The Sex Tourist
By Richard Rivers
Tired. I'm so tired, he thought, resting his head against the seatback. There was still a twelve-hour flight to go. But his weariness went deeper than anything sleep could remedy. He felt as if the life force had been sucked out of him. I'm different. After the last two weeks, I can never be the same person again; there is no recovering from the things I have done.
Oddly, Richard remembered the heat most vividly; awful humid air that sapped his strength the moment he stepped off the plane. And it was still hot when he went out at night. He had other memories too, of course - old men squatting along the side of the road, watching him; the twisted smile on the porter's face at the hotel; a young girl in one of the bars pushing back a lock of hair, staring with eyes that bored through him, through the back wall, like laser-beams, through the city and up the river into the countryside to the tiny village in the jungle she had come from, where she hoped a little of the money he gave her would be sent.
Don't fall asleep in the cab, his friends warned him. After a grueling day of travel, Richard wanted nothing else. The cabdriver's eyes kept flitting over him in the rearview mirror every time he nodded off.
A hand touched his shoulder and he found himself looking into a woman's eyes, Asian eyes, soft smiling eyes that didn't blink. The stewardess wanted him to put his seat upright for takeoff. He watched the pleasant motion of her hips as she proceeded up the aisle, surprised he could still feel lust for a woman.
At the hotel, the porter made an obvious show of sizing Richard up before asking if he wanted a girl sent to the room. Without thinking, Richard dismissed the man, and then - what the hell am I here for anyway? He called him back and asked for the girl in half an hour.
When she came she was so shy Richard hardly got a look at her before she slipped into the bathroom and he heard the shower go on. They always have to take a shower, his friend's told him, before and after. It's crazy - even if she just took a shower after the last guy she was with half an hour ago. The girl took so long he considered knocking on the door and sending her away. He was getting almost too tired. Instead, he sat down on the bed and ended up falling into a deep sleep.
The soft touch of her hand on his shoulder woke him. She was standing beside the bed wrapped in a towel looking down on him with soft eyes. Without a word, she slipped under the covers and wriggled free of the towel. He had to take off his clothes while she watched and then slide in beside her. She had taken a cold shower and he warmed her, rubbing his large flat hands over her body. She felt young and smooth, tight at the waist and hips - probably not more than fifteen or sixteen years old, he guessed and his desire finally began to emerge. Her body parted for him easily when he entered her. Too tired to be athletic, he moved inside of her with a slow easy rhythm.
He wanted to finish quickly so that he could sleep at last, but he had trouble going over the edge. Maybe it was the long trip, the jetlag. He wanted to look into her eyes, knowing it would help him come - the way looking into an Asian girl's eyes could always make him come - but she held hers tightly closed. He gently touched her eyebrows and got her to open them. Her eyes were deep and wide, like pools of very still water, and he felt himself plunging into them, drowning in soothing cool water. He shuddered as the dam within him burst. His orgasm felt like the release of a pent up sigh.
After the girl left, Richard wondered if his father had ever done anything similar. As a Marine, he had been in Okinawa, the Philippines and Thailand, but he never spoke about his personal experiences. In fact, his father never said much of anything. I'm a doer not a talker, son he said, ruffling Richard's hair with one of his big hands. And that's about all he ever said.
When Richard was fifteen, his father started a new job that took him to Japan several times. Everything seemed normal the first couple of trips and then one day he never came back. There was a phone call - Richard remembered his mother crying in the kitchen, twisting the curly phone cord into knots - and then his father was gone. Just like that; no more catch in the backyard, no more helping out in the woodshop they had setup together in the garage. Nothing.
He returned a few months later, but only to get his things. Richard sat across from him at the tiny kitchen table. The small chair hardly seemed sturdy enough to contain the big muscular body. His father stayed in shape and he still wore the same Marine-style crewcut, graying at the temples. To Richard, he looked exactly the same as ever. He still laid his broad hands awkwardly on the table when he had to struggle with words or feelings, palms down, as if he was about to push himself away. But Richard knew that inside his father was different somehow. His quietness seemed to emanate from an inner calm, not barely contained anger.
