one, too?”

I grimaced involuntarily. Which wasn’t like me. Whenever I wanted a relationship with a man, I always asked her to get involved with him, too. I would have been too frightened otherwise. I’d run to her for help whenever I thought I’d found the real thing. I knew I was a bad girl, really bold, but I also knew I was a coward.

Maria always had the same quick response.

“Well, I can’t.”

But then she would add, “Of course, if you only need help in bed, that’s no problem.”

And so I would ask her to do it. It always gave me the sense of security I needed before I could love a man, but it also made me feel a little freaky to depend on her this way.

When she said it this time, though, my response surprised even me.

“Oh, my God! I’ve never seen you look at me like that before! Does this mean you won’t be needing me this time?”

“I don’t know. I’m confused. Usually whatever you say calms me down like some kind of tranquilizer, but for some reason I feel nervous this time. I don’t know what’s wrong….”

“Well, girl, something tells me this is different—you can’t even imagine me going to bed with this one, can you?”

Sure, I could imagine it. I could imagine Spoon leaving bite marks all over another woman’s body the same way he did with me. But then I felt hot tears rolling down my cheeks. I was crying!

Maria brushed away my tears with her finger.

“What’s all this? Crying with jealousy over something that’s only in your imagination? Aren’t you the sweetest thing! Come on now, Kim, don’t cry—it’s just a waste of time. Nothing has actually happened, right? Listen, why don’t you tell me about this guy, huh? I’m really interested. Hell, if he can do this to you…”

“He’s run away from the navy.”

“You mean he’s UA? A deserter?”

I nodded. I knew it meant I would lose him someday. He would be taken away, put in jail on the base, and then sent back to the U.S. And if he was, would I follow him, go all the way to America for him? I couldn’t say. But what if I did, and then waited for his release, what then? If he was just UA, it wasn’t really such a big deal—he’d probably just get kicked out of the navy. Then he could get a job, get married and have kids, and settle down with a family. Damn! What was I thinking?

I couldn’t imagine Spoon as a father! No way! How could his hands ever change from groping at my pussy to stroking a baby’s head?!

“Jesus.” I sighed.

“It seems to me like you’ve picked a guy with a lot of problems. He’s a sailor, right? He’s also a deserter. The next thing you know, he’ll be living off of you.”

“Don’t say that. He’s nothing like that. He’s not weak that way.”

“Is he the kind of guy who makes you feel like he’s a part of you?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how, but he does.”

“Well, you stop worrying about what might happen then. The reason I asked if you feel like he’s a part of you is ’cause that’s the most important thing. You should be thinking about how you can keep what you’ve got—that’ll put some sparkle back in your eyes.”

I felt relieved. “Thanks, Maria. I love you.”

“Who do you love the most? Me or Spoon?”

I was completely lost for words. For some reason I suddenly felt nervous. Maria raised her glass of gin to her lips and smiled. It was sort of a friendly little smile that didn’t suit her beautiful face at all.

“I’m only joking! I just love to see the look on your face when you’re confused.”

She downed the gin in a single gulp, pulled on her black gloves, and stood up,

“Well, I’d better get ready for my next spot. So, anyway, you won’t be needing any ‘advice’ from me this time, right?”

“I’m not sure… I might need—”

She just stood up, picked up the check, and left the bar. It was like she hadn’t even heard me.

I was confused. My heart was pounding and I put my hand up to my chest to calm myself down. I had never felt so alone. It felt like the dice had been rolled and the game had already begun. But I’d never played a game as serious as this before. I picked one of Maria’s cigarette stubs out of the ashtray, lit it, and inhaled hard. This brought on a violent fit of coughing; Maria’s cigarettes were much stronger than what I was used to.

What the hell was going on? I was only living with him after all. ft was ridiculous to get so serious about it. Absolutely ridiculous.

I heard a key in the door and the sound of the lock turning. For the I first few days it had really bothered me. Until then, I had never I heard the sound of someone else unlocking the door while I was in the apartment. I just sat there, petrified, waiting for the door to open. It was such a relief when Spoon’s big, black face appeared. He saw my frightened expression and looked puzzled.

“I’m not a monster,” he told me seriously.

I realized just how much I loved him when he came out with things like that.

That day, he came in with a thick envelope full of papers. I was curious about what they were. The room was littered with sheet music—jazz music; I was having a hard time deciding what song I should sing at the club that night. I wondered why jazz singers always had to have that kind of low, husky voice Maria had. My problem was that my voice was soft and high-pitched. But after Spoon told me mine was the best for making love, it was enough for me that I only sounded good in bed.

I quit my efforts to become a “jazz vocalist,” and resigned myself to being just another singer.

“What’s in the envelope?”

“It’s the capital I need to make money.”

“Can I see?”

But when I tried to look, Spoon just pushed me out into the kitchen and began making telephone calls. I gave up and started breaking ice to make myself a bourbon and soda.

“Oh! Shit! Gimme some goddam motherfuckin’ soda, bitch!”

He turned to me as he slammed down the receiver. His four-letter j words sounded so musical—to me perfect English was as boring as an impotent man drinking flat beer. And it made me feel so close to him when he called me “bitch.” You see, Spoon was a bitch’s man. Now that his calls were done, Spoon turned his attention to something new.

“Why don’t we have ourselves a little party before you go to work?”

I stood watching in a vacant haze as Spoon carefully measured out identical lines of white powder on the cover of Ebony magazine and cut them with his navy ID card. I just assumed the drugs were a habit from his childhood in New York City.

“Man, my dick is nothing but trouble. He goes looking for pussy everywhere… in discos… in bars…”

Now he was in a good mood. Snorting coke put Spoon on an instant high, and he began babbling to a beat, his words a cross between a song and a wordy monologue. He told me it was real New York rap and that he’d been the number-one rapper where he came from. Then he told me a sad, sad story, but the rhythm he rapped it to was a happy, lively beat.

I stood there stupefied, watching Spoon pace around the room, and I downed my bourbon and soda in one gulp. Then I picked up the magazine and, bringing it close to my nose, I inhaled the coke in one big snort—my first time. An instant later I burst into a fit of coughing and sneezing and I couldn’t breathe. I stayed crouched down on the floor, huddled and gasping for breath.

“Are you okay, baby? You’re supposed to hold one side of your nose with your finger and do it more slowly. It’s always tough the first time.”

He was right. Everything’s difficult the first time.

When I eventually stopped coughing, I looked up at him. He was looking down at me, smiling with a worried look on his face. I could see the wealth of his experience shining in his eyes, and it made me feel like a little girl again.

“I’m gonna be your teacher,” he said.

He sounded so responsible and dependable. It was just crazy.

Sometimes I told Spoon he should write a book. It would be some weird how-to book about taking drugs. Or maybe about hanging out on the streets and walking like a gangster. Or maybe a teach-yourself guide to picking up innocent girls and using your body to make them crazy about you.

The next thing I knew, Spoon had got a can of spray paint from somewhere and was trying to spray something on the bathroom wall.

“Stop! We’ll get thrown out of here!”

“Okay, okay.”

Before I could stop him he had turned his attention from the wall to Osbourne, my cat. I saw his finger on the nozzle, and in a flash I scooped Osbourne up in my arms to save him.

At first I didn’t realize what had happened, but Spoon was holding his stomach, rocking with laughter. I looked in the mirror on the desk, and discovered that I had sacrificed myself for my cat. My hair was crimson, dyed the color of a red pepper, and it stood out from my head, stiff and spiky. Even the boy in Renard’s Carrot Top would have felt sorry for me Spoon was rolling on the floor now, still laughing.

“My baby’s a carrot—a carrot!”

