Ikigai

by Hildred Billings

  Reina flipped her cell phone shut. Her wife implying she wanted to get down and dirty in bed was always important. “My wife is horny.”

  “Oh, well then.”

  The stool squeaked as Reina slid off and straightened out her jacket. “Thanks for inviting me tonight. It was… interesting.”

  Shio put her hand on Reina’s arm to stop her from leaving so suddenly. “Did you at least have a good time?”

  “Sure.” Not as much fun as hanging out with friends in a lesbian bar, though. But Reina wouldn’t say that. Shio could probably tell from the bored look in her eye.

  “Did you feel comfortable? I mean as a…”

  Well, I was treated as a man. Solicited more than once. She hadn’t had offers like that in a couple of years. Maybe living as a man has some real benefits. Jury was out if she thought it was a worthwhile fulltime endeavor. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll tell our therapist about it later.” Reina waved and turned toward the entrance. “Jya.”

  Shio said goodbye, letting Reina go as if she were a jilted first date. Reina put her hands in her back pockets and walked past men and women socializing, flirting, and drinking. In another life she could have been one of those men, whispering in a straight woman’s ear and enticing her into bed. It didn’t matter if her dick was real or not. Nobody else’s probably was.

  Just before she reached the door and the bouncer there, something brushed against her ass.

  She spun around, looking for who had touched her. A group of men ambled by, laughing and talking about one of the performers due on stage later. One of them. It had to be one of them. Reina searched each of their faces, but the place was dark, and none of them looked back at her.

  Why? She thought that as she bolted through the door and was smacked by the cold night air. It sharpened her lungs as she took in a deep breath and stalked off toward the train station. Why? Was one of the men gay? Did he violate her because she didn’t pass well enough? How did that work in that small community? And why was Reina so bent out over it? Wouldn’t be the first time a man groped her for the simple fact that he was a man and she was female.

  No matter what, I… She tripped down the stairs to the train station and landed at the bottom, where a couple of women glanced at her and then scoffed to each other. They must think she was a drunk salaryman. The spot on Reina’s ass where some scumbag touched her burned hot, tainted. She attempted to walk toward the women’s restroom to clean herself, but stopped when she realized a security guard looked at her strangely.

  He thinks I’m a man.

  Without thinking, she turned into the other room. The men’s room.

  It stank of piss and sweat. So did the women’s room, like in any train station, but somehow the men’s room was worse. Luckily for her no one else was in there. Reina stopped in front of a sink and ran the cold water, splashing it on her face while she ignored the exposed urinals behind her. She wet a tissue from her pocket and unzipped her pants far enough to slip her hand back and scrub her skin. This is ridiculous. She thought it, yet she pushed on, as if ignoring that spot would dirty her for days.

  Two men walked in, talking loudly as they already lowered their zippers and pulled out their dicks before they stood in front of the urinals. Reina saw it – saw the whole thing in the mirror in front of her and froze where she stood.

  “That man’s a right pig bastard!” bellowed one man as he began pissing next to his colleague. “What makes him think he can change up how the whole department works because he has that fancy degree?”

  Reina didn’t hear what the other man replied with. She was too busy zipping herself up and tearing out of there.

  Fuck me. She could see what those men did; she could feel the grime of men on her skin. Reina fumbled for her train pass and nearly dropped it in the stall as she went through, conjuring the nearest guard to ask her if she needed assistance. Don’t talk to me! She shoved her pass into her pocket and ignored the man, who looked like he couldn’t be older than fresh out of college.

  It was late, but it was Saturday night, and thus the trains were packed with people, most of them party-goers and businesspeople grumbling about meetings and dinners. Reina found a seat and buried her face in her hands. At the next stop, the other people on her bench disembarked, only to be quickly replaced by all men squeezing in next to her.

  She was surrounded. She was trapped. She was nobody and everybody at the same time.

