Chapter 5


Transit

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If the one who is looked at looks back,
then the person who was looking
becomes the one who is looked at.
Kobo Abé

 

Polyglot pre-landing commands interrupted my airborne reverie. So much to remember! The plane touched down at Osaka Airport, gateway to Kansai and my destination, Kobe. Again that thought when facing new reality, where in the hell am I? In a few moments I would be released, to what and to whom unknown. The new life before me gave hope that I had left all the pain behind. But I was too old not to recognize wishful thinking.

In taking this job, I sought escape all those reminders me of what I had become. How could I move on to someone else, something else, if I was buried under all that baggage? I thought by getting on that plane I could leave it all behind. It had worked in the past. When things got too heavy, just get on board and head for new adventure. But that was awhile back, when my mind was still fresh and uncluttered, when I hadn’t made the same mistake so many times that I had become resigned to its inevitability. By the time I cleared customs it was the middle of the night. On the ride to Kobe enormous displays of brilliant neon loomed, touting the advantages of some product or service. Only in the soft light haze of early morning, did I begin to see that beneath the glitz this was a rather dowdy land.

Gripped by jet lag, I wandered down the maze-like mall looking for a place to eat. It was early morning, too early I guess, for to my horror I found the only thing open, an American fast food outlet, a place I studiously avoided Stateside. Trying not to display too much cross-cultural ineptness, I blithely pointed at a photo of a nondescript sandwich. The clerk gave me a knowing smile. A few minutes later, munching on my fish burger, I thought with some irony how appropriate was this introductory meal. Suddenly aware that I was slipping into depressive funk, I conned myself that this ugliness would keep me fixed on my goal, the journey back to what I believed, in my hippie-trippy West-Coast way, was my "spiritual center." Even as I took my first steps into this new world, I was looking beyond, to a land further west, to the Himalaya so deeply etched in memory. Munching the cardboard sandwich made my resolve even greater.

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Then another image drifted into mind. It was an image most unappetizing, an image that I had tried to dispel for quite some time. That it appeared just at this moment was, perhaps, the fault of that malodorous fishburger. It was a memory much less noble, yet equally ingrained. Within the folds of those same hallowed mountains lay Kashmir, and there was Nazir, that unctuous son of a bitch houseboat-wala. In my mind it was to Nazir that blame for my bust fell, not to mention all the misfortune that followed. Over the years, I concocted wild schemes to revenge the pain Mei and I had suffered. Not that it had been only Nazir’s fault. But the real rat, the one who did the actual fingering, that faggot Morgan, was beyond reach, either dead of AIDS or living dead in some Federal Witness Protection limbo. Nazir was another tale; through a few simple queries, I knew he was in place though suffering from the same malaise now endemic in the Vale.

Over the years much of my hatred mellowed; at least I no longer contemplated slow, mutilating tortures. God! Inside, I had thought up some good ones. But I still wanted to face that bastard. I wanted to prove, not to him, but to me, that I could overcome.

Memories of this kind should have cooled my ardor for further crime, for if not Nazir, there was always some Nazir-like character waiting to pick me off. But even with Nazir’s bloated face so prominent, I had made sure to bring along the tools of my former trade. These were the smuggling boxes, custom-built plastic containers that fit snugly into the power supplies of my Graflex strobe—one in and one spare. In my more active days they had been only my "backups," the primary ones, the big Colortrans, fell to the Feds at the time of my bust. The strobe itself was old and bulky. If I packed the boxes carefully, I could get one and a half kilos of well-pressed charas in each box. It looked professional. I even rigged up a way so that the little red light signaling insufficient charge would glow if some overzealous customs lackey tried to test it.

"Oh! That must be why the light won’t flash. Well, if we wait over night they’ll charge up just fine." Just keep your cool; they wouldn’t bother. "Have a nice day! Welcome back to the U.S. of A." What a clever lad I was.

^ ^ ^

Almost as soon as I arrived I began to anticipate departure. I had no illusions of this as a new life. If I had been out of step in America’s relatively individualistic society, imagine how well I fit into Japan. The only saving grace was that, as a gaijin, a foreigner, I was out of the loop, and so wasn’t expected to fit.

From my gaijin perspective, I was outside; race and culture put me there. I could never penetrate the barrier of their seeming collectiveness, to touch them as individuals. They had their own lives, their own problems. It is hard enough making it under one set of rules, let alone mucking it up with some other’s set. Oh, they were quick to accept the paraphernalia, particularly those of American origin. You should have seen some of my kids, the "students," Metallica all the way. However, these were quickly co-opted into a Japanese context. Only in as much as I could become Japanese, think Japanese, see the world as Japanese, could I hope to penetrate their culture. The trouble was that most gaijin who tried ended up as stereotyped characters…like cartoons. I knew a number of this kind. They all were fucking cartoon sarariimen, Zen monks, or ninjas.

Perhaps if I had been younger, I could’ve taken the trip. At this stage in life, I had neither the time nor energy. What energy I possessed I wanted for the Himalaya, which after so long an absence was the most abstracted form of escape I could imagine. It was so distant and thus malleable to my fantasy. Japan was there and then, reality, something I couldn’t assign to daydreams, to a place where I had absolute control. Rather, I had to deal with it as it was. Also, I didn’t like my role. In such a xenophobic land, there is nothing lower than a gaijin English teacher.

Buoyed by my growing dream, I formed an existence—life would have been too ambitious a term—considerably better than what I had originally envisioned. That this dream was still distant allowed me to escape into fantasy. I dialed out on all that was external in a very Nihonjin strategy for coping with the pressures of society. I always had a way of coming out in fairly good style and this was to be no different. Kobe for urban Japan was quite attractive. The city rose directly from the sea to lush green mountains of over three thousand feet.

Despite the endemic housing shortage, I found a small, but comfortable, flat in the desirable suburb of Rokko. It was quite a way up the mountainside, a stone’s throw from the cable car, at the edge of the park. From the balcony of my bedroom, I could sit and watch the city below. When it rained, the stream running underneath the balcony would roar, recalling the sound of the Himalaya’s glacier-fed torrents. This luxury came at a price. Although my rent was higher than I could afford, I was sure I could find someone to share the cost. Besides, I was lonely, and a flat mate, a female flat mate, might provide more than just financial relief.

Although I lived in relative comfort, the job was a bore. It was little more than glorified day care for maladjusted youth. Who wouldn’t be maladjusted in that pressure cooker world? My co-workers were uninspiring, as you might imagine. I saw in them the same element of "loser" that, with horror, I had begun to suspect in myself. For a while, after the long period of climbing back from depths of incarceration, I looked with expectation to my future, preparing to join the community of my fellow beings. I willingly resigned myself to be someone they, rather than I, defined. Then somehow it all began to blur. Hopelessness now edged out hope. My new "colleagues" became the very thing I was trying to escape. The mirror, so painfully reconstructed, again began to crack.

