So why am I crying?
“Are you a woman? Are you a man? Why can’t you decide what horrendous disease you have?”
“Don’t you care about yourself? Why are you so ugly? You should put on a nice dress and wear some make-up. I’ve seen those old photos of you. You were so pretty back then.”
“So then you’re the man in the relationship? I guess it was easy to decide, since you’re taller and don’t have a chest.”
“If Reina-san were a boy, I would ask her out so fast! She’s so cool and so…talented. I wish she wasn’t a girl.”
“Don’t you wish you could be normal? Have a husband? Kids? Do you want to work a salaried job the rest of your life? It’s not natural for a woman to live that kind of life. If you keep trying to be a man you’ll miss out on all the good things about being a woman.”
Crash. Boom. Bang. Reina knocked her head against the table to contain the sudden howl flowing out of her like a river bursting through a dam. Hot tears flowed down her cheeks and she couldn’t breathe, her nose filled with mucus and her chest full of shame and pain.
All it took was one whimper to summon Aiko from the back of the house. “Reina? I heard something fall? Are you…” Her voice cut off as soon as it entered the room. Reina had one more second of reprieve before Aiko descended upon her like a mother at a playground.
“Ehhh!” She clasped Reina’s shoulder. Aiko’s hand pried away Reina’s own to see the dishonor on her puffing face. “Daijyoubu?” Aiko’s mouth fell as she asked Reina again if she was alright. Do I look okay? “Did you hurt yourself?”
Like the child she felt she was, Reina raised her head and pushed it against Aiko’s chest, a conglomeration of disgrace and embarrassment welling up inside her as she wrapped her arms around Aiko and sobbed into her blue summer dress.
“Reina! Doushita?” Aiko’s voice went from controlled to shrill in less than a second. “What happened?”
But Reina couldn’t open her mouth without choking on her own tears. Soon she hiccuped at the same time she tried to sniff, and ended up coughing so hard she had to have Aiko beat and rub her back. Not until Aiko stopped asking pressing questions did Reina take a deep breath and calm herself again.
“Aiko,” she said with a raspy voice, her entire head shutting down from crying for the first time in over half her life. “Ai-chan…”
“I’m right here.” Aiko stroked the top of Reina’s head, her fingers smoothing the oils away from the soggy hair. She dipped a finger down and cleaned up Reina’s tears. “I won’t go anywhere.”
More tears oozed out of Reina’s eyes as she burrowed her face further into Aiko’s chest. Ai-chan is right here. She consoled herself further by tasting Aiko’s scent and grabbing her torso. She won’t leave me.
No, not Aiko. If there were one greater constant in Reina’s life besides chasing women, it was Aiko, the woman taking care of Reina’s needs for twenty years. From that first time Reina approached her and said “Let’s get ice cream,” Aiko was there. Sometimes Reina felt a twinge of guilt for taking advantage of her, especially since she could only give back in her own made-up language of sex and adulation. She could light the house on fire right there and then and Aiko would still cradle her amongst the flames.
Reina eased her grip on Aiko and looked up into her face long enough to see the confusion there. She’s never seen me cry before. Few people had. Michiko was the last one, and all she could do was pat Reina’s head since they were in the middle of a public restroom.
“Did something bad happen?”
Nodding, Reina sniffed and wiped her eyes with shaking fingers. It took her another minute to find the words and courage to tell Aiko what had happened on her way home.
And when she finished spitting it out, her cheeks reddening, Aiko pulled her back into a hearty hug and nuzzled her nose against Reina’s scalp. “Oh, Reina!” she cried, her own tears coming down her face and washing into Reina’s hair. “I can’t believe it! That pervert!”
“I’m so gross.” Reina didn’t know where the words came from, but they fell out of her mouth regardless. “He touched me and said…” She didn’t want to say it again.
“No! You’re not gross! I won’t believe it! Just because some disgusting pervert assaulted you…”
“Don’t say that!” Reina didn’t mean to shriek. “Don’t say that word!” She was Reina Yamada, the biggest butch she knew, bigger than the women with baseball caps and gold teeth hanging out in the bars of Ni-chome. Nobody can touch me.
