Personal-space Invaders

Theo was a teetotaler… and this pun was too easy.

I couldn’t remember when I’d last slow-danced. I remembered, however, a florid tale told by Leah and passively absorbed by me last Sunday, about ‘prom’ and being its queen, and something about a ‘cerulean mermaid dress’, a punch bowl, three flasks of hard liquor, and a derek ‘getting handsy’. I remembered imagining a wide boardwalk promenade and, with their truncated caudal fins hanging over the rounded glass edges, a few blurble-colored mermaids idly riding up and down that promenade in giant bowls, sipping from pearl-encrusted flasks, wearing crowns; I remembered Leah asking me about my last ‘prom’ and me reluctantly explaining to her that ‘oh you mean school balls’ were not a thing in my original corner of the world, and Leah refusing to believe it, and claiming that I was lying, and me distracting her by saying how beautiful she looked, and Leah giving a nervous laugh and once again accusing me of lying because ‘I’m wearing my yoga pants and no makeup, and I’m all sweaty!’ Yes. But I wasn’t lying. She had indeed looked really beautiful that Sunday. I wished she herself could have accepted how beautiful she’d looked that Sunday.

No. I could remember when I’d last slow-danced.

Mom and Dad had been waltzing in the living room sometimes. I’d asked Dad to teach me, and he had.

I remembered. I just didn’t want to remember it too much. Remembering made my stomach twist.

“Fair warning, I’m really bad at this.”

“It’s okay. I’m decent at this,” Wakuu whispered back, and I realized that, although there were no school balls in his original corner of the world, either, he’d whisked himself away for nearly five years to a land of proms, punch bowls, and dereks aplenty. Around the time I’d whisked myself away to his original corner of the world. So it might have been that.

It might have been a living room.

As he led me to the dancefloor, I threw one glance back and noticed that the discussion was becoming more lively and chaotic; the overall atmosphere returning to the usual. So were our minds. Thanks, Theo.

Wakuu stepped away, snapped his heels together, and held out his hand ceremoniously, his head tilted and a tiny smile playing across his lips.

It might have been old-timey movies. The elegant and romantic ones.

Wakuu’s pale cheeks were flushed pink; he’d downed a couple of drinks during the ‘seminar’, for the purposes of coping, I assumed. As I slipped my fingers into his, I wondered how many teachers would have drank heavily in class if only they were allowed.

Inhaling for a primmer posture, I placed my spare hand over his shoulder. “And keep my back straight?”

His spare hand landed on the curve of my waist; a firm, confident, but gentle grip. “Yes. And chin up, if possible.”

“Literally?” I specified.

“Literally,” he confirmed.

Expecting him to move in the standard and basic box step, the only one I knew, I felt more-or-less confident about my ability to follow along. Yet, threading his fingers through mine, Wakuu briskly tugged left instead of right, and attempted to spin me around in a semicircle, and my head spun, as well. Not that I held Frank’s overall generosity against him, but he might have been way too generous with that rum bottle.

As Wakuu made an effort to guide me, I made an effort to adjust, adapt, optimize, and follow his wordless instructions, certain that he would be just as patient with me as with the crowd by the bar counter, if not more. This effort was half-assed.

“—‘interplanetary contamination’?!” I heard Noah shouting angrily. As if these words were the filthiest curses.

Sunny and Eleanor slowly waltzed past us, as placid and confident as before; effortless, in harmony. They looked like pros.

They’d had over two decades to practice, of course they were pros.

“Don’t look down or sideways, look into my face,” Wakuu advised in the same calm voice as the one he’d used while saving me from rum frost pain.

Tossing my head up, I looked into his face, only to find him looking down into mine. His lips parted gently, his breath landed on my skin, just as the melody shifted, becoming much more soft and mellow. Making it apparent that Theo’s own sullen state, whatever had brought it on, was evaporating.

“It, uh. It can help you keep your back straight,” Wakuu explained.

But it didn’t.

