The Man In The Moon Is Japanese

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I've always had a thing for Oriental women, and was reminded of that the night I watched a program about life in Tokyo.  Hey, now there’s a place just filled with them!  It’s every man’s fantasy. 

There was a girl that graced an ad for a local Japanese restaurant, and man, was she beautiful.  My head danced at the thought of meeting her.  I imagined us living in a paper house with a goldfish pond, and seeing her run at my every beck and call.  And then I made the dream even better by bringing in lots of geisha girls to bathe me!

Still dreaming about the girl on TV, I went to the steakhouse.  I had just started looking at the menu when two couples sat down near me.  They were funny looking country people, and I could tell right off that they had never been anywhere. Let me tell you, even though I came from a scum of the rural earth town called Poville, Mississippi, and was raised in a snake handling church, I at least know how to dress and act.  These people beat all I had ever seen.  Earl, the outspoken one, wore a t-shirt with something raunchy printed on it, and Hoyt wore overalls.  And the women were overly tanned, with cut off jean shorts, high heels and dyed blonde hair.  I decided to kick back and enjoy the show.  By the way, my name is Levi. 

One of the men started mocking how the Orientals talk. 

“Ching chong!  Wing ding!” 

“Earl, you shut yore damn mouth!” his wife said.  I gathered that her name was Gladys, and the other couple’s names were Hoyt and Mary Lou.

“I can’t take him anywhere,” exclaimed Gladys. 

“Well, you just did!  Huh huh!” laughed Earl.  He cupped his hand over his mouth and spoke in a loud whisper. 

“Ding dong!” 

Gladys hit him over the head with the menu and he got quiet, if only for a little while.

“China is a ancient ci-vi-lie-za-shun,” Earl said. 

“This here’s a Japanese restaurant!” Gladys answered. 

“What’s the difference?” asked Earl. 

“Well, they’s different,” said Gladys.  “Now read the menu.” 

“Well, they all look the same to me, “ Hoyt said.  “With their pointy hats and slanty little eyes.”

“They ain’t got no pointy hats on, you fool,” Mary Lou said to Hoyt. 

“They eats dogs over there,” Earl said.  “And snakes too.”

“You don’t know that,” Gladys retorted.

“They do!” answered Earl.  “I bet they cook dog meat here.”

“I ain’t eatin’ it,” Mary Lou declared.

“Ya’ll just read the menu,” ordered Gladys. 

“They’ll cook it in front of you and you’ll know it ain’t dog.”

“I didn’t get no knife,” Earl said. 

“I didn’t either,” Hoyt added.

“We’ll ask for ‘em,” said Gladys. Hoyt looked at the menu, and remarked that he “didn’t see no taters.” 

“They don’t eat taters?” he asked. 

“I guess not,” answered Mary Lou. “Or cornbread either, from what I can see.  Hell, they ain’t got nothing here we like!  No catfish… No gator…”

“I’ll try the chicken and shrimps,” offered Earl.

“But you always eat steak, don’t you?” asked Gladys. “At home, you like it when I put the teriyaki sauce on it.”

Earl looked her in the eye and spoke sternly.

“I ain’t gonna eat no damn dog.” 

“Does squids come from around here?” Hoyt asked. 

“I ain’t never caught no schwids,” Earl said.

“They‘s from the ocean, that‘s why,” said Gladys.

“What do they look like?” asked Earl.  They all looked at each other, but nobody knew.

At that point, the waiter walked up. 

“We ain’t got no knives,” Gladys said to him.

“You no need,” he answered. 

“Whar’s the bread?” Hoyt asked.

“No bread.  Rice.”  Earl spoke up next. 

“I want chicken and shrimps.  And a beer.”

“Ladies are ’sposed to go first, you jarhead!”  Gladys hollered at him. 

“I don’t see any,” Earl said.  At that, Gladys got up, and spoke to the waiter.

“I’ll have the steak and shrimp with mushroom soup and a diet cola.”  Then she walked past Earl, and slapped him so hard that they probably heard it out in the street.