It took a real jolt of fate to give up all that was native and throw myself on the mercy of an enemy. In my youth there had been some rationale—get out and see the world, see how others live. But in these older "ex-pats," I saw only a menage of failure, escape, and malcontent. What might be attractive in youth, the proverbial "angry young man," wore thin as the years went by. I struggled to avoid my colleagues, to make connections with the Japanese. I did share one common, inescapable trait with my peers; we were equally strange in a strange land. There was, however, one big difference; they had come to terms with it.

Each day I would scurry home as soon as my classes were finished. Climbing the hill to my sanctuary, I passed row upon row of biru dispensers, Kirin, Sapporo, Asahi—each brand had its own machine. Before the climb, I would say to myself, "Today, I won’t drink. Today, I’ll try to do something, anything, to get myself together, to get out of this space. Today, I’ll…start to write." It would be hot and humid, and as I drew closer to the flat, I would think how nice it would be to have a cool one—just one to quench my thirst. Then, I would think about the long empty hours that stretched before me. Maybe one wouldn’t be enough. Two would put me out, or better yet three. Invariably my pace would slow to a crawl. By the time I reached the last machine, the one that always got me, SAPPORO, I would be fingering the change in my pocket, trying to figure out just how many of those shiny silver containers I could afford—two half-liters, three three-quarter liters?

Occasionally, because behind the machine was a small but amply stocked liquor store, I would be tempted to go for a stronger jolt. The temptation had to be great because to go into the store meant the mortifying experience of attempting to converse with the owner. As I climbed, I would rehearse the few stock phrases that would get what I desired. But always it wound up the same way: silently taking a bottle from the shelves, wordlessly passing a large bill to the owner, trusting the correct change would be forthcoming, which, of course, it always was. I would mutter a hasty, almost incomprehensible "arigatogosaimas." Then I would continue on my way, trying to hide the bottle so the neighbors wouldn’t think me another typical gaijin alcoholic. It was no wonder most gaijin seemed to be. This fear of my neighbor’s judgment was strange. In my own world, I never gave a rat’s ass about what people thought. But here in pressure-cooker land, my image in an unknown neighbor’s mind suddenly became important. Was the collective force that drove this culture getting to me too? What a relief finally to close the door on that world and retreat back into a space I controlled. Then ever so slowly, I would pass through another doorway, into memory, content to linger for a while, pondering a life lost, what might have been, where I had gone astray, all that bittersweet idiocy. Finally, I would be released as I passed into the world of dreams, my mind no longer held prisoner by experience. I could travel to new worlds limited only by imagination.

As dull as this life was, it had one definite advantage. I was trying to save yen, money that would take me to the Himalaya. A few beers were the cheapest way to go…to get into limbo. Otherwise, any way you moved cost a lot of yen. I would get sick every time I went to the grocery store, five-hundred yen Fuji apples, and that sort of thing. It made me frantic.

Sometimes in a biru funk, I would watch the school children pounding up and down the steep street under my kitchen window. The young ones spilled down, the spirit not yet beaten out of them—plenty of time for that later. Their shiny black or red book packs, the color denoting the gender of the bearer, sparkled even in the smog-shrouded light. When it rained, as it did so often, all differentiation dissolved under bright yellow slickers. Older ones went the other way, making the grueling climb, great waves of blue and white, thin to the front, fat huffing behind, all with the worry of looming exams in their eyes. I knew my time had come and gone.

Tara’s ghost remained with me. How curious she could affect me so deeply, that final momentary anger born of frustration, desperation. But those last moments and the twisted emotions they brought out found resonance in my own self-doubt. They were arrows loosed when I had been most exposed. Of all the beauty we had shared and all the ecstasy…given and received, it was…is…those final hideous hours that linger in my mind, blotting out all the rest. When I picture Tara now, it is at that moment, her face contorted with rage, words of hate hanging on scorn-twisted lips. That was the price I paid for loving her.

There on my perch, I pictured my fate if I remained, So little stood between me and the lonely, aged ex-pat schoolteacher whom I could become—perhaps, had already become. Better go out in a blaze of glory, or at least in a blaze, than to slowly wither away. In my mind, the Himalaya grew closer, more real, while the Japan that surrounded me became ever more remote.

On my way to work each morning, I was drawn to the tree-shrouded grounds of a local Shinto temple. This wasn’t the most direct route, but the tranquillity of the temple’s garden chilled me out after the trauma of the Hanku Railway’s press. The detour also afforded a glimpse of young female attendants, who ceremoniously swept the temple grounds dressed in the traditional robes of office. I ached for a connection with a woman; I missed what I so long had enjoyed. Out of balance—a Yang without Yin! I sought Yin from outside because my conditioning constrained me from reaching within. Passing under a high stone arch, intricately carved with guardian dragons and lion dogs, I ritually petitioned unknown Japanese God. My plaint, although often rephrased, was in essence, "Give me love or death." The operative word, however, was "give."

As melodramatic as I knew I sounded, I really believed I didn’t want to live without love, for it was in love that I saw my reason for being. It wasn’t so much I wanted to be loved; that required responsibility, but that I needed to love someone else again. How wonderful it was to throw my heart and soul away on another. Yet how easy it was not to focus on the need to love when I had it, like air breathed and water drunk. When it was all around, I had taken it for granted, as my birthright. Now that it was gone, I was thirsting, choking, filled with unquenched need. I needed a woman to feel complete, not necessarily there with me all the time, but another soul of whom I could dream, in whom I could escape the overwhelming loneliness, the infinite emptiness, if only for a brief while.

Then one day it seemed my whining was answered. I had advertised for someone to share the flat. In my mind, along with a host of other lonely gaijin, I hoped that a young, attractive Japanese woman would respond. Perhaps it was that celluloid fantasy, Sayonara, which triggered my fascination with Asian women. Today, I would most likely see it as a syrupy melodrama, but to a young boy in the clutches of puberty, it really tugged the old heartstrings. It was all so illicit, all that interracial business, even the viewing. Mother, good daughter of the South that she was, would have never permitted such a thing. Not that the film is explicitly sexual, but imagine, a good old Anglo boy falling for an "Oriental." No way! I sneaked in a show on my way back to boarding school, a slight detour to Times Square between Penn and Grand Central Stations.

