After work, I had the pleasure of sitting through a typical faculty meeting: a drawn-out and pointless affront to collaboration with a lot of talking at rather than talking to. Every meeting is made up of bits of information, each bit being deemed more important than the previous bit. All of it could easily have been shared in a short, easily ignored email. One or two people usually ask about things that don’t even concern them and then remind the rest of us of how things were done—read done better—fifteen years ago when Mr. So-and-So or Dr. What’s-her-name was the principal.
Today’s meeting was about next year’s goals and how we can best help the students achieve them. We communicate in meaning, not words, so the real purpose of the meeting was to tell us that the students have not been achieving as the district office would like, so we needed to be encouraged to do everything that we could to get the job done.
In the modern overseas American-dependent school, there are no student expectations; both the administrators and the parents expect the teachers to take a bunch of disinterested students and turn them into high achievers. The problem is, with no attendance policy and zero threat of retention, the students have no impetus to work. Then add in the lack of responsible parenting and effective discipline coming from the home, and you basically have a reason to fear for the future.
Close to the end of the meeting, the teachers who cared were too angry to discuss goals, and those doing an expert job of collecting a paycheck had already checked out before the meeting started.
Afterward, about two hours after school let out, I went to the gym for a brief but focused workout, and following that, I had a deep muscle massage from Yuko. Her hands were magical, giving me muscle-relaxing thrusts and caresses that encouraged me to fantasize about the euphoric happy endings of which I had heard she was capable. After my massage, I headed to the commissary to pick up more bagged lettuce, willing myself to ignore the smell of mildew that seemed to elude everyone else’s nostrils but mine.
They had some fresh strawberries, so I bought six cartons, knowing that if I didn’t get them when I saw them, I would likely never get the chance again. Whenever something new comes, there is a rush on the store because everyone knows that if you don’t buy the things you want in bulk, you are likely to never see them again.
I paid the cashier with my debit card and tipped the bagger with the only change I had in my wallet, a five-thousand-yen bill, and carried my few bags out to my car without the assistance my tip bought me.
Before leaving the base, I stopped by the post office to check my empty box, and then I stopped by the theatre to confirm that nothing I wanted to see was playing.
I was in no hurry to get back to my house, my three-bedroom ghost town of a habitat, and watch movies on my 64-inch projection television while sitting back on my too-large-for-one-person living room set after eating a lonely meal at my enough-seats-for-eight, rosewood dining room set.
I used to rush home after work, anxious to love on my wife, but it was the rushing home that got me where I am. It was about two years ago that I sped home, getting off with a warning from the first cop after explaining why I was going 45 in a 35-mile-an-hour zone. The second was an old friend, so after gloating about his win at the last poker game, he let me go, offering a police escort. I declined, not wanting to risk losing the element of surprise.
I wish I had taken his offer; it might have given her time to pull her clothes back on and sneak the bastard she was screwing out of the house, but wishes seldom come true. When I got there, I found her in the middle of phallic communion with another man.
Most of all, I remember the humming, the all too familiar sound that I thought she only made with me. It was a song, a deep passionate hum that came from deep within her soul whenever we were making love. It used to be a sound that I loved, a sensual song that grew from the tingling between her thighs rising like the climax she was reaching until it erupted like a soul cry from a gospel singer. I thought it was spiritual, a kind of proof that what we had was special and exclusive, but on that day, it became something dark, something evil and carnal.
I haven’t been able to stand the sound of a woman humming ever since.
All I could manage in that instance was a weak, “What the fuck?”
The best she could give me was, “Chris,” the look on her face speaking volumes more than her words. She was only capable of saying my name as if I didn’t know it. Her hair was matted and damp with sweat, and I could see raw patches on her back and ass where she had been either laying or kneeling.
She was that fat kid caught with the whole cookie jar in her mouth, creamy frosting stuck to her cheek and chin.
“Christ, I didn’t know you would be here.”
I didn’t pay much attention to the naked-ass-bitch airman struggling to get dressed and get the hell out of the house. I only saw my wife, the first woman I loved romantically and the first woman I ever wanted to kill. She looked like sin, dark and shadowy, lust dripping from her cheek like an overzealous milk mustache. She had the nerve to want to talk to me, reaching out to me as if I wanted her to touch me with the same hands she used to stroke his dick.
She stepped forward and I stepped back, doing the best I could to not beat her until my anger subsided.
“I can explain.” She gave me pleading eyes when she should have given me loyalty.
I spit my reply like so much bile. “No need. I saw the flick; I don’t need a rerun.”
“Christopher.” She pleads, wiping his cum from her face.
“Corrine, get the fuck out. Get the fuck out, or I will kill you.”
I was never the violent type, always choosing a peaceful solution even when I knew I could win, especially when I knew I could win. But she saw it in my eyes, that look of a lunatic on the verge of berserker rage, a fit of serial killer shit, the cutting bodies up and stuffing them in freezer bags kind of shit.
Her hands began to tremble as if she was going to cry. It was the first time in our marriage—our whole relationship—that she was truly afraid of me. She looked at me, like a hurt puppy, her eyes pleading with me not to beat her with a rolled-up newspaper and stuff her face in her shit. Then when she saw that I couldn’t be reasoned with, she hurriedly dressed and left. She believed that I could have killed her if she stayed, so she cut out of there.
Even in my rage and hurt, I felt guilty and unmanly, showing such a desire for cruelty directed toward a woman, especially a woman I once loved. Could I have actually done it? My heart pleads its case now as I reflect on that day, and I only hope that my heart is more true in its confession of innocence than my ex-wife was in her vows.
I didn’t see her again until she came back with her girlfriend to get her shit out of my house. She cried and begged me to give her another chance, but I gave her what she apparently wanted: freedom to do whatever she wanted.
Freedom.
Slaves had others with whom to share their misery, but when they were set free, they were on their own. Yeah, there were others around, friends and family, but they had their own freedom struggles with which to worry. It’s the same freedom I have now, but freedom is lonely, and sometimes I miss the painful comfort of slavery.
Emancipation.
Some people asked for it. Others had it thrust upon them.
I had it shoved up my ass without lubrication and time to adjust, and it hurt like hell. It hurt like hell.