Then I imagined myself singing in the club later that night with my red lion’s mane. Oh, shit! In my mind I could see all the drunken customers jeering at me, and the piano player trying to stifle his laughter.

And then there was the manager—what if he fired me as soon as I walked into the club? If I lost my job, how would I be able to look after Spoon? Maybe I’d even be forced to let someone else use my pussy.

Spoon calmed down and looked up at me. But as soon as our eyes met he burst out laughing and began rolling around on the floor again. Shit!

He was laughing at me. And this was all his fault! In a fury I gulped down a second bourbon and screamed, “Fuck y-o-o-o-u!!”

I wasn’t in the habit of swearing like that. Spoon suddenly stopped laughing and stood up.

“Baby, you’re turnin’ into my kinda woman.”

“Go to hell, you motherfucker!”

“That’s right, Kim. That’s the way ”

Spoon inched closer and closer. I was rooted to the spot. It was like he was an animal and I was his prey. I fumbled in the sink behind me, and my hand found the sponge. I threw it at him, and it hit him in the face and fell to the floor. Osbourne scrambled around, desperately trying to get out of the way, and ran under the bed.

Without even glancing at the sponge on the floor, Spoon grabbed both my arms and pinned them to my sides. I didn’t say a word. I pretended to struggle so it would turn him on, but he just pressed his lips hard to mine. I stopped resisting and fell into his arms.

Spoon lay me down on the floor and began to undress me. I pretended that I was sulking, but I wanted him to know I was only pretending, so I curled my arm around his neck, and drawing him close, bit his earlobe. His eyes flashed, telling me he knew the game I was playing. He really was becoming my teacher.

“My darling little hot chili sauce… ”

After we had made love on the kitchen floor, his “hot chili sauce,” who was feeling quite a bit spicier, decided to call into work to say she couldn’t make it to the club to sing that night because her father had died. The manager was very sympathetic and told me to take a few days off. The truth was I never knew my daddy—he left before I was born—so I didn’t feel guilty at all. And what better way to spend the time than partying with Spoon? That night my stage performance took place in my room; it was a nasty little performance with a lot of alcohol, a little bit of cocaine, and just the right number of joints. And my audience was Spoon and Osbourne.

We partied long and loud, and in the end we both drank too much and threw up. By the time we had finally begun to cool down, it was already morning.

I was awakened by the sound of Osbourne meowing for his breakfast. I opened the refrigerator and took out a can of cat food for him I and a big carton of milk for myself. I fed the cat and then gulped the milk straight from the carton. My throat was unbearably dry and my body still felt like it was floating.

I quickly cleared away the remains of the previous night’s party and went back to bed. The cold floor under my bare feet had me shivering, and the milk had chilled me through to the bone. All I wanted was to curl up under the warm blankets and go back to sleep again.

Making a gap in the Venetian blind with my fingers, I peered outside.

It was raining. It looked as though it wouldn’t stop all day. I was feeling good and put the telephone away in the closet. When it starts raining early in the morning it feels like evening all day long.

I slipped into bed beside Spoon, wrapping the blankets around me.

To me his naked body was the most comfortable sheet in the world.

“I can hear rain,” he mumbled

“Are you awake?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It looks like it could last all day long.”

“I feel like shit.”

“Tired?”

Spoon stared into the big frameless mirror by the bed, and answered

“I’ve got a hangover.”

“Me too. I think it’s a good excuse to spend the day lying around.”

“Umm… ”

Resting his cheek nonchalantly on his palm, his elbow on the pillow, Spoon began caressing my body. It felt so good, my eyes narrowed like a cat’s and I confessed to him, “You’re my most comfortable sheet.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re my blanket,” he said with a smile.

The way he put it made him seem so innocent, like some rough, in-experienced young boy trying to whisper sweet nothings. It reminded me of the way I was impressed by Chet Baker even though he had a terrible singing voice. Whenever I listen to his songs, my insides feel like sugar dissolving.

It was still raining. Spoon began to nibble my earlobe. I wasn’t wearing earrings, so I could feel the saliva seeping through the hole in my ear.

Spoon asked me what my favorite time of day was for making love.

“Anytime,” I said coyly.

He told me he liked to make love best in the morning, especially if it was raining.

“It’s raining now,” I reminded him.

“You didn’t know that about me, did you?” he said tenderly.

He pressed his lips to my neck and sucked hard—so hard I thought he might suck the skin clean off—and he left a spider’s web of purple bite marks scattered across it. Meanwhile the spider inside me was waiting to feast itself on his heart, but it wasn’t long before I gave up on such an ambitious plan and began enjoying my role as Spoon’s little play-thing. And as he threw his toy around like some impulsive child, I began to feel pleasure in the pain.

He reached out his arm and put a record on the turntable. On days like this he liked to listen to Thelonius Monk. The piano sounded like rain. My pleasure was interrupted.

Spoon lay on the bed, his burnt-black body only partly covered by the sheets. He reminded me of Brother Rufus in the Baldwin novel, listening to the saxophone and crying out from deep down inside his heart:

“Please, won’t you give me your love?”

Spoon didn’t need a saxophone. He could say all he wanted to say with his body. I would probably have even become an alcoholic prostitute for Spoon if he had wanted me to. But I wouldn’t have wanted him to be my pimp—if I were up for sale, he wouldn’t be able to leave bite marks on my neck anymore.

“When I was young and I didn’t know anything about women, a friend of mine told me they had a hole between their legs for guys to stick their cocks into. So from then on I thought there was, like, this big gaping hole between a woman’s legs. So the first time I slept with a woman I was really confused—I thought, Damn, this bitch ain’t got no hole. I didn’t realize I had to look for it.”

His story made me feel more relaxed.

“So now you know, do you?”

“Sure, like this. But now I don’t need to search for the holes with my fingers no more—they come looking for me….”

I wanted to tell him the hole was alive. I wanted to tell him it was breathing and that if you put a mirror up close, it would mist up. I opened my mouth to tell him, but nothing came out. I often lost my voice when he was doing that to me.

“Your skin really is the color of ebony, isn’t it?”

It was the saddest color in the world, and yet it was the most beautiful color I had ever seen. However suntanned I got, I could never come close to the color of Spoon’s skin. If I ripped his skin, the blood would flow red from his flesh. When he made love to me, there was white liquid.

I felt his head between my legs and I was helpless. I could see the top of his head, covered thickly with hair like little coiled springs. His tongue was like some enormous snail eating up my skin, layer by layer.

I could feel his little gold earring against my thigh. It always got in the way when he was down there, but he liked to wear it because it made him look good. Small rivulets of sweat ran down from the hollow of his back to his ass. I was always wary of touching him there. I was sure that if I got my hand in between the hard muscles of his butt cheeks, he’d grip it so tight I wouldn’t be able to get it out again and I’d probably have to cut it off at the wrist. It would be like the little girl in the fairy tale, the girl with the red shoes who had to keep on dancing and dancing and couldn’t stop until they cut her feet off. I’d have to keep dancing, too.

I didn’t want to lose these things that bound me.

“Mmm, delicious. Juicy.”

Spoon wasn’t concerned with what I was thinking—only with what he was feeling himself. He didn’t think. He only spoke about the things his body reacted to. When he danced, it wasn’t because he heard music—it was the other way around: he needed music because his body had started to dance. And now his tongue was dancing and playing music all over my body.

There was no let-up of his tongue. My pussy juices were starting to turn into the kind of filmy skin you get when you boil milk.

“Do you know how cats fuck?” he asked.

“No…”

In an instant I felt Spoon’s weight on my back. His thick, wiry chest hair was rubbing against my spine, and I felt like I was going to cry.

Then suddenly he bit my left shoulder hard.

“That hurt! What the…?”