How I had thought about that exquisite beauty, promising all sorts of unspoken delights, even if the exact nature of those delights was an unknown. How I reveled in Brando’s sticking it to that the straight and narrow Anglo world, even then beginning to suffocate me. Now, I had a chance to play that same seminal role. I was in Kobe, after all. I was American, and why wouldn’t women, Japanese women, come flocking to my call.

In my mind, I already saw an "us" settled into our little nest high on Rokko. She would teach me the ways of Japan, as I would teach her mine. How hard it was to escape Svengali’s shadow, how clinging the dream that had been Mei, in turn reborn as Tara. Despite the kick in the ass both had given me, I was left with hunger, still looking to find what I had found, then lost, in "her."

But I wasn’t Marlon, and this wasn’t post-war Japan. Initial responses were most unsatisfactory, mostly middle-aged, "American Woman" schoolteachers. In my scorn, I failed to see they were only female counterparts of myself, "American Man," also desperately trying to hold on. Then, just as I was about to give up hope and settle for one of the "harpies," a call came that I imagined might have come from those Gods.

It is customary in Japan, at least in gaijin circles, to meet guests at the train or underground station. It is an almost hopeless enterprise to give directions. I agreed to meet the caller outside Rokko station. I gave her my description, "Gaijin, bearded, wearing dark glasses and a neon green melon hat." I was still clinging to my SoCal surfer image. There wasn’t much worry about her missing me.

When it first registered that this tall, frankly gorgeous young woman, who looked every inch as if she had stepped off the cover of Elle, was actually approaching me, I was almost speechless. It was just too good. "Guy?" she asked, reaching out to take my hand, "I’m Elizabeth." Yes, I thought, the Gods had answered me, not only answered, but blessed as well.

On the fifteen minute uphill walk I tried, without seeming too rude, to take in the fullness of her beauty. More than just appreciating her for what she was, I was looking for flaws—she was just too good. Maybe, I thought, she is not a she? But although she was able to match my brisk pace, she was every bit female. The Gods were indeed kind. Or so I thought at the time.

At the outset of our discussion, I learned, while not the pure Japanese of my fantasy, Elizabeth had a Japanese father. Looking closely, I saw that this was a possibility, for despite her height, her face was extremely delicate, an oval framed by long, long jet-dark hair, balanced lightly on a swan’s neck. Her complexion, a perfect pale in the Japanese fashion, had its pallor emphasized by deep, green-gold eyes and blood red, pouting lips. But there was a definite western streak, for she had a look I associated with ballerinas, except that she was so tall—had to be a model. Certainly she was beautiful and even younger, I guessed, than Tara, maybe in her late teens or early twenties. Just the right age before experience brings bitterness and withdrawal. I was particularly happy she was so different from Mei or Tara. I didn’t want a living reminder of those failures. While physically she was more like Mei, tall, with long, sensuous limbs, she was curvaceous where Mei was angular, more boyish. She was what we had once called a "real earth goddess"—maybe closer to Steph in body and certainly as worldly wise. Her personality seemed open, friendly, and most importantly, for the first time since my days with Stephanie, I was back with someone native to my culture.

Up in the flat, we talked further. It was a muggy summer day typical of Kobe. I discovered she was also from California, or at least that had been her last Stateside address. It was as if I had suddenly met someone from my own tribe after years of wandering among strange peoples and places. It didn’t matter that so many years separated us. While her body seemed young, her mind was experienced. In some ways she took me back in time, a time before Mei, to those days of the drug culture, where much could be expressed with only the slightest communication. No arduous explanations needed. There was an intrinsic feel of family. Although she was an entire generation younger, she had grown up as the daughter of what she described as "a real wigged-out hippie woman," and had a command of the culture that far surpassed even what I could remember. Suddenly, I was back in the Haight’s "Summer of Love"—I had been in London at the time. The conversation was all about macrobiotic foods, ashrams, yogis, rock ‘n roll. After several years with Tara, where I had to explain every word, every phrase, where she was so straight, so ultimately bourgeois, it was refreshing to relate to someone who "talked the talk." Whether Elizabeth could "walk the walk" only the future would reveal.

In those opening moments, we seemed to take to one another. Was this was the "romantic interest" I had been praying for? She was so good and, at the time, I was too mesmerized by the cling of her sweat-moistened "T" to notice how good she was.

The first night after moving in, she came to my bedroom, clothed in just a T-shirt and panties—long, exquisite legs rising into the fullness of buttocks very much open to my gaze. Well, now that I think back on it, maybe those upper thighs were in the American way a little too full…and there was a stretch mark here and there. There were signs that Elizabeth wasn’t as young as I supposed, but I chose to ignore them. I wasn’t about to let fantasy fall to a little cellulite. I wanted her…I needed her to be the most beautiful woman in the world, for if she was, and she wanted me, then…. That would show Tara who was too old! Right there in the heat of the moment, I was still thinking of Tara. I would send her a picture of my new wonder woman, younger, more beautiful than she had ever been. God! Why couldn’t I get rid of Tara’s ghost? It had been almost a year and the bitch was still with me.

Was this an invitation to dance? Had I been younger and more at the mercy of my libido, I would have acted, fearless of any rebuff. Age and all that gender-sensitivity training chipped away more elemental natures. And then there was the memory of Tara. Elizabeth seemed even younger and we had no history. Did she see me as a ridiculous old man trying for something far beyond my means?

I was no longer an animal driven by my appetites. I was civilized and forced myself to avert my gaze, to be cool, to remember she was just a flatmate, to whom I had promised, "no hassles." Maybe she was just testing how far that promise went? It was hard to be so hungry, yet to abstain from such a feast. And what a feast! I longed to sink my teeth into those milky white buttocks, to drink from the cup of youth-restoring nectar that lay within. When had I last sipped there? With Tara, of course, but it seemed so long ago, I had almost forgotten that salty-sweetness.

For a while we just talked. She was so young, and I felt protective. I knew my other side, the one with the nearly uncontrollable hungers, would soon emerge. I would…I must…have her. For the time being, however, I would take things slowly. That was my style; make them hungry; "make them want to be wanted." But Elizabeth was like no other woman that I had ever known—how often had I found myself using that phrase? She seemed to know just what was in my mind; she took control, pushing all the right buttons. As I said, she was good!

"Guy, you’re too tense. I want to do something for you."

She spoke not as a lover, but as a therapist or, maybe, given her background, a guru. This startled me. Always the male, I like being in charge, calling the shots, dominating my partner, bending her to my will. Not that I didn’t want to give pleasure, but I could perform best only if I felt the master. Suddenly, it was Guy, almost always the seducer, who now felt seduced.

