Choto Temple

Here's Chapter 3 (of 14, altogether). I really appreciate the feedback, whether by voting, commenting or by dropping me a line. Hope you like Chapter 3!

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"I taught at the public high school in New Canaan," Zerzinski told me. "One of the few teachers at the school who could afford to live in the town. Thanks to inheritance - the only way any school teacher could possibly live in New Canaan. Unless they're married to a banker."

"Your parents left you their house?" I asked.

"Yeah, the house I grew up in from the age of three or so."

"They died young?"

"More like they were unusually old when they had me, particularly by the standards of their generation. They both died in the same year, months before the diagnosis. Thank fuck they didn't have to deal with any of the shitstorm."

"Which shitstorm? The Mother Jones article?"

That article, I recalled concretely this time, was the first serious hack job on Zerzinski in the press.

Zerzinski's face lightened a bit, and a slight smile appeared on his lips.

"Ah, so you've done a little research, anyway. Yeah, that and just the whole thing."

"So, you were living in New Canaan, teaching at New Canaan High School," I said, in an attempt at steering.

"Yes, living in New Canaan, teaching, maintaining a blog. Or whatever they were calling them before the term 'blog' became popular. Taking frequent hikes in the woods..."

"You were in a relationship during that time?"

"Yes. It was certainly the most stable I've ever been. Living in one place, teaching at one place, in a relationship with the same woman for eight years straight."

"Were you guys monogamous? How would you describe that relationship?"

Zerzinski exhaled deeply before responding. He took a thoughtful sip of his cappuccino.

"It was monogamy in practice, most of the time. But an ostensibly open relationship."

He stopped talking for a good 30 seconds or so. He looked lost in thought.

"Can you tell me more about your life at that time?" I prodded.

Finally he responded.

"Honestly, it's hard to remember very clearly. It all seems so long ago. I've read - and my own life experience has confirmed this - that memory is state-specific. You remember best what happened when you were in a similar state of mind or a similar emotional state.

"So when you fall in love, you tend to remember other times you fell in love. If someone dumps you, you remember other times that happened. If you're tripping on LSD, you remember other times you did that.

"Life for me," he continued, "was so different back then, compared to afterward. It was almost like being a different person. But I should probably try to remember all that more often. Seems like a good idea."

"Are there particular differences you're thinking of?" I asked.

"Yeah, I was just remembering how Marta and I both felt when one or the other of us got involved with someone else. We both wanted to encourage the other, but we both experienced some degree of fear, and jealousy."

"Is that allowed in an open relationship?" I asked, rhetorically.

That question seemed to snap Zerzinski back into teacher mode.

"It's a common fallacy that poly-oriented people aren't supposed to experience jealousy. Of course anyone can experience jealousy. The question is more one of what you do with those emotions, whether you let them take over or not. Which depends on to what degree you experience those emotions, and how capable you are of being mindful of them without letting them run your life.

"But yeah," he went on, sounding more tentative, and less like an instructor all of a sudden. "We got jealous sometimes.

"For both of us, I'm sure that the basis of the jealousy was not so much about being worried about being upstaged sexually - we both knew that new relationships had a special sexual excitement about them that was its own thing, and comparisons were silly. The jealousy was more about fear of scarcity - fear of losing the relationship, and being lonely. Because generally we weren't both in a second relationship at the same time, it just didn't go that way. So one of us always could potentially worry about being alone."

"And it's hard to remember that part of your life, and those feelings?" I asked, for clarification, trying to keep loose strings tied.

"Yeah, right. Because I barely remember what jealousy felt like. Or fear of scarcity. Or even, now, the desire to be in that kind of day-in, day-out relationship with one other person. Now it feels like it's not just jealousy that's rooted in fear of scarcity, but the basic desire to be in a relationship like that at all. I mean it may not be realistic for most people, but, the various pros and cons notwithstanding, I've certainly never been so happy as I am now."

He looked at me to make sure I was following him before expanding on that point.