Richard's father evenly explained that he had met a woman in Japan and that they had fallen in love. He was going to live with her in Santa Barbara California. After he left, Richard dug through a pile of old roadmaps looking for one of California to try and find Santa Barbara.
After the first girl, his first time with a prostitute Richard realized - but it doesn't feel like prostitution over there, his friends told him time and time again; it's part of the culture - he fell into a deep dreamless sleep and didn't awaken for nearly sixteen hours.
The next night he went out. The bargirls and go-go dancers all wore numbers pinned to their skimpy outfits. He bought them their special 'lady drinks' while he stuck to beer himself. He was always looking into their eyes, searching for the one who could evoke a certain feeling in him. He gravitated towards the younger ones, the girls who looked straight back at him without shiftiness or evasion, the ones who smiled. And when he found the right girl for his mood, he bought her out - paid the fee to the bar to take her back to his hotel. And when he had sex, he had to look into her eyes again to make him come.
You'll be like a kid in a candy store, his friends told him, and it was true. His hotel was across the street from the entertainment district so it was easy to slip out of a club with a young girl beside him and be back again an hour later trolling for another. He thought about going 'long term' with a girl, buying her out for a week at a time - you could still have others, his friends said: just give her a few dollars and tell her to go shopping and meet you again tomorrow - but he could never bring himself to settle on just one. It seemed a waste to give up all the others, even for a night.
His third or fourth night out - how quickly he lost track of the time - he indulged his fantasy and brought home two girls at once. They were bubbly young things who laughed and chatted with each other in a language that was musical and mysterious to his ears. Back at the hotel, he positioned them side by side on all fours and fucked each one in turn. Later, he had one lie on top of him while he fucked her friend. Richard enjoyed the weight of another body draped over him and the rasp of her pubic hair on the small of his back.
None of it was enough. Escorting one girl out of the hotel, intending to head right out for another bar, Richard felt his lust rising again as soon as he saw another available female. He was always looking for the girl who could evoke the feeling in him more powerfully than the last, the orgasm wet enough to finally quench him. And when he went to the bathhouses during the day, seeing ten, twenty women in the 'fish-tank' - waiting behind the big picture window - he could hardly contain himself knowing he could have whichever one he wanted; all of them if he had the time and energy.
Something had broken down - the power that opposed sexual desire. Normally, what kept men and women from sizing each other up and deciding to have sex in the nearest hotel, or on the nearest park bench for that matter? Was that culture, a civilizing force, modesty? It no longer existed for him. With his money - more in his pocket than these people might see in a year - he could feed his insatiable hunger until he no longer had the strength.
After a week, his lust showed no sign of letting up. But knowing he could have virtually any woman he wanted only made him more keenly aware of the one woman he could never have.
From the time he was sixteen until he finished college, Richard spent the summers in Santa Barbara. From the moment he met his father's girlfriend, Yukiko, Richard became infatuated with her. She had to be twenty years younger than his father and she was beautiful. Growing up in a small Midwest town, Richard had met few Asians. To him, Yukiko was beautiful, mysterious and a little dangerous because he saw her as the agent of the profound change that had come over his father.
Richard felt he hardly knew his father anymore. On the outside, he still looked the same. The bulky muscular body hadn't changed. He still had the same haircut, but his old wardrobe seemed to have gone out the window. He padded around the house in sweatpants and long flowing shirts he said were made in Indonesia. When they decided to go out, he pulled on some baggy trousers that tied in the front with a drawstring and slipped into a pair of sandals. His father was still a quiet man - neither he nor Yukiko were big talkers - but he smiled more often now, and it made Richard realize that his father had probably learned to relax and enjoy life for the first time.
But Richard was too taken with Yukiko to pay more than passing attention to his father. She was a like butterfly silently gliding about the house in her kimono. It was impossible to keep from following her with his eyes whenever she was near. If she noticed him watching her, he would become flustered and embarrassed. Sometimes he spied on her outright, peering out his bedroom window when she sunbathed on the deck in her modest one-piece suit or when she took a dip in the small pool. At night, Richard often lay awake listening to the sounds of Yukiko and his father in their bedroom. Through the thin walls, he could make out the murmur of their conversation. Eventually the sounds of talk gave way to his father's low grunts and Yukiko's soft answering cries. When he heard the fleshy slap of their bodies coming together the image of his father's muscular hips rising and falling between Yukiko's slender legs was almost more than Richard could bear.