“This is the way cats fuck—till all the hair comes off the female’s shoulder.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and they make a horrible noise, too.”

“Like this?” I made a noise like a cat yowling. Gradually the cat’s yowling gave way to my own yowling, and it gave me such pleasure to allow Spoon to subdue me. I looked in the mirror at the side of the bed.

Grasping the sheet between my fingers, I could see my body laid out on the sea of white wrinkles. It looked like a blurred photograph. Then, on top of me came my favorite black sheet, forming a sharp, tight contrast.

After a while I could no longer tell whether the sheets were white or black, and through a hazy semiconsciousness, all I could do was follow the reflection of my red polished nails in the mirror.

I cried out again like a cat.

“Shhh, quiet, baby. Listen to the rain.”

I hadn’t noticed, but Thelonius Monk had finished playing, and the rain was the only sound left in our dimly lit room.

I had just finished taking off my stage makeup and peeling off my I big, feathery false eyelashes when Spoon came home. He stumbled I around the place, shouting and bumping into things, drunk.

I got out of bed and offered him a glass of water. Not out of kindness, you understand, especially since he was drunk and being so obnoxious. I just knew how to deal with him now that we were living together.

“Drink this and sober up!”

Spoon’s leather jacket reeked of cheap gin and absinthe.

“Jesus, Spoon! You stink!”

“Shut the fuck up, bitch!”

He snatched the glass from my hand and smashed it on the floor. A sliver of flying glass caught me, and blood trickled down my cheek.

“So, I smell, huh? What kinda smell? Answer me, bitch! Answer me!”

Spoon grabbed me by the neck and started to choke me.

“ I… I’ll… tell you… let… me go… I can’t breathe…”

He tore his hands from my throat and flung me against the wall. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. He’d been doing drugs again.

“You smell like a loser, you bastard! You’re nothing but one big inferiority complex.”

He snatched a bottle of white rum from the table and threw it against the wall. It smashed, filling the room with the sound of splintering glass and the sweet aroma of the liquor.

Then suddenly, he sat down on the floor, motionless, staring vacantly into space. His hands were covered in blood, cut by shards of the broken glass. Looking closely at his face, I noticed some dried blood. So, he’d been fighting, too. Sitting there on the floor, his fly undone, he looked absolutely pathetic.

“Why don’t you zip your fly? Did you forget to do it after you peed?

Or have you been out fucking other women?”

I knew he hadn’t.

“Fucking? What makes you think I’ve been out fucking? You’ve had some guy in here while I’ve been out, haven’t you? You brought him here, spread your legs and let him fuck you, didn’t you, you cheap whore! I bet you bring guys back here every time I go out, you fucking bitch!”

Ranting and raving, he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me around the room through the carpet of broken glass, the sharp splinters piercing my skin.

“Is he black or white? Don’t tell me he’s fucking Japanese! They’re all such ugly bastards.”

“You scum! You’re just a no-good drunken junkie! I’m one of those ugly Japanese bastards, too. But I’m still better than you. Dirty asshole! You were born miserable and you’ll always be fucking miserable!”

I wanted to cry to relieve the pain. I sobbed convulsively, but the tears just wouldn’t come.

Spoon just didn’t have a middle ground on anything. In fact, it was from living with him that I discovered there were actually people who couldn’t eat plain, lightly flavored food. He was altogether too sweet, too spicy, and too greasy for that. One minute I was swimming in the sweetest of sweet cream, and the next I felt as though I’d had pepper sauce poured over my head. My stomach just couldn’t cope with it. I knew I was on my way to an ulcer.

“Goddammit! Every fucker makes an ass of me! I can’t do anything right,” he cried.

“I can’t make an ass of you—you already are one! I love you. Am I weird? I think you’re sweet. I mean it….”

Spoon stopped breathing. He just stared at me.

Shit, I thought, he’s going to hit me.

I screwed my eyes shut and clenched my jaw so he wouldn’t break any teeth—he had already knocked out two of them. How was it that the same hands that hurt me like this could also tickle me or take me to the very heights of ecstasy?

But he didn’t hit me. He took my head in his hands and kissed me. I struggled to free myself, but he kept a tight hold on my chin. An odor filled my mouth like a virus entering my bloodstream, a mixture of marijuana and alcohol that spread and flowed through my body.

“I can feel you, Spoon.”

Suddenly he pushed me away and started to throw up. It didn’t look like he was going to stop, so I took him to the bathroom and stroked his back.

Tears trickled down his bloody cheeks. Spoon continued to puke even after everything in his stomach had come up and all that was left was a mixture of blood and stomach juices. I kept on stroking his back; it was like comforting someone who’d just been told he had six months to live. He cried pathetically. But what was I supposed to do? I mean, I’m not a nurse.

I took the spoon from his pocket and used it to scoop the puke up off the floor and dump it into the garbage can. I felt like I wanted to tell God about it.

“Hey, God! Look at me scooping puke up off the floor with a silver spoon!”

After I’d finished cleaning up the mess, I went to bed while Spoon washed his face. When he had finished, he came in feeling better, and in an apologetic voice he called my name. But I didn’t answer. I was pretending to be asleep.

“Kim, I wanna fuck you. I suppose you don’t want to do it tonight, huh?”

Fucking was all he knew. In his heart he must have been screaming, What do you want me to do? How can / make you feel better ? What else is there besides fucking?

He was just a little, immature kid in a grown-up body. My darling Spoon. This black demon was gradually filling my mind with dirty words. But there was still some free space left. There would always be space for more until the day my mind was full and whistled like a boiling kettle.

“Kim, I wanna fuck you. I wanna make you feel good. Are you sleeping? Are you asleep? Shit! I’m doing my best to make you feel better and you won’t even let me touch you.”

Spoon climbed into bed beside me and turned his back on me with a sigh.

“You could always rape me.”

Spoon turned back, surprised. I gave him a big grin in the dark.

He stopped being miserable.

I had been to bed with other guys twice since me and Spoon started I living together. But it had nothing at all to do with wanting to have sex with them.

Every now and then I just felt really nervous that I had let myself get so caught up in my feelings for Spoon. He was like a big jigsaw puzzle, and I didn’t want to turn into one of the pieces.

One day after work I went to see a guy, an old friend. We had a very close relationship, but very relaxed—there was no pressure. We were what you might call partners in crime. In his room that night he did the same things he had always done; I thought he knew me inside out, but I left his apartment feeling defeated. Now I knew I was addicted to Spoon.

When I got back home, Spoon was sprawled out on top of the bedcovers, sleeping facedown with a glass of gin on the floor beside him. I just looked at his big, bare feet and burst into tears.

He woke up when he felt my tears falling onto his feet. I guess he thought I only cried when we made love or when he was hitting me.

“Kim? What’s wrong? Why are you crying? What’s the matter? Did someone hit you?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Did somebody do something to you?”

“No. I just missed you, that’s all.”

“Naturally—what do you expect?”

I didn’t know what was so natural about it, but he dragged me into bed and started taking my clothes off like he was opening a bag of caramels. Then he started to run his tongue over my body, licking me all over. Suddenly his tongue stiffened. I looked down and saw with horror that there was a bright purple bruise on my chest.

Spoon was so dumbfounded that he couldn’t even hit me. He held me by the shoulders, his hands trembling. I really thought he was going to kill me. I steeled myself and looked at his face. I expected to see his eyes wild with anger, but all I saw was desperation and sadness.

I had never wanted to see Spoon’s eyes filled with sorrow like that.

The pain was written all over his face, like on one of those teleprint signs going from left to right: “I AM SAD… I AM SAD… I AM SAD… ”

A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. I had to do something.

Spoon wasn’t supposed to look like that. He was only supposed to have that nonchalant, vacant expression. I wracked my brains for something to say.