Wakuu probably would have been patient, if only I’d given him a solid chance. Patient until he taught me to dance in the other-hemisphere direction. But either my physical effort was doomed from the start. Or my brain wasn’t in the mood for dance lessons. Or, a secret third thing. As I continued staring at the amalgam of beautiful imperfections, my hand slumped down his shoulder blade, I shuffled my legs awkwardly around his one more time, nearly getting tangled in the yukata’s hem, and tilted sideways towards him with an involuntary sigh, giving up. For a moment, his fingers gripped tighter, thumb pressing into my ribcage, in one last ditch attempt at integrative pedagogy. After this, however, instead of further trying to straighten me up, Wakuu gave up too. His palm slid around my waist, to my lower back, and pulled in. Warmth surged into my chest.

I exhaled sharply, almost a laugh.

The solemn, tense knot of our fingers sagged down and got untied. We all but halted while searching for new resting spots for our arms. Mine ended up a cage around his rib cage, his ended up a circle around my shoulders. We tightened both, simultaneously. Closing my eyes, I leaned against him, bowed my head and burrowed it beneath his chin.

“We’re hugging.”

“We are,” he said and rubbed his chin over my hair.

“We’re supposed to be dancing,” I stated without reproach.

“We are.” Wakuu swayed from side to side, sluggishly, rocking the cradle that was the two of us.

This, I had no trouble repeating. And repeating. And repeating. I poked my nose into the dip of his collarbone, in between the three-button-down open lapels of his shirt. His skin was no longer cold; it smelled of something simple, soothing, and familiar, and I found myself wishing to continue inhaling this scent for longer. Much longer. Come to think of it, I’d have been fine with inhaling it until my dying day.

On the deadend edge of the dancefloor, by a rounded wooden wall, we continued shuffling in place, swaying together, like those lazy waves outside. Nobody was paying us the slightest bit of attention. Theo’s eyes were shut as he moved his agile fingers over the strings, body half-turned away. Sunny and Eleanor sat down at a table in the farthest corner, their backs to him, us, everyone. Surya had retreated from the dartboard, either to the loo or to the ocean and the 'dolphins'. The discussion by the bar counter was becoming needlessly heated.

“You’re killing me—”

“—know what I saw!”

No one was looking at us. No one at all. As if we weren’t there. Together, completely alone in a crowd.

I was acutely aware of his heartbeat under my ear. Quicker than a regular rate, but slower than mine.

“Which one is yours?” Wakuu asked.

“Hmm?” Instead of tossing my head up, this time I raised it slowly.

Until today, we’d never been in such close proximity and for as long. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one realizing the fact; his bashful smile looked almost as goofy and comforting as his regular smile. I saw him flatten the smile by force, calm and composure returning to his features, and my heart sank.

“Which explanation would you choose,” Wakuu clarified hoarsely, and I watched him swallow past the evident lump in his throat.

“For why no aliens?” Left with the impression that this was an all-round unpleasant topic for him, I found it odd that he was asking.

His dark eyes flickered away for a split second, returning to me instantly. “Yes. Speculatively. Which one is yours?”

As we continued swaying, my fingers spread across his back and curled, knuckles pressing into his spine.

“Kiahee,” I said. “Do you know Kiahee? The town.”

His hands were still cupping my upper back, fingers hooked over my shoulder blades, keeping me close. “I think I do. The name, at least. What about it?”

“So you’ve never been?”

“No. You?”

“Nope. It’s a neglected industrial hub. No museums, no universities, even. Boring as heck.”

“What about it?” Wakuu repeated, and I saw the corners of his mouth twitch.

“See, no one I know has ever been to Kiahee. Who in their right mind would ever choose Kiahee as their destination when there’s so many other places? Who would ever unironically say, ‘oh how marvelous, I am going to Kiahee!’ Who would ever go there on purpose at all? No one.”

“You think that aliens know about us, but have better places to visit, and your explanation is that on a galactic scale, our planet is Kiahee.”

“Precisely. We’re Kiahee. Going to Kiahee is a waste of gas.”

“Wasn’t there a— What was it? World’s third largest outdoor thermometer?”

“Precisely!”

“Point taken.” His chuckle was soft, yet robust; my chest resonated with the vibration.

His expression had mellowed, eyes half-lidded, his breathing deep, relaxed, and controlled. No visible trace of tension or anxiety.

“What’s yours?” I exhaled.