"I have friends who I don't have sex with. I have a lot of great sex with women I'll never see again. And I have friends I have sex with regularly. But I don't have anything resembling a traditional relationship, and I have no interest in that. Which really freaks some people out, but not everybody. Sometimes it makes me wonder, too, but usually I'm OK."

"In fact," I noted, "some people have said very mean things about you based on you expressing perspective like that."

"Yes. One of the many attractions of this place. And Japan in general."

"How's that?"

"Well, the Temple orients around me as someone with a special gift. And they've basically created a whole tradition oriented very practically around making use of that gift while keeping me happy. Which is all very symbiotic that way. That's one thing. But Japan, generally, is a very 'live and let live' kind of culture.

"For example," Zerzinski explained, "I very much consider myself a feminist. I strongly believe in gender equality. I hope that doesn't come as a surprise to you. But a lot of feminists in the US just couldn't cope with the fact of my existence.

"Same with the Christian fundamentalists, though I really don't give a shit what they think about anything. But it got to where I wasn't just concerned for my security in terms of potential kidnapping, etc., but I also never knew if some random young woman or old man on the streets of Portland was going to start yelling at me for no particular reason.

"In Japan that just doesn't happen, anywhere. People respect your space, your privacy, even when you're in public. When I got here, I could truly relax for the first time in years."

"Were you in a relationship," I asked, "when you got the diagnosis?"

Another effort at steering the conversation so we don't jump ahead.

"Thankfully, no," said Zerzinski. "Not in a daily live-in kind of relationship at that time. I was somehow permitted not to have to go through whatever would have been involved with that, which would seem unlikely to have ended well."

"What happened with you and, was her name Marta?" I asked.

"Yes, Marta. I think with every other relationship I've ever been in, even though most of them were ostensibly polyamorous, the relationships ended soon after one or the other of us met someone we basically wanted to be in some kind of primary relationship with. Or we met someone who couldn't deal with being secondary, and someone had to choose, more like. More a pretense of polyamory than anything else. I think most supposedly monogamous relationships end the same way, except the in-between part is called 'cheating.'

"With Marta," he continued, "it was different. After eight years it was really more of a fizzling out kind of thing. In retrospect I think although we always got along great, and it was the least dramatic relationship I've ever been in, we were too similar, and we both started getting bored with each other. Both white Americans from the suburbs, very close in age.

"The two cliches I subscribe to most are probably 'familiarity breeds contempt' and 'variety is the spice of life.' We didn't have enough variety, and we had too much familiarity. Though we never achieved anything close to contempt, thankfully. Just a bit of boredom."

Zerzinski looked out the window at the lush vegetation outside.

"At the end we were experimenting a lot with introducing more fantasies into our sex life, role play and such, which helped a lot, but it wasn't enough.

"Then from one day to the next, basically, life became one big, strange fantasy. Except the fantasy was bigger and stranger than anything I might have come up with in my most ridiculous daydreams."

As if the term "ridiculous daydreams" required emphasis, the sliding door from which Zerzinski had first appeared opened, revealing Mariko once again.

Her hair was no longer up in a bun. It was flowing around her shoulders, reminding me of Medusa, or some other such mythology, and I had to swallow a little liquid that suddenly was pooling just inside my lips. Which thankfully did not manage to start coming out in the form of drool. Though I'm sure I was staring.

Mariko's enchanting gorgeousness was only part of the daydream I was witnessing. When she opened the door, you could see just behind her that she had prepared a massage table. With one hand on the table, she said something in Japanese.

"I have to prepare for tonight now," Zerzinski said. He said something to Mariko and slid the door closed again, looking at me.

"Dan," he said to me in a meaningful sort of tone. "I don't know you, so I hope you'll forgive my bluntness. Despite whatever your impressions may or may not be, respect for everybody's boundaries and autonomy around here is really, really important.

"You just make yourself at home while you're staying there in your guest house. But anything that happens here is all by consent, no exceptions. I assume you're a good guy, but just FYI, there is zero tolerance for pickup artist shit around here."