“Can’t you be more careful, Spoon? If you leave marks there it means I can’t wear any of my nice dresses.”

“Oh, right. Last night…?”

His face suddenly lit up and he pushed me down and started making passionate love to me.

Somehow I had managed to shift the blame. I never knew I could be so devious.

I sighed with a mixture of relief and pleasure as we made love, and I thought about the way Spoon’s jealousy hurt him and tortured me.

Whatever hurt Spoon hurt me, too. I was in love with the useless bastard!

Just the thought made me blush and I looked up at him. He stopped moving and stared back at me with a quizzical expression:

“What’s the matter?”

“I think I’m in love with you…”

I’m sure I must have looked really proud of myself, like I’d decided to make lobster for dinner or something.

“Naturally,” he said.

I wondered if maybe me and Spoon being together was just the way it had to be. Whatever the reason, there was no question that SPOON was stamped on my heart in big, bold letters.

We were lying on the grass in the corner of a park, sharing a joint. People passed by, completely unaware, never thinking for a moment that we might be smoking marijuana. From time to time Spoon would close one eye and blow smoke at Osbourne, then roll with laughter as Osbourne just stood there, paralyzed, like it was a whiff of catnip. I was wearing a heavy coat, and was twisting the tops off one bottle of beer after another.

We were having an Indian summer. The sun was strong. When I closed my eyes, the insides of my eyelids turned into the fresh, young leaves that grow on trees at the beginning of summer. I reached out my hand and fumbled for the stiff material of Spoon’s jeans. His eyelashes always tickled my cheek just before he kissed me, so I knew what he was up to. His Panama hat fell to the ground and Osbourne jumped on it and started playing with it. I wished Spoon would stop blowing my lips like he was playing a trumpet.

We stood at the bus stop in front of the park, munching hot dogs. I had put too much hot mustard on mine and it was making me cry. Osbourne was curled up inside Spoon’s jacket, asleep, when I heard a woman’s voice.

“Kim?”

It was Maria. I was surprised to bump into her so unexpectedly, but I didn’t let it show. I just stood there, rooted to the spot, as she looked Spoon up and down. I thought I would die of embarrassment It was humiliating to be seen with someone you love so much. Spoon, on the other hand, gave Maria a brief glance and went back to stroking Osbourne inside his jacket.

“Is this him?” she asked.

I nodded. I always counted on Maria to tell me what to do next, but I didn’t want her to pass judgment on Spoon as she had my other men.

“He’s a big one,” she said after a moment, then mumbled good-bye, caught a cab, and was gone. I felt a little sad, like I had just split up with a boyfriend. I felt like I deserved some kind of diploma, like I had finally graduated from her or something.

The bus arrived and we got on. Spoon sat in silence while I talked.

“She taught me everything I know, the same as you have. Don’t you a think she’s pretty?”

I winced at the triteness of my words and looked up at him.

“Not really.”

I felt a moment of panic. Spoon’s usual reaction to a beautiful woman was to whistle and shout obscenities at her.

“She is! Everyone says so.”

“Just shut up and leave me alone.”

Spoon looked out the window. His thick eyelashes were wet with tears. Now I felt sick, like I had swallowed a big lump of bread whole.

The lump refused to break up—it just got bigger and bigger.

The bus jerked to a halt and the seat lurched forward violently. I gulped and swallowed the lump back down, and prayed that the driver wouldn’t hit the brakes again. I was afraid that the lump would come bursting out from inside of me.

I set my gaze on Spoon as I stuffed my scrambled-egg breakfast into I my mouth. He had skipped his usual breakfast, a couple of aspirin I washed down with Tanqueray gin, and was looking over some papers that he held carefully in his hand as he talked on the phone to some embassy or other. And every now and then he would just shut his mouth or close his eyes and stop moving.

I wanted to say, Hey, your girl’s got eyes for nothing but you, but all I could do was sit there beside him, stealing the odd glance at his big, black face.

Spoon had told me not to play Chet Baker so early in the morning, but other than that he hadn’t said a word. He was usually so loud about everything, but recently he’d been really quiet. Who’d he think he was, a philosopher or something? He had even quit snorting coke. But he smoked all day long, his big body sprawled out on the couch. Spoon worried me.

His eyes, which always told me exactly what he was thinking, were full of anxiety. And what had happened at the bus stop was still gnawing at me. What was that all about, and why was I still so upset about it?

It was as though we had reached an important point in our depraved life together, and a bookmark had been thrust in between us to mark the event.

I was picking some egg from between my teeth with a toothpick when I hit a raw nerve in a bad tooth. It made me feel so depressed. The ache in my tooth hit another nerve somewhere in my mind.

I snatched the pile of papers from the table and flung them at Spoon, but they just fanned out in perfect order in front of me like a lost poker hand, and that made me even more angry. Spoon responded with a sharp slap across my face, and I suddenly realized the papers must be some kind of plan he was working on.

I fell to the ground with the force of the blow, but Spoon gave me no more than a glance as he gathered up my cards (he had certainly won that hand) and left the apartment without a word.

Alone in the room, I crouched down and clutched my hands to my chest. Then I rolled over onto the floor and started kicking my legs in the air, screaming and crying like some spoiled child. But it didn’t ease the pain in my heart. I tried calling out his name like I was just calling out the name of a kitchen implement: “Spoon!”

Just a tool for getting the food from the bowl to the mouth. I started kicking my legs in the air again.

“SPOON!”

This time I yelled like I was calling for my man, and hot tears flowed from my eyes. That made me feel a little better.

I had always stayed calm before, even when Spoon beat me half to death. Spoon and me, we were bound too close to each other and our relationship was something far too insincere to be called love. I knew there was no reason for me to worry about Maria, and that made me feel even worse because I knew I didn’t need a reason—Spoon had shown me exactly how he felt, and I could see the pain in his expression. Whenever Spoon hurt, I felt pain, too, and then neither of us could help the other because we were both hurting so badly.

On one hand, I was pleased that Spoon was attracted to Maria—at least he had good taste. But it made me feel more jealous than I had ever felt before. What an ungrateful bastard he was! How could he leave his glass before drinking the last drop? I wanted to despise him because he had no manners, but it only made me hate myself.

I had to go and look for him, so I stood up, combed my hair, and put my coat on. I wandered around town like a sleepwalker, searching for him, starting with the places he was least likely to be: the bars, the discos, and the record shops we had been to together. I even went to one of his friends’ apartments where Spoon sold drugs. But I couldn’t find him anywhere, so I decided to follow my instincts, and turned my steps toward Maria’s apartment in Jiyugaoka. Despite the fact that he shouldn’t know where she lived, like a madwoman, I was drawn there by my intuition.

I rang the doorbell, and there was no answer, but I could feel Spoon on the other side of the door begging for my help. Once, when I had been a homeless teenager, Maria had given me the key to her apartment.

Now I used that key to silently unlock the door, and I pushed it open.

Spoon lay on the bed in the corner of the large, loftlike room. He half sat up. Maria’s long hair, like seaweed, spread out from between his legs, and each hair seemed poised to turn into a wriggling Medusas snake. Peeping through the hair were sharp, gold-polished fingernails.

She looked up quietly.

“Come over here, Kim.”

I walked over and looked at them both lying there. Spoon’s body, glistening black, looked like sweet, mouthwatering chocolate. And that was all. That was what I had been running around Tokyo like a crazy woman to find. But for me, it was worth it.

Why? Since when? Who started it? So many w questions cam crowding up into my throat, all trying to get out at once. I could feel all those battling it out inside me; it felt like a scene from an American cartoon. Now that was funny—I was a comic heroine! I wondered if maybe I should just throw my head back and start laughing at myself.