Hoyt asked if they had any crawdads, which put a perplexed look on the waiter’s face.

“Who dad?” he asked. 

“Never mind,” Hoyt said. 

Not noticing how red in the face Mary Lou was getting, Hoyt said he wanted chicken and shrimp and beer.

“Can I get fries with that too?” he asked the waiter.

“You want fried?” 

“No.  French fries,” Hoyt said.

“French fried?” the waiter asked. 

“Yeah.  French fries.”

“No.  No fries.  Rice.” 

Mary Lou looked at Earl, who was holding his hand up against his face.  And by then, she had gotten so mad that her own face was as red as a tomato in the sunshine. 

“Hoyt, do you see a lady here?” Hoyt looked at Earl, then turned back to Mary Lou.

“Yes, I does.” 

Mary Lou turned to the waiter, and ordered the steak, then said she would go to the restroom too.  She got up, and Hoyt got up and backed away so fast that she would have had to chase him to slap him.  So she just gave him an evil look, and walked off.

Just then, Gladys came back, and pulled at Earl’s hand.

“How’s your face, hon?” she asked.

“Okay, I guess…” 

She grabbed his wrist, and slammed his hand down on the flat, hot cooking surface. 

“Eeeowhhh!” 

By then, the owner of the restaurant, whose name badge said Hiso Fat, ran over.

“You no can do that here!  Just eat!” 

They looked around, and saw that everybody was staring at them, and finally realized what a scene they had created.  After that, they were silent as the cook brought the cart of food to be cooked.  But some things never change.  Hoyt was the first to speak again.

“Is those Louisiana shrimp?”  The cook just looked at him, but then broke out a smile. 

“Better than that,” was his reply. 

“What’s in this here sauce?”

“Top secret,” was his answer.  Though I couldn’t be certain, I think Hoyt whispered that the Enola Gay had been a secret too.  He and the others then got quiet again, as the cook worked his high speed magic with the cutlery.  In fact, I think they were a bit scared. 

Gladys ate some steak, and put a piece on Earl’s plate.

“N.  O.  No!”

“Oh, come on Earl,” Hoyt said.  “It looks good to me.” 

“You no rike?” the waiter asked.  Earl’s reply was short and quick.

“Wing ding!”

The cook said something in Japanese to the cook at the next table, then he put on such a display with the knives, and and made such banging noises against the stove that he got the attention of everyone in the restaurant.  Then came the coup de grace.  He threw a huge knife over Earl’s head, and the other cook did the same.  The knives collided in the air, bounced by their handles off the top of Earl’s head, then landed point down in the piece of steak on his plate.  The cook then showed them the palm of his hand.

“Money!”  The two couples shook like leaves in a hurricane, put everything they had on the table, and made a bee line for the door.  I’d never seen anything like it. 

Just then, I looked up and saw her.  She was a stunning beauty, with long black hair, and almond-shaped eyes.  She looked so innocent.  Her name was Sumi, or something close to that. 

“Would you rike sake?” she asked.  I said sure.  I then proceded to eat more Japanese food, and drink more sake than one person should ever be subjected to.  I tried to find out if she had a boyfriend, and make other small talk, but it there seemed to be no way to get close to her.  And an older women from the back kept coming out and looking at me. 

I was thinking of pretending to choke when she brought me the ticket.  But instead, I decided to wave a lot of money around.  Girls always like that.

“Want to talk?”  At that, she combed my hair with her fingers. 

“Ooh, I rike Revi a lot.”  Then she held out her hand. 

“Five dollah!”  It appeared to be a common joke of hers.

After that we talked about a lot of things.  It appeared she couldn’t stand up to her parents over something or other so she just left.  And if and when she were to ever return, she would be shunned.  I asked how could someone go around the world and not see their parents, and the main answer was money. 

