THE MAN IN THE MOON
IS JAPANESE
By Harry McDonald
Copyright 2011 by Harry McDonald
Smashwords Edition
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I've
always had a thing for Oriental women, and was reminded of that the
night I watched a program about life in Tokyo. Hey, now there’s a
place just filled with them! It’s every man’s fantasy.
There
was a girl that graced an ad for a local Japanese restaurant, and
man, was she beautiful. My head danced at the thought of meeting her.
I imagined us living in a paper house with a goldfish pond, and
seeing her run at my every beck and call. And then I made the dream
even better by bringing in lots of geisha girls to bathe me!
Still
dreaming about the girl on TV, I went to the steakhouse. I had just
started looking at the menu when two couples sat down near me. They
were funny looking country people, and I could tell right off that
they had never been anywhere. Let me tell you, even though I came
from a scum of the rural earth town called Poville, Mississippi, and
was raised in a snake handling church, I at least know how to dress
and act. These people beat all I had ever seen. Earl, the outspoken
one, wore a t-shirt with something raunchy printed on it, and Hoyt
wore overalls. And the women were overly tanned, with cut off jean
shorts, high heels and dyed blonde hair. I decided to kick back and
enjoy the show. By the way, my name is Levi.
One of the men
started mocking how the Orientals talk.
“Ching chong! Wing
ding!”
“Earl, you shut yore damn mouth!” his wife said.
I gathered that her name was Gladys, and the other couple’s names
were Hoyt and Mary Lou.
“I can’t take him anywhere,”
exclaimed Gladys.
“Well, you just did! Huh huh!” laughed
Earl. He cupped his hand over his mouth and spoke in a loud whisper.
“Ding dong!”
Gladys hit him over the head with
the menu and he got quiet, if only for a little while.
“China
is a ancient ci-vi-lie-za-shun,” Earl said.
“This here’s
a Japanese restaurant!” Gladys answered.
“What’s the
difference?” asked Earl.
“Well, they’s different,”
said Gladys. “Now read the menu.”
“Well, they all look
the same to me, “ Hoyt said. “With their pointy hats and slanty
little eyes.”
“They ain’t got no pointy hats on, you
fool,” Mary Lou said to Hoyt.
“They eats dogs over
there,” Earl said. “And snakes too.”
“You don’t
know that,” Gladys retorted.
“They do!” answered Earl.
“I bet they cook dog meat here.”
“I ain’t eatin’
it,” Mary Lou declared.
“Ya’ll just read the menu,”
ordered Gladys.
“They’ll cook it in front of you and
you’ll know it ain’t dog.”
“I didn’t get no knife,”
Earl said.
“I didn’t either,” Hoyt added.
“We’ll
ask for ‘em,” said Gladys. Hoyt looked at the menu, and remarked
that he “didn’t see no taters.”
“They don’t eat
taters?” he asked.
“I guess not,” answered Mary Lou.
“Or cornbread either, from what I can see. Hell, they ain’t got
nothing here we like! No catfish… No gator…”
“I’ll
try the chicken and shrimps,” offered Earl.
“But you
always eat steak, don’t you?” asked Gladys. “At home, you like
it when I put the teriyaki sauce on it.”
Earl looked her in
the eye and spoke sternly.
“I ain’t gonna eat no damn
dog.”
“Does squids come from around here?” Hoyt asked.
“I ain’t never caught no schwids,” Earl said.
“They‘s
from the ocean, that‘s why,” said Gladys.
“What do they
look like?” asked Earl. They all looked at each other, but nobody
knew.
At that point, the waiter walked up.
“We
ain’t got no knives,” Gladys said to him.
“You no
need,” he answered.
“Whar’s the bread?” Hoyt asked.
“No bread. Rice.” Earl spoke up next.
“I want
chicken and shrimps. And a beer.”
“Ladies are ’sposed
to go first, you jarhead!” Gladys hollered at him.
“I
don’t see any,” Earl said. At that, Gladys got up, and spoke to
the waiter.