Maria glanced at me sideways, picked up the gown from beside her, and put it on. I just stood there, my lip curled.

“You made me do it,” she said.

I just stood and stared at her. I couldn’t figure out what she was trying to say. If it had been in a book with notes, I would have skipped straight to the last page for the explanation.

“This is all your fault, Kim.”

She thrust the words at me as if to say, Have you had enough? Or do you want some more?

My lips felt dry and I tried desperately to moisten them.

“What are you talking about? I don’t know what you mean. You just met me with Spoon by accident. And then, before I knew what was happening, you stole him! You conniving bitch!”

It was the first time I had ever called her a bitch. Any respect I had for her was gone.

“I didn’t steal him from you.”

“Yes, you did! He’s mine!”

I suddenly realized that all of the satisfaction I got from being dominated by Spoon was actually the satisfaction of owning him.

“And you are his, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, there you go then.”

“Huh?” I was lost. She always had that effect on me.

I stared at her. Her eyes looked as heavy as if they’d had golden wine poured into them, wine that had been aged in a cellar for a hundred years. I had always been intoxicated by them; they reminded me of my own ugliness. I’d always asked her to check out the men I was seeing he-cause I didn’t think I was smart enough to judge for myself. She had taken care of me since I had been on my own, and I’d always trusted her completely.

Then, when I met Spoon, he had replaced Maria. I was too ignorant and too unsure of myself to go it alone, wavering unsteadily like seaweed in the ocean; I always needed someone to tell me what to do.

Maria stared back at me. I felt strangely calm. There was a song I used to sing about a girl whose boyfriend cheated on her. I got all worked up, imagining how she felt. The idea of her agony and her beautiful expression made me cry. She must have felt like her whole body would dissolve into tears that would just wash away. I cried tears of pity for that poor, heartbroken girl. I had never had a man stolen from me before. My love for every man I knew had snuck out the back door long before someone else could take him from me. And Maria would whisper quietly to me over and over again that that was the way things were, and eventually I would forget all about it.

Now I was the one who had been tricked, and I felt like the girl in the song, but I didn’t start singing any blues. I just stood there like I was bound hand and foot, and was watching TV. It seemed like all my emotions had been frozen.

“I don’t know the meaning of anything anymore. I sure don’t know the meaning of love,” I said.

“That’s because you’re in the middle of it.”

What the hell was she talking about? If anyone was in the middle, it was Spoon.

I could tell he was scared by the way we were talking about it so calmly, no shouting, no fuss.

And suddenly I felt sorry for him. For the past few days he had had a look on his face like he was going to do something dangerous. But now he just looked awkward and embarrassed. So what had that serious expression been for? I was so frustrated, I felt like stamping my feet. I knew that if I asked him how he felt about all of this, he’d just say something lame like, Hey, it’s no big deal.

But it was important to me. Even if, maybe, to this cheap whore of a man (Now how did I come up with a phrase like that?) it was just a fling.

But I had adored Maria and had even dreamed of being her lover. I didn’t want to believe that an affair with her could ever be a shallow thing—I wanted it to have some deep meaning.

“You’re in the middle,” she repeated.

“Just lay off, will you?” I said, beginning to cry.

“Hey, baby, don’t cry.”

“Kim, my darling, don’t cry.”

Their voices overlapped.

“I love you, Kim.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. This woman, who I had worshiped for so long, was saying words I’d never expected to hear. But it was too late. I had already stopped loving her.

“I’ve always loved you. There has never been anyone else.”

Now that she said it, I knew it was true. She really did love me deeply.

Far more than her hats and her rings, or her men.

“I love everything that has anything to do with you. I want to know everything there is about you. Since you’ve met this guy, you never come around anymore. I don’t care if you leave me in a corner and forget all about me; just let me watch you. I can’t bear being shut out like this. Do you know how hard it’s been because I couldn’t tell you how I felt?”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“If I had, you would have dumped me. You’re always like that. If something starts to demand your attention, you end up hating everything about it.”

She was probably right, I would have ended up hating her. Especially if I’d met Spoon after hearing that.

“Besides, if I had told you, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. I would have eaten you alive, even your bones.”

I realized then that her love for me was the same as my love for Spoon.

I often felt the violent urge to sink my teeth into him down to the bone.

“I wanted to satisfy my hunger with this man. I can still smell you on his penis.”

I was lost for words, but Maria continued. “I’m going to just forget all about today. I’m never putting myself in this position again. And I never want to go through the embarrassment of telling someone I love them again. Next time I fall in love it will be with someone who doesn’t need to be told.”

Maria put her hand to her mouth to stifle her sobs. To love and to cry were equally humiliating for her. I was suddenly grateful to myself for my total lack of patience.

“Maria, Spoon doesn’t belong to me. But I probably belong to him.”

“What could make you say that? He’s just a man, that’s all. He’s got nothing. Just a man. How could you?”

“He’s my man.”

She put her head in her hands and sighed. “Well, is that so important?”

“Don’t forget, I don’t have anything, either. I’m just a woman.”

“Get out. Please, just go now.”

I left them there in the room together, and left with my head spinning, full of thoughts about how we all fall crazily in love, but each in our own way.

When I got back to my place, a pang of hunger reminded me that I hadn’t eaten for two whole days. I was exhausted, far too tired to cook, so I just sat down with a bowl of cereal and milk. The cornflakes got stuck in my throat.

Squatting down behind the door, I strained to hear what was going on outside. A car door slammed, and I wondered if it was Spoon coming home. The sound of a drunk kicking a garbage can. Spoon often did that, making a terrible mess all over the street. It must be him. Finally I heard the sound of the student next door rummaging in his bag for his key. He would never have guessed that a girl sat behind a door less than a meter away from where he stood, a glass gripped tightly in her nervous little hand.

A miserable feeling began to well up in the pit of my stomach, like Alka-Seltzer bubbles. I had no idea what I would say to him when I saw his face, but I knew that however much I cursed him, it wouldn’t have any effect on the stupid jerk. Dirty words were just everyday language to Spoon.

I was numb with exhaustion. The next thing I heard was the sound of the key in the lock, the sound that used to frighten me so much every day. The door opened just a crack and Spoons shameless black face came peeping through. I didn’t even have the energy to stand up. I just sat there and looked at him. Spoon picked me up in his arms and kissed me, bringing in a rush of cold air from outside.

“Oh my god! Are you okay?”

He pinched my cheeks and my lips with his fingertips, playing with my face like I was a baby. I tried to explain my feelings but I couldn’t find the words.

“What’s wrong? Forgot how to speak English, huh?”

I tried to give him a brash smile like one I’d seen in a Jeanne Moreau movie, but I was too young to pull it off.

“Do you love me?” I asked.

Spoon didn’t answer. The word “love” had no real meaning for either of us, and he usually tried to brush questions like that aside with a quick, “You know I do.”

But now I could sense that the meaning of the word “love” was changing for us. It was no longer something trivial, but something dark and heavy, a word that we no longer dared use so lightly. I looked down, and removing one of my earrings, I dropped it into the glass of gin I was holding in my hand. I held the glass out to Spoon and he stared at it, a puzzled expression on his face. I pushed the glass up to the white ivories that were his teeth. It made a little clinking sound.

“Cheers!”

I forced the glass between his teeth and poured in the clear, strong liquid. The gin and the earring flowed down into his stomach. It must have burned his throat along the way.

“I hope that diamond stays inside your body forever.”

Ever since then, I only wear the other earring in my left ear, all by itself.

“You know, you’re my Linus blanket.”