“Reina…that’s what happened.”
No. Nakamura had grazed her a little. He was drunk. Were he sober he may have said something stupid, but he wouldn’t have meant to do something like feel up his coworker of fifteen years. His masculine coworker. “How wonderful. You’re a woman after all.”
“No…” she wailed, as Aiko began rocking her back and forth on the floor. “That can’t happen to me…I’m not…”
“You’re not what? Human?”
A breath lodged in Reina’s throat. “I’m not a woman.”
The rocking stopped. Aiko pushed away some hair from Reina’s sticky face. “What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Reina-chan.” Perhaps Aiko thought if she called Reina a girly nickname, it would remind her of what she was. “What’s going on? This is deeper than that pervert, isn’t it?”
Reina shook her head but couldn’t convince herself of that. “I mean…I’m not a man either, right?”
“You’re just Reina.”
She pulled away from Aiko and looked into her eyes, where she saw, through her shimmering tears, bewilderment and worry. “And what’s ‘Reina?’”
Aiko cupped a hand around Reina’s face; Reina rubbed herself against it. “You’re the most wonderful woman I know.”
“Really?” All this self-doubt was too much for Reina, but she figured she was vulnerable enough at the moment to ignore it. With Aiko smiling at her and showering her with adornment, what other cure was there? “You think I’m a woman?”
“Of course I do, silly!” Aiko’s eyes sparkled in fresh tears. “What else would you be? Last I heard I was in a relationship with a beautiful, charming woman who made my heart melt and my life a constant adventure!” She blushed – the cutest blush Reina had seen since that day she asked Aiko out. “I had boyfriends before you, and none of them matched the passion and wiles inside you! Don’t you get it? I fell in love with a woman who makes me feel more alive than…I don’t know, alive!” She pressed their foreheads together and wiped away more of Reina’s tears. “I’ve never seen you as anyone else.”
All of her words were like a punch to Reina’s brain, a stroke to her heart. She thinks I’m a woman. She saw twenty-year-old Reina, a young woman sitting in front of a mirror and analyzing her long hair before picking up a brush. What had happened to her? Reina had no desire to ever return to long hair, make-up, or tight dresses, but that Reina had never second-guessed her own self-image. Just like the Reina who went into a hair salon and demanded all her hair chopped off. That Reina hadn’t cared either. None of this started until afterwards. Getting a job. Moving into a house together. Being an adult. Somewhere Reina thought she had to “grow up” into the male role.
“But you’re the housewife,” Reina tried to rationalize out loud. “So that would make me the salaryman.”
“We have our own roles, Reina.” Aiko’s hands were the softest things in the world as they touched Reina’s face. “People outside of our home will interpret them however they please out of ignorance. We’re a team. All couples have to be a team. My strengths are in taking care of you and a home. You blend in well with a business crowd, and you’re good at math. So what?” Aiko laughed. “I know we joke about you being the ‘husband,’ but that’s all it is, a joke! Yes, I love those flashes of masculinity you show me all the time. But you’re just as feminine, too. I see it when you move, I hear it when you talk, and I feel it when we make love.”
&n
bsp; Reina contained the urge to sob again. “I don’t know if I want to be feminine anymore.”
Aiko frowned, but she didn’t shirk away. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know.” Reina closed her eyes; she couldn’t bear to see Aiko’s confusion. “I like being masculine.”
“Why can’t you be both like you already are?”
“Because I can’t!” She sobbed again. “I’m not allowed!”
“Who says!”
“You don’t get it. The moment I announced to the world I wanted to be with women, everyone saw me as a girl wanting to be a boy. To them I’ll never be anything else.”
“So? I only love women too, and nobody’s ever treated me that way.”
“You’re different.”
“How so?”
“You’re feminine through and through.”
Aiko sighed. “Anata,” she said, calling Reina the most reverent of marital nicknames, “I am me and you are you. We complement each other. You could walk with a strap-on around your waist all day and you’d still just be Reina to me. I don’t know how else to make you understand. When I see you I see the woman I love, not the girl I wish were a boy.”
