Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 03:43:41 +1200 From: prime wordsmith Subject: swansea-bridge-04 I had spent most of my teens in Tennessee but had to leave when my father found out my sexual preference for males was more dominant. He wasn't really my father. I spent most of my young life with him married to my mother. She encouraged me to regard him as my only father since my genetic father had so unfairly left her by going and dying. Mother never forgave my genitive father for that. So I was expected to regard the man who now supported my mother and me as my only father. He was often intolerant of me and persistently found short-comings with me. I did not measure up to his expectations of a son he would have sired himself. So I left after he became violent against me. I travelled to Arkansas and started a very successful art school there. Martial arts -- not the brush type. It was well regarded. It was there in Arkansas that I was introduced to the tactile art form I most liked. My companion, Jeff, showed me how to stroke, to touch, to feel, to gently excite and slowly arouse. The idea of slow and sustained arousal is highly regarded in my Japanese heritage. Love play often takes relaxed hours. There is no rush to `get it off', as my American friends called it, as quickly as possible. I mean it is not as if we were trying to escape from invading conquerors. It was not as if we were back in the jungle and trying to get it done as quickly as possible so we were not exposed to danger for any longer than absolutely necessary. The Japanese regarded themselves as being far removed from jungle animals. There was no need to rush. Indeed it was quite rude to rush. If you were that desperate you could always utilise the household duck. Sex between people should be relaxed and gentle and, well, artistic. It should be elegant. Just so. Wham, bam, don't give a damn, might be alright for the uncouth barbarians on the other side of the Pacific, but not for us. We understood that most of the uncouth had relatively recently arrived in their country by ship. The rocking, jerking, rolling, corkscrewing motion of sea travel on the wild Atlantic is not conducive to relaxed gentleness. So we understood why most Americans tended to be quick and jerky in their sexual practices. But we had a much longer history, over greater time, and with a vastly more homogeneously developed culture. We had progressed beyond the animal and raised sex to a truly human art form. So I was very surprised when Jeff, an American, raised my sexual consciousness in line with my Japanese traditions. Especially after my experience with the father who raised me, with his brusque bald brutalness. Jeff was a balm for my bruises. He reinforced in me the need to caress, to be tender, to touch and stroke the skin all over. He explained skin hunger -- the need by the skin all over to be tingled by gentle feather-touch stroking. So it was with the body I was carrying into the drying room. It had become obvious he was suffering from skin hunger. He wanted close contact, skin contact, all over. He didn't just need genital stimulation. That was a mistaken belief Jeff had eradicated from his own thinking. I had never adopted it. Thankfully it was never a natural part of my culture. Such cultural attitudes are usually absorbed by simply living within a culture. I had never soaked it up when I was living in America. I could stand back and see it clearly. Yet I was amazed that my American friends could not see there is any alternative. I could see their whole culture was driven by this quick fix attitude. They all absorbed it unthinkingly, as if by osmosis. Sex was `getting it off', getting it over and done with, getting that problem out of the way as efficiently as possible. And the same attitude for quick fixes flowed through into their foreign policy. The quick fix of Korea. The quick fix of Vietnam. The quick fix of Iraq. The quick fix of Afghanistan. No, none of them worked. It was too heavy handed and too quick. It was a fundamental flaw in the American psyche. The quick jerk-off. No. They needed to understand the needs of the person they were lying beside. They needed to make their passion last so they could keep up the dance right through their lives. By understanding the one they were lying with, they could soothe and ease and caress and satisfy their companion as well, and thus themselves even better. Likewise with their enemies. If they understood the needs, doubts, concerns, hurt, anger and desires of their enemies then they could understand their motivation. Understanding their underlying motivation would enable them to stroke, caress, cajole, soothe, ease and satisfy their enemies. Their enemies would no longer be rape victims but willing partners. The interrelationship would no longer be forced and brutal, but openly willing and productive. The body needed this. It needed caressing, gentleness, time and understanding. He had not spoken once since he was inside my house. He did not need to. I was reading him and understanding him without the need for words. It was a higher plane of communication than mere words. His skin hunger shone through. Skin hunger is a fundamental human need. It should be in the United Nations charter along with the others -- food, shelter, clothing, right to work, etc. And of course the need doesn't get automatically switched on at a magical age which happens to vary from country to country, or from state to state, or from gender to gender, for that matter. No. Here I had a body which was wanting to die from lack of nourishment for its skin hunger. The law saying no nourishment for someone his age, was inept. I knew what its aim was. It intended to protect those less able to resist undue influence. But one of the Supreme Court judges had been wandering about in Hyde Park groping up the unwilling, and sometimes not so unwilling, students from the Cathedral primary school for years. Yet the law did nothing to stop him for years and years and years. The law obviously needed refinement. This body wanted it. This body needed it. And I was going to nourish this body just as much as he wanted it. He would be my Akihiro for the moment. He would be my crown prince. There were a number of benches in the drying room. I had thought of giving in to the easy way out and using vinyl coverings. But that was aesthetically unacceptable -- as well as uncomfortable. I never liked the sticky feel of vinyl on the skin. And it did not breathe properly. And it was unnatural. And my great-grandfather, my own genitive father's grandfather, the one who taught my father so much during the second world war, would never have tolerated something so artificial, so substitutional, so second rate as vinyl, when real handcrafted deerskin leather could be had. Rusa deer were hard to find in this new country. Importing leather from overseas was unacceptable because of the risk of disease being introduced. This country cares about keeping out unwanted diseases. It even exports camels to Saudi Arabia for the royal racing stables, because it is so disease free. So I made do with fallow deer hides. The benches were covered with fallow leather which kissed the skin rather than encasing it like some slab of meat in a supermarket tray. I lay the body down on one of these breathing benches where the deer skin kissed one side of him. Balance and poise. Both so necessary. Equilibrium demanded that if he is being kissed on one side then he should be kissed on the other side too. So I kissed the back of his neck and both shoulder blades on either side. The body sighed. A deep sigh. A contented sigh. A sigh of happiness. The body certainly seemed to think this beat dying. With this implicit permission granted I kissed his spine in bunny hops to the end. A shiver. No doubt for two reasons. But the second had to be dealt with first. He was still cold and needed warming. I took some fresh dry towels out of the warming cabinet and covered him in them from top to toe. [If you would like this story to continue please email me, Yoshi Torriati, at primewordsmith@hotmail.com Positive comments are always welcome. Many thanks to David Spencer for editorial assistance and advice on English usage.]