HERE IS THE 'MEXICO DIARY' SECTION FROM MASAHIKO SHIMADA'S NOVEL HIGAN SENSEI (1992) IN THE TRANSLATION BY PROF. KENNETH L. RICHARD THAT WAS READ AT THE HARBOURFRONT WORLD FESTIVAL OF AUTHORS IN OCTOBER OF 1993. MR. SHIMADA WAS PRESENT.

Mexico City - Winter

Wednesday

We check in to the Majestic, a colonial style hotel facing the Zocalo. Luckily for him, Pat and I get a suite all to ourselves. I think Agnes had been right to warn me. Pat might have some educating in store.

The air is thin here and so I have difficulty breathing. The whole place is shrouded in smog. New York's air is clean by comparison. By the time we go back, I'll have grown longer hairs in my nose.

Immediately, we go out for a walk. For the first few days, we're going to do the normal tourist things. First, the cathedral. I'm fascinated briefly by the jumble I see in the facades, as though the domes and towers have been stolen from somewhere else in the world and reassembled. Then I'm told, to boot, that the place occupies the site of an Aztec temple. And before that, a lake? This has all the ingredients of a nightmare.

Next to the hotel there's a pawnshop run by the government; in front, the Plaza Santo Domingo with its collection of print shops and scriveners, businesses consisting of a single typewriter catering to the needs of the illiterate for notes of love, dispute, and honor. Same business as mine really; writing love stories on contract.

We go back to the hotel about three for a short rest, then walk to the Plaza Mariachi before six. On the way, we walk through a quarter where shop after shop sells nothing but wedding dresses. Suddenly Pat and I look at each other and laugh. For some reason, all the mannequins in Mexico City are attractive. Shall I buy one in a wedding dress? Sometime in the future I might exchange the contents for a real woman, I think.

A throng of musicians is ensconced in Plaza Mariachi. Pat haggles on a price with three of them for a lively march tune which they play as they walk. I find that, in the end, this is a ploy to have them lead us to a good restaurant.

I gorge on enchiladas and tacos, guzzle the tequila. This is how we are to eat every day, I think. I get drunk quickly in the thin air.

Thursday

At five o'clock in the morning I am jolted awake by the sound of a big drum in the Plaza. The guards are raising the national flag of Mexico. I can't bear the thought of being beaten awake every morning at five. Pat suggests we move to another hotel soon.

About eleven, Pat goes off to meet an old school friend while I go alone to see the National Museum of Anthropology. Being alone overcomes me with a strange sense of intellectual curiosity, and so I buy a quantity of materials which I pour over in a cafe. I had made three sweeps of the galleries already and so I have a nearly perfect grasp of where things are.

I learn that two hundred years ago, the Aztecs, who were annihilated by the Spaniards, had also made a similarly barbarous living out of being mercenaries for city states other than their own. They had been a nascent power who grappled their way to the top through a combination of marriages of political convenience with powerful clans, and through clever maneuvering in internecine clan warfare.

The various civilizations that arose in Mexico (Olmec, Zapotec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Toltec) were all sustained by the religious authority of the priesthood, and so a single mistake on the part of the priests brought the whole thing down. Civilization to them was merely a tale made by priests. The Aztecs were annihiliated in exact accordance with their own myths, passed down through generations. Once there had been a war between those ruling factions who revered a god of darkness, the war god Teskatripoka as their tutelary deity, and those who worshipped a more cultured god, Quetzalcoatl, who disdained blood sacrifice. The Quetzalcoatl side was defeated and banished to the eastern sea. A calamity was to be brought by him in the first year of the Reed.

In that first year of the Reed, Cortez's army came out of the Atlantic Ocean to the east. They incited the anti-Aztec clans to war, rode out the battles and conquered Mexico. The native gods were ousted by the God of the bearded white man. The Aztec peoples believed that the universe had been destroyed four times before and they were living in the fifth period. But all that was annihiliated by Catholic civilization as well as by successive waves of material culture and socialist ideology. I wonder in which period of the universe Mexico is now living?

