The Pornographers Read online

  “Okay, okay! Six inches.” The circumference at the thickest point was four and five eighths inches. The color was a light brown, with the exposed portion a brownish pink. And there were five moles.

  And so it went. Cocky’s was a bald-pated bonze, a full seven inches in length, topped with a pointed crown. Next was Hack’s, able to pound day and night without rest, whaled-headed and wolf-mouthed—power enough to batter apart the strongest gates. Then Banteki’s: goose-headed with a moist calf nose and no less lively for its skimpy scrotum. And finally Paul’s, quick and vigorous. So there they were, like furious horsemen charging with lances aloft, like elite warriors eager to grapple with the foe from the break of day and not give way even when night came. They would press unafraid toward those pits more perilous than even Aso’s steaming crater. And so they bore their weapons high, each with the power of a poised sledge hammer flowing up from its hairy, kimono-wrapped base. Never had Arima seen a sight like this.

  Next on the program were various trials of skill and strength. One involved laying on a ten-yen coin and seeing how high a hard upward thrust would send it. A more simple one was a time trial for unrenewed erection. And as the four of them raucously shouted at one another, savoring their vigor and calling for still-greater exertions, the evening mist that Rokko was famous for began to curl over the slopes. And the autumn sun sank steadily as a well bucket. In the excitement of matching themselves against one another, they had lost all sense of time. After the points had been tallied at last, Hack was declared overall victor.

  “Hey, I’m getting cold!”

  When everybody had decided that it would be a good idea to go down to the bath, Cocky had another inspiration. “How about this? We’ll go in just like we are and knock them dead.”

  They all agreed that this would be worth a try, and, relying upon the security of numbers, they marched into the bath, firm and erect. When the weekday crowd of ten or so bathers, some women among them, glimpsed their corporate state, there were those who looked away in dismay, those—all the women—who forthwith fled, and those who smiled rather painfully. But the pornographers entered the water and frolicked about in all innocence, as if to say to the other men, “Why so shriveled up? Here’s the way a man should be. Up with it, comrades! Don’t hold back!”

  “That was some research we did,” said Hack.

  “Yeah,” answered Cocky. “There’s a lot of interest in what a woman’s got down there. The man really looks her over in detail. But when the woman’s getting loved up by a man, she doesn’t get much chance to take more than a quick look. ‘It’s brown,’ ‘It’s pink,’ or ‘Oh, how small this guy is!’ and that’s all she’s got time for. Having fun is a different thing from research.”

  In the films, of course, the male actor’s armament was on display from start to finish; and among these were some well-tooled pieces; but still that was not the same as matter-of-factly weighing the merits of one’s own in open competition. Subuyan now felt himself looking upon his associates with heightened esteem.

  Even though the bath attendant’s pornographic merchandise could not begin to compare with Banteki’s, nonetheless, again for research purposes, they asked him for a look at the selection of books, pictures, and titillating condoms which he had in stock. In the process he showed them a novel artifact made out of foam rubber. It had the shape of a huge walnut, about a foot in diameter, and in its center was a hole, which was lined with soft rubber of a rather distasteful color and ringed with hair. This creation, designated as a “Solitary consolation device (male),” sold for forty-five hundred yen.

  Banteki looked at it rather contempuously. “Why, if you want something like that, I could easily do better myself.”

  “Well, why don’t you?” urged Subuyan. “There’d be a real project for you!”

  Banteki was engaged at the moment in the not especially stimulating task of editing the doctor’s films, and a challenge like this would provide just the right sort of outlet for his creative energies.

  When Subuyan returned home, pleasantly tired, he found an unexpected letter waiting for him. The assistant principal at Keiko’s school wanted to discuss something with him. Since there was no way of escaping the responsibilities of fatherhood, he went to the school to see her, though without feeling much concern about the whole thing.

  “Keiko has broken a school rule. We are willing to let it pass this time. But if it happens once more, we’ll simply have to suspend her. The family, too, we feel, must not shirk its own responsibility in these matters,” said the assistant principal, a middle-aged woman of formidable mien and arrogant manner.