Maybe, after so many years of societal pressure and conditioning, Reina lost touch with her own identity. Is that sort of thing even possible? She worked, she wore business suits, she smoked and drank beer at dinner, and she loved nothing more than brandishing a fake phallus and dominating feminine women. But she didn’t used to define herself by those things. When did everything change? “What if…” she began, “what if I want to change? What if I want to…be a man?”
Aiko cocked her head and lowered her hands to Reina’s shoulders. “Would you still be Reina?”
“Well…maybe a different name. Because men can’t be named Reina.”
“Then I don’t care. Just because you change your name or maybe start going to therapy, I’m not going to leave you.”
Reina remembered what Michiko had said that one day. “She’d stay with you.” She was always right about those things. “Well, it might happen. I’m not sure yet. It’s a big decision.” Reina couldn’t imagine it happening unless there was no other choice in the world. She had never hated her body until society told her to. She remembered when she would let all her sexual partners inside her body, not just Aiko or Michiko on certain days. I want to be a woman. She tried to tell herself that again and again. I want to be a woman who can act like a man and no one cares.
“Whatever decision you make, I’ll be here.”
Reina cried again, but not because she felt scared or confused. She cried because after twenty years with Aiko she had never felt so sure that this was it, that this was “love.” That she wasn’t using her, or relying on her out of convenience, or because she was too lazy to take care of herself. She had always known it – she “loved” Aiko. Life seemed impossible without her, just as it always had been before they met.
“Oh, Reina.” Aiko lifted the hem of her dress and dabbed Reina’s face with it. “Every day I feel so lucky that you chose me. I love you.”
They kissed, sloppily, weakly, anything to reflect Reina’s puttering puckers between sobs. Aiko’s face remained serene, however, informing Reina she didn’t have to reciprocate the words yet. Not until she was ready.
The phone continued to slip through Aiko’s hands as she switched between them every time one got too sweaty. She hid in the kitchen, outside the main burst of the air conditioner and already regretted putting on the extra apron to cook lunch.
But she didn’t hide because she wanted to melt in the heat of the kitchen; she hid because Reina could come home unannounced at any moment. Lest anyone think she was up to no good, well…maybe she was. Aiko would never hear the end of it if Reina saw or overheard what was talked about on the phone.
“Well, I don’t know what else can be done, if she’s not going to report him,” said Mayumi, the on-shift volunteer for the city’s biggest LGBT resource center. “There’s only so much that can be done then anyway, especially if the company’s not going to take any action. Last time we hit that wall there was nothing we could do, save for telling the victim to quit or risk asking for a transfer.”
Aiko switched her cell phone between hands again. She had a feeling Reina would not appreciate being referred to as a “victim.” “I thought as much, honestly. But, you know Reina, she will barely admit it’s happened now, let alone do anything about it. She says it’s fine…” Aiko had wrung her hands all Monday in fear of what may happen when Reina went back to work. But she came home nonchalant, claiming nothing was amiss, “Just a misunderstanding,” etc. As usual, if she doesn’t think about it, it doesn’t exist. Still, knowing she worked alongside somebody like that disgusting man set Aiko on edge, until she worked up the nerve to call the resource center the following Saturday when Reina had to work in the morning. They had attempted lovemaking the night before, the first time since Reina’s incident, and she was so distracted Aiko wondered if it would ever get better. “Anyway, there’s something else, too.”
“Hm?” Mayumi rustled some papers on her end. “Has this happened elsewhere with you two?”
“No. Not that. Something else entirely.” Aiko took a deep breath. “Reina told me she was…interested in Gender Identity Disorder counseling.” The reason Aiko shook a little when she said it was because she swore she heard the front door open. No, just some wind outside.
“Eh? Reina-san? Hontou ni?” Mayumi mumbled something as she shuffled through more papers and yelled at somebody for a schedule of available doctors. “No, but really, you’re serious?”