He would wake up the next morning still exhausted to find the two of them already sitting down to breakfast. Yukiko's eyes would meet his over her coffee cup and she would ask him with unblinking innocence how he had slept. Richard looked away, unable to face her. What beautiful eyes she had! - like deep wells filled with the sweetest most soothing cool water. He longed to plunge into those eyes and put out the fire that burned in him. He wanted her so badly, and it made him ache to know he could never have her.
Bolting from the table, he would run through the hills above Santa Barbara every day trying to escape his vision of Yukiko. He ran for miles, impossible distances; over hills, to the sea and back again, stumbling home in the blazing sun to find her still there, smiling serenely and offering him a glass of cold water. When he left at the end of the summer, he could not leave behind the haunting images - her eyes, the heavy body of his father pressing her onto the bed. Trudging through the snow at his east-coast college, he would think of Yukiko and his father making love endlessly in the warm Santa Barbara evenings and he would cast away his books and run through the icy city. As he matured, Richard's began to look less and less like his muscular father. Instead, he developed the gaunt emaciated frame of the distance runner.
One of the bars had a large tank of water in it - they called it the Mermaidium or some other such nonsense - an aquarium where naked girls would swim to-and-fro entertaining the customers. That is where Richard saw her, darting through the water like a little fish, arms pointed straight back, her tiny feet kicking up bubbles. He watched her for half an hour, admiring her smooth skin, the strength in her slender legs. When she looked at him through the glass with the vacant smile that said he was nothing more than a blur to her, Richard suddenly knew that this was the one, the girl he had come halfway around the world to find. He asked the bartender about her but was told another customer had already bought her out for the night. Unable to bear seeing her leave with someone else, Richard left for a different bar in search of another girl to make him forget her. But his enthusiasm was gone; none of them caught his fancy, and for the first time he returned to his hotel alone.
The next night he returned to the bar earlier and waited. By midnight she still hadn't come and he asked the bartender about her. Richard kicked himself for not getting her name the night before. Describing these girls was pointless. Around five feet tall, ninety pounds, black hair... The man was either lying or playing dumb when he said he didn't remember whom Richard had pointed out the night before. With an infuriating shrug, he turned away. Richard stayed until closing time, quietly getting drunk, waiting and watching for the girl who never came.
After his last year of college, Richard stayed with his father in Santa Barbara one last time. He could have easily done other things but he felt drawn there by Yukiko. He came even though he knew it would only be another summer of torture. As it had every time before, the instant he saw her at the airport, all the feelings came flooding back. He walked up the long jetway to the gate with Yukiko and his father framed in the doorway, bathed in mellow California sunshine. Clutching his father's arm, she was wearing a pale blue sundress that seemed to shimmer and float about her slender body. She greeted him with the same serene smile and unwavering eyes.
Richard's father had work for him to do that summer. Behind the house, there was an acre of wooded land he had a mind to clear and build a small shed on, a woodshop, maybe with a guestroom above it. It would be good man's work clearing that land, he said, wrapping his burly arm around Richard's shoulder as they made their way out of the airport.
The accident happened almost immediately. The old man wasn't as young and limber as he thought and neither of them had ever used a chainsaw before. The wound in his leg was awful. Richard didn't know someone could lose so much blood and live. But his father never even lost consciousness.
"Shit", he said evenly when Richard ran up to where he was laid out beside the fallen log he had been cutting.
With no time for an ambulance, Richard drove to the hospital with Yukiko and his father in the back seat. Richard's eyes kept flitting back to his face, still calm as he recited a litany of swearwords - "shit, fuck, damn, goddamn!" - and to Yukiko, who's white shorts were slowly becoming soaked with blood as she grimly held onto the tourniquet.