Yes, there was that almost again. Tara was so hard to shake. Perhaps that was because in that instance it was me who had ultimately been fucked, or so I thought at the time. How strange! There I was with this incredible piece of ass, and couldn’t escape that bitchin ghost I had come to Kobe to forget. I couldn’t get her…it…out of my mind. Instead of taking care of business I….

^ ^ ^

It had been all so goddamned symbolic: on a bridge in that tourist trap called New Hope. New hope on my bridge of the world, and for the first time in so long, I felt that entirely uncontrollable feeling, entirely independent of all self will, welling through my being, not from my head downward, but upward from my heart—although in retrospect possibly from even further below. It reminded me of those first rushes of emotion I felt with Mei. In a moment, I was carried back almost twenty years. It can’t be rationalized, it just was.

Yet there was a difference between that first and what, I guess now, is the last. With Mei, it had been a feeling of unbounded joy. All was right with the world; I had finally found my soul mate, that fellow entity to which we are drawn, lifetime after lifetime, our fates inextricably bound. But with Tara, joy was tempered by an even deeper sorrow. Driving back to the University that night, I began to cry. I blamed the mushy, romantic music that oozed from the radio, but I knew otherwise. A great wave of foreboding swept over me. It was as if part of me, an unconscious part, knew what was coming. It was trying to warn me, but in the grip of passion, I failed to listen. In accepting this new love I was accepting failure with Mei. I no longer believed in soul mates or in eternal love, at least with another human.

Both in Nam and in prison-in many ways so alike-was heard the motto, "You come alone and leave alone." I have come to believe that is true for life anywhere. I knew at some point all the love between us would dissolve that we would go our separate ways, perhaps regretting that we had ever met. And that eventuality came. Tara sent me packing with the final benediction: "Guy, you’re too old…too fucked." This was doubly terrible, for I knew who had put such harsh words on such sweet, rosebud lips. It had amused me to teach her all those sort of words, the "fuck" I would have her cry out in a much different tone, in a much different context. Once it had been part of making love, now it was all about hate.

^ ^ ^

She…Elizabeth…started to stretch out, almost as if she was alone and not with me…an almost stranger. Her years…growing up in the ashrams…had made her an adept…very adept…yogini. With the most damnable air of innocence she assumed positions that defied the constraints of normal human anatomy. At times, her postures seemed to offer her most intimate parts…I thought I was going to go out of my mind. I would have, if I had been ten years younger. She seemed to be taunting me from each posture: "Hey Guy can you do this?" She performed an extension, her leg raised into the air parallel to her body. Was it an invitation? "Here’s my ass, take it, here I am spreading out my legs, take what lies between them. If you’ve got the balls that is?" I couldn’t decide if it was in my head or something we shared between us. Maybe, I just no longer had the balls?

Resting on the floor after a particularly awesome contortion, she beckoned me to join her. She lay there, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her all too brief "T" had crawled way up, exposing the slightly fleshy curve of her belly, flecked with beads of moisture from her labors. How I wanted to reach over and taste salty-sweet dew, to let my tongue follow to its source, and then drink the nectar deeply. She gave me a long, piercing look, then rolled over, raising her hips into the air, then lowering them in continuing undulations. The night had been cool before she entered the room, but now the sweat was building on my body; I could feel it rolling down my sides, down my neck.

Something inside me snapped. It was too fast. I wanted more than release. You know…that kind of thing was in my own power, my own two friends here, these hands. They could and did give me that often…as often as I wanted…I learned that long ago. What I wanted…desperately needed…from Elizabeth was more than a momentary release from lust.

I started talking, probably babbling is a more appropriate term. At least this is what Elizabeth, who by this time was fully aroused, must have thought. She was a young woman in the fullness of her sex. She wanted satisfaction, nothing less than a hard cock. Her readiness showed; she made no attempt to conceal the spreading dampness on the crotch of her diaphanous panties. In the tight confines of the room the smell of the tatami intermingled with the scent of sweat, dry sweet grass with the dampness of mutual lust. My cock was hard, swelling to fullness I hadn’t experienced for some time. I knew that physically I was ready. All I had to do was slide off the futon, onto the floor beside her. One swift move and I would be in her, filling her emptiness with my need.

But I wouldn’t be so rude. No, I could see myself not taking but giving, guiding us to a mutual pleasure, kissing first on the mouth. Later, I would wander over her body until my tongue could touch that so-sweet bud. I prided myself on my tongue as an instrument of love, for if it had a chance, I would always get the rest. Once my tongue got inside, it did things, touched places that no woman I ever loved in that way could resist. The problem, of course, was to get that far.

The moment came and went. There was always that moment ripe for action, when both partners’ senses are honed to their sharpest edge, minds readying bodies for action, screening out all thoughts except for the desire to desire. She had been able to reach this place, blotting out the past, memories of pain, humiliation, guilt, all those things that inhibit, cripple, and ultimately kill the pursuit of pleasure; perhaps, even blotting out whom it was who would give her pleasure.

I didn’t have such power. My ghosts were still too strong. To Elizabeth’s disappointment, there was no tongue, no hard cock, not even a caress, only more of the interminable nervous banter. All she wanted was simple fuck, just a quick shot to know she wasn’t alone. But I was unable to even give her that.

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^ ^ ^

On first meeting, Elizabeth radiated youthful innocence and trust. As the weeks went by, closer inspection revealed this was a mask, hiding the deep scars of relationships that for her had been long and bitter. In our many long conversations, substitutions for the real communion we both wanted, I began to uncover her story. Married at seventeen, she was now in Japan because this relationship had become too oppressive. Marriage blotted out any chance for her to see who she was. She had been raised as a love child, where relationships were everything. This early experience overloaded her, and she went the other way. Yes, like so many others of her generation, the children of the hippies, she could talk the talk, but walked in a different way. She was on the make in a very material world, in a world where youth no longer aspired to peace and love, but to career and property, power and security.

Elizabeth wasn’t looking for love, a fuck yes, a friend maybe. And there I was desperate for love, for the other half, for my Yin, or at least so I had convinced myself. I should have just taken her before we got to know each other. If I had done my part well, she might have wanted more—and I, perhaps, less. But as I came to know more about Elizabeth, I was almost glad I had not been so bold, for she held all the ingredients of one more tragic affair.

Elizabeth was another metaphor for my life…you know you are a goner when life is nothing but a fucking metaphor…all that initial, self-projected optimism, hope, joy, quickly falling away to the underlying reality that was the other—FRUSTRATION. Why was it always this way? Either I expected others fill my needs, as if they had been placed here on earth explicitly for me, or vice versa. I felt the need for some mystic hand behind all relationships; nothing was just random, dumb luck. Then I would find out otherwise and, in my disappointment, turn bitchy, vindictive. How could I wean myself of dependence on fate for life’s meaning? How could I find purpose in what was so seemingly random?