I think my place is with such defeated, conquered gods. Gods who have sunk to the farthest depths, by their very nature, deny the god thing. And so those who follow such gods have nothing to fear. They can survive anywhere because they know the victory to be gained in defeat.

Friday

Today we hire a guide and go to Teotihuacan. On the way, we stop at the main shrine of Mexican Catholics, the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The guide tells us, as he has done hundreds of times to tourists, of the 'miracle of Guadalupe.' In essence, a boy named Diego saw the Virgin Mary. A church is always built on the site of a miracle. Diego relayed the Virgin's oracular words 'build a church' to the bishop, but he asked for some proof. Diego met the Virgin again and was given a bouquet of roses. He wrapped them in his cloak and took them back to the bishop, and when he unwrapped the cloak, a statue of the Virgin Mary emerged

It appears that the Guadalupe miracle occured ten years after the fall of the Aztecs. Now I suppose the bishop would not have bought the idea of the miracle if the Virgin Mary had said forget about building a church, repair the Aztec temple.

Swept up in these side trips, it takes us two hours to reach Teotihuacan. After observing a donkey drinking cola at a souvenir stand, we climb the Pyramid of the Sun. The steps are steep and I get dizzy looking down. The word Teotihuacan in the Aztec language means 'place where man becomes god.' No way a man who has to squat because of the height is going to turn into a god. Gods love high places. Pat puts a question to me from the top of the pyramid.

"Would you like to have been there watching this civilization destruct?

"I think I'm there now."

"Standing here dont you wish you could meet somebody, a being out of this world who doesn't fit the common sense of the planet?"

"Would you make love with it?"

"I'd do my best."

"Even if the greatest act of extraterrestrial love was to murder the loved one?"

"Love is not a wasteland."

"Wrong. God's love is exactly that."

Pat puts his arms around my shoulders and kisses me on the cheek.

"You'd understand God's love if America were ever occupied, and the Wasps were made into slaves," I tell him. He laughs, thinking it's a joke, but I'm perfectly serious.

Saturday

That night, I dream about turning into an armadillo and tumbling down from the top of a pyramid. When I look at the clock, it is only five minutes to six. I have woken just before the drum resounds in the square in front of the hotel. Pat is not in bed, so I go to the living room where I find him, strangely, doing pushups. I fall down laughing.

Outside, it's raining. I feel weak and don't leave the hotel until evening. Pat goes shopping alone. For some reason, I have the urge to write and go to the desk. When Pat returns, I speak to him in Japanese, too involved in my writing to remember to switch back to English.

In the evening we go to an expensive Italian restaurant in the Zona Rosa. Pat's friend joins us. I can tell from a glance that the boy is gay, and that he is trying to divert my attention. I glance around at the other tables, catching only a third of what is being said at my own. Some women, dressed to the nines in an obvious display of wealth, are engaged in a heated gossip session. Behind them, a couple of men, showing off their chest hair under a flash of heavy gold chain necklaces, are sizing up the women. One of them even begins to croon! Pat's friend doesn't drink. I begin to feel a little high drinking rum and cokes by myself. By the time we leave the restaurant, I am so drunk that I can't walk straight. It's after twelve and the air has grown chilly, yet the lusting crowd gets progressively bigger, men and women alike fixing their stares on any and all. So what, their eyes say, if the night makes new loves to consummate?

Sunday

The diarrhea doesn't stop. Was it the ice I put in the rum and coke? I send Pat out for some medicine. By the afternoon, I return to some sense of normalcy. Pat says that Sunday is the day for the bullfights so, squeezing my anus as tightly as I can, I set out with him for the Plaza de Mexico.