Spoon didn’t apologize. He must have thought it was special enough that he finally knew how much he needed me, like a blanket, taking it everywhere, sucking on it for comfort, unable to sleep without it. And he must have thought that him needing me made me lucky. I just didn’t have the heart to argue with the dopey bastard. He was probably right anyway.

Spoon was under my skin. We talked. We must have fucked hundreds and hundreds of times, but now for the first time we communicated with each other using words, not just our bodies. I told him how much I wanted him when he wasn’t there. And I explained to him how it got so bad that I would have been happy just to catch a glimpse of one of his turds left floating in the toilet bowl. Once, I even turned the trash can upside down so I could line up his empty Michelob bottles on the table.

“Spoon, I wanted to eat your penis, to scoop it out with your spoon like I was eating a banana.”

I just kept on talking. My senses were alive with sexual excitement.

Spoon looked up, clicking his tongue like he was irritated.

“Shit… I feel like I’m only here for you to play with. It’s like your skin. When I press it with my finger, it gives. And when I take my finger away, it goes right back to the way it was.”

He knew his kisses would have a much more dramatic effect on me than his fists. He had learned how to read my emotions so well that he even knew how to turn a painful bite into a deliciously pleasurable experience.

“Oh, Spoon, right now I feel like butter on hot toast.”

Spoon had wanted a cat more than anything when he was a young boy.

But his whole family hated cats, and no one would listen to him. He used to think about cats all the time, even at school, and he’d tell his mother about how cuddly and soft and cute they were, but she just told him that what he was describing sounded more like a girl than a cat, and hat in four or five years he should try finding himself a girlfriend to look after instead.

Then one day, on his way home from a friend’s house, Spoon found an abandoned cat with a bad leg. He was overjoyed and took the cat home on his bicycle. But his brothers were allergic to cats and were angry with him when they couldn’t stop sneezing. In the end, Spoon decided that he would take care of the cat secretly in his bed. But it always had gunk oozing out of its eyes; it must have had some kind of disease.

Spoon’s family was poor and they couldn’t afford to buy extra food for the cat, so Spoon fed it his own leftovers. No one liked the cat. It was a scrawny, pathetic-looking creature, but Spoon loved it.

One morning when Spoon woke up, he found the cat had thrown up yellow puke and died; it was lying underneath him. Spoon hated the cat for dying on him without warning. He wrapped it in a plastic bag and threw it down a back alley, and as he did, he heard the echo of his mother’s voice telling him, “Cats and girls—there’s very little difference.”

He was only a child, but he was convinced it was true.

My body made juice.

“Dissolve your sugar in me, Spoon.”

If his dick had been an icicle, I would have melted it with the heat from my body.

“Crush me like you did the cat!”

Like that poor cat, I would remain alive in Spoon’s heart and wreak my lifelong revenge. His mother was right about cats and girls.

When we made love, something about the smell would suddenly remind me of oysters, and Spoon’s skin would become like hot tar and envelop my whole body. The room was pitch black. No lights. No music.

Only the aroma remained. My sense of smell made me feel like a police dog, and I was sure I would be able to sniff Spoon out, no matter where he went.

He trapped me with his elbows and slowly opened his eyes to look down at his prey. He ground his teeth together. I felt like if anyone was grinding their teeth it should be me.

“I can’t stand it!”

“Why?”

“You’re on top of me, in control as always, and I’m trapped here underneath you, feeling like this.”

“Feeling like what?”

“Like I’m gonna pass out and die.”

“Open your eyes for me.”

Spoon grabbed my jaw with his hand and pulled my face toward his to stop me from fainting. I wished he’d just let me pass out. That would have been a lot easier.

“I want you to watch me and feel me here on top of you right to the very end.”

I started to cry. I just couldn’t help myself. Now at last I understood that pleasure and pain were one and the same thing. Loving Spoon was such a painful experience. I wondered if maybe I should just wait for it to turn into pleasure. Or if one day I would just get used to it and accept the mixture of pleasure and pain.

“Look at me!”

I looked. There was no escape. I was possessed. Nothing else mattered. Everything I cared about lay between the sheets on that bed.

And maybe Spoon knew. I’m sure we would have dived into bed together, writhing passionately like worms, even if somebody had told us that today were the end of the world.

“The end of the world? Who cares?”

Not us.

I couldn’t find the ashtray in the darkness, so I flicked my cigarette in a champagne glass I found lying under the bed. Then I realized that me and Spoon had never drunk champagne together. Somehow it made more sense for us to spoil a fancy glass like that than to use it the right way. And besides, we were far too lazy to make enough money to buy anything as expensive as champagne.

Savoring the taste of the cigarette smoke, I decided that Spoon knew me better than I knew myself, as though his body would be better qualified to fill out my medical reports than a doctor.

“Whenever I’m with you, Spoon, my heart pounds and my legs turn to jelly. Sometimes I’m scared you’ll find out how I really feel about you.”

“I feel like three stars came up on the slot machine,” Spoon answered. “The bells just keep on ringing inside me.”

You try to scoop up the quarters in your hands as the machine spits them out at you, but they pour out so fast you can never keep up. You feel both excited and surprised at the same time, and so happy when you ex-change your quarters for a fistful of dollar bills. I thought it was a perfect way to describe our relationship.

For the first time in my life I felt lucky, like I was a winner. I felt like I could do anything, and optimistic dreams welled up inside me. I felt so good that I’m sure I would have been happy even if I were some kid going to school on a Monday morning in the middle of a rainstorm. And of course, at that moment the old gambler’s saying, “Easy come, easy go,” had never been farther from my mind.

I sat in a corner of the room where the afternoon sun came pouring in, and peeled a hard-boiled egg. A pinch of salt and a sprinkle of I freshly ground black pepper and I was in heaven. Spoon and Osbourne were both sprawled out on the floor dozing, their heads resting on the magazine Spoon had been reading.

I ran my hand over the stubble on Spoon’s chin with the back of my hand. He frowned a little but showed no sign of waking. He was like a big, black cat, sleeping there without a care in the world, and he looked so peaceful that it was all I could do to stop myself from saying out loud, Please, Spoon, won’t you fuck me?

But I held back and just kept gazing at his face. I could feel a sad sense of security in my heart. I had loved Spoon so madly for the past few months, but when I thought about it, I knew absolutely nothing about my lover boy. But it didn’t matter. I realized I could love no one else but Spoon, and I could only love what I knew, so I really didn’t care about his background or his past. Only one thing bothered me: the file of papers he always carried around so carefully. I knew they were some kind of plans; I’d seen them that time I’d thrown them across the room at him. Then, when he hit me, I thought about getting revenge by drawing all over them with colored pencils. Poor little me… I just couldn’t stand it when Spoon was interested in anything else but me. What would I do if he ever left me? What if he just stopped being there? Even if he was alive and well, if he wasn’t with me it would be the same as if he were dead. I’m not like some girls who say they’ll be happy as long as their old boyfriends are having a good time somewhere (not that I really believe them). I needed Spoon to be by my side, to laugh with and to be angry at; and I needed him to be close enough to make love at a moment’s notice. If I couldn’t have that, it made no difference to me whether he was alive or dead. I could only love something if it was right there in front of me. And if it wasn’t right there, I never wanted to see it again—for me it did not exist.

I tried to fight it, but I had a feeling that Spoon might leave me. I wondered if the idea had come to me so I could be ready in case it really happened.

“Please don’t…”

The words came so naturally. I tried to think whether I had ever really asked anyone for something before or not. If I had, it was for something so trivial I couldn’t remember it.

I made some tea and lit a cigarette. The smell of the tea woke Spoon.

The steam must have made my face look hazy to him.

“What would I do if you left me?”

“What makes you think I’ll leave you?”

“I’d probably cry.”

He stroked my hair. “Poor baby,” he said.