  By some miracle she made it home without passing out or throwing up. She walked through the front door of her house, forgetting to announce that she was home and almost forgetting to take off her shoes before stepping up into the raised hallway. I need a drink. Reina bypassed the living area and went straight down the hall to the kitchen.

  “Reina!” Aiko slammed the laptop lid down where she sat at the breakfast table. “I didn’t hear you come home!”

  Glasses chimed and plastic cups scuffled as Reina grabbed the first one she found and filled it with tap water. “Tadaima.”

  She went upstairs without saying anything else to her wife. It was the first time she had privacy all night, and she was going to revel in it.

  Or as much as she could, anyway. With half her brain fighting against her, she wasn’t sure she could enjoy the silence in her own room.

  What am I? She liked it when women perceived her to be a man, but she didn’t like being around other men. She wanted to be the only man in the room, not because it fueled her ego, but because it made her feel safe. Deep inside, Reina knew she would always have those insecurities, those fears of being around other men in exposing situations. Nothing would let her forget that she was a woman, and vulnerable because of it.

  She sat on her side of the bed, facing the shuttered windows. Her hands clasped over her face as she leaned forward.

  It wasn’t fair. She could neither live her whole life as a man, nor could she stand the chains of being a woman. Forsaking one was not the same as embracing the other. I could never live that kind of life. She was jealous of the men who could. Either because they were born with the right parts, or because they were so assured in their identities that nothing phased them. Or at least in supposed safe spaces.

  But that party wasn’t a safe space for Reina. Sure, she could go there and “feel like a man,” but she was still surrounded by other men. It was the problem she ran into when she first started going to therapy two years ago.

  Why can’t I just be a woman? Why do I have to be anything at all?”

  “Reina?”

  The door creaked open as Aiko’s voice entered the room. Reina shivered. “Nani?”

  “How was the party? You know, I was thinking…”

  Reina didn’t hear what she said after that. It sounded flirty, and a part of her wanted to respond positively to it. No one made her feel more normal than Aiko did. But this wasn’t something that sex or her wife could heal tonight. Knowing that made it even worse, and Reina inhaled a deep breath to keep from sobbing.

  “Are you okay?”

  Nope. She didn’t say it. Aiko fretted about enough already. Reina didn’t have to feed into her wife’s panic.

  And yet… a part of her wanted the attention. Shame, embarrassment, and futility swelled up inside her again, and she heaved forward, fighting back a sob that choked her chest and tested the strength of her ribs.

  Without another word Aiko darted into the room, letting the door close behind her as she climbed onto the bed and wrapped her arms around Reina from behind.

  “Doushita?” she asked softly, as her spouse forced back tears. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.” This meager word unblocked the hold on her emotions, and Reina found tears running down her cheeks. She wiped them away, but Aiko had already seen them.

  “Don’t tell me ‘nothing.’” To her credit, Aiko tried to mask the worry in her voice. But that made her sound like a doting, incessant mother. Like mine never was. Reina wiped her cheeks again as her w
ife’s hold on her tightened. “Something happened. Who do I have to kill?”

  The mere image of Aiko leaping out the window to go take on a stranger vigilante-style almost made Reina laugh. But she was in too much pain to laugh, so she merely put her hand on her wife’s and shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know that I’m tired of being fucked up.”

  “You’re not fucked up.” Aiko nuzzled the back of Reina’s head, cooing into her ear that she was fine in her eyes. “What was the party like?”

  Reina didn’t know how to begin, so she started where she could, talking about what it was like to be surrounded by people who were like her, to an extent. She recounted the flirting, the jokes, and the… it wouldn’t be the first time she talked about her inadequacies as a man when she wanted to be one. It also wouldn’t be the first time she told her wife how another man violated her personal space and sent her into a dysphoric hell she couldn’t escape from. Like now.

  She also mentioned the restroom at the train station, and how sick she felt because she was forced to go in there, let alone what she saw.

  “Why couldn’t you go in the women’s room?”

  “Because look at me!”