It is, as I had heard, the largest bull arena in the world. The crowds cheer as the fanfare begins. A lump of black sinew appears at the bottom of a mammoth earthen mortar, and the matadors dance around it like butterflies. Unfurling their pink wings, they lure the bull to its death. The picadors on horseback ride forth and, like bees, thrust their stinging lances into the hump on the bull's back. Enraged, the bull, ringed in a muffler of blood, lowers its head and attempts a last desperate fight. Now the moment belongs to the star matador Jose. The crowd's attention focuses on the tip of Jose's lance. In an instant, the lance pierces thrillingly through the bull's heart. Spitting blood, the bull groans, and collapses.

I am riveted by the last moment, when the matador and the bull meet in a serene fixation of eyes. No one knows who will be slaughtered in that instant when lance and horns meet. I can think only that the bull will kill the matador, but, of course, the matador and the bull are joined in a common thought - kill the other. One slip in resolve invites death. Two sides locked in mortal combat, yet simultaneously united in a strong love. In the next second, this love becomes a sea of blood, and I am transfixed by the sight of the bull's semi-erect penis quivering faintly on the lower torso. After the matador has, by his own lance, severed the love he bears for the bull, he parades to the women in the stands, seeking indemnity for a love that will remain unconsummated for eternity.

Evening, and I am so excited I can't sleep. Though I have fought no bulls myself, still I have an erection all night.

Monday

I am awakened as usual by the sound of the drum. I crawl out of bed and look outside. I am still erect. I smoke a cigarette and then, as I am about to get back into bed, my eyes meet Pat's. You must have had trouble sleeping, he says,and I reply I'm in a strange mood.

"Want me to take care of it?"

I tell him to go ahead, fully aware of the implications. He gets into my bed and lays his hand on my still erect penis. I take off my pajamas, then my underpants. He climbs on top of me, and thrusts his semi-erect penis into my crotch. I am assaulted by the weight of his heavy chest, the bristling of his chest hair. I tell myself repeatedly that it is too late, that I can't resist, that it's no different than our wrestling. Yet the smell of his Chanel eau d'cologne unsettles me. An old girlfriend used to love that same scent. I must not close my eyes. I am wrestling in the nude with Pat. I am not having sex. He begins to attack me with his tongue.

My fingers dig deeply into Pat's ribs. As if by reflex, he writhes, and pulls away from me. I fly from the bed, and taunt him to a wrestling match.

"Trust me. I know what to do."

"If you want me, you'll have to use force. Rape me if you can."

Pat grins, and accepts the challenge.

"If I get a hold of your penis, I win."

He attempts to tackle me. I slip skillfully to the side. The ring evolves from the living room to the bath room. He is laughing yet serious. I am as alert as a matador. With my pillow as a shield, I fend off his attacks from above, from the left, the right, from below. I turn to flee. He locks his arms tightly around my waist, so I grab him by the neck in a head-lock and try to force him to the floor, but instead he grabs my penis, thrusts out his mouth, and takes it in. I have lost.

I entrust my body to Pat, and by dawn, my baptism is complete.

Tuesday

Dinner nearby, then back to the hotel bar for some drinks, when Pat starts to want me again. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather put the matter of yesterday's baptism aside, like something experienced in a dream. I feel guilty toward Agnes back in New York; yet I'm also gripped by the desire to go out and have a memorable one-night stand with one of the senoritas at the night club. I am defiant about doing whatever I please, despite my other half which is appalled at the infidelity of it all. Was the baptism a temporary diversion brought on by the excitement of the bullfights, or a way for me to thumb my nose at Pat's friend who had been so stand-offish to me? I have no idea. I am sure of one thing, however; now that I have received my baptism, anything is permissible. I am confused

Telling Pat I want to go out alone, I bolt from the hotel, and head for the night club. Immediately, I get the wink from a black-haired beauty of mixed blood, and I ask her to join me. I pay her one hundred dollars, she takes me outside and up to a friend's apartment. I am on a reckless high. She doesn't understand much English so we finish without any silly quibbling. Had I stayed put in the bar, I would have used all sorts of verbal defenses to deceive myself about my own mixed feelings. Again and again, I plead with her:

"Rape me. Please rape me."