The doctors told them they had made it just in time. Any more blood loss and he might not have made it. For the first two days, it was touch and go whether Richard's father would keep his leg. Yukiko stayed with him the whole time, sleeping on a couch in the waiting room while Richard went home for the night and brought her fresh clothes in the morning. On the third day the surgeon came and told them they had saved the leg but that Richard's father would have to stay in the hospital for awhile. He told Yukiko to go home but she refused. Richard went back alone and returned again the next day with another change of clothes for her.
When his father came off of the drugs enough to be lucid, he was angry. Yukiko spent a long time in the room alone with him and when she came out it looked to Richard as if she had been crying.
"Get her out of here," his father said gruffly when Richard went in to see him. "I don't want her seeing me like this. Take her home."
Yukiko went in alone again while Richard pulled the car up to the front of the hospital. Yukiko got in quietly and on the drive home neither of them said a word.
At home, she made herself busy in the kitchen. They had hardly eaten since the accident. Once back in familiar surroundings they both realized they were starving. Richard pulled a beer out of the refrigerator and snapped it open while Yukiko worked at the stove. She surprised him by turning and asking for one too; he had never seen her drink.
The house was hot and stuffy after having been closed-up for three days. They ate in silence and Richard felt the tension between them growing like the ominous sensation before an electrical storm.
Yukiko broke the silence.
"I'm so hot," she said, drinking the last of her beer and getting up from the table. "Do you want another beer, some water?"
"I'll get it," Richard said, on his feet now too.
"Don't be silly."
She was at the sink running the tap when he pressed his body against her from behind. It was a crazy thing to do, but something about it felt right, as if he was giving in to the inevitable. There was the firmness of her hips against him, her fragrant hair brushing his face. She felt so small, so fragile and delicate.
"Yukiko..." He whispered her name.
And then his hands were tracing her hips, feeling for her slender waist. He pressed her against the counter and his hands moved to her breasts.
"Richard..."
He couldn't read her voice. Did she mean stop, or go on? But he couldn't stop now.
A voice in him pleaded, as if praying for him to stop. No, no! Not your father's wife. But there was another voice as well, goading him on. Yes. My father's wife. Yes...
He gently turned her towards him.
"Richard..." she said again, still unfathomable, but his lips were on hers, softly, so softly, silencing her.
She held her arms at her sides while kissed her, and she let him runs his hands over her back. He could feel the delicate bones in her shoulders through the thin summer dress, the arch of her waist and the yielding, trembling flesh of her hips.
Richard led her to his small room and lay her on the futon mat. When he kissed her, she responded by pulling him down onto her with fingers curling and clasping in his hair. He plunged his tongue into her and she held him tightly.
He tore his mouth from her and kissed her chin, her neck, the little hollow there, and down the narrow 'V' at the front of her dress. Yukiko arched her back when he teased her nipples through the sheer fabric. When he slipped off her out of the dress and looked at her breasts they reminded him of roses, soft and pale with a deeper pink at their center.
She helped him off with his clothing and ran her hands over his chest. Richard could feel her fingers tracing each of his ribs. She grasped his penis - her fingers so cool and soft he gasped when she touched him. And she deftly positioned the blunt head of his erection against her.
"Yukiko," Richard moaned as he slowly pushed himself inside. And then again, "Yukiko...Yukiko..." with each stroke.
She brought her legs up around his waist, encouraging with her hands, with her hips, for him to drive against her harder and harder until he could hear the sound of their flesh slapping together. She brought her knees up almost to her shoulders. Richard felt her surrender herself to him completely, she was so small and delicate beneath him. His lust for her was like a caged animal set free. He let it run wild and carry him away.
Looking down, Richard watched himself disappear inside of her and the soft upheaval of her flesh he caused with each stroke until Yukiko touched his face an brought his eyes up to hers.
"Look into my eyes," she whispered.
When their eyes locked, he felt something in him give way. Suddenly he was helpless and afraid of the power sweeping him along on its wild rampage. She reached down and placed a hand on his hips.
"Stop now, don't move," she whispered.