I knew exactly the sorts he was talking about. I did a story for the magazine about those abhorrent men, though I could tell Zerzinski was unaware of that fact. I liked the guy even more now. He was full of surprises. Either that or I had a pretty thoroughly wrong impression about him.

"Got it," I said. "Thank you."

"Your meals will be delivered to you at the guest house, Dan," Zerzinski said as he stood up. "Looking forward to talking more with you tomorrow afternoon."

He opened one sliding door to join Mariko, and I opened another, leading to the front steps, which I descended unaccompanied.

I was glad especially this first day to have the evening to myself. The jet lag was just starting to catch up with me. I took my shoes off at the entrance, walked inside as far as the bed, and lay down.

Later, I was awoken by a knock, and the sound of my name, sort of, being spoken by a very high-pitched female voice.

"Danu-san! May I come in? Supper time!"

The voice sounded young. She had said enough to indicate that this woman may actually speak more than a few words of English, whoever she was. As I stumbled toward the door in my woozy state I somehow had time to think all of that, and to notice that I had been fast asleep for two hours.

I felt groggy and vulnerable at that moment. I had just only recently landed in the country. Then made it to the other side of the country. Unfamiliar surroundings were not unusual for me, but sometimes it's all a bit unbalancing. Upon opening the door it was only with great difficulty that I remained upright and managed to act sort of normal.

She looked to be somewhere in her twenties. Petite, with blonde hair in pig tails. Which would have been completely convincing if she weren't Japanese. Unlike the other women I had so far encountered on the mountain, she was wearing a lot of makeup, but so elegantly done.

The base made her look like a Scandinavian with Japanese features - light skin but with impossibly dark, painted freckles, on top of an unmistakably, beautifully Asian face with such delicate features. She was wearing a bright yellow dress, and webbed leggings underneath.

I never saw the movie, but on my first visit to Tokyo, years ago, I was taken to Yayogi Park, where dozens of young women dressed very much like this woman can be seen hanging out every Saturday, posing for photographs from passersby. I was face to face with an impeccable Japanese Lolita.

"Please, come in," I stuttered.

She smiled a smile that almost made me fall over, and I tried harder to get ahold of myself. I'm not like this normally. I don't consider myself a swinger, but very few people in my line of work have anything resembling a normal family life. I have had my fair share of lovers, and, well, I probably still do. But all that worldliness did not leave me with the capacity to cope with this, and for fuck's sake, all she was apparently trying to do was to bring me dinner.

Which initially is what she did. She was holding a tray, which she put down on the table in the dining room area of my little guest house. On top of the tray was a plate of food, with a cover on it. She lifted the cover, to reveal a plate of rice with Japanese-style curry on it, which looked and smelled delicious.

"Thank you," I managed to say.

If Lolita noted my intense feelings of awkwardness, or the growing bulge in my jeans, she didn't let on. I was suddenly glad I put on some of my tighter pairs of underwear that morning, rather than the boxers I've been wearing occasionally, which would have done nothing helpful in terms of hiding my erection.

"Would you like some company while you eat?" Lolita asked, tilting her head slightly.

"That would be lovely," I found myself saying, dreamily.

I was barely awake, still, but my mind was racing, as I was trying to grab ahold of anything Lolita and I might have in common to talk about. I noticed some of her consonants were more or less missing, like the "p" in "company" and the "t" in "eat." I suck at learning other languages, but I love guessing accents. And it sounded very much like she had learned English from an Englishman.

"It sounds like you learned English from someone from England. Am I right?"

Finally I managed to say something, more than a couple words. She smiled, which was very gratifying.

"I lived in London for a year."

"What were you doing there?" I asked.

"Studying fashion design."

Somehow not a shocking response, but one which left me fairly unable to continue a line of questioning, since I know very little about fashion design. But I know London well, so I thought I'd steer the conversation that way if I could.

"Did you like London?" I inquired, lamely.

"Great city. But too many Japanese people. It was hard to learn English. Because everywhere I went, more Japanese."

Cities like London or New York can be like that, no matter what your national origin.