  “I am.” Aiko gently stroked her spouse’s head as Reina broke down and sobbed into the palms of her hands. “I’m sorry you ended up having such a bad time. I wish I could do something to help you.”

  There’s nothing. Reina leaned back into her wife’s embrace, drawing her legs up onto the bed as she turned and wrapped her arms around Aiko. Except being here. She cried softly into Aiko’s shoulder, taking what reassurance she could from her wife’s perfume and shampoo.

  “Why am I like this?” Reina asked. “When did I become so screwed up?”

  “You’re not screwed up.”

  “I am! People are supposed to fit into boxes.”

  “Not everyone got the same box in the mail, Reina.”

  “Fuck the postman then.”

  Aiko let silence fill the air before she spoke again, her breath heaving her chest up and feeling warm against Reina’s cheek. I don’t deserve her. She wanted to curl up against her wife’s breasts and pretend it was safe there, with Aiko’s heartbeat calming her. “You’ve come so far these past two years. Until tonight, I’ve seen you become more open, confident, and full of life. Of course you will have some setbacks along the way. You’re still trying to figure things out.”

  She sounded like Reina’s therapist. Except she wouldn’t hold me like this. Usually Reina was the one doing the holding. “I’m tired of figuring things out. I’m tired.”

  “No matter what happens, or what you feel any day, know that this place is okay for you to be whatever you need to be in. I like to think that we have created a kind of sanctuary for ourselves here. Don’t you?”

  Reina closed her eyes. “I guess so.”

  Slowly, as if Reina were some fragile thing, Aiko eased her spouse onto the bed and sat up. “You’ll feel better later. Do you want to take a bath?”

  “No. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Sou. How do you feel otherwise?”

  Reina stared at the ceiling. The same ceiling she stared at every night for over fifteen years. “My stomach hurts.”

  “I’ll make us some tea. Should we drink it up here?”

  “Sure.”

  Aiko crawled off the bed and disappeared out the door. Reina tried to find the strength to get up and change into her pajamas. There was something Aiko had wanted when she first came in. Reina wondered what it was. She promptly forgot as she recalled the moment she walked into that men’s restroom. No amount of bathing could wash that off her tainted body.

  Five-year-old pop songs played on the supermarket airwaves as Aiko pushed her cart up and down aisles, trying to decide what to cook for dinner. Should I make curry? She stared at the piles of vegetables as a young man in a red apron hosed them down. Fish filets? The raw meats were behind her, and she stared at rows of whole fish gaping up at her with their wide, dead eyes. She picked one up and peered at it through the packaging,

  “Aiko-san?”

  She turned, bumping into her tiny shopping cart and nearly crashing it into the one beside it. Attached to that cart was Yuri, smiling at her friend, neighbor, and lover as if she caught her daydreaming. “Gomen ne,” Aiko apologized. “How are you doing today?”

  It was their first time talking since Yuri was last over almost a week ago. As they stood in the middle of the supermarket aisle, their baskets full of groceries that would last, at most, two or three days, they talked of Yuri’s daughter, Aiko’s work, English books, and a recent mailer that went out in the neighborhood announcing a new internet provider in the area. The only time they moved was when an elderly man needed to shuffle by.

  “I have to get going now,” Yuri said, slipping her hand on top of Aiko’s shoulder. “See you Wednesday?”

  Wednesdays were quickly becoming one of Aiko’s favorite days of the week. That and the weekend, when Reina isn’t as tired. Back in the early days Reina could go every night, work or not, but these days she was more likely to succumb to fatigue by the time she got home. She wasn’t fatigued last night. The day after her party, Reina was back in the saddle and ready to go in bed. Thank God. Aiko couldn’t hold in the randiness any longer that weekend.

  “Sure. There’s a shop in Shibuya I’ve been wanting to check out, if you are interested.”

  Yuri knew what that was code for. Love hotel. She smiled, waved goodbye, and pushed her cart toward the checkout counter.

