She sat down on the bed. She was trembling. I felt irritated. She should have come to terms with her decision before calling me. She beckoned me over and asked me to sit next to her. She stroked my face and ran a hand through my hair. She kissed me. Her mouth tasted of white wine. I thought of Rachel. She took my hand and placed it inside her bathrobe. My hand settled on her right breast. My fingers reached underneath to cup it. Her head moved slowly back and she closed her eyes. She moaned a little, a sound filled with a mixture of despair, shame and longing. I felt no excitement. I worried that I would not be able to perform.
She lay back on the bed and asked me to take my shirt off. She loosened her bathrobe and I understood that she wanted me to help her untie the knot. When it came apart I stared at her body for a few moments before looking at her face again. Whatever unhappiness had brought her here, she was very beautiful. I began to feel aroused on a purely physical level. I stood up, undressed and began. She did not, I think, enjoy it very much. She was too nervous. She was on the edge of excitement but could not quite bring herself there. I ran my tongue across the indentation on the fourth finger of her left hand and she pulled away, shaking her head. Don’t be cruel, she said.
Afterwards, she didn’t invite me to take a shower. She went into the bathroom while I dressed and only when I knocked to say that I was leaving did she come out. She had been crying. She handed me my money. You have my number, I told her and left. I went for a beer in a nearby bar where I saw a boy from my schooldays sitting in the corner with his arm around a girl. Once, several years before, he had approached me at a party and told me that I had beautiful eyes.
I met a girl and tried to like her. She worked in a café I often visited. She told me she was from Hiroshima. I didn’t know people still lived there, I said. Oh yes, she told me. Has your family lived there a long time, I asked her. No, she said. Her parents were both from a city called Masuda in the Shimane Prefecture. But they moved to Hiroshima in the 1980s after their marriage. I was intrigued by this idea. I asked her would she like to come for a walk with me some evening and she said yes.
I’m not accustomed to dating. I’m not even accustomed to sex, outside of my job. I have no interest in it. The boys in my class at the university talk of little else, perhaps because they get so little. The girls hold back, not for moral reasons but because they enjoy the power they have over the boys. I can understand this. Feeling desired can be a very potent force.
The girl’s name was Hamako, which, she told me, meant child of the shore. She had come to Ireland to study medicine but discovered quite early on that she had no aptitude for the subject. She was frightened by the cadavers. She hated the smell of formaldehyde. She didn’t care for blood. She wasn’t even particularly interested in helping people. She said that she couldn’t tell her parents she had left the course because they would be furious with her and insist that she return home.
Don’t you like Japan, I asked her. No, she told me. It took me years to escape. I’m never going back. But what will you do, I asked her. What I am doing, she said. I can waitress for a year or two, save some money, then move somewhere else. Anywhere that isn’t Japan.
The third time we went out, she took me to the beach in Killiney. I’d never been before but she came regularly. She knew a family who lived nearby and twice a week she would take their dogs for a long walk. Why can’t they walk their dogs themselves, I asked her. They’re too busy, she said. Besides, it’s easy money for me. We called on the family and for a moment I thought I recognized the man who opened the door but I was wrong. I‘d never seen him before. He seemed pleased that Hamako had a boyfriend, even though I was not her boyfriend. He asked me many intimate questions about my family life and my studies at the university. His wife forced me to eat a slice of shop-bought cake and drink a cup of herbal tea that tasted like flowers. Their house was decorated with Japanese art and furniture. There were ink paintings on the walls featuring women in black and white kimonos, their hair held up with combs and pins, and a woodblock print of two kabuki actors performing before an audience of skeletons. Hamako didn’t seem to want to leave, nor did she show any interest in taking the dogs for a walk.
Have you heard Hamako play the piano, the man asked me, and I shook my head. Oh no, don’t ask me to, said Hamako in the kind of voice that made me realize that this was one of the reasons we were still here. Ask her to play, the man said to me. She can play if she wants to, I said. I’ll play, said Hamako quickly, and she sat down before it, raised the lid and did some finger exercises in the air before starting. She was adequate, nothing more, but the man and woman applauded enthusiastically at the end. Isn’t she wonderful, they asked me. They watched her as if she was their own child. She could do no wrong. I looked around and saw that there were no pictures of children to be seen anywhere. They asked me whether I could play a musical instrument and I shook my head. They asked if I could visit any city in the world, which one would I choose. I stopped talking. Another hour passed. I was invited to stay for dinner. I stood up and left.
When I returned home, I found a message waiting for me on my voicemail from Hamako telling me that she had never been so embarrassed in her life, that she had brought me to meet people who were important to her and I had behaved abominably. She said she wasn’t sure if she wanted to see me again and that she would have to give it serious thought. She told me not to contact her again, that if she wanted to talk to me then she would be in touch. I deleted the message. She texted a few hours later in an advanced state of outrage and once again told me not to contact her. I deleted the message. When I woke the next morning, there were two messages, both quite abusive, and a third arrived during the day. I threw away the SIM card and bought a new one. It wasn’t my work phone so it didn’t matter and very few people had the number. Only my former social workers, who called me occasionally, and I informed them of the change.
I stopped frequenting Hamako’s café and months later, when I thought enough time had passed that I could eat there again, she was nowhere to be seen. I asked what had become of her but the waitress who served me didn’t know. Perhaps she had gone travelling after all. Or perhaps she’d returned to Japan.
Sometimes men phone, then hang up. Ten minutes pass, then they phone again. Their confidence has built up. Maybe they’ve written down what they’re going to say. I saw your profile online, they tell me. Are you available tonight? What time are you thinking of, I ask. As soon as you can make it, they say. They don’t want to wait. They’re in the mood, they have the urge, they hate themselves for it. They just want to do it so they can get on with their night. That’s when they call me. Or boys like me.
Sometimes they block their number and when I answer, before they can say a word, I tell them to call back with an unblocked number. And then I hang up. Sometimes they call back. Sometimes they don’t.
They might ask if I know someone I can bring with me. No, I tell them. There’s no one you can call, they say. No. There’s plenty of other lads online, they say, I thought you might all know each other. No. There’s a long pause. So you don’t know anyone, they say. No. All right, they say, come on your own. And I go on my own.
Only once did I go with someone else. Or rather there was someone else there when I arrived. This was in the early days. I couldn’t have been doing it more than a few weeks. The boy was younger than me, maybe sixteen years old. Wild-eyed, probably on drugs. I came in and he was sitting on the sofa with his pants around his ankles. He barely looked up at me. His eyes were locked on a cat that was stretched out before an open fireplace, purring with contentment. Sit beside him, the man said. I sat beside him. Put your mouth on him, the man said. I put my mouth on him. Hit him, the man said, and I was going to say no but he must have been speaking to the boy because he roused himself, slapped me hard across the face and I fell off the sofa in surprise. I stood up and walked over to the man. Give me my money, I told him. But you haven’t done anything yet, he said. I have so many ideas for the two of you. You’re both so beautiful. Give me my money, I repeated, staring directly at him. He gave me my money. I left. I saw the boy another time near the canals in Baggot Street.