American Geisha
I left the West Coast after camping on a glacier with an old friend, discussing my decision to fly back to Africa to marry. I got on a train in Eugene Oregon and started to let some of the agitation leech out of me. I had recently divested myself of everything I owned, gotten out of a job, left the house I had lived in, caught waves, climbed mountains, and talked about what I was doing and why. Finally, as I crept onto the train and put my entire life into the overhead bin I knew I would have three days of largely uninterrupted revelry and self-reflection. I already felt better rested as we laboriously climbed through the Cascades along the banks of the Columbia. By the time the conductor was regaling us with the story of the Donner party I had napped briefly and was ready for a hot smoke and a cold beer.
I made my way down to the observation car, which is the car on the Empire Builder that has glass walls and roof and seats that all face outward. You could smoke there, and on the ground level there was a booth, really, where you could buy cans of Bud from a cooler. I went right to the beer guy and got a beer and returned to the top to observe the U.S. rolling by. I fell into an empty seat and opened the beer, putting it into the arm of the seat. I took out a pack of smokes and went to light one when I was interrupted. A young woman was sitting in the next seat over, and was asking that I light her cigarette. She held it in her mouth and leaned over, under the dual assumptions that I would provide a light and light it for her, both of which I did.
She was a woman who I normally would have taken notice of before sitting next to her. She was young, had a beautiful face, and whose body was not just functionally fit, but had obviously been sculpted for maximum visual impact. Under other circumstances I may have been intimidated by her looks into sitting somewhere further away. Indeed, there were a fair few unattended young men in the observation car not sitting by her, and I think misplaced intimidation may have been in more than one mind. Since I had made the decision to return to Africa to marry, though, the presence of my yet-to-be wife was with me constantly. She inhabited the quiet place in my mind with the aspect of a wraith-like afterimage, keeping me sedate and preoccupied. I had no need of anything from this young woman, so I had nothing to fear either of her or from her.
She thanked me and I commented on the beauty of the view. We fell into conversation of our destinations and what brought us to where we had been. The transfer of information was intended to fill the silences and make our convergence on the same seats bearable, but as we learned more about each other our curiosities were further piqued. Before long we were engrossed in an active and meaningful conversation.
My side of the conversation consisted of revelations of facts you already know, and of points of view and timely comments on her utterances. I will spare you its recitation. What is of interest is what I learned about her and about her point of view. Here is what I found truly interesting.
She told me that she was traveling along the corridor of the northern rail line. She had to make frequent stops and hated to fly anyway. She was a dancer from New Jersey, but she traveled along the northern border of the US and Canada by choice. She said that she had always craved attention, since the time she was a young girl, and had excelled in dancing school. But because she needed attention and loved to make moving her body her occupation, she told me, “I had to take off my clothes- it was the next logical step and it was so natural that I never had an ethical ‘dilemma’.” I found this admission both fascinating and refreshing. I had gone through young adulthood thinking that exotic dancers were all somehow forced into the profession as an option of last resort, and that they were caught up in some sordid web of underground life. It didn’t occur to me that they may actually have normal lives and have chosen their occupation because it truly was, for them, the best fit.
I asked her about the clientele, if there times when she felt unsafe. She said that there were no times when she felt unsafe in this part of the world, but that she would not do what she did in her native New Jersey. She told me that the bachelor farmers of North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin were mostly good natured, well mannered, rough gentlemen. She said that they were lonely, and that their loneliness touched her. She explained how it made her feel as if she were doing some good in society and filling a deep need by providing not only succor and companionship, but also comfort to these men.
I laughed. It caught her attention and brought her out of her soul-plumbing groove. She leveled a curious and disdainful eye on me. I felt I had to explain. I told her that I was not laughing because what she was saying was amusing, but that I was laughing because I so easily recognized the correlation between what she was saying and what I had heard from a “comfort woman” in Korea. I paraphrased what the comfort woman had told me, which was that sex was not the object or the center of her industry, but that listening and understanding was central to the service provided. According to her, Asian (particularly Korean) comfort women filled the traditional role of women in the old society. They made men feel important, and led them away from their substantial day-to-day cares by engaging them in petty distractions that bordered on flirtation. With a broad repertoire of mimes and programmed reactions they could elicit emotions and responses from their clients. They perfected the “yin” to the male “yang”, and this was their product. If a man left her company feeling good and knowing that he would seek her out again then her interaction was successful. When she told me this, on that beach in Korea, I was assailed with the image of a T-lymphocyte forming the complementary shape to neutralize a jagged, threatening virus.
The dancer admitted that she was never a student of culture, but that she had always thought of herself as a student of psychology. She said that the Asian women had obviously given some thought to the whole thing, and asked what else I could tell her. I told her that they had been perfecting the role for hundreds of years and that she could learn more and stand on their shoulders by researching the geisha. She said that she would, and that she should be getting back to her first class sleeper car because the dining service would be serving her suite soon. She gave me her card and said that I should call her the very next time I was in the north but didn’t have a deadline or a strict itinerary. She offered to take me out for dinner and a show, which was kind. I thanked her and told her in truth that once I returned from Africa, if I returned, then my future was completely up in the air. We took our leave and I went back to my tiny seat, encroached upon by the rotund thighs of the drunken businessman next to me, and rooted through my backpack for peanut butter crackers and a boiled egg.