“Y…yes. Is that a problem?” Why wasn’t Mayumi taking this seriously? She had known Reina for nearly a decade now, from the Ni-chome circuit and from…that one time…so shouldn’t she know such a thing was possible with Reina? Aiko wasn’t so shocked once she had time to sit and think about it that week. I have always known; I’m just surprised she noticed it herself.
“No, no problem. It’s just…well it’s Reina-san. I would’ve never guessed.”
“Well, that’s what she’s expressed to me.”
“Does she want to transition, or…?”
“I don’t think so. I think she just wants to talk to somebody.” Although the thought of Reina talking to anybody about anything was as likely as her coming down the stairs in one of Aiko’s summer dresses one day.
“Yes, we can do that.” Mayumi’s voice retained its usual business-like demeanor. “We have free consultations on the weekends, although spots are at the whims of the doctors. Right now I don’t think we could get her in until the end of next month.”
“That’s fine. I mean…she doesn’t even know I’ve called you, so…”
“Eh? She doesn’t? Is this okay, then?”
“Well, you said so yourself, that you know Reina. Do you think she would react well to me doing this?”
“No, probably not. But I don’t know her as well as you, her girlfriend, would. Give me your phone address and I’ll mail you some information. If she decides she wants to come in, give us a ring again.”
Aiko thanked her for her time and hung up. She got a message two minutes later with a list of doctor names and available times in the coming months. A frown creased Aiko’s face as she put her phone on the counter and stared at her lunch ingredients as if they were toxic.
Six months until their twentieth anniversary. It seemed unreal. Twenty years of Reina. And when Aiko thought she knew everything she could know about her, it was like everything changed around the two of them.
Did all of this start because of me? Aiko wondered if anything would have been different if she had never brought up her own insecurities earlier that year. Perhaps, but it wouldn’t have stopped what happened with Reina’s coworker. Aiko shivered.
The front door opened and footsteps crept in. “I’m home!” Reina called, her voice low and lackadaisical.
Aiko shuffled out of the kitchen and stood in the hall
way, watching Reina fling her blazer onto the staircase and practically kick her briefcase out of the genkan. “Welcome home.” Aiko’s voice had escaped somewhere else.
“Eh?” Reina stepped out of the genkan and walked toward her, hand outstretched and feeling at Aiko’s forehead. “Are you sick? You’re usually peppier than this.”
Aiko batted away Reina’s hand and retreated into the kitchen. “Are you sure it’s not your hand that’s hot? How warm is it outside?”
“Over thirty. Typical.” Reina followed her, passing through the kitchen and standing beneath the air conditioner in the living room. Aiko rinsed her hands in the sink, grabbed her cutting knife, and relocated all her vegetables. As she began chopping, Reina said, “I ran into your other girlfriend on the way down the street. She told me to tell you hi.”
“My other girlfriend?” Aiko stopped chopping long enough to make sure she heard everything right. “Oh, Yuri-san?”
“That’s the one.”
“Mou, she has a name.”
“Sorry, there are just so many women in the world.”
Aiko peered out of the kitchen and saw the smarmy smirk on Reina’s face. She was in dire need of a summer haircut, their original plans to get their hair done together the previous Sunday canceled when Reina still had troubles leaving the house. “Well, do you at least know my name?” Aiko remembered Michiko’s off-hand comment about the miracle of Reina knowing anybody’s name.
“Hanako?” Reina still smiled when Aiko turned around in mock huff and returned to her vegetables. “Sayuri? Nanami? Rika? Mou.” Her voice got closer, and over her shoulder Aiko caught a glimpse of her leaning against the pillar at the kitchen entrance. “Aiko.”
“Very good.” Should I tell her now while she’s in a good mood? Or would it spoil everything? This was the first time Reina had seemed more like her usual self ever since last Friday night. Best not to risk telling her about the talk with Mayumi. “By the way, why didn’t you text me to say you were coming home? I wanted to have lunch ready for you.” Reina was habitually home at one when she worked on Saturdays. The time was already almost two.
Daisuki Page 13