Once rather drunk—I would have had to be in some way altered to make such a deep revelation—I told Elizabeth about my morning ritual, my prayers to the Japanese Gods, and how I saw her as an answer to those prayers.

Venomously she replied: "You don’t need love Guy, you need passion. You feed on passion like a vampire feeds on blood. It makes you feel alive doesn’t it? Well?"

She was goading me, driving the knife deeper and deeper, all her venom towards the male gender spilling out over me.

"The only trouble is passion is like that cock of yours, it comes and then it goes." She laughed coarsely, revealing another side of her character, a side I somehow had missed in my initial observation. "Maybe down your leg, eh, old buddy?"

Late at night, after the effects of the booze wore off—I no longer even tried to make it past the biru—I would wake. Though giving up all hope of a relationship, I was still tortured by being so close to this beautiful creature. Elizabeth could have slaked my thirst, if she had been so inclined. I hated her for withholding.

Sometimes the Fates…the Gods…whatever…are there at work even though we can’t perceive them. They protect us despite ourselves, and what at first disappoints us, turns out a blessing. Elizabeth was more than an American studying Japanese. When I first met her, she exuded affluence. This wasn’t only in her accouterment: Armani, Cartier, Gucci, all so impressive in Japan, but in her demeanor as well. Despite the self-professed hippie background, I assumed that somehow there was money in the family. Obviously, someone was bankrolling Elizabeth. As the weeks went by, I began to observe that she consistently returned to the flat in the wee hours. Perhaps because of the alcohol, perhaps, hoping to recapture that lost moment of opportunity, I would regularly wake about midnight.

I tried not to get involved; her comings and goings were her business. However, as the tension grew between us, I got into the habit of…lying in wait. Finally one night I got pissed and told her she was disturbing my sleep. This, of course was the truth, but for different reasons than any noise she made.

Tired and upset at having to deal with my anger, she defiantly admitted: "Look Guy what I do with my life is my…anyway I thought you said no hassles…that we’re just roommates. I gave you a shot just to get it over with, but you had to be the asshole, get all serious and all of that gop. If I got involved with you, you’d just eventually run off with some real Japanese woman. I know you! You’re just a butterfly."

She went on and on, really socking it to me. She was good at that. Just as good as when she wanted to stroke you, when you had something she thought she wanted—whip, stroke, whip, stoke, those were her special skills. She then let me in on her darkest secret. It was no accident that she had played me so well. The manipulation of the libido, male and perhaps even female, was her rice bowl. Her nocturnal habits weren’t the result of the long commute from Kyoto where she was supposedly enrolled in school, but because of her job as a night club "hostess."

"This is my living Guy…this is the way I pay you my rent. If I’m such a whore, what does that make you? My pimp?"

There was no wealthy family. She had run away from a suffocating marriage and, just as I had done, taken the first thing that came along. Without even a high school diploma, Elizabeth fell back on her more primal attributes, leading to recruitment as an "entertainer" in Japan.

Maybe you are wondering why all this hassle over a fucking job. But that is just the problem, it was a fucking job. The job had been titled on her passport "entertainer specialist," but quickly degenerated into nightclub hostess. Naively, she had fallen for an old ploy of the Yakusa, the mob in Japan. For years they have recruited attractive women from all over the world, enticing them with visions of fortune and fame. The reality is much different. Once in country, the girls are essentially prisoners, both through intimidation and their isolation from Japanese culture. Apparently, it was very rough at first. Elizabeth’s initial "booking" landed her in an S&M bar where she engaged in all manner of kink. Most of it was simulated, but it got the Nihonjin sarariimen off to watch this young, virginal-looking, gaijin angel virtually brutalized by their own.

Empowering the powerless through the spectacle of submission, Elizabeth allowed her body to be used in sordid ways, both on and off the stage. She had come to Japan with some great burden of guilt whose source she never fully revealed, although, I suspected it had something to do with infidelity. This was, perhaps her way of expiation. For though the actual physical pain might have been simulated, at least on the stage, the degradation was real.

She was, however, more than a piece of meat to be "poked and stroked," as she described it. Slowly, she had gained ground through judicious management of her charms, choosing the right protectors, giving of herself, but sparingly, and to her advantage. By the time she moved in, she was working in what, for that world, was a "respectable" club. The boss was a friend and looked after her interest. It was her choice who would receive her ultimate charms; for the rest she would have pleasant conversation, a smile, and, perhaps, even a shoulder to cry on. Yes, Elizabeth was on her way to becoming a very good courtesan. The pay was excellent, and she learned the culture much faster than she could in any school.

Pragmatically, Elizabeth made the best of a rather nasty situation, but for me it was the last straw. All I could see was this lovely creature, selling herself to the highest bidder, some fat, old sarariiman…another wake up call for me. Hey…I was toying with fire. Those business types spent a lot of time in places like Bangkok, Taipei, or Manila. In Japan, AIDS was a taboo subject. But silence is no protection for the traveling sarariiman in a Bangkok hotel room—one night in Bangkok, the next in Kobe. You know…I have flirted with death for a long time, I hope I am not afraid. But I don’t want to go like that…no, not like that.

Having come to this realization, scared straight so to speak, I rather piously vowed to investigate an all too elusive inner self. Maybe it was time to put aside those pleasures, those pursuits of youth, understand who I was and go from there. After all, I was in a land of the Buddha and, while I had flirted with Buddhist philosophy, my early aversion to religion kept me from any but the most casual acquaintance. Perhaps intuiting my need, Elizabeth told me about a Zen retreat primarily for gaijin—they spoke English—located in the rolling farm country west of Hiroshima, several hundred miles from Kobe. She was going and, if I wanted, she would be glad to take me along. Perhaps, she felt sorry for me, looking to break down the shell I had cast around myself.

Despite this new spiritual fervor, I regretted my earlier hesitancy. I felt burned by my own inability to take another chance on love, wondering if this could be an opportunity to regain lost ground with Elizabeth. How hard it is to let passion go.

The trip was a disaster. Perhaps a confusion of motive doomed it. We agreed on nothing and wound up taking different trains, sleeping in different rooms and, for that matter, barely speaking during, what was for me, an ordeal of physical pain and mental boredom. The regimen required three daily six-hour lotus-twisted meditations, or at least an approximation of one. The over-zealous dojo master would come around and whack me with a stick, if my posture deviated too much from his standard.