Before I could continue my line of questioning, she said, "My name is Rie. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Why was it a pleasure to meet me? I thought. It's just an expression, I reminded myself, feeling about thirteen.

"My name's Dan. Good to meet you, too."

A pleasure, actually, but I didn't want to use too many adjectives, for fear of sounding the way I felt.

I was sitting at the table in front of my curry, but I hadn't started eating it. Hard to eat and talk at the same time, especially with Lolita, or Rie, sitting across from me. Perhaps sensing my awkwardness, Rie took a rice ball from a bag she was carrying, and started unwrapping it.

"Please, eat while it's hot," she said. "It's better that way."

She smiled, gingerly taking a bite of her seaweed-wrapped ball of rice, which did in fact make me feel better about taking a bite of the curry myself. I was so glad she had brought me something relatively easy to eat, and I didn't have to make a fool of myself by trying to eat something like some kind of noodle soup. Which invariably results in drops of broth spattered on the table and on my clothing.

As we sat together and talked, the conversation gradually became easier. I imagined us to be very different from each other, and I didn't feel like I was developing a deep understanding of who Rie was or what motivated her in life, but we had common references to explore - different parts of London, a few bands that we both liked.

Finally I felt familiar enough with her to venture to ask her something about the place where we both found ourselves that evening.

"Do you mind telling me a little about how you ended up here, Rie?" I asked.

She suddenly looked shy, but seemed to be forcing herself to hold her chin up and maintain eye contact.

"I wanted to join the Choto Temple," she explained.

"And now you're a member of it?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Do you mind telling me what made you want to join the temple?" I continued my questioning.

"Well," she said, pausing again, looking like perhaps she was deciding how much of such personal information she wanted to divulge. "I'm not from Fukushima, so I'm not eligible to join the Purification Temple.

"But actually I wouldn't want to, anyway. I like Choto Temple better. To serve others is good. What Robu-san is doing for people is important. There is something bigger. I want to be part."

"Is that the general orientation of the members of the temple, would you say?" I asked. "Serving the greater good?"

"Hm. So. Maybe that depends on which temple. Choto Temple, perhaps. Purification is a little different. I am probably more selfish than most."

With those words, her expression suddenly became an exaggerated shade of mischievous. She stood up from the table, and I instinctively did the same, almost knocking my chair backward, suddenly feeling like a clumsy westerner.

"Danu-san, I know you have things to do. I will go now. Unless" - she paused, and everything suddenly seemed to be happening in slow motion - "there is" - she paused again, and I thought it was good that I had a rib cage, because otherwise my heart would be jumping out of there, in Rie's direction - "anything" - the word hung in the air like fairy dust. And as she said the word, she tilted her head a bit and pursed her lips just a little, causing her cheeks to wrinkle slightly, adorably - "else I can do for you?"

Although my mind had been very actively imagining the things I wanted to do with this real-life Lolita fantasy who had been sitting before me for the past hour or so, the invitation almost knocked me off my feet again.

The confidence with which she asked that question was so complete. There was no look of shame or embarrassment, no sense that she was nervously anticipating my response, no fear of rejection. Just a quietly confident beauty. I wondered what she'd say or do if someone said something like,

oh sorry, I'm married.

Did people even do that? I had no idea.

But I also had no idea why she had asked this question.

There was no doubt about the sexual content of it, as far as I could tell. Though I wondered repeatedly within the space of several seconds if I might be misreading that somehow.

And then I wondered again why. Was she really so into me after talking to me for an hour? Or was she under instructions to take care of me this way? If so, was that prostitution?

I had never been to a prostitute and didn't want to start now. Nor did I want to ask her any of these questions. Nor did I care what the answers might have been, really.

After what seemed like a very long time, but was probably less than ten seconds, I managed to utter the words, "please, yes," as I walked away from Rie, towards the one comfortable, plush sort of chair in the room, a slightly stiffer version of the chairs in Zerzinski's living room.

I had no idea what she would do with these two words, but this was apparently all she needed to hear. She walked towards me, and then sat down on my lap.