  A school rule! thought Subuyan, becoming worried at once. Maybe her mother’s death was such a shock that she went wild. Maybe she got pregnant or something.

  However, as he listened further, he learned that the violation in question was nothing of the sort. What Keiko had done was to go into a restaurant in Osaka Station with some of her classmates and have a rice-curry lunch.

  “Under no circumstances do we permit our girls to frequent restaurants, movie theaters, or amusement areas unless accompanied by a parent or older brother.” The lady was extremely perturbed. Such conduct was simply outrageous! Especially since Keiko would soon be an upperclassman.

  Was that all it was? thought Subuyan, drained of all interest and unable to think of a reply. However, he was careful to put on a properly abashed look.

  The assistant principal had not finished yet. “The tradition of our school is to form young women to become dutiful wives and loving mothers, a humanistic education that seeks to inculcate a love of freedom, properly understood. Therefore, we are in no way able to tolerate the least divergence from our standards. And so I ask you, too, as the father of one of our girls, to seriously take all this into consideration.”

  What the hell is this woman running on about? thought Subuyan. I wonder if you ever noticed your students’ fingernails. When they’ve got the nail on the middle finger and forefinger cut short, that’s a sign of Lesbianism. Did you know that? Have you any idea how they go about it with their short nails? And that’s not all, either. In gym class, when they wear those bloomers, did you ever notice how the hips on some of the girls change? Your students know all about it. And all this business about not going into a restaurant unless their fathers are along! How ignorant can you teachers get! I think it’s disgusting. Oh, well, she’ll be here only another year or so, so what the hell!

  He of course gave not the least manifestation of his interior monologue. “It was completely inexcusable. I’m terribly sorry it had to happen. I assure you that it won’t happen again. So please be kind enough to overlook it this time,” he said, repeating a speech that he had become well accustomed to using in his dealings with the police.

  After he returned home, he called Keiko and told her what had happened and that he thought it was foolish for the assistant principal to have made such an issue of it.

  “Sure, it wasn’t anything at all,” agreed Keiko. “Why shouldn’t a girl go into a restaurant and get something to eat if she’s hungry! If the father had to be along every time, why no matter how many fathers there were, there wouldn’t be enough to go around. I’ll be more careful from now on. They won’t catch me. And besides, you know, that woman, the assistant principal, she’s got all kinds of complexes.” Like a pump that has been primed, Keiko cheerfully poured out a stream of abuse. “Her trouble is that she’s still a virgin,” she laughed with harsh glee.

  I wonder what would happen if I showed the assistant principal some of the films, Subuyan mused silently. She’d croak and shriek and shut her eyes. I’d force them open and tell her, “Look! Look! This is what men and women do!” That would be a good deed to do, all right.

  Keiko was still chattering happily away. “It’s so good to have a father that understands like you do. The kids who were with me are different. They really got bawled out at home and are still pretty sad about it.”

  “Ah, that’s f
oolish! Cheer them up, Keiko. My way of looking at it is the right one.”

  “In that case, can I have them come over here? Both of them are real good friends.”

  “Sure, sure, have them come. You can tell them I’m not upset in the least,” said Subuyan, feeling his heart beginning to thump within his chest.

  The two girls came. The three of them soon decided that as long as someone’s father was along there would be no grounds for complaint, so Subuyan should take them out somewhere.

  “Well, where would you like to go?” asked Subuyan, once they had left the house. “I’ll take you any place you want.”

  The middy-blouse trio went into a huddle and conferred in low voices. Finally Keiko announced the decision.

  “We’re just dying to go to a gay bar.”

  “A gay bar! You want to get a drink at a gay bar?”

  “Yeah! Something like a gin fizz would be okay,” answered Keiko, all three nodding in affirmation.

  Since he had just said “any place you want,” Subuyan had burned his bridges behind him. Middy blouses and fags! he thought. What a combination!

