Choto Temple

6

For the first time since I arrived in Yamaguchi, I took a long walk on the mountain. Without leaving the property of the Purification Temple, there's a walking trail that does a figure 8, passing by various houses and plenty of trees. And some large gardens, with women busily working among the beds of dark soil and healthy-looking plants.

At the crossing of the figure 8, there's a small stone foot bridge that passes over a bubbling creek. Beneath the bridge I noticed there's a bench facing the creek. Nice place to sit quietly and think, or read or write, I noted for future reference.

For the moment, though, I knew that I wanted to get back to my little house, and try to contact a friend in Australia.

I knew I might want to talk with her, and she had said that mid-day was a good time to Skype. She's a freelance journalist based out of Melbourne named Cy. And she's the most knowledgeable person I know on the subject of alternative lifestyles and sexual practices.

"I was wondering when you were going to contact me, Dan-o," were her first words after we connected.

She looked like she had recently gotten out of bed. She was holding a mug on the table in both hands. Her long, shaggy hair was wild, pointing in every direction but up, and it had some multicolored highlights to add to the chaotic look.

Her nose ring was glittering in some light being reflected from somewhere. It looked bright on the other end, as it often does in Australia.

"You've been there how long?" she asked.

"I got in yesterday."

"Well. OK then. How is it?"

She asked this question with a certain amount of urgency.

"It's beautiful here. There are beautiful young women all over the place, amidst the trees and gardens and quaint Japanese houses. The food is really good. People are very nice."

"And the man himself? How is he? You do realize you're the first journalist he's granted an interview in a decade?"

"A bit odd, but basically a nice, warm kind of guy. Surprisingly so."

"Has he said anything especially interesting so far? What have you been asking him about?"

"I've got weeks here, so I've been working from the beginning, for the most part. The thing that came up today that I know nothing about is denial."

"You're so vanilla."

I was wondering how long it would take before she started giving me shit. I knew I wouldn't have to wait more than a few minutes.

"It's all about fucking for you, isn't it?" she continued. "There are other things you can do, you know?"

"You like fucking, though, don't you?" I countered, lamely.

"Psht. I'm talking about in general. You're very conventional. I didn't say I didn't like it," she added. "So what about denial?"

"Well he was talking about the first time someone came to him for sperm collection. And how he had to try to figure out whether it was moral to just enjoy himself in the process."

"Yes, there are whole forums dedicated to discussing the moral implications of Zerzinski's practice on FetLife, ten years after he closed it and moved to Japan!"

"What's FetLife?" I asked.

Cy almost fell off her chair, and choked on the contents of her mug, at the same time.

"That was very dramatic," I commented.

"What's FetLife?!" she shouted. "I can't fucking believe you're in the middle of the Purification Temple, interviewing Robert Zerzinski for Rolling Stone magazine, and you don't fucking know what FetLife is. Do they prep their reporters for assignments at all at Rolling Stone? How did you get this fucking job in the first place?"

She continued ranting, but in a slightly more controlled way.

"FetLife is where people who are into sex talk about sex, basically. It's like social media for talking about sex. At least that's how a lot of people use it. Other people watch amateur porn on it, or try to hook up. But there are active discussion forums. And Zerzinski has been a trending topic in many of them since he went to the fucking CDC."

I was starting to feel really dumb.

"Tell me something about denial...?" I inquired meekly.

"It's a DS thing. There are lots of forums about it. And you don't even fucking know this, but if Zerzinski has admitted to you that he's into denial, this itself is breaking news. The only anecdote related to this is Charity Keeley's interview with Salon."

"Why is that the only one?"

Every question I asked her seemed to piss her off a bit more, but I was used to that.

"Fuck, you're amazing. Why? Because everyone since her has signed a nondisclosure agreement, and if they talked about it they'd get massively fined and who knows what else. This is public knowledge. Fucking Christ."

She took a deep breath and seemed to be trying to calm herself down before she continued.

"Daniel, do you realize that anything you find out about the specific practices that go on in there with this Purification Temple will be news?

"I don't know what kind of nondisclosure agreements those people have signed, but nothing gets out of there.

"For example, this Choto Temple. People know it exists. There's a discussion forum about it. Most of the discussion is pure fantasy. People have no idea what they do. All anyone knows is the women are a bit older than most of the women who come there for treatment."

Cy ranted usefully at me for a bit longer, before I ate the rice balls and miso soup someone had left on my table while I had been out, and I tried to prepare mentally for my next round with Zerzinski.

I also opened an account with FetLife, set up a basic page. I used a stock photo of the Purification Temple for my picture, and posted a single entry:

If you could ask Robert Zerzinski a question, what would it be?

As I entered Zerzinski's house, the same woman who I had passed on my way out was leaving. I tried to notice if she looked happier or less happy than she had appeared a few hours earlier, but I couldn't tell. She had her "outdoor face" on, as they say in Japan, I supposed.