I knew the drill. I was supposed to drive all thought out of mind. If I could get the world out of mind, get mind out of mind, then and only then could I release. To get beyond Maya you need to see clearly. You don’t need to think to see. For by thinking, you bring to the act of seeing all the accumulated shit of your past experience; you just make seeing all that more impossible. But a clear mind isn’t easily achieved—the Gods know I have tried long enough, certainly not in a weekend excursion. Despite the chanting and the dark, musty dankness of the temple hall, my mind raced with thoughts of this world.

To further my discomfort, Elizabeth took to the place like the proverbial duck (swan was more apt in her case) to water. She seemed to experience little physical discomfort in the meditations and during the breaks would dazzle the monks and visitors with feats of yoga. After the first day, she had become the center of attention. A wall of admirers surrounded her. It was almost as if she had planned it to keep me at bay, almost as if she wanted to punish me for my failure to fulfill her needs.

That evening, after dinner, we all went to the commons room where Elizabeth began to flirt with the dojo master, the very one who took such delight in correcting my posture. I saw the look in her eye and knew it was the same as that first night in the Rokko flat. She was up for it and had selected this monk, a very strong and virile looking fellow, to satisfy her needs. Unlike me, the monk obviously felt little constraint. Throughout the night, I could hear their passion through the paper-thin wall of my room. A flickering lamp left to burn in a corner projected their mingled forms on the translucent surface, like giant shadow puppets in a recreation of the Kama Sutra. My imagination supplied the more lurid details. The shadows became three dimensional, no longer just of light and the absence of light, but of flesh, hair, those most intimate recesses. The monk mounted Elizabeth in her many contortions. The visions of those postures, and the pleasures they promised, drove me almost to madness. I think it was the image of Elizabeth in a "plow" that particularly stuck in my mind. Let me just slide up between those long, marble white thighs. That would be Shambhala enough for me! That would clear my mind! DAMN! It was almost like being twenty again…I was so hot. I just wanted to burst through the goddamned rice paper wall and take my shot. That probably wouldn’t have been too off the mark, but it was a threshold far beyond me.

I wanted so much to be that monk, to hold Elizabeth in my arms, to enter her and become one again with another human being, to lose in the release the lust searing my very being. Again, it was more than just the release; it was connection I needed. The desire to lose myself in the soul of another was my undoing. Both for Elizabeth and the monk, their coupling was no more than a form of yoga, a "left-handed" Tantric release of bodily desire, clearing the way for other things. A scroll on the commons room wall drawn in particularly beautiful, boldly washed characters summed up this master’s philosophy nicely. Since this was a dojo frequented by gaijin there was a translation underneath: "As a washerman uses dirt to wash clean a garment, so with impurity, the wise man makes himself pure." I envied their casual, yet mutually beneficial relation. That was why I lay alone and they were together. Why, I thought to myself, do I have to carry so much baggage?

Now I had to banish thoughts of Elizabeth, thoughts that I had taken on to drive out thoughts of Tara, who in turn had been undertaken to fill the vacuum left by Mei’s drifting away. I was going around in circles, maybe vortex was a better word…spinning ever downward…replacing one with another, each time the quality of my relation dropping lower and lower. Mei had been the real one, but finite as are all thing in this life. The rest were but echoes sent by the Gods to mock me for wanting life to be forever.

For a time, too long I realize now, I had been sparring with Elizabeth. In some contorted way, I thought I might find a life in Japan that someone, or something, had brought us together for a purpose and somehow we would work it out. Those flights into order and purpose often seized me, but in the end leaving me to chaos. For the first time in weeks, the ultima Thule of my imagination, those great mountains of South Asia, the Himalaya, loomed large in my mind. Lying on that monastic pallet, I was a captive witness to heated chiaroscuro played out on the paper wall. This was all the more heightened by an overwrought imagination, coupled with real cries of pleasure. To block these intrusions, I transformed them into the long remembered sights and sounds of distant mountains; the rush of the wind through tall stands of deodars, the roll of thunder as it swept up a col, the cry of a marmot, the howl of the wolf.

No longer would I seek human love, caught up in that hopeless trap of inevitable disappointment. I vowed to turn to one who could only be loved, from whom no love could be forthcoming. I had been burned too often to be attracted to any God bearing human form. Yet, I wanted something with a physical presence, something I could feel, taste, smell, something so large so powerful that I would feel no shame in my submission. This could be found in the Himalaya.

Without this refuge, I might have taken the more pragmatic course, returned to the States, apologized to Mei, and set out contritely to rebuild our life. Instead, I was desperate to retain that romantic image—death before anonymity or boredom, before what I thought of as surrender. I wouldn’t let myself wind up as some lonely, impoverished teacher, surviving rather than living. Neither would I crawl back to Mei and the humiliation of some god-awful nine-to-five suburban existence, that familial specter which haunts me even now.

Even in such ethereal rapture, with thoughts of fate and religion dancing in my head, I revealed the duality within. I knew from hard experience not to throw myself completely to the mercies of my spirit-side. There was a chance I might not meet any "ultimate fate" in the mountains. That, instead, I would simply go up one side and down the other and, six months or a year later, be right back in a similar fix as now, if indeed so fortunate. This was the pattern: the dream-goal, the rush to achieve, pushing all else aside, burning bridges as I went, and then once reached, the long slide back to the reality of the outside world. Yes, I had to make some alternate arrangement, something to fall back upon, in case there wasn’t that storybook ending. It was one thing to die in the pursuit of a goal; it was another to take your own life. Many times I had contemplated such surrender. I knew it wasn’t in me. But whether it was from nobility or cowardice, I wasn’t sure.

In all those years since the bust, I had told myself I would never do what I now contemplated, making one last "run," a last chance where it would be all or nothing. Yet what did I have to lose? The prison experience had receded into "three hots and a cot." No hassles; I forgot about those. I wasn’t getting any on the outside. When your not getting any, it is almost better to be inside, then at least you can kid yourself, "If only…." Besides, why else had I bothered to bring along those tools of my former trade? Such thoughts would have been unthinkable even a year ago; but then there was so much more to lose. I had no clear plan of where to cop, but I had gotten charas so many times before, in so many different places. Scoring wasn’t a worry. And there was plenty of time before the unloading. Even though all my past contacts were gone, I had recently met someone, an old ex-pat gaijin, who offered me grams of charas for five thousand yen. If he sold the shit, then he must buy it. Even if he didn’t, that he was offering it at such an outrageous price meant there was a good market in Japan.

Twenty-eight grams to an once, sixteen ounces to a pound, Man…that’s over sixteen-thousand dollars a pound…a thousand an ounce. If I brought back a few kilos, I could live well. Just get rid of the shit in Japan, then go somewhere cheap and kickback…maybe some tropical paradise in Indonesia. I would be like a character out of Conrad, rule my own little world. I started to lay it all out. I would build my refuge…even surround myself with those lovely women…and when I needed more cash…just take a trip…like the old days.