“I’ll have the steak and shrimp with mushroom
soup and a diet cola.” Then she walked past Earl, and slapped him
so hard that they probably heard it out in the street.
Hoyt
asked if they had any crawdads, which put a perplexed look on the
waiter’s face.
“Who dad?” he asked.
“Never
mind,” Hoyt said.
Not noticing how red in the face Mary Lou
was getting, Hoyt said he wanted chicken and shrimp and beer.
“Can
I get fries with that too?” he asked the waiter.
“You
want fried?”
“No. French fries,” Hoyt said.
“French
fried?” the waiter asked.
“Yeah. French fries.”
“No.
No fries. Rice.”
Mary Lou looked at Earl, who was holding
his hand up against his face. And by then, she had gotten so mad that
her own face was as red as a tomato in the sunshine.
“Hoyt,
do you see a lady here?” Hoyt looked at Earl, then turned back to
Mary Lou.
“Yes, I does.”
Mary Lou turned to the
waiter, and ordered the steak, then said she would go to the restroom
too. She got up, and Hoyt got up and backed away so fast that she
would have had to chase him to slap him. So she just gave him an evil
look, and walked off.
Just then, Gladys came back, and pulled
at Earl’s hand.
“How’s your face, hon?” she asked.
“Okay, I guess…”
She grabbed his wrist, and
slammed his hand down on the flat, hot cooking surface.
“Eeeowhhh!”
By then, the owner of the restaurant, whose name badge said
Hiso Fat, ran over.
“You no can do that here! Just eat!”
They looked around, and saw that everybody was staring at
them, and finally realized what a scene they had created. After that,
they were silent as the cook brought the cart of food to be cooked.
But some things never change. Hoyt was the first to speak again.
“Is
those Louisiana shrimp?” The cook just looked at him, but then
broke out a smile.
“Better than that,” was his reply.
“What’s in this here sauce?”
“Top secret,”
was his answer. Though I couldn’t be certain, I think Hoyt
whispered that the Enola Gay had been a secret too. He and the others
then got quiet again, as the cook worked his high speed magic with
the cutlery. In fact, I think they were a bit scared.
Gladys
ate some steak, and put a piece on Earl’s plate.
“N. O.
No!”
“Oh, come on Earl,” Hoyt said. “It looks good to
me.”
“You no rike?” the waiter asked. Earl’s reply
was short and quick.
“Wing ding!”
The cook said
something in Japanese to the cook at the next table, then he put on
such a display with the knives, and and made such banging noises
against the stove that he got the attention of everyone in the
restaurant. Then came the coup de grace. He threw a huge knife over
Earl’s head, and the other cook did the same. The knives collided
in the air, bounced by their handles off the top of Earl’s head,
then landed point down in the piece of steak on his plate. The cook
then showed them the palm of his hand.
“Money!” The two
couples shook like leaves in a hurricane, put everything they had on
the table, and made a bee line for the door. I’d never seen
anything like it.
Just then, I looked up and saw her. She was
a stunning beauty, with long black hair, and almond-shaped eyes. She
looked so innocent. Her name was Sumi, or something close to that.
“Would you rike sake?” she asked. I said sure. I then
proceeded to eat more Japanese food, and drink more sake than one
person should ever be subjected to. I tried to find out if she had a
boyfriend, and make other small talk, but it there seemed to be no
way to get close to her. And an older women from the back kept coming
out and looking at me.
I was thinking of pretending to choke
when she brought me the ticket. But instead, I decided to wave a lot
of money around. Girls always like that.
“Want to talk?”
At that, she combed my hair with her fingers.
“Ooh, I rike
Revi a lot.” Then she held out her hand.
“Five dollah!”
It appeared to be a common joke of hers.
After that we talked
about a lot of things. It appeared she couldn’t stand up to her
parents over something or other so she just left. And if and when she
were to ever return, she would be shunned. I asked how could someone
go around the world and not see their parents, and the main answer
was money.