Wednesday

At dawn, I return to the hotel feeling like a limp rag. My cheerful day-break incarnation now looks and feels like a ghoul. The thin air debilitates me.

Meaning to wash away the fatigue and the odor of the senorita's perfume, I soak in the bath tub, and fall asleep. When I wake, I find Pat, in his briefs, staring down at me. Oh God. How embarrassing. My defenceless sleeping face has given everything away. As though the punishment is to be worse than the crime, Pat tosses a bath towel over to me. He continues to gaze at me silently, his expression suggesting that he has sniffed out my secret. "Something wrong?" I say innocently, but Pat only smiles spitefully in return.

I sleep well past noon while Pat is out carousing with his rich Mexican friends. He makes alliances with gays in every city, not just in Mexico, and his acquaintances are all wealthy; nary a poor boy, a thug, or a Communist among them. Am I not a rarity in these gorgeous, courtly circles of diplomacy? I feel I am the sole recipient of his need to nurture. The truth is I can't stand such attention, even if it is well-meant. Deep inside, I even pride myself on knowing that there is no one in this world who could nurture me anyway.

Pat telephones after two to invite me to a party that evening at a friend's estate. Telling him I don't feel like it,I turn him down. He understands and hangs up. This time, he acts unusually cool about it. I decide to amuse myself and go out for a walk. My legs take me towards the busy street where we had seen a veritable forest of wedding dresses. I want to have a look at young girls laughing innocently together, sharing dreams of future wedding days. Engrossed in the mannequin beauties lining the show windows, I wind my way onto a back street. When I wrench my eyes from the displays, I see a woman with curlers in her hair and no make-up. She has one leg up on a chair, so that the breeze rustles the thick hairs on her calf. Her stifling body odor accosts me as I stand there wrapped in my fantasies of young girls' dreams. In a pushy voice, she asks me for a match. As I hand her my lighter, she points to a bar across the street and motions me to treat her to a drink. I ignore her and walk on, only to find myself forced to walk between two men who have just appeared in the street. Our shoulders brush lightly. The men call out for me to stop. When I turn around to look at them, I know I am in trouble. Their faces broadcast that they are hoodlums and that I am not to get off scot-free. Will there be a fight? Will I be relieved of my money? Both? Doing my best to smile amicably, I call out "How are you doing, amigo?" Then, with a wave of my hand, I walk away dragging my leg like a cripple, praying that the woman will not see through my instant replay of the Threepenny Opera. The woman and the two men whisper something in Spanish. They are not about to stoop so low as to rob a cripple. Even after they have left and are out of my sight, I tell my legs to maintain their crippled gait. My reward is a heavy coating of dust on my shoes.

Thursday

Suddenly, as we are having our room-service breakfast, Pat turns to me.

"Aren't you straining your limits trying to live this kind of lifestyle?"

I just stare back uncomprehendingly.

"You fell asleep in the bathtub yesterday. Remember? That's when it struck me. Your face was telling me you're forcing yourself to do something you don't want to do."

"What do I look like when I'm asleep?"

"Well, it would help if you didn't frown like you're in unbearable pain."