If that was too farfetched, I could always take it back to the States. Of course, a pound there was nowhere near as valuable and it would be a little dicey. I wasn’t sure how efficient those customs folks had become. From experience, I knew they were typical bureaucrats, spiders waiting for you to enter their web. Despite public posturing, they only went into action when the whistle blew, or they had a stroke of dumb luck. Yes, I kept telling myself, the DEA like the INS, or IRS, work in a virtual plane. Oh, if you made it easy for them, they would pop you. But their real deterrence was the fear they planted in your head. You were their best agent.

For some reason I didn’t even worry about the Japanese customs. They had been so accommodating when I arrived. Even though I had bulging cases, they didn’t give them a glance. As a certified academic, I was outside the profile. I had an identity, a compartment where they could store me away. It is the anomalies that cause problems, the square pegs in round holes. The secret is to seem to fit. In any event, I wouldn’t be greedy, just a few kilos, and I could start again. And I still had my trusty battery packs. They had never failed me in the many years of border crossings.

I understood, more clearly than ever before, the power of money, that this power was meant to be the natural substitute for youth. This may seem a given to you, but raised to scorn the material world, I was a slow study. As I got older, if I got richer, life would remain good, at least not too painful. Without money, without the wealth that signaled blessing, I would be cast among the damned, to be avoided and scorned. All this was a lesson learned perhaps more easily in Japan. I had come to the point where it didn’t matter any more, I was over the edge, I was falling and there was no one to help. Only by my own strength could I forestall the inevitable. It was so tempting not to resist, just slide into oblivion. This, however, was the curse of my dual nature. On one hand, I knew what was right, what should be done and, on the other, I compulsively couldn’t surrender; I had to go for it one more time.

There was only my personal energy, a power fast fading, with little hope for rejuvenation. Either I would save myself before the power drained or be lost. As in days past, I knew I was getting softer, weaker. It might have been easier to end it at that moment. How simple just to slip in front of the train…just as if I was going to work…but…step out a moment too early…splaaat! No pain…no gain…it happened on an almost daily basis in that over-stressed country. But I wanted to see life played out to the end, to see what would happen, if I let fate carry through…whatever fate was…is.

Like so many times before in my life, I began to lay out a journey in my mind. It is not entirely true that the journey begins with a step, rather it begins with a dream. Each day I would scour the bookshops on my lunch hour, looking for books and maps on the mountains. I built what I called a mandala, made of pictures taken on previous journeys, and hung it on a wall beside my bed. At night in the luminescent glow of the twilight, my brain fuzzed by the nightly ration of alcohol, I would stare at the pictures trying to will them to life. They were well crafted, and their stark, deeply etched, black and white images took on almost a life-like dimension in the tatami’s golden glow—in my mind they came alive.

I committed to this trip that night in the monastery, but the first physical steps were up the mountain on which I lived. To enter the Himalaya you must prepare. Rare for urban Japan, Rokko provided almost instant access to thousands of forested acres. A twelve-mile run from my flat took me to the top of Mt. Rokko. There on the rare clear day of the early summer, I could see the entire city of Kobe sprawling below to the sea. How many times did I make that exhausting run, alone on the winding road? Perhaps alone is inaccurate, for although alone on foot, there were sometimes a busload of incredulous Japanese tourist, who didn’t know what to make of this aging, ginger-bearded gaijin, running where even Toyotas and Hondas had tough going. Let the world call me crazy. I had mountains, the real mountains, in my mind. Each step I took up Rokko was a step toward the Himalaya.

The school term was over at the end of July. What better time to make my escape, except of course, it was also getaway time for all Japan. Consequently, my first shock was in shopping for an air ticket. Anyone who could in Japan was flying somewhere, and the price of tickets skyrocketed. After exhaustive research, I bought the cheapest discount ticket I could find, almost half again a flight from LA to Delhi.

The gaijin’s bleat, "it’s sooo expensive!"

It was the same when it came to equipment. Wilderness outfitters were a rare commodity, even in such major metropolitan regions as the Kansai. After finally locating the principal retailer in the area, almost all items were double the price of the States.

Again the bleat of the gaijin, "it’s sooo expensive!"

I counted myself fortunate that I had brought much of the necessary kit along with me. What I needed was a good tent. The monsoon would be in full force by mid-August. The cheapest "mountain" tent was over four hundred US dollars. My budget forced me to make do with a more humble product; from its short dimensions, name "Sunrise," and colors, red and white, it must have made for the Japanese market. The price, about half of the real thing, together with its extremely lightweight, made me skeptical that it could survive the rigors of the Himalaya. Although I had been away from the mountains for years, I remembered how dependent the quality of life was on that of the "canvas." This tent would be my bubble of survival. When life became centered on the physical dimensions of dryness and warmth, its reliability was all-important. In the heat of the Kansai summer, however, distant memories, and their lessons, were overridden by more immediate financial concerns.

Slowly, through the growing heat and accompanying smog, I passed June and July, the mandala of the Himalaya ever before me—both materially on my wall and spiritually in the deepest recesses of my mind. There was always something to do in preparation: visa, maps, shots, and the obligatory photo supplies without which none of my trips would be complete. Although it had been several years since I had taken anything other than snapshots, I couldn’t possibly travel without my cameras, despite the ambiguity of return.

Then there was the daily ritual: rising and up the mountain before the atmospheric soup became too thick to endure. Each day got hotter, each trip to the top more difficult, no matter how early I would run. The hill seemed to get steeper, the miles longer. By the time I finished a run, I would be as wet as if I had been in the shower. I could wring cups of sweat out of my melon cap and my shoes, equally awash, would make squelching sounds as I climbed to my flat. What a sight I must have been to my perfectly groomed sarariimen neighbors—sweat isn’t publicly displayed in Japan, at least not in upscale Rokko. I was getting to that point of diminishing returns. The runs weren’t making me stronger, but, rather, breaking me down. It was time to depart.

The weeks went by to the point where I could rationally count days. My excitement grew into euphoria, drowning out the unpleasant past and present. Again I had a future, a dream. True it was open-ended, leading to the unknown, but it still gave me hope, more hope than I had in many months.

In those final weeks Elizabeth dragged in a young American student. He was contemplating his own Himalayan odyssey, but from the Tibet side. At first, I was less than enthusiastic, sure that he was doing to Elizabeth what I so wanted to do. Yes, even then, despite my pieties, I might have chucked it all, if she had given the nod. But as the young man unfolded his ambitious plan—to cross the Himalaya from China to Nepal on a budget of one thousand dollars—my initial annoyance evaporated. I remembered earlier times when I too had been as bold, trusting my luck, entering the unknown with only a few bucks in my pocket. I loaned him a volume on Tibetan travel, the work of my friend, Paul Lowell.

