South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,10

me with conceited talk. She liked me and was good to me. She listened carefully to what I had to say and cheered me up. I talked a lot about myself and my future, what I wanted to become, the kind of person I hoped to be. A young boy’s narcissistic fairy tales. But she listened intently. “I know you’ll be a wonderful person when you grow up. There is something special about you,” Izumi told me. And she was serious. No one had ever told me that before.

And holding her–even with her clothes on–was fantastic. What confused and disappointed me, though, was that I could never discover within her something special that existed just for me. A list of her good qualities far outstripped a list of her faults, and certainly far outshone my own, yet there was something missing, something absolutely vital. If only I’d been able to pin down what that was, I know we would have ended up sleeping together. I wouldn’t have held back forever. Even if it had taken a long time, I would have persuaded her that it was absolutely necessary for her to sleep with me. But I lacked the confidence to see this through. I was just a rash seventeen-year-old whose head was crammed full of lust and curiosity. But in that head of mine I still knew that if she didn’t want to have sex, I shouldn’t try to force the issue. I had to wait patiently for the right time.

I did, though, hold Izumi naked in my arms one time. I can’t stand holding you with your clothes on, I pleaded. If you don’t want to have sex, that’s okay. But I want to see your body, I want to hold you with nothing on. I have to, and I can’t bear it any longer.

Izumi thought for a while and then said that if it was what I really wanted, she didn’t mind. “But promise me, okay?” She looked at me seriously. “That’s all you’ll do. Don’t do anything I don’t want to.”

She came over to my house on a beautiful clear Sunday in the beginning of November. A bit chilly, though. My parents had to go to a memorial service for someone on my father’s side of the family, and actually I should have attended with them. I told them I had to study for a test, and stayed home alone. They weren’t supposed to return until that night. Izumi came over in the afternoon. We held each other in my bed, and I took her clothes off. She closed her eyes and let me undress her. It wasn’t easy. I’m all thumbs to begin with, and girls’ clothes are a pain. Halfway through, Izumi opened her eyes and took over. She had on light-blue panties and a matching bra. She probably bought these specially for the occasion; up till then her underwear was always the kind mothers bought their high-school-age girls. Finally I undressed myself.

I held her naked body and kissed her neck and breasts. I stroked her smooth skin and breathed in its fragrance. Holding each other, naked like this, was out of this world. I felt if I didn’t go inside her I’d go insane. But she pushed me firmly away.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Instead, she took my penis in her mouth and licked it all over. She’d never done that before. Over and over she drew her tongue over the tip of my penis, until I couldn’t think straight, and I came.

Afterward, I held her close, caressing every inch of her body. Her body bathed in the autumn light was beautiful, and I kissed her all over. It was truly a gorgeous afternoon. We held each other tight many times, and I came again and again. Each time I came, she went to the bathroom to rinse her mouth.

“What a weird sensation.” She laughed.

I had gone out with Izumi for just over a year, but that was without a doubt the happiest time we ever spent together. Naked, we had nothing to hide. I felt I knew more about her than ever before, and she must have felt the same. What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities.

Izumi lay still for a long while, her head nestled on my chest as if she were listening to my heartbeat. I stroked her hair. I was seventeen, healthy, on the verge of becoming an adult. Wonderful is the only word