“Wouldn’t you cry?”

“I’ve never cried.”

I wondered if I’d have to teach him how to cry, too. He didn’t seem to be able to do anything without my help.

“I’ve gotta make a phone call.”

“Who to?”

Spoon didn’t answer. He just kept dialing. In my mind I told him, I’m worried. I love you.

But outwardly I pretended not to care. Spoon was right there in front of me. He was close enough for me to reach around from behind and unzip his jeans, then reach inside and turn him on. I calmed down.

It would have been easier to love him if I lost my sight and my hearing and was only left with my sense of smell.

UA stands for “unauthorized absence” in navy lingo. In a disco full of sailors, if you were told that one of them was UA it meant that you should steer clear of him unless you had plenty of money and were thinking of keeping him as a pet. It was rare for a girl to know that a guy was UA and still fall in love the way I had. If they were caught, deserters usually had to pay enormous fines. And of course a lot of those guys, who had joined the navy because they couldn’t get a job in the first place, couldn’t pay, and they ended up in military jail. Even guys with minor offenses had their ID cards taken away so they couldn’t leave the base. They were birds in a cage.

And if they were thrown out of the navy, they just went back to hustling on the streets.

I was frightened. Not because he sold drugs, or by the telephone calls he made to some embassy, or even by the file of papers he carried around with him. The thing that frightened me was that Spoon could be taken far away from me for what he had done. If there was anything he was guilty of, it was that he had given me memories. I had never had to deal with memories before. I had always hated them and I had none prior to meeting Spoon. But now I did have memories—memories of him—and I no longer had confidence that I would be able to erase them when he walked out the door. I wondered why I was thinking about this now. It hadn’t worried me a bit when all he had been to me was a helpless jerk.

I had just accepted him for what he was.

One afternoon I got a strange phone call.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you. Is this an office or a company some sort?”

“Who is this?”

“This is the Metropolitan Police.”

“Are you putting me on? I get this kind of prank call all the tirf! Look, what do you want?”

It was no lie; every now and then some joker would phone and it really irritated me. Once it was one of Spoon’s idiot friends.

“Hello, this is the navy police.”

I’d started shaking, and then when I realized it was a joke I really let him have it. Poor Willie! He hadn’t meant any harm.

“Okay then, give me your number—if you can—and I’ll call you back. That way I’ll know whether or not you really are from the police.”

I dialed the number he gave me, and it was answered by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. I spoke to the guy again, and he just asked me my name and occupation and then hung up.

I didn’t understand why he had called, but at least I didn’t need to worry that it had anything to do with Spoon—this guy was from the Japanese police. What did worry me was that the police might have been investigating prostitution at the club where I worked. Sometimes I got some of the hostesses to work the odd trick here and there on the side: the Taiwanese and Southeast Asian students were such amazingly hard workers, it was incredible.

I paced around the room, irritated, then poured myself half a glass of whiskey and downed it in one gulp. What would I do if the club got closed down? With my singing as bad as it was, it was difficult to imagine that any other club would take me on. I wondered if I could sell drugs with Spoon. But I was too gutless for that. I slumped down on the couch, muttering to myself.

Tina Turner was on the radio. I thought about those amazing thick lips of hers, and seeing my reflection in the dressing table mirror, I took out my red lipstick, outlined my lips with a brush to make them look twice as large as normal, and carefully filled them in. Then, over and over again, I applied kiss marks to pieces of tissue paper, and then painted on another layer of lipstick to keep the color from coming off.

When I had finished, my lips looked more like chunks of ripe, red nectarine than cute little cherries, but I was satisfied with my work and lit a cigarette.

Looking in the mirror again, I decided that my T-shirt and the Levi s I was wearing didn’t go well with my new lips at all, so I dragged my black silk nightgown out from under the bed and changed into it. There were claw marks in the silk, and loose threads hung from the places where Osbourne had been scratching. The whole effect made me feel like a dramatic heroine, and I let the cigarette droop from my fingers like some movie star.

The door opened. It was Spoon.

“Hi, honey!”

He stared at me in confusion, then burst out laughing.

“You look terrible! Is it Halloween or something? You look like a canned tomato!”

At first his laughter annoyed me, but then I got his joke: lips often remind people of food.

“You can eat me if you like.”

He kissed me and his lips were instantly dyed red. Then he crouched down, gazing up at me intensely, and began kissing my thigh. He got some lipstick there, too. I could feel its stickiness on my leg, and as I stroked the curly hair on his head with my hand, I was almost in tears.

“Spoon…”

He opened his mouth as if to say something, but I never knew what The phone rang. It wasn’t the police. It was a guy from some embassy. I was so confused that I didn’t really catch the details, but it was a country with an unusual name. He asked if he could speak to Joseph Johnson. This was the first time I had ever heard Spoon’s real name, and it came as a shock.

Spoon grabbed the phone. He spoke to the guy on the other end of the line for a moment, then said to him, “Everything’s all right.”

He replaced the receiver and turned to me with the happiest of smiles on his face.

“Baby, we’ve been very lucky.”

But something made me feel uneasy and I couldn’t return his smile. I just stood and stared at his beaming face like it was some kind of object.

I couldn’t even blink.

The doorbell rang and my heart missed a beat. Anxiously, I looked over at Spoon. He motioned with his eyes for me to open the door. I really didn’t want anyone else to see me dressed like that, looking like a prostitute. I was almost in tears, but pulling the front of my gown together, I reluctantly opened the door.

Five people in suits stood outside. One was a dark-skinned foreign woman, two were older Japanese men, and the other two were young Americans.

One of the Japanese men spoke.

“Do you know this man?”

He showed me a photograph of Spoon. It was a terrible shot and made him look really ugly, so I didn’t answer.

“I asked, do you know him? We know he’s here.”

He spoke quietly, but his tone was menacing enough to make it difficult for me to avoid his question.

“What do you want?”

He opened a small black case holding his ID card. It was attached to his jacket by a piece of cord, and as he pulled it out I could see a gun under his jacket. I was terrified. I just stood there, too frightened to speak, and they all charged past me into the apartment without even taking their shoes off.

Spoon must have known that something was wrong. He was hiding silently in the back room. But the suits were determined, and they kept searching until they found him.

I heard them struggling and then Spoon shouting angrily, “She’s got nothing to do with this! Shut the door!”

Dazed, I stood riveted in the doorway, completely dumbfounded.

When I came to my senses I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My face was deathly white and the lipstick I had painted on so thickly was now double-crossing me. It made me look like I was smiling.

After a few moments the five people came out of the back room. One of the Japanese men said, “He wants to talk to you. You’ve got fifteen minutes. You can go in now.”

I was grateful for his kindness, but I was so nervous my legs were trembling.

“Spoon…”

He was sitting quietly on the bed. That bed had been everything to us. He’d made me laugh and cry there. I wondered if we would ever have the chance to use it again.

It was already night. I had planned to cook ribs for him and I had already put them on the bottom shelf of the fridge to defrost. I liked to roast them in the little oven with tomatoes and red peppers to make them spicy, and add some bay leaves to bring out the flavor. Oh, and plenty of ground black pepper, of course. Spoon had never got around to buying me the garlic press I had been after, so I crushed it with a knife blade instead. Last of all I would add ginger, nutmeg, paprika, and anything else I could find in the cupboard.

As it cooked, the sticky, bloody smell of the meat would gradually change to something much more appetizing as the meat started to brown. And when the bones went a reddish-brown color and glistened with fat, I would turn off the oven and drain the fat. Then I would open a bottle of red wine, put it on the table with a pile of napkins, and call Spoon. There would usually still be a lot of grease left in the bottom of the roasting pan, fat that oozed from the ribs as they cooked, and it smelled so good, I liked to spread it on slices of toast and throw them in a basket to eat with the meat.