Thank God there were still two days to disentangle my thoughts.
I made my way down to the observation car, which is the car on the Empire Builder that has glass walls and roof and seats that all face outward. You could smoke there, and on the ground level there was a booth, really, where you could buy cans of Bud from a cooler. I went right to the beer guy and got a beer and returned to the top to observe the U.S. rolling by. I fell into an empty seat and opened the beer, putting it into the arm of the seat. I took out a pack of smokes and went to light one when I was interrupted. A young woman was sitting in the next seat over, and was asking that I light her cigarette. She held it in her mouth and leaned over, under the dual assumptions that I would provide a light and light it for her, both of which I did.
She was a woman who I normally would have taken notice of before sitting next to her. She was young, had a beautiful face, and whose body was not just functionally fit, but had obviously been sculpted for maximum visual impact. Under other circumstances I may have been intimidated by her looks into sitting somewhere further away. Indeed, there were a fair few unattended young men in the observation car not sitting by her, and I think misplaced intimidation may have been in more than one mind. Since I had made the decision to return to Africa to marry, though, the presence of my yet-to-be wife was with me constantly. She inhabited the quiet place in my mind with the aspect of a wraith-like afterimage, keeping me sedate and preoccupied. I had no need of anything from this young woman, so I had nothing to fear either of her or from her.
She thanked me and I commented on the beauty of the view. We fell into conversation of our destinations and what brought us to where we had been. The transfer of information was intended to fill the silences and make our convergence on the same seats bearable, but as we learned more about each other our curiosities were further piqued. Before long we were engrossed in an active and meaningful conversation.
My side of the conversation consisted of revelations of facts you already know, and of points of view and timely comments on her utterances. I will spare you its recitation. What is of interest is what I learned about her and about her point of view. Here is what I found truly interesting.
She told me that she was traveling along the corridor of the northern rail line. She had to make frequent stops and hated to fly anyway. She was a dancer from New Jersey, but she traveled along the northern border of the US and Canada by choice. She said that she had always craved attention, since the time she was a young girl, and had excelled in dancing school. But because she needed attention and loved to make moving her body her occupation, she told me, “I had to take off my clothes- it was the next logical step and it was so natural that I never had an ethical ‘dilemma’.” I found this admission both fascinating and refreshing. I had gone through young adulthood thinking that exotic dancers were all somehow forced into the profession as an option of last resort, and that they were caught up in some sordid web of underground life. It didn’t occur to me that they may actually have normal lives and have chosen their occupation because it truly was, for them, the best fit.
I asked her about the clientele, if there times when she felt unsafe. She said that there were no times when she felt unsafe in this part of the world, but that she would not do what she did in her native New Jersey. She told me that the bachelor farmers of North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin were mostly good natured, well mannered, rough gentlemen. She said that they were lonely, and that their loneliness touched her. She explained how it made her feel as if she were doing some good in society and filling a deep need by providing not only succor and companionship, but also comfort to these men.
I laughed. It caught her attention and brought her out of her soul-plumbing groove. She leveled a curious and disdainful eye on me. I felt I had to explain. I told her that I was not laughing because what she was saying was amusing, but that I was laughing because I so easily recognized the correlation between what she was saying and what I had heard from a “comfort woman” in Korea. I paraphrased what the comfort woman had told me, which was that sex was not the object or the center of her industry, but that listening and understanding was central to the service provided. According to her, Asian (particularly Korean) comfort women filled the traditional role of women in the old society. They made men feel important, and led them away from their substantial day-to-day cares by engaging them in petty distractions that bordered on flirtation. With a broad repertoire of mimes and programmed reactions they could elicit emotions and responses from their clients. They perfected the “yin” to the male “yang”, and this was their product. If a man left her company feeling good and knowing that he would seek her out again then her interaction was successful. When she told me this, on that beach in Korea, I was assailed with the image of a T-lymphocyte forming the complementary shape to neutralize a jagged, threatening virus.
The dancer admitted that she was never a student of culture, but that she had always thought of herself as a student of psychology. She said that the Asian women had obviously given some thought to the whole thing, and asked what else I could tell her. I told her that they had been perfecting the role for hundreds of years and that she could learn more and stand on their shoulders by researching the geisha. She said that she would, and that she should be getting back to her first class sleeper car because the dining service would be serving her suite soon. She gave me her card and said that I should call her the very next time I was in the north but didn’t have a deadline or a strict itinerary. She offered to take me out for dinner and a show, which was kind. I thanked her and told her in truth that once I returned from Africa, if I returned, then my future was completely up in the air. We took our leave and I went back to my tiny seat, encroached upon by the rotund thighs of the drunken businessman next to me, and rooted through my backpack for peanut butter crackers and a boiled egg.
Thank God there were still two days to disentangle my thoughts.
posted by Traveler at 11:36 AM
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