In fact, I got the impression that money was all
that mattered to her. And electronic possessions. A new type of cell
phone came out, and she just had to have it. Then a new type of
computer came out, and she had to have that too. I couldn’t live
with someone to whom money and possessions means everything. Back
home, we call it Keeping Up With The Wehunts. You get this and you
buy that, until one day you’re left with no home in which to put it
all. Up north, it’s probably called Keeping Up With The Rigolettos.
I didn’t agree with all she said, but I was still able to get a
date for the next night, and soon started seeing more of her.
She
liked to ride in my new, yellow Mustang, and swing her purse with
kittens on it around in the air. Sometimes I thought that she liked
my car more than me.
“Oh, I ruv Revi’s car.“ Yeah,
especially when she’d say that. Also, the fact that the
relationship was strictly platonic made me feel more sure of it. She
had a nice butt, though, and I called her Budi. She thought it meant
Little Buddha.
One day, at her apartment, I got to see some
of the things she worked on. She appeared to have some kind of
one-person internet import business. Don’t they all? And it sounded
like she painted detailed waterfall scenes on the backs of June bugs
with teeny tiny paint brushes. Bugs imported from Japan, of course.
I somehow brought up the church I went to as a child, and
asked what hers was like.
“I don’t berieve in God, she
said.
“You don’t?” I asked.
“No. I berieve in
Buddha! Ha ha!”
“Five dollah!”
I didn’t say
it, but I had a feeling Buddha must have been a rich man.
One
day, I thought of something to ask Sumi. I had always been intrigued
by the mysterious ways of the Orient, and of the women especially, as
they display a secretive allure that the Western man can’t resist.
Looking at her, I could only imagine what knowledge of the world she
possessed, or the acts she’d committed in the throes of passion and
desire.
Could it be that on a misty night, she had stabbed the
wife of her lover with a sword, making her fall over the cliff and
onto the rocky surf below?
Or perhaps she would pour me the
ultimate, intoxicating aphrodisiac, fulfilling all my innermost
desires, only to leave me to die in a heavenly, paralyzed state.
There were many answers I simply had to hear from her.
“Sumi,”
I said to her. “Tell me your biggest secrets.”
“Huh?”
She tilted her head, and gave me a quizzical look.
“Tell me
your innermost secrets. Those things only you would know.”
“Ret’s
see…” She put the end of her paintbrush handle in her mouth, and
appeared to be in deep thought. I leaned in closer, so as to hear the
magic words clearly.
“Okay,” she finally said. “It may
not be big secret, but I get deal at drugstore with expired coupons,
and senior citizen discount. But onlry when brind as bat woman there
on Thursdays."
I felt totally dumbfounded. That was it?
Was that really all?
That was the mysteries of the Far East explained? She laughed and
said yes. Then she held out her hand.
“Five dollah!”
Oh
well. Life sure ain’t like the movies.
Another time, she
started sketching an idea for a scene which included the man in the
moon. A Japanese man, naturally. I remarked that if it had been me
drawing it, I’d have drawn an American man. Personally, I‘d
always thought the man in the moon looked like somebody who was
drunk.
“And the Chinese would draw Chinese man,” she
said. Then she looked at me.
“You know, we hate Chinese
people. They rike your niggers.”
“Hmmm.” I was really
surprised to hear that from her, and thought about how that stuff
must be the same all over the world. And the more I thought about it,
the more I didn’t like what she’d said.
Then she read me a
Japanese legend about a man that was cursed by a witch to become the
man in the moon for all time. It was an interesting story, but my
mind was preoccupied with something else. I watched her draw for a
while, and realized that the situation wasn’t everything I’d
dreamed it would be. I was just “there," and felt like things
weren't going to get any better.
Soon after, we were standing
outside by the car and I said that I needed to go home for a while.
Right! In my mind it was more like, anywhere
else forever. Sayonara! She said she was
leaving for New York. She had originally thought that all of America
was like New York, and I guess she wanted a bigger bite.
“Rast
time I see Revi’s car,” were the last thing words she said.
That does it,
I told myself. I skipped on the hug while pretending there was an
important business call coming over the phone, threw a wave, and
drove off in the modern golden idol on wheels.