Spoon liked to scrape the meat off the bones with his sharp teeth.

Drops of grease would fall from his lips into his wine and float on the surface in little round globules. And sometimes a few of those globules would merge together to form one large one. It was cheap, sparkling, red wine from America, and the grease and tiny bubbles mixed together in the glass made it look like it was moving.

Spoon never bothered using napkins when he ate, so his greasy fingernails shined like ripe chestnuts. By the time I was finishing my first rib, he was usually finishing the very last one on the plate, so I never got full.

“I’m still hungry,” I’d say. “Let me lick your fingers.”

Then, gazing into his eyes, I would suck the grease from his fingers, one by one. I would know he wanted me then. It was written all over his face. And the look in my eyes would say, What do you want to do now, Spoon?

Those dinners of debauchery were our greatest luxury.

“What should I do about the spareribs?”

There were tears in my eyes as I said it.

“I suppose I’d better just throw them away, huh? But it’s such a waste!”

I flopped down on the floor and began sobbing my heart out.

“And I really wanted ribs tonight, too.”

My mind was suddenly flooded with memories of everything we had eaten together. It was soul food, hot and spicy and full of flavor, not mild like Japanese food. Things like ham hocks, a stew made with white beans and a smoked h a m shank, and okra gumbo, a spicy stew with meat so tender it just fell off the bones. Then when you sucked those bones, they were full of thick, tasty jelly. And Spoon just loved Tabasco—whenever we had fried chicken he would pour tons of it all over the dark meat. And of course chitlins—stewed pig giblets. It was the kind of food that most Japanese would never think about eating, but I was happy to eat anything with Spoon. I just thought about how the food would become part of his body, and it made me feel like I was eating part of Spoon himself.

“I shouldn’t really be talking about food at a time like this, should I?”

Spoon didn’t say a word. He just looked at me. His eyes were sad but there was a smile on his lips.

“You haven’t said it today, Spoon.”

“Haven’t said what?”

“Your favorite four-letter word.”

“Huh? Oh, that.”

“It’s not like you.”

“Hmm?”

“Say it for me.”

“Fuck!”

“Now do it to me.”

He held my face in the palms of his hands. I caressed his fingers and his wrists. When he spread his fingers wide, one hand was big enough to cover my whole face. There were only three thick lines on his palms, and that made them look deceptively simple, but they were actually very sensitive and they knew every inch of my body.

“Can’t we? Can’t we make love anymore?”

He finally stood up, dropping something down between the bed and the wall as he did so. Then he turned back, and after looking at me for a few brief moments, he closed one eye and winked at me. It reminded me of that night we first met. After we had made love so hurriedly, the passion had remained and solidified inside me like some kind of cap-sule. Then his wink had been the catalyst for it to dissolve and take control of my heart.

Now, everything was over the moment his eye closed. I tried to hold back all the emotions welling up inside. “What are you trying to do to me?” I whispered. “You’re still making eyes at me like you want to make love.”

Spoon pointed at himself with his finger, then very slowly pointed at me, and nodded his head twice. I tried to tell him, Me, too, Spoon! Me, tool But the words just wouldn’t come out.

With one detective holding each arm, Spoon left the room and left me. I was alone with no idea of what had really happened. I poured myself a glass of gin and glanced at myself in the mirror. My face was covered in lipstick.

Later that night one of the detectives returned to ask if Spoon had left anything behind in the apartment—he had dropped his ID card down by the side of the bed before they had dragged him off. At first I told the detective I didn’t know what he was talking about, because the photograph on that ID card was the only one I had of Spoon, and I didn’t want to lose it. But then he threatened to search the apartment, so I thought I’d better give it up. I put the ID card together with a newspaper and Spoon’s copy of Jet magazine, and told the detective that was all I had of Spoon’s. He was pleased to have found what he was looking for and left.

I hadn’t told the detective, but along with his ID card, he had also left his namesake lucky charm: his spoon. But I couldn’t imagine the American government arresting me for stealing a spoon.

The next day on F E N radio news, they said that Spoon had been arrested for trying to sell confidential military documents. There was probably a big article about it in Stars and Stripes, too. Actually, I was surprised to hear that Spoon had been dealing with something so important—maybe he was more clever than I had given him credit for.

But all that meant nothing to me anymore.

For the first few days I just sat on the floor in my apartment like idiot, staring at myself in the mirror, my face still covered in lipstick from the night Spoon had left.

Then, I finally started to come around, and I noticed that the meat in the fridge had gone bad and was beginning to smell. I opened the lid of the wastebasket to throw it away, but I got sick to my stomach and I had to run to the bathroom to throw up. Even after I’d been sick, the pukey feeling wouldn’t go away, and it made me so mad that I picked up Spoon’s bottle of Brut and threw it at the wall. It was made of cheap plastic, so it didn’t smash. Only the top broke, and the sweet fragrance of the aftershave filled the room. As soon as it reached me, I began to cry, wailing like an animal.

At last I understood. I had lost Spoon. I cried and moaned as if I were at death’s door.

“Spoon! Where are you ?”

I began to search madly around the room, turning the whole apartment upside down, desperate to find something he might have left behind: sperm stains on the sheets, any sign of that bout of Philippine crabs we just couldn’t get rid of when we first met. Anything would do.

Anything at all. I even turned his Panama hat inside out in an effort to find even one solitary, springy hair. I found his toothbrush, and his bottle of aspirin, and when I opened the jar of Vaseline I found the traces he’d left with his fingers—he scooped it out with his big, rough fingers and used it to make me feel horny. I found the wrapping from one of his packs of cigarettes, too—he used to bite them open from the bottom—the stocking cut in half with a knot tied in the end to keep his “springs” in order, a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie, and an empty bottle of Bacardi—he didn’t need a glass, he just drank it straight from the bottle. By the time I had gathered all his junk together, I was completely exhausted.

I lay down on the floor, grinding my teeth. It was over. But what was it that had ended? Was I supposed to be able to convince myself that just because I could no longer see him there in front of me, he had never existed in the first place?

I started tap-tap-tapping with the spoon. A constant stream of tears fell from my eyes, and I was afraid that my memories of him might flow out with them and be washed away and lost forever. I loved those memories. They were everything to me. I even loved the word “memories”!

Up until now that damn word had never meant anything to me at all. In fact I had always been proud of my fantastic ability to forget. This was the very first time I had ever had anything I wanted to call my own. I wondered if maybe there was still some sperm floating around inside me. I prayed that there was, and that it would seep into every last cell, spreading its sweet smell throughout my whole body.

After a while I gave up fighting and decided just to take life as it came. Little by little my memories began to settle, sinking to the bottom of my mind, and on the surface I appeared relaxed, as if nothing had ever happened. Like smooth, calm water without a ripple to be seen. No one around me knew. And then, every once in a while, I would secretly reach in and gently scoop up some of the cream that had settled to the bottom of my mind with my fingers, and lick them. It gave me an enormous feeling of satisfaction to finally savor those memories again.

“Mmm… delicious!”

Let’s say, for example, that there was a huge pile of hands, and that they all looked the same. I would still be able to pick out those horny, black hands of Spoon’s with no problem at all.

And let’s say there were loads and loads of men’s asses all lined up.

All the same, all with a crack running down the middle. I would still be able to spot the one that could grip my hand and not let go. And in the same ceremonial way you might choose a Filipino hooker, I would shower his butt with champagne to call him over to me.

Spoon was part of my own body now.

Now I drag my poor, weary body off to bed and turn down the blankets. I can’t escape the illusion any longer—the illusion of those sharp eyes hiding there, waiting for me.