Richard pressed himself firmly inside of her. The urge to thrust again was almost overwhelming and he began to tremble. Yukiko stroked and soothed him.
"Shh..." she said softly. "Stay...stay...quietly. Sweet boy. See how long you can stay inside of me. Quietly."
Her hand slipped lower and found his balls. Richard twitched and began grinding his pelvis against her at the exquisite sensation.
"No...you mustn't move." Her hand was still now, gently cradling his balls in her fingers. "Just look into my eyes, deeply. So deep."
She continued her hypnotic whisper. "Sink deeper into me...into my eyes, into my body. Deeper...deeper... I will make you come. Sweet boy. Don't move your body. All you need to come is your mind...my voice."
Her eyes seemed to grow larger, enveloping everything around them. Richard plunged into those eyes, hurtling downward, spiraling, falling.
"I feel the seed rising in you," Yukiko whispered. "Hold it back as long as you can."
Richard felt a great thick eruption well up from within. Yukiko coaxing him to hold back only made it more impossible to stop. His whole body began to tremble.
"I can't hold out..." he gasped. "I can't..."
"You are on the crest of the wave," Yukiko whispered. "Ride it. Balance there as long as you can."
"Yu...ki...ko..."
He came inside of her with prolonged moan. The throbs of his orgasm burst and recoiled one after another until he was completely drained. All while Yukiko continued to hold him locked in her gaze.
The next morning, the whole next day had been awful. Although thinking back on it, he could not have expected anything to have come out differently. There was Yukiko in the kitchen, looking pale as she gently but firmly explained that he would have to go away. Yes, the night before had been wonderful. She had expected it to happen one day, dreaded it and longed for it at the same time. But now that it was over it could never happen again. His father would hear about it when he was well. Richard pleaded with her not to tell him, but Yukiko insisted. She didn't care about the consequences. She and Richard's father had never lied to each other, she said; she wasn't going to change that, no matter what happened to her. Honesty was the most important thing they had. She was gentle and insistent in her resolve no matter how much he pleaded with her and begged for her to change her mind. He was crazy, asking her to run away with him, leave his father, spend one more night with him, anything. But Yukiko wouldn't hear of it. And so Richard packed his things and left. He took a cab to the Amtrak station and waited for the evening train to San Francisco.
Richard continued to go to the same bar although he never saw the girl again. He began to wonder if she had been a figment of his imagination. It didn't matter. After seeing her, or imagining he had seen her, none of the other girls appeared desirable to him any more. He knew it was crazy to think that way - there were so many girls of every size and shape imaginable, willing to do anything he wanted. To come all this way and just sit in a bar alone was crazy, but that is exactly what he did.
At first, the people in the bar took pity on him. Th bartender would send a girl over now and then to see if Richard might come out of his deep funk. They were all the same, tiny young things with bright smiles and soft eyes that now seemed dead to him. Eventually patience wore thin. It didn't do much for business having a morose drunk American siting at the bar every night spreading his personal cloud of gloom over everything. One night they threw him out and didn't let him back in for the rest of his stay.
Richard had five days to go before his flight home and so he turned himself into a regular sort of tourist. He went out during the day to see temples and statues of the Buddha; he bought useless little trinkets and sampled the local cuisine.
It wasn't until he got on the plane home that a possible meaning for his actions struck him. Richard came to realize that throughout his life he had always defined himself by what he lacked. First, it was his father, then Yukiko...and after that, so many other things. Wanting was his natural state he decided; longing was his identity. There was a certain comfort in despair, he realized. Slipping into an unrequited passion was like slipping on an old shoe.
And then there was a hand on his shoulder. The stewardess was asking him to put his seat upright again; he had completely forgotten. He watched her move up the aisle, her face in profile every time she leaned down to repeat the request in the rows ahead. Willowy, Asian, she was just his type. A passenger said something that amused her. He saw her eyes go wide, and then the smile that spread across her face as the musical sound of her laughter floated back to him.
Richard squeezed his own eyes tightly shut, trying to will away what he felt happening inside of him.
And so it begins again, he thought, half in hope, half in despair.
Fin
Copyright Richard Rivers
02/00