I had a feeling Wakuu craved to say it, but the sentence never materialized. Instead, he dived down, head-first, and kissed me. His lips brushed against mine lightly, hesitantly, as if he wasn’t certain whether or not I would take offense. At least, that’s what I thought for a fraction of a second before figuring out another facet of the meaning. He wanted to stop himself from saying something he’d have hated to say. And his brain had fumbled for solutions on how to abstain from saying that something. And he’d been wanting to kiss me, anyway. And he’d wondered if kissing me would be inappropriate, outrageous, stupid, the worst idea ever. Scared, reserved to the point of rigidity. No ‘naked’ of any kind allowed. And his brain had given him a circumstantial solution to both problems.

A logical excuse to follow his heart; wasn’t that a decent quip. Comedy thrived on contradictions, after all.

When I responded by pressing my mouth to his, when I drew in his lower lip and slid my tongue over it, Wakuu made a brand new sound. A low rumble that crawled up his throat and escaped past his lips. I caught it between my teeth as his palm moved to caress the nape of my neck.

Our bodies were a decelerating pendulum, then the pendulum came to a full halt. Wakuu cupped my face, drawing it closer, his breath becoming more erratic. A shiver raced through me, and I clawed at his shirt, bunching and wrinkling the fabric. The kiss was hurried and wet and clumsy.

We were obviously bad at this. All of this. Neither of us minded being bad at this; a positive collateral of having other worries, the perpetual ones.

This kiss most definitely did not belong in elegant and romantic old-timey movies. Yet neither of us wanted it to end. Movies lied, veneers lied; this was honest and real.

This was real, and real was hot.

Our noses bumped together, we shifted and inhaled some fuel, and the next time our lips met, everything became sufficiently less sloppy; slower and more methodical. Now this effort was not a half-assed one. We were adapting, optimizing, learning on the go.

The goddamn academics.

I smiled into the kiss and he kissed my smile, his thumb caressing my cheek in perfectly even circles.

“—is not! Some stupid! Sleep! Paralysis!”

Pulling away, Wakuu dropped his forehead against mine, eyes closed.

The pointless debate was still going strong, growing stronger. Wakuu sighed. His eyes flickered open.

“Let me guess. You’re thinking that it’s your duty to stop them from fighting,” I whispered, slowly rubbing my hand down his flank.

His left hand traveled to the back of my head and strummed my dangling ponytail. He did not ask me how I knew. Asking would have been redundant. “I suppose, my rational side knows that it isn’t, but—”

“Force of habit.”

“Yes.”

He considered it his responsibility, as, according to his personal frame of reference, he’d started and fueled that silly unrest, and now he felt guilty. And responsible. And guilty.

People who had been unloved and carelessly discarded, well, they would usually get abandonment issues as their unique emotional baggage. We had been loved. My dad and — as far as I knew — his mom, they had not ‘carelessly discarded’ either of us. They’d had no choice and no say in the matter. Which did not mean that their departure hadn’t left us with plenty of baggage that we now dragged around; the fact that our surviving parents were full-on guilt machines with the ‘insecurities generator’ cranked up to the max, helped very little. I, at least, had the luxury of not being anywhere near my mom. Wakuu had yet to learn to give slightly fewer fucks.

Addressing my own thoughts, I shook my head and leaned back just enough to see his face better. It was flushed, with a light dusting of pink over the nose bridge.

“This is a bar,” I reminded him. “Folks yell at each other and argue in bars. This is normal.”

He gave a weak shrug. Looking guilty about feeling guilty. And responsible.

I remembered him briefly retelling the whole nagging saga to me. How his father had attempted to badger him into taking over the family business — although a scrawny academic like Wakuu would have been less suited and suitable for that task than a robot vacuum. With the typical mobilizing of all of the typical manipulation tactics, including the casual mentioning of much more dutiful cousins — something I had been saved from, albeit in part, because my cousins were a bunch of walking catastrophes in comparison. How Wataru had given up and retreated into his own head; his own psychopomp. I remembered, ‘on his best days, he says I should be out there...’ Too little, too late.

Right now I tried to think of an argument that would convince Wakuu not to interfere, and came up with half a dozen, but abstained from voicing any of them. Instead, I tugged him down by the collar and kissed him again, briefly. Making it into the silliest, most lighthearted smooch possible, giving my tongue a break. Wakuu accepted the gesture with a long-winded exhalation.

I let go of his shirt and adjusted my yukata. “I’m going to, uh.”

“The onsen.” He nodded.

