My Year of Meats by Ruth L. Ozeki Page A

the Year of Meats. His name was Sloan and he was a musician from Chicago. A mutual friend had sort of set us up, but I was never in New York much and he was always on the road, so it was months before we actually met in person. Instead we got into this phone sex thing. I’d call him up late at night from some trucker’s motel in Gnawbone, Indiana, or wherever we happened to be shooting, and we’d have these libidinous conversations that went on into the night. Production paid the bills, so it didn’t matter how long we talked. When we weren’t on the phone we’d fax, and I could usually count on a transmission waiting for me at the front desk when I’d check into a new motel. It made things interesting, helped mark the time. I always wondered if the desk clerks read our faxes or listened in to our calls.
    “Exotic? Well, botanically speaking, yes, but not what you’d expect. I’m more of a hybrid or a mutant.... I’m tall. Very tall, pole thin....
    “Green eyes, shaped like my Japanese mother’s with her epicanthic fold. My dad’s eyes were blue. The green’s not traceable, but Ma thinks it’s the oni and I’m the devil’s spawn....
    “Brown hair. Usually. Sometimes I dye it when I’m not working. Short, but respectable. No, like really short. Like boy short. Yeah, with a couple of AWOL parts that stick out in front....
    “Breasts? Upstanding, small. Never discouraged, never lethargic ... Yes, quite sensitive ... Hmm, yes, some pain is good....
    “Now? At a truck stop. Lying on the bed looking up at the drop ceiling ... An old army-green sleeveless undershirt and brand-new boxer shorts from Wal-Mart ... Haven’t been near a laundromat in weeks. Yes, men’s shorts ... More room to move around in ...
    “The room? Lurid. Weeping walls and peeling ceilings, and it reeks of Tiparillos. The wallpaper’s flocked, harvest gold with a floral pattern. The walls are riddled with pockmarks, looks like from an air gun, and the mirror has a large crack in it. Mattress like a sponge. The carpet is golden, too, and sticky, so I’m wearing my combat boots ... unlaced, no socks.... No. You know what it’s like? A 1960s porn set: exotic Eurasian of ambiguous gender, dressed in men’s underwear and combat boots, lying on her back having phone sex on the damp polyester bedspread—sort of post-Vietnam nostalgia-porn thing. A quick little R and R fantasy in Tokyo or Seoul. I should call the boys in to film it. There must be a market for this....”
    We finally met in Nebraska. I got back to the motel after a day of shooting a Mrs. Beedles and her Busy-B-Brisket, to find Sloan sipping a martini at the motel bar. He had no trouble recognizing us, of course, being as we were the only Japanese television crew in the 77,355 square miles of high plains that is Nebraska. He strolled over to us and extended his hand.
    “Jane Takagi-Little? Sloan Rankin, Nebraska Film Commissioner. It’s my distinct pleasure to welcome you and your distinguished crew to the Cornhusker State.”
    I tripped over the tripod I was carrying. Suzuki and Oh and the director were right behind me, so I introduced them all, and that’s when I noticed something peculiar about the Japanese crew—they would not look an American in the face. The director, a shy, sweet man this time, approached the ersatz Commissioner with desperation and gusto. In a valiant simulation of a hearty American greeting, he pumped Sloan’s hand, but he was unable to raise his eyes from the floor. When Oh’s turn came, his body just seemed to rotate like a magnet driven away by an opposing charge. Suzuki was the most successful ; he fixed his gaze in the region of Sloan’s solar plexus and haltingly greeted the string tie Sloan had purchased as part of his Commissioner disguise. Along with the cowboy hat. Or so he told me later.
    “Will you be visiting our national forest during your stay?” Sloan drawled with unctuous aplomb. “It truly is one of Nebraska’s more notable