  It was just eight o’clock when they entered the Cockatoo, a bar on the south side. For a place of this sort, it was far too early for the night’s action to have gotten underway, an hour when most of the queens were still fussing over their make-up as they underwent the transformation into women.

  As Subuyan’s party entered, they were greeted by a young man named June, for over ten years a devotee of the gay way. “Come right in, please!” said June, only to do a startled double-take. “What’s this, a school excursion? Goodness, what cute little customers!”

  “No, the idea is to see how feminine you girls can be. They said that they wanted to do a little research.” Even Subuyan could not find it in himself to introduce them as his daughter and her friends. “Anyway, give these young ladies a gin fizz, and I’ll take a highball.” The middy-blouse trio sat down at the bar without hesitation and, with not the least trace of reticence, began to look boldly around the room.

  “This simply isn’t proper! They don’t fit in here at all,” complained the flustered June in a low voice to Subuyan.

  “We won’t stay long. Just hold on a bit,” he said reassuringly.

  Meanwhile the three interlopers were pouring out a steady stream of comment and speculation.

  “They certainly lay on the make-up. I wonder if it’s all imported.”

  “I wonder if he wears jeans like that all the time? Do you think they look better in kimonos or in Western clothes?”

  “That guy there, he’s really got a pretty face.”

  “Where?”

  “Over in the corner, putting on the make-up.”

  “Oh, yeah! He looks just like a department-store mannequin.”

  Not to lose out on their home grounds, the “girls” themselves began to speak up about their own peculiar concerns.

  “I don’t know! Today you just can’t seem to get by with only face powder,” said one young man who, his transformation now complete, came up to take June’s place at the bar. “There, that will do it, I think to myself, and then what happens? These men, they’re so rough, and my skin gets red every time.”

  The middy-blouse trio did not hesitate for an instant. “Is it really true that you don’t like anything but men?” they asked.

  “Isn’t it natural? What am I but a woman, after all? Just like you girls, all I care about is that thing a man has.”

  “Oh! Naughty, naughty!”

  “Naughty, naughty, maybe, but don’t you think it’s kind of cute? Like when you’re riding on the train, you mean you don’t start staring at the one of the gentleman across from you?”

  This is getting out of hand! thought Subuyan, beginning to panic; but he need not have worried. Keiko and company were not fazed at all but answered immediately.

  “We’ve already graduated from that stage.”

  “Yeah! When we were in junior high we used to go to ballets and check the men’s tights.”

  “My God! You’re hot little numbers, aren’t you?”

  With that, the other resident queens began to cluster around the bar, seeing that there was no need to watch their words in front of little girls so lascivious.

  “Oh, isn’t this one a darling? Just like my youngest sister. Hmmm! I’d like to snuggle up to you.”

  “Better watch yourselves, girls. This one here is reversible.”

  “How do you mean reversible?”

  “Front and back—she can go either way.”

  “No kidding! You can get twice as much for your money from her, huh?”

  “These little brats think they know all the answers.”

  “We’re not little brats.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “No, we’re women.”

  “Oh ho! Women, eh? Then you had it put to you already, uh? How sweet!”

  “Thanks, but right now we’re still waiting, and we’re just dying to have it happen.”

  “Oh, c’mon now! You already know what men are like, don’t you?”

  “Well, now, what would you say?”

  “Let me have your nose a minute. I think if I just gave it a little push, it’d break. So you’re not cherry.”

  “Superstition!”

  “It’s not superstition. Here, let me push.”

  “No, I won’t!”

  “Okay, how about this little test? Did you ever hear about it? You squat over a pile of ashes, see? Then you tickle your nose and sneeze. Now if the ashes get blown around underneath, that’s proof that the opening’s good and wide.”

  “No kidding? That’s the first we heard of that. Say, how about people like you? Do you have virgins, too?”

  “Why, of course. The first time is a terrible shock. I just cried and cried myself. Oh my, I thought, is this what it means to be a woman?”

  “Why, that’s way out of date! Maybe nowadays you’re the only ones who make such a big thing out of it.”

