Don’t Stand So Close To Me

Saturday, November 10, 1990

I’m up at 7AM. Good thing, too because that dog was up at 7:05AM.

If you dream it, it will be done. I start doing a lot of laundry and again clean up the apartment.

I forgo the bicycle and walk out to Iseya and give in some photos for copying and buy a Nintendo Gameboy along with a Super Marioland cartridge and battery pack before heading over top the nearby petshop beside the police station where everybody knows my name—gaijin sensei—as they come out to bow and say konichiwa (hello/good afternoon). I buy three new goldfish and some real aquarium plants to keep my festival-won goldfish company.

Did you know that the sidewalk blocks in Ohtawara are about 18-inches wide and two feet-long and are used to cover up the sewer system? While it was a little ripe in August, it wasn’t as bad as I’ve smelled it here in Toronto sometimes. As well, there is no curb separating the sidewalk from the road.

I walk home, do some ironing and get a phone call from Kaoru who asks if I want to go to a concert with her tonight. At first I say “no”, but relent after she says she and her father will pick me up at 6PM. The word “father” rings a bell, as I finally realize who it is I am talking too. Kaoru Kurita is the daughter of Kurita-san, one of the local politicians. She’s also 16 years-old, incredibly beautiful and sexy, and once played “footsie” with me at a local Ohtawara International Friendship Association shindig. For further reference, she’s the little sister of the beautiful and sexy Takako who – SPOILER ALERT – is married to the beautiful and sexy Matthew Hall. Trust me… Matthew would be angry if I DIDN’T write that.

After that scintillating phone call, I walk back to Iseya and pick up my copied photos. For Ashley’s upcoming birthday next month, I’m going to make a fummeti of Ashley and Hobbes, with me as Hobbes. Basically, it involves using cartoon word balloons with photographic images.

I get home and do more ironing and get ready for my date. When she arrives to pick me up, you’ll forgive me for this, I hope, but she looks stunning. She’s wearing black silk socks that come up to her knees, brown cord shorts and if she hasn’t just shaved her legs, then I have no idea how to explain the sheen. How special. Yum. Cripes. She’s 16 and I’m 26. No.

Her father drives us 20 minutes north to the town of Kuroiso… and then leaves??!! Are you kidding me? Geez. He must really trust Kaoru and myself. Bless him.

As we walk into the cultural center, we run into the Nozaki Junior High School music teacher who announces in perfect English (where did that come from?) that my girlfriend is here. Aww crap. I forgot about that. This should be good.

We go in and sit down and watch the amateur singers perform. The singing is good, but the section on “Americana” used the term ‘darkies’ a tad too much for my liking… still, that was the way Stephen Foster wrote his pieces, so I can’t in all good faith be upset about the Japanese singing it.

At the intermission, a lady walks up to me (and Kaoru) and asks me why I didn’t want to go with her, but I show up here with this girl. I’m too flabbergasted to say anything.

Next, Kathy Samuela who’s an AET (Assistant English Teacher) from a town a lot further south than Ohtawara, and isn’t part of our northern collection comes up and jokes with Kaoru about how she has to watch out for me. Poor Kaoru. Poor Andrew. Screw with me if you must, but don’t embarrass this poor girl.

Ashley then saunters over and gives me the same question as that lady—whomever the heck that is—except she’s really ticked! I don’t say anything. What the heck am I supposed to say? I don’t recall Ashley asking me to join her for this. She probably doesn’t know who my “date” is. They should all be jealous.

With the intermission over, Kaoru and I head back to our seats. She tells me she heard everyone say that Ashley is my girlfriend. She says that Ashley always says she doesn’t have a boyfriend.

Ashley, along with teaching at the Ohtawara Senior Boys High School, also teaches at the girl’s high school. I have volunteered to teach there on more than one occasion, but the OBOE has wisely smacked me on the back of the head and sucked air through their collective teeth, which is what they do when they don’t want to be impolite and say “No, you idiot!”

Kaoru looks downcast—even her perky breasts don’t seem as perky (Folks… I wrote this 20 years ago, okay?). I’m fuming about being accused of lying—especially when I didn’t lie.

After the show (I barely notice the music in the second half, except that there wasn’t a trumpet or a clarinet involved, but there was a breathy, nasally oboe, which spoiled things), I was still mad—mad for myself, but really mad on behalf of Kaoru.

I stomped over to that lady and was about to explain things to her when Ashley interrupted to say she had already explained it all to her. No apologies. From anyone. Am I the only man here at this concert?

Here’s the backstory:
Last Saturday, this 50-ish lady—whom I don’t know—asked me if I wanted to go with her to this music event. I said “No” because I was going to be visiting a castle with Naoko and Ashley that day, and couldn’t guarantee I’d be back on time. Apparently this lady calls up Ashley to ask if she wanted to go to this music event. Ashley says “Yes” but forgot she was going with Naoko and myself to see the castle.

Once Ashley realized her mistake, she made Naoko and I change our travel plans to this upcoming Monday so that she could go to this concert. Great. She now gets to go to a concert that I turned down because I was responsible enough to remember a prior commitment. It makes me look bad. Plus, this lady took Ashley to a festival in another town before coming to the concert, which I missed out on. I stayed home and got to do ironing.

It’s only by luck that Kaoru was nice enough to ask me to join her this evening, and now, everyone else is being stupid about it. And people wonder why I have a bad temper! Do people actually wonder about that?

I apologize to Kaoru for the way the evening has gone. Good person that she is, she brushes it aside. I can’t, however. This treatment of Kaoru and myself is eating me up inside, and I don’t know how to let it out.

I’m sure people are talking to me as we leave, but I don’t hear them. The blood is pulsing loudly in my skull. I’m really pissed off. Reads like it too, don’t it?!

The car ride home is interesting, as Kaoru sits in the back seat with me pressed up as close as she dares and occasionally touches me on my chest in those “you’re kidding me” gestures, and peppers me with questions of my girlfriend. While I answer as politely as I can, I feel like I don’t want one anymore.

I’m home by 9:30PM and asleep an hour later, emotionally drained.

Somewhere wishing I was 17 – but, no… I was a complete nerd then,
Andrew Joseph