Shortly after our meeting, I received a call from the student. Most casually he mentioned, "It’s cold Paul died! He wasn’t that old and with so many more passes to cross. To die from…Damn that fuckin AIDS! Soon there won’t be anyone left."

He assumed I knew about Paul’s death, but with all the shit of the past year, I had lost track. What a shock, for somehow Paul had seemed indestructible. He had gone through so much. We had history and, out of the blue, that history ended.

I first met Paul in Nam. He was doing "alternative" service as a teacher in a remote hamlet in the Delta. At the time, Paul had been more naive; he thought that teaching would be preferable to killing. His stint there made him see otherwise, (even more so after Phoenix swept through). Shortly after he arrived, it was made clear what was expected. Nothing heavy, just report occasionally on village affairs: who was seen with whom; who was missing; what strangers came to visit. That was the sort of thing, tidbits that helped the PRUs in their bloody work of covert assassination— "crowd control." A smack-happy Gunny who worked for G-2 put me on to him.

"If ya wanna know what’s going on, there’s this c.o. fuck…you know one of those Shak…no, it’s Quakers. I mean…well I guess he’s not that bad even though…a real odd one…but he’s a goddamned gold mine."

Eventually, Paul got hip, and the reality of his role blew him away. Why did peasants, rice farmers, need to know English? Yes, Paul began to tune into certain aspects of cultural imperialism. He bailed as soon as his tour finished.

I lost track of him for some years, but when I started up the treks, our paths crossed again. Paul was trying to make a name as a Himalayan wala—he too had taken his R&R there. It was another case of once having been to those mountains, falling in love, and thereafter desperately seeking ways to return. He heard about my new company and contacted me for work as a guide. In the mountains, our separate adventures served as goads to one another—get back out there and cross one more pass, explore one more valley. After the bust, Paul went his own way—perhaps leery of being tainted by my own failure—carving out a niche through his writings. In Paul’s travels, I found an alter ego and, as I spun my wheels in the pen, I could take imaginary furloughs in his words.

Paul once called himself the "Angrez Gujar," and I guess that is the side of him I would most like to remember. I only traveled once with Paul, to the Gharwal. We were surveying the route to the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, for one of our tours. There is this vision I have carried of Paul since that time. It is how I want to remember him—Paul the sirdar, guide, mosafer, my guru of the Himalaya. We took our picture in Auli, a place of pastures, high up on the mountain, looking out toward the Tibetan border. The panorama is a one-eighty plus sweep of ice peaks cut deep by green valleys, each rich with ancient Hindu tradition, a true land of the Gods. In the foreground of all that grandeur, Paul, tall, gaunt, sun-seared, and bearded, squats down on his haunches, clothed in the loose, shalwar-kameez, sharing a chillum with one of our Bhotia porters. I am there too, only slightly out of focus—I was rushing back after triggering the delayed release. In some ways we could be twins, at least physically, except I am a bit more robust, or at least I was. Paul looks every bit a Gujar.

Gujars! They were another of those memories, so real at the time and then lost in that sea of past experience. They are still there, I can recall faces, remember names, but only when I happen upon a spark of association that brings them back. Gujars have figured on so many of my treks, their ponies contracted to carry my loads, shouldering the loads when the ponies could go no farther. They too were travelers, distinct from the local people. Wily and proud rogues, they would drive a hard bargain, but once a bargain was made, I never knew them to renege. More than I could say for many of the village men I employed; more than I could say even for myself.

Every spring they move vast flocks of sheep and goats from lowland plains to summer encampments, high in the alpine pastures of the Western Himalaya. Unlike much of the local population, Gujar men are tall and thin, with flowing turbans and beards. Like the photo of Paul, they wear the traditional shalwar-kameez over which they drape blankets of patterned hues of orange, red, and brown. They speak their own distinct language and stick mainly with their own, traveling en famille, wives, children, old women and men. The villagers accuse them of all sorts of crimes, as settled people often do. But though the tent is home for much of the year, their enormous flocks attest to the great wealth some of these families possess.

Like the Gujar, Paul had a similar need to move, see new lands, meet new people, and lose himself in the Himalaya. Back in California, his Venice apartment was bare of all except the most necessary furnishings, the space given over to a vast collection of books, maps, and papers, all dealing with things Himalayan. Even his relationships were constrained by this passion. Most of his friends shared his love for the Himalaya—they had to if they wanted to be his friend. Maybe he feared putting down any real roots that might keep him from these mountains. When I heard Paul had died, not on some distant pass or peak, but in hospital with AIDS, my first thought wasn’t, how sad he died, but how fucked he died that way. I mean, I don’t know anything about his personal life…I have no idea how he got it. Yet after all the risks, the near misses he had met in his travels, with his love of the mountains, to waste away in a hospital bed…. Jesus!

As I made the final preparations, I pondered Paul’s fate. In my first rush, I imagined my destiny was to continue Paul’s work, to cross those passes yet to be crossed by Paul. In the news of his death was I being offered new purpose to rejuvenate my own life?

Alone, staring at the blank wall of the unknown, life has a way of speaking directly to you. This may seem irrational to those immersed in the full swing of a life, those who can relate to actual flesh and blood. But to the lonely, those living on the margins, there can only be this abstracted communication with life. Life no longer has individualized faces, Mei, Paul, Tara, Elizabeth…. Instead the dialog is with Life, faceless and impersonal as that abstraction may be. It was Life that spoke, but the language was difficult, and easily misinterpreted. Its text required many readings before the message could be understood. As I pondered, I became increasingly thoughtful of Paul, his dedication and how his life, except for those few who knew him intimately, now lives in what he wrote. Someday…no, right now in what I am doing here, I will set down my own experience…give meaning to all that I have done. Is that crazy? At times I can accept all is chaos, that it is only our own particular affliction, our curse, to demand order. I envy those who can let go, if any such dudes exist. At times I am almost there, when I get high, when…but then you always have to come down, back to this need to find meaning.

The many aberrant rays of experience finally coalesced into a distinct image, the romantic again ascendant. I was going to an unknown destiny, where kismat and karma would judge. I placed my life in the hands of abstracted fate, so much a human failing when overcome by uncontrollable forces. Yes, all ties to the past would be cut, and I would disappear, sky-clad, into my mountains. But in my mind, even more than on my back, was the accumulated baggage of years gone by. When the day of departure finally arrived, my burden was much greater than the baggage-counter scales revealed. I hoped that my journey would tear this saman away.