  Aiko sighed, both dreamily and as an attempt to get her mind focused on dinner. But before she could do that, she caught a glimpse of two older women – neighbors, two and three houses down. They looked at her, whispered to each other, and scurried away with their carts.

  This time Aiko’s sigh was for something else entirely.

  Whether by design or perception, the rest of November blew by on the mid-autumn winds. While the city became colder and the days shorter, Reina and Aiko lived their lives in a manner suggesting something was about to pop. At least this time it was not an internal matter. On the contrary, their marriage was as healthy as ever, with quiet nights at home that quickly turned into raucous bedtimes, and dates on the weekends when they could spare them.

  This was the hardest part, since there was much to keep them busy. Aiko worked and spent days with her friends, and Reina worked and spent her weekends helping the erotic cause or attending therapy. With her wife working later hours, Reina took to eating dinner in Shio’s empty bar a regular occurrence, if only so she could have someone to talk to. Shio in turn indulged Reina’s whims once a week, but she never invited her to another party.

  Every so often Aiko asked her spouse what she wanted to do for her birthday, and every so often Reina had to pretend that she cared about such a thing. But one day blurred into the next, and a constant stomachache was all Reina had to show for them. “Go to the doctor,” Aiko said, after her spouse complained about stomach pains for the millionth time. So Reina went, and the doctor told her to lay off some of her favorite foods. At least she didn’t tell her to lay off the sex.

  On the last Saturday of November, four days before her birthday, Reina kissed her wife goodbye and went to therapy. While there, she and Dr. Katou hashed out the Cross Party some more, including Reina’s suffocating feelings while she was in the restroom. “Was it fear or inferiority that scared you the most?” the therapist asked. Reina couldn’t say. Such an answer depended on the day.

  After therapy, she had a date with her girlfriend Jun, who had come up from Nagoya.

  They normally didn’t meet so early, preferring to have dinner and then-some later in the evening, but Jun had no work and Reina didn’t want to waste time going home just to go back out again. She met her girlfriend at her hotel next to Shibuya Station, wondering what they would do. Save me from karaoke and museums. Aiko used to go on semi-regular dates with Jun and would talk about the Imperial Gar
dens, history museums, and other boring shit that those intellectual types liked.

  “Ohisashiburi!” Reina was knocked out of her daydream when Jun slammed into her right there in the hotel lobby. She didn’t even see how her girlfriend was styled or dressed before Jun pulled her into a hug and a kiss in front of God and crystal chandeliers. At least they were the same height. Sort of.

  Jun took her out to an early dinner a few blocks away in a cozy eatery she said one of her friends recommended. And while the atmosphere was certainly casual and light-hearted, the food and drink were the usual fancy flair Reina associated with her girlfriend. Jun had exuberant tastes, even if she didn’t realize it. She also had the money to pay for those tastes.

  “I can’t believe it’s been two whole months since we last saw each other,” Jun said over her meal. Reina didn’t point out that it had been two months since Jun saw either of her girlfriends. That was when she talked and talked and talked for over half an hour, discussing absolutely nothing but happy to be discussing it with someone she was fucking. Reina half expected her girlfriend to start sobbing in the middle of her one-sided conversation because she was so happy to be there.

  Hence Reina knew better than to check a text she received from Aiko. She had to wait until Jun went to the restroom, and even then it was an admonishment that she had forgotten to get something down from the top shelf in a closet that Aiko couldn’t reach.

  “By the way, I got something for you,” Jun said as she slinked back into her seat next to Reina. She pulled out a small black box from her purse and slipped it into Reina’s hand. “Happy birthday.” The nose rub Reina got on her cheek was too sweet for even Aiko to attempt in public.

  “…Thanks.” She popped the top on the box and saw a silver watch inside. It was small and thin, yet masculine, the type of watch business execs wore when they were small of frame but not of stature. Reina pulled it out and realized that the chain making up the watch band was cleanly feminine. A masculine face and a feminine body. Funny. Most women said Reina was quite the opposite.