“Yes,” I said, and the warmth of his body moved away from me. The way he looked at me was both hesitant and intense; the gaze of someone who knew exactly what he wanted, and knew exactly how and where to obtain it, but wasn’t sure if he was allowed. Or if obtaining that something would be a good idea in the first place.

Hoo boy, wasn’t that whole train of thought painfully familiar to my depot.

“I’ll see y—”

“You will, and soon,” Wakuu interrupted firmly, narrowing his eyes in a straightforward broody-romantic-hero fashion. After a beat, his features crinkled, a small, guilty smile crept to his mouth, and he added in an apologetic tone, “Oh dear, this was such a cheesy thing to say.”

But it wasn’t.

On my way out, by the door, I turned again to throw a glance at him, just like earlier tonight on the square. Wakuu returned to the bar counter, palms spread and raised in a soothing gesture as he approached, his voice low and gentle. The crowd had quieted. At least for now, everyone was listening to him. I saw Frank pouring him a drink, unprompted — and generous.

I closed the door behind me and inhaled the brine of seawater.

A large, black moth flapped up past me. Its antennae moved back and forth in the air, seeking for a safe place to rest. Creating a pathway of silver ripples, the lighthouse shone down at the ocean surface like an extra moon. The world was no longer painted in blue and purple hues; the late-evening air was still and quiet. The only sounds I could hear were being produced by waves and crickets.

I’d forgotten that crickets could be just crickets, and not a comedic noise with a meaning. Crickets meant neither rejection, nor self-deprecation, nor the lampshading of those. Crickets meant crickets.

My head buzzed pleasantly with this revelation. Then I remembered that my head buzzed because I was tipsy.

And that these were cicadas, not crickets.

On ever-so-slightly wobbly legs, I turned away from the ocean and headed back into town, towards the more banal and less salty water.

As I trudged on, I was thinking about bamia. Uhm, okra.

Eight thousand kilometers between the places where we’d grown up. And yet I had no doubt that, in our childhoods, both of us had been choking on those goddamn pods under the meaningless, torturous yoke of ‘finish it, it’s good for you! eat your okra!’

His came lightly blanched and seasoned with soy sauce. Mine came stewed with mutton and apricots. Both versions were slimy and disgusting, up until — in place of confused children, under the meaningless, torturous yoke of peer pressure, family pressure, and emotional baggage — adults had formed and gaslit themselves into ‘it’s very rich in vitamins and antioxidants, and not that bad, actually’.

Okra was an awe-inspiring, revolting, brilliant, and tragic unifier. Okra should have been the true neutral symbol of globalism. And why not? Its origins were still disputed. There were theories aplenty, but no one knew for certain in which corner of the planet it had originated. Maybe okra was able to teleport. Maybe okra could fly around the world. Maybe okra had fallen from the sky.

Hell, for all I knew, okra was aliens.

The road was bright enough to show my way. Old, white pebbles underneath my feet. Large, paunchy lanterns above me. All of them were on, none of them flickered.

Behind the fencing of the onsen, the garden and the shrine were soaked in darkness. The bathhouse, too; looming like an ominous wall. Once I found the door, however, I discovered that inside it looked as cozy and neat as a spa.

The self-proclaimed caretaker, Takeba, was not around; no one was.

As I stepped further in, a soft chime resonated and more lights switched on, enveloping the rest of the anteroom in a warm, gentle glow. Uhm, chandeliers? Excuse me..? The furniture looked so expensive and so out-of-place that I couldn’t help but wonder.

Someone had installed high-end portable loudspeakers in each corner, and they were vomiting out the most standard and tired ‘stress-management music’. All day, every day, probably. Accompanied by the faint, yet permeating, sweet smell of incense in the air. The smell was a bit too sweet. The carvings on the panels lining up the walls looked a bit too kitschy. The panels were a bit too hinoki. The ‘calming and peaceful atmosphere’ felt a bit overdone. Especially for a small town situated on a remote island. Eyeing the front desk — made of materials that looked a bit too imported — I pursed my lips, scratched my temple, and wondered yet again.

Once I reached for the nearest stack of towels to grab a couple, I stopped wondering. Yes, the same red bomby logo stamped on each.