Zerzinski was just grinding some more coffee and making drinks for us. I wondered if Mariko was going to be back at some point, for my espresso-making lesson, but I didn't ask.

I placed my recorder on the table, in between our cappuccinos, and turned it on.

"You were at the Hyatt in Atlanta, and you slept well after Charity's visit," I reminded him.

"Yeah, OK."

He clearly remembered where he was, and was ready to tell me about what happened next. Which made my job easy.

"The next several days was more of the surreal vacation in Atlanta. Every day through Friday, I went to the CDC to do tests. And inadvertently to learn slightly more about diseases and vaccines and stuff like that.

"And every evening went something like the first one had. Except with less of a focus on conversation and more of a focus on sex."

"Every evening a different woman from the CDC came over to your hotel room?"

I knew that's what he had just said. But I was wondering how that might have worked in terms of scheduling. Like why they wouldn't have all shown up on the same night.

"Yeah, I also thought it was interesting how that worked. I was enjoying everything way too much to think about that at the time.

"But I learned later that they had actually had a meeting at CDC for anyone interested in volunteering to spend time privately with Donor X. That's how they were referring to me before my visit. And they continued to do that. Though at this point they all knew who I was."

"Were there more women who wanted to visit you than there were days in the week of your stay in Atlanta, I wonder?"

"By my observation," he replied, "most of the people who work at CDC are male. I was wondering how that might have worked. Turns out they all thought Charity should visit first. And then they randomly chose four women after that. For Tuesday through Friday nights. But the pool of random wasn't very random, really. Which from a sociological standpoint is interesting."

We were back in the classroom I believe.

"It turns out," he continued, "or at least that experience indicated, that if a group of intelligent, well-educated women are trying to decide whether to even think about asking a stranger to have sex with them, even if it's for a very good reason, the ones who decide to do it are the ones who are confident it will all work out OK."

"And who were they?"

"Generally speaking, they were a mix of professional women who work at the CDC. They were all under forty. They all were confident, athletic sorts, who knew they were attractive.

"You know what I mean? Women who knew that if they went on a blind date with a guy who was supposed to be really good-looking, that he would most likely feel the same way about them. None of them were elderly or obese, for example."

"Interesting. And is this normally how it works?"

"Much less so. When there are other factors involved. Like money, medical considerations. Fame, infamy. All kinds of things."

"So it was a good week at the hotel in Atlanta?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell me a bit more about it?" I asked.

"Generally, yes. But details would have to be changed. My private life is yours to do with what you will, for better or for worse, at this point. But Charity is the only one of them who's already bared all for the media."

"Of course. The innocent shall be protected."

At that, he looked at me with the sort of skepticism that journalists become very accustomed to, when face-to-face with celebrities of one kind or another.

"What was basically so new for me that week," he began, "among many other things, was where these women were coming from sociologically."

The spark of the sociology teacher once again in his eyes.

"In the past you could say my lovers fell into certain categories. Hippies and punks of one kind or another. People who had recently or long ago embraced some form of alternative lifestyle. People who were comfortable with open relationships, not interested in money or dating people with lots of it. Women who stopped using makeup years before, in the vast majority of cases. Women who thought high heels were a cruel and strange invention that needed to be vocally and publicly rejected on a regular basis.

"None of the women who came to the Hyatt - and very few of the women I've been with since then - would fit that kind of description. These were professionals, who were comfortable with being professionals. Who were not looking to find something different, and break out of a constrained professional existence. They were not ex-yuppies. They were yuppies.

"They shaved their arms and legs. They wore makeup. They had new leggings and heels and all that.

"They were also as wonderfully international as you might imagine CDC staff to be. They were the cream of the scientific female crop. Not hippies from western Europe going to California to work on an organic farm. They were from Poland, Russia, India, China.

"Not only had I never had sex with a bona fide yuppie - I had never become carnally familiar with women from any of those countries."

"How was the experience different from your previous experiences?"

"Well that would be hard to put a finger on. Because the basis for the sex - the transaction - was different. They hadn't sought me out because they liked me or my music or because they wanted to date someone from a more alternative lifestyle background, or because they thought I was intelligent or whatever. They were in it for one thing.

"But in any case, they universally had a confidence about themselves which was refreshing. They knew what they wanted. They knew what they had to do to get it. And they all came and got what they wanted. And gave me a really good time in doing so."

"Would you say that kind of self-confidence was a new thing for you to run into?"

"No. I've known many self-confident people, including women. But the self-confidence of the yuppie scientist type is a bit different.

"I mean, I know so many people you might describe as ex-yuppies. But how yuppie were they ever in the first place?

"I'm not convinced, generally, that they ever really fully embraced the narcissism. The desire to make something of themselves in the eyes of society. The money, the big houses, new cars, fashion, etc. And they dropped out because of their lack of confidence in these things. And perhaps because of their lack of confidence in themselves, to some extent.