In fact, I got the impression that money was all that mattered to her. And electronic possessions.  A new type of cell phone came out, and she just had to have it.  Then a new type of computer came out, and she had to have that too.  I couldn’t live with someone to whom money and possessions means everything.  Back home, we call it Keeping Up With The Wehunts.  You get this and you buy that, until one day you’re left with no home in which to put it all.  Up north, it’s probably called Keeping Up With The Rigolettos.  I didn’t agree with all she said, but I was still able to get a date for the next night, and soon started seeing more of her. 

She liked to ride in my new, yellow Mustang, and swing her purse with kittens on it around in the air.  Sometimes I thought that she liked my car more than me. 

“Oh, I ruv Revi’s car.“  Yeah, especially when she’d say that.  Also, the fact that the relationship was strictly platonic made me feel more sure of it.  She had a nice butt, though, and I called her Budi.  She thought it meant Little Buddha. 

One day, at her apartment, I got to see some of the things she worked on.  She appeared to have some kind of one-person internet import business.  Don’t they all?  And it sounded like she painted detailed waterfall scenes on the backs of June bugs with teeny tiny paint brushes.  Bugs imported from Japan, of course.

I somehow brought up the church I went to as a child, and asked what hers was like. 

“I don’t berieve in God, she said.

“You don’t?” I asked.

“No.  I berieve in Buddha!  Ha ha!”

“Five dollah!”

I didn’t say it, but I had a feeling Buddha must have been a rich man. 

One day, I thought of something to ask Sumi.  I had always been intrigued by the mysterious ways of the Orient, and of the women especially, as they display a secretive allure that the Western man can’t resist.  Looking at her, I could only imagine what knowledge of the world she possessed, or the acts she’d committed in the throes of passion and desire.

Could it be that on a misty night, she had stabbed the wife of her lover with a sword, making her fall over the cliff and onto the rocky surf below?

Or perhaps she would pour me the ultimate, intoxicating aphrodisiac, fulfilling all my innermost desires, only to leave me to die in a heavenly, paralyzed state. There were many answers I simply had to hear from her. 

“Sumi,” I said to her.  “Tell me your biggest secrets.”

“Huh?”  She tilted her head, and gave me a quizzical look.

“Tell me your innermost secrets.  Those things only you would know.”

“Ret’s see…”  She put the end of her paintbrush handle in her mouth, and appeared to be in deep thought.  I leaned in closer, so as to hear the magic words clearly.

“Okay,” she finally said.  “It may not be big secret, but I get deal at drugstore with expired coupons, and senior citizen discount.  But onlry when brind as bat woman there on Thursdays." 

I felt totally dumbfounded.  That was it?  Was that really all?  That was the mysteries of the Far East explained?  She laughed and said yes.  Then she held out her hand. 

“Five dollah!”

Oh well.  Life sure ain’t like the movies.

Another time, she started sketching an idea for a scene which included the man in the moon.  A Japanese man, naturally.  I remarked that if it had been me drawing it, I’d  have drawn an American man.  Personally, I‘d always thought the man in the moon looked like somebody who was drunk.

“And the Chinese would draw Chinese man,” she said.  Then she looked at me.

“You know, we hate Chinese people.  They rike your niggers.” 

“Hmmm.”  I was really surprised to hear that from her, and thought about how that stuff must be the same all over the world.  And the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t like what she’d said.

Then she read me a Japanese legend about a man that was cursed by a witch to become the man in the moon for all time.  It was an interesting story, but my mind was preoccupied with something else.  I watched her draw for a while, and realized that the situation  wasn’t everything I’d dreamed it would be.  I was just “there," and felt like things weren't going to get any better. 

Soon after, we were standing outside by the car and I said that I needed to go home for a while.  Right!  In my mind it was more like, anywhere else forever.  Sayonara!  She said she was leaving for New York.  She had originally thought that all of America was like New York, and I guess she wanted a bigger bite. 

“Rast time I see Revi’s car,” were the last thing words she said. 

That does it, I told myself.  I skipped on the hug while pretending there was an important business call coming over the phone, threw a wave, and drove off in the modern golden idol on wheels. 

Harry McDonald
2006