Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman Page 0,116

dig it?”

Neither one of these incidents was anything special. It wasn’t like my life turned in a new direction. I was simply struck by the strange coincidences—that things like this actually do happen.

Don’t misunderstand me—I’m not the sort of person who’s into occult phenomena. Fortune-telling doesn’t do a thing for me. Instead of going to the trouble of having a fortune-teller read my palm, I think I’m better off trying to rack my brain for a solution to whatever problem I have. Not that I have a brilliant mind or anything, just that this seems a quicker way to find a solution. I’m not into paranormal powers either. Transmigration, the soul, premonitions, telepathy, the end times—I’ll pass. I’m not saying I don’t believe in any of these. No problem with me if they really do exist. I’m just personally not interested. Still, a significant number of strange, out-of-left-field kinds of things have colored my otherwise humdrum life.

The story I’m about to tell is one a friend of mine told me. I happened to tell him once about my own two episodes, and afterward he sat there for a time with a serious look on his face and finally said, “You know, something like that happened to me, too. Something that coincidence led me to. It wasn’t something totally weird, but I can’t really explain it. At any rate, a series of coincidences took me somewhere I never expected to be.”

I’ve changed some of the facts to protect people’s identities, but other than that the story is just as he related it.

My friend works as a piano tuner. He lives in the western part of Tokyo, near the Tama River. He’s forty-one, and gay. He doesn’t especially hide the fact that he’s gay. He has a boyfriend three years younger than he is. The boyfriend works in real estate and because of his job isn’t able to come out, so they live apart. My friend might be a lowly piano tuner but he graduated from the piano department of a music college and is an impressive pianist himself. His forte is modern French composers—Debussy, Ravel, and Erik Satie—and he plays them with a deep expressiveness. But Francis Poulenc is his favorite.

“Poulenc was gay,” he explained to me one day. “And he made no attempt to hide it. Which was a pretty hard thing to do in those days. He said this once: ‘If you took away my being homosexual my music never would have come about.’ I know exactly what he means. He had to be as true to his homosexuality as he was to his music. That’s music, and that’s life.”

I’ve always liked Poulenc’s music, too. When my friend comes over to tune my old piano I sometimes have him run through a few short Poulenc pieces when he’s finished. The “French Suite,” the “Pastoral,” and so on.

He “discovered” he was gay after entering music college. Before then he never once considered the possibility. He was handsome, well brought up, had a calm demeanor, and was popular with the girls in his high school. He never had a steady girlfriend, but he did go out on dates. He loved walking with a girl, gazing at her hairdo close-up, the fragrance of her neck, holding her delicate hand in his. But he never experienced sex. After several dates with a girl he’d start to sense that she was hoping he’d take the initiative and do something, but he never was able to take the next step. He never felt anything inside driving him to do so. Without exception the other guys around him wrestled with their own sexual demons, some of them struggling with them, others plunging ahead and giving in, but he never felt the same kind of urges. Maybe I’m just a late bloomer, he figured. Or maybe I just haven’t met the right girl yet.

In college he went out with a girl in the same year in the percussion department. They enjoyed talking, and whenever they were together they felt close. Not long after they met they had sex in her room. She was the one who led him on. They’d had a few drinks. The sex went off smoothly, though it wasn’t as thrilling and satisfying as everybody said. In fact he found the act rough, grotesque even. And the faint odor the girl gave off when she got sexually aroused turned him off. He much preferred just talking with her, playing music together, sharing a meal.