"They didn't ever completely fit in. These women did. I mean, I think once in my life I had a one-night stand with a woman who had had cosmetic surgery earlier in her life. That week alone I think it was five out of five women I slept with who had had nose jobs, breast enlargement, or both."

"Can you tell me a bit about the nature of these sexual experiences?"

"Sure," he said, and then paused to think.

"First of all, each one of them showed up with their proof of a clean slate regarding STDs. And each of them showed up with the clear understanding that it was their job to turn me on and make me come inside them.

"Each of them was totally open to pleasing me in the way that turned me on. So they could get what they came for. They all seemed to think this was the cost of doing business. Though this was by no means business - there was no money involved. Not that week."

"I'm curious if you also engaged in rough sex with the others? And made them touch themselves until they almost came?"

"Made them edge?"

"Is that what it's called? Yes."

He smiled. At my ignorance about kink, undoubtedly.

"How did that go over?" I asked.

"In all cases it went fine. I think it's largely about expectations and communication.

"In their cases, their expectation was that they were going to make me come inside them. I don't know what they thought the sex would be like. But I don't think most women, especially women who have made it into their thirties, are going to be shocked by encountering a guy who wants to fuck them hard, for a long time. They've done this before. They may or may not like it as much as something else, but it's not an alien concept."

"How about the edging?"

"This, on the other hand," he smiled slightly, "is often a less familiar thing. Maybe no one has ever done it to them. Maybe they've never purposefully done it to themselves, either.

"But if they know how to make themselves have a clitoral orgasm - which the vast majority of women do - then they know how to stop from having one, just before it arrives. Of course they might go over the edge - it can be hard to judge when it's coming - and that's life. Sometimes they do that because they want to be uncooperative. Other times it's an accident. Other times it's hard to say.

"What I can say for sure is that these women all knew each other. And no one seemed to be warning anyone else not to go have sex with that guy. He's crazy, he'll fuck you too hard and won't let you come. No, they just kept showing up."

"I'm curious, with this edging fetish, what do you do about women who have vaginal orgasms?"

"If I'm in a relationship with a woman like that, well, it depends on whether she's agreeable to my fetishes.

"Most women I've been in normal relationships with have not been into it. And I've been OK with that. But if they're into it, I like to stop fucking them just before they're about to come. And then start up again after a bit, to keep them close to the edge. Without letting them go over. Except now and then.

"It's different with the Choto girls. But with clients back at the clinic in Portland, or with Purification Temple girls, there's not enough time to get to know them.

"So if they have vaginal orgasms, they have them. Though oftentimes I can tune into that energy even if I just met them, and play with it."

"And keep them from coming?"

"Yes. While also fucking them for a long time."

"It seems cruel," I said, hoping he wouldn't be too offended.

"Yes, it is."

"How do you feel about that?"

"Have you ever heard of dom guilt? It's a thing. I've learned to become comfortable with it.

"The thing is, that week was different. But later, with the practice and everything, if the idea is me coming two or three times in a given day, well, that's not natural. Not for me.

"If that's going to be my life, then my life is going to revolve around sex. And if my life is going to revolve around sex, then the sex is going to revolve around those things which turn me on the most. The Things That We Do, as they say in the kink scene. Fetishes."

"You're making sense," I blurted.

"Is that surprising?" He smiled.

"So, you were in Atlanta for the remainder of that week, and then you went home?"

"Yeah, I was flying home that Friday. The next several days were certainly some of the craziest several days of my life."

"Walk me through them?"

"Sure. First, I got to the airport, went through security, sat down at my gate, early. CNN was on, though the volume was too low to hear.

"But then on the screen, there's Karthik and Charity, standing in front of a lectern that says 'CDC' on it. And behind them, a big screen with a graphic on it. At the bottom of the TV screen, the question, 'cancer cure?'

"I mean the whole week I was at CDC, nobody said the word 'cure.'

"But I guess lowering the risk for certain kinds of cancer for people with certain genetic predispositions is too complicated. Just the word 'cure' sounds better...? Anyway, that gave me a further inkling of what kind of madness was about to ensue.

"I have a bunch of news apps on my phone. And when there's breaking news, things pop up, you know?

"So while I'm sitting there watching CNN, messages were popping up about the CDC's press conference. Other news sources were being slightly less sensational than CNN, avoiding the word 'cure.' Instead talking about 'cancer breakthrough.'

"Then I landed at Westchester, turned my phone on, and there were more articles popping up.

"By now the news agencies have had over an hour to digest the CDC press conference. And the results of their digestion process wsa clear.

"There are two categories for the headlines. One of them is 'will this lead to a cure for cancer?'

"The other one, the one that made my heart skip at least two beats when I saw it for the first time: 'WHO IS DONOR X?'"