Well, whatever. The bathroom at the observatory was amazing, after all. High tech, a bathtub with jets, two shower heads — one of them huge, installed right in the ceiling. A toilet which looked and spoke like it had attended a medical school and minored in literary criticism. A whole pile of toiletries. Not all of them were meant for creating veneers, some of them were for, uh, getting clean. So if it was anything like this here, I had neither a reason nor desire to complain.

Besides, the bathroom back at my place was a pathetic affair in comparison. A claustrophobic shower cabin, lousy water pressure, a sink that had decided to start leaking upon first use, the floor that was constantly damp from humidity — which was no wonder, considering the location, so— Nope, whoever had funded this bathhouse, no complaints.

One of the low tables held large bowls; not made of composite plastic, but of actual wood. Bending down despite the vertigo, I sniffed one (maple?!), then scooped a couple of small bottles of shampoo out of it, and stuffed them into my yukata’s solitary pocket. On the other table, closer to the entrance: a tapped bottle of pomegranate-flavored soju, several shot glasses, and a plate with a sliced lemon. Soju went infinitely better with fried chicken, oily noodles, or savory pancakes. But hadn’t Da Bomb once declared that overweight people who wished to neither go on diets nor get liposuctions, needed to be locked up and starved by force..? What a sweet, self-aware, well-loved by his parents, totally not an overt narcissist, absolutely not insecure, chill and pleasant guy.

“Hello? Takeba?” I called. “Would it be okay if I—” —used this to get further plastered?

No reply. He was probably asleep and not here, anyway. Takeba looked about eighty and was, no joke, the chillest guy. He would have said yes. I grabbed the bottle and squinted at the label. The pomegranate on the label was not a pomegranate.

“Yeah, all good,” I decided, shrugging, and poured myself a shot. It went down smoothly. I still bit into a lemon slice, pro forma. “M-motherfff—aaaah—ghh!” The ‘lemon’ turned out to be the bitterest, sourest, tangiest yuzu ever, and I wailed through gritted teeth while pouring more liquor. Twice as much. Out of desperation for anything to rinse the vile balsamic coating out of my mouth. Anju was supposed to ease the burden of bad booze, not the other way around, so I toasted (inwardly; outwardly I was mooing) to breaking out of the constraints of ingrained norms and routines.

Giddy, with the towel bundle in my arms and warmth spreading through my body, I moved towards the changing room, expecting that the modern chic would continue there. Forgetting what veneers were about.

Or maybe the onsen was a work in progress.

But this was much more familiar and much less stressful, once I’d had enough time to look around. No background music; I could hear water dripping. No incense burners; it smelled of dampness and bamboo. The tatami mats were old — and sturdy. The benches were simple — and honest.

No chandeliers. The washi lanterns were lightweight, translucent, and a bit too bright, but they looked honest, too, and expected the same of whoever was using them. The loo abstained from talking to me, but it was clean.

After undressing, I took the towels and toiletries and flip-flopped to the women’s washing area, behind the screen. My head was swimming already, ahead of the rest of my body.

Three small alcoves separated by thin partitions, each with a showerhead and a stool. A soaking tub full of water. Steam rose, as did my spirits. It was so quiet here, so warm.

Taking over the left-most alcove, I reached for the nozzle on the wall, and the showerhead manifested a downpour of hot water without any groaning. I stepped under it, moving the stool aside with my calves. My muscles relaxed, my skin tingled, and I exhaled in satisfaction. For a few moments, I stood like this, letting my hair get soaked, watching the droplets drip down my arm, thinking about what had happened at the bar. And what could happen. And would it be a good, responsible idea to let it happen. Then, getting weirded out by how my brain was not accompanying these thoughts with jokes.

What, not even one lousy pun?

I washed my hair, scrubbed my body, attempted to reach my back, mostly failed, nearly slipped, sighed, rinsed off the soap.

Got my butt pinched.

Yelping, I jumped in place and had to toss out my arm, fumbling for the partition; otherwise I would have fallen. It wobbled under my fingers as I leaned into it and turned, spitting out water.

“Sorry!” Eva grinned at me. “I was aiming higher!”

She was just as much of a hydrangea naked as she was with clothes on, if not more. I gulped, doing my best not to gawk. No matter how much I wanted to.

“All good.” Wiping my face, I asked, “What are you still doing here?”