  “Oh? You girls don’t make such a big thing out of it?”

  “Of course not! The only animals where the female has a hymen are moles and people.”

  “Really? I wonder if the little girl mole cries when it happens?”

  “That’s old-fashioned, we’re trying to tell you. There’s nothing to cry about.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m a traditional Japanese woman. Oh, when I think of the pure and happy days of my girlhood!”

  As the six homosexuals and the three schoolgirls kept up this ribald exchange without remission, Subuyan, becoming more and more astounded by the minute, sat uneasily at the bar. From time to time a customer would appear at the door, see the figures in middy blouses, and, as much as to say, “Whoops! Wrong place,” would turn and disappear.

  “Your underwear and everything? Is it all a woman’s?”

  “Of course. What else. And then during my period I have to wear a sanitary belt.”

  “June, honey, if you have to wear a sanitary belt, I’ll bet it’s because your piles bleed.”

  “You smart little bitch! You say something like that again, and I’m going to stick my hand right in there and rattle your womb for you.”

  “Go ahead! See if you can grab ahold!”

  Keiko and her friends laughed hilariously. The frolic had gone so well that here it was already ten o’clock.

  “Well, I think it’s about time we were going,” said Subuyan. “It’s pretty late.”

  “Oh, don’t go now!” cried June. “The strip show is coming up in a minute.”

  Since it was to be a male strip, of course, Subuyan thought that the girls might rather forgo it; but instead their eyes flashed.

  “Let’s go after we see it.”

  On the ride home in the cab, Subuyan sat beside the driver. Professional though he was, he had heard about all he could stand for one evening. But the three in the back, though they kept their voice low in deference to the driver, had not run out of topics.

  T
he woman who never had a man, why, she’s terrible, thought Subuyan. She’s just a mass of sexuality. The worst kind of woman is a virgin. Why, compared to her, the call girl, who sleeps with a different man every night, is a perfect lady. Once they’re with a man, I don’t think they’ll go so far again.

  Surely if he had brought a barmaid or a Turkish bath attendant to the Cockatoo for a drink, she would have been better behaved. She would have become upset and embarrassed at the jokes of the homosexuals. Her cheeks would have flushed. But here this trio in middy blouses—all dewy innocence, exteriors unbesmirched—they had sat cheek by jowl with fags for two hours and had given them back as good as they got. It was incredible. Subuyan’s eyes had been opened.

  After they had dropped off Keiko’s friends, Subuyan got into the back seat; and Keiko, as though she had been waiting, threw herself heavily into his lap.

  “What’s the matter, don’t you feel good?” he asked. His finger tips were resting against the edge of Keiko’s tight brassiere. “I don’t know, but maybe this tonight was a little too much for you and your friends?”

  “No, not a bit. We always talk about things worse than that in school.”

  “Worse than that? What do you mean?”

  “Do you really want to hear, Dad?”

  “Yeah,” answered Subuyan, swallowing unexpectedly hard. “Well, come to think of it, maybe we better put it off until later. You don’t want too much excitement in one night.” Keiko wiggled slightly, shifting her weight. After a moment Subuyan spoke again, trying to disguise his persistence with a playful tone. “Is it really that way? Do all the young girls nowadays look down on virginity?” he asked, trying to pin his opponent to the mat.

  “Look down on it, look up at it—it’s just a pain in the neck being a virgin. Get rid of it and you feel good.”

  “The first chance that came along, you think you’d get rid of it?”

  “Yeah, that’s just the way I feel.”

  Who knows? Maybe that chance might be close at hand. Subuyan began to tremble and he felt himself growing tense. What’s wrong with me being the one for her? he thought. There’s nothing between us. We’re a man and a woman, that’s all. It’s been more than half a year since Oharu died, and I’ve been watching myself pretty well. And I know that she’d understand anyway. Then if she’s going to let just anybody at all come along and take it, why shouldn’t I, her guardian, be the man to do it? Look what the school rules say.