Not that late, not yet my bedtime, but definitely bedtime for bakers.

“I fell asleep in the pool!” Eva said in an even more cheerful tone and kicked the stool back into the center of the alcove. She pointed at it. “Come on, I’ll scrub your back, then I’ll go.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

With an umph, I plopped down, and Eva lowered herself to her knees behind me. The pert points of her breasts brushed against my back as she was reaching for soap, and I inhaled sharply. Eva hadn’t noticed; nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Not for her.

As for me... That’s when I knew that I could no longer go on without intimacy. The urge for physical contact had been much easier to tamp before. Push it to the background, leave it there, ignore it, function without it. Now, after what’d happened at the bar, it seemed impossible to tamp. Like with Eva’s baking: inhale one egg tart, and you’re hooked forever, dummy.

Huffing, she lathered my back in soap.

“You’re really skinny,” Eva lamented, clicking her tongue. “Way too skinny.” Not chiding me for my imperfections, but actually worried about my health; I could tell by her tone. “I thought you were eating okay. Oh—”

Her thumb slid down my soaked hair. Tilting my head to the side, I dodged it a moment too late.

“You— You have gray hairs.”

“I’ve had gray hairs since I was nineteen. It happens. It’s a genetic aberration. All good.”

“I thought it happened only in books,” Eva whispered, quiet and hollow, piercing through my bluff, “and was a hyperbole.”

“It is. Don’t worry about it.”

‘Stress causes the release of norepinephrine, norepinephrine penetrates hair follicles, affecting the melanocyte stem cells in the follicles, which causes the melanocyte stem cells to turn into pigment cells, followed by them moving out of the hair follicles, and without stem cells left to create new pigment cells, new hair turns gray’ didn’t mean ‘oh noes, she cried so hard that her jet-black mane turned silver overnight!’ It meant that stress, grief, and depression had long-lasting consequences. A whole cornucopia of them.

“Hey, thanks. For washing my back.” I swung around on the stool and gently pulled the soapy sponge out of her unresisting fingers. I hated to see her unsmiling. “But please go get some sleep. I admit that it’s selfish and disrespectful of me to have this as a primary motive to chase you away, but I just really want muh pineapple buns.”

Despite the alcohol intake, my mind was lucid, maybe too lucid. And I felt guilty.

The pools were supposed to be outside, in the back, behind the building. Confident that there were two of them, divided, I stepped out past another shoji screen naked, with a towel around my hair and another thrown over my shoulders.

One. The doors from both cleaning areas led to one communal pool. Smooth stones lining its borders, and a small waterfall cascading down from a rocky outcropping at one end. Water steaming, rising in wisps into the cooling night air. Two dim lanterns below, one dim moon above. Two steps down, round, large enough for at least a dozen people.

Well, there were no people in it at the moment, and no people around at all, and I was tipsy and cared very little, so I hesitated for no longer than half a minute, going around it and assessing, before dropping the towels on the edge, slowly dipping my toes into the dark water, making sure it wasn’t too hot (it was perfect), and finally getting in up to my knees, and up to my waist; my chest and then my chin as I sat down and groaned.

It was so friggin’ perfect.

My head lolled to the side, leaning on the stone wall; I let two kinds of heat spread through me and the sound of the waterfall to fill my ears and mind. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to think. Being here helped.

What followed in a few minutes, helped even more. The screen leading to the men’s section slid to the side with a feline-like hiss, and Wakuu stumbled out, naked. Well, almost naked. Instead of either folding the towel and mounting it on his head, or tying it around his thighs, or carrying it in his hands, or… anything else that a normal regular sober human person would have done, he’d folded it in half to make a triangle, put it over his hair, and tied the ends under his chin.

As I shook with laughter, I watched him slowly hobble around the pool towards me. Even from here, I could see that he was three sheets to the wind. So drunk that he might have outright forgotten about his nakedness or the fact that he was supposed to be embarrassed by it. His eyes were unfocused, his movements sluggish, and he was making a wide arc with his hands, to keep his balance on the uneven, slippery ground of the path. He was grinning ear to ear. And maybe I would have paid more attention to the parts of him I had not seen before, if only said attention wasn’t gobbled up whole by the granny-style shawl-towel.

On purpose. I knew he’d done it on purpose.

Physical comedy, check.