A wave of pity sweeps over Pat's face. I try to laugh it off, telling him it doesn't matter, that I'm just tired, but inside I am offended. In short, I have no intention of leading a life as orderly as his. I feel best living in uncomfortable situations. For me, pleasant, safe environments are, in themselves, a source of anxiety. If I know that someone's out there guarding the door, I can't fall asleep. It's much more natural for me to keep anxiety by my pillow, where it can drive me from my bed at any minute. When I frown in my sleep, there's a war going on in my consciousness, one that sets the I that insists on putting up with the boredom as usual against the I that commands me to get out there and enjoy a freer life; the power of my past propelling me into the future against the power of the future pressing me inexorably down; my reclusive impulses against my extrovertism, my temptation to seek salvation in other people against my readiness to annihilate them; the limitless repeating wrestling of oppression and buoyancy. Caught in the vise between the opposing enemies, I act as referee, deciding who will win or lose. And so I frown. If I am the ally of the winning side one day, when that day is done, I resume my neutral stance, ready to referee the next match. Willingly, I take the position filled with the most extreme anxiety. The more uncomfortable the surroundings, the more comfortable they are.

I have never seen how I look asleep. I hate the idea of being watched. Pat should have held his tongue. He has no right to read my furrowed brow for pain. Does he mean to say that I fail to see myself as I should be? This bunch of pious cookie-cutter talk sounds as though it's coming from a religious fanatic! I have to tell Pat at least a part of what I have to tell myself.

"Listen to me. My way of living has no principles or ideals. I need to live honestly. Sometimes I do revolting things, but I do what I want. That is not to say I do what I please. As long as I continue in my quandry, I am honest with myself; as long as I stay accustomed to both anxiety and pain, I am a happy man."

Friday

Ultimately, I have a fight with Pat. Ever since that Monday morning baptism, our relationship has been a rocky one. Pat has tried to approach me in his usual way, but I have been awakened to an odd self-protectiveness, and have tried to keep him from crossing any further over the wall I have erected around my conscience. This was why I was so angry at him when he watched me sleep. Anyway, the quarrel breaks out in the sauna at the fitness gym where we both go in the evening. Taking his cue from the fact that no one else is there, Pat embraces me and promises to take care of me. My reply is honest, and voiced in a tone that is hostile to his arrogant kindness.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm the kind of guy who turns happiness into bad tidings. Your sweetness isn't sweet to me. It makes me uneasy. I like the uneasiness you give me, but the more you want to protect me, the more confused I get. For me, you are a cause of frustration and suffering. It's in the very nature of our friendship."

Since last night, I have been thinking of how best to make myself understood in English. Pat drops his arms listlessly to his sides, and stares blankly at me. The silence unsettles me, and so I confess that I had returned that morning after spending the night with a woman from the nightclub. I go on to tell him all there is to tell: namely that I have a lover in New York whose name is Agnes who foresaw that I was headed towards a gay initiation, and that because her prediction had come true, I was at a loss as to what do do about it.

"Now I know why you looked uncomfortable with this. Believe me, I don't want to force you."

I strip away my bathtowel and answer him completely naked.

"I wanted to be forced. I tolerated it for the sake of our friendship."

I knew it had to all come out. Tears fill Pat's eyes. He whips me with his bathtowel. I decide to be a non-combatant.

"You may be having great fun torturing yourself, but I'm being had in the process. What a sad case you are. You're crazy."

Pat is right. I've received the baptism, yet claim I'm not a believer. Saying I want to have a relationship with a gay man, I'm making a joke out of being gay.

Flinging a 'Go to Hell!' at me, Pat bounds out of the sauna. I start to follow him, but then realize that nothing I could say would make it any better, so I stop and immerse myself in the jacuzzi.

Pat doesn't return to the hotel that night.

Saturday

Pat comes back just before noon. I'm in the midst of packing my bag.

"What are you doing?"

Pat's voice is hoarse. I apologize instead of answering his question. He asks why I'm apologizing, and I say it's because I'd made a fool of him.

"Listen, it's none of my business if you sleep with women, or if your lover has asked you not to turn gay. After all, I sleep with other guys too. What I need to know is whether you want to leave me or not."

I shake my head.

"You're one strange guy. No matter how I try to deny it, you are crazy. A mass of bad vibes."

"I know, but I didn't intend to set my bad vibes on you. How can I explain?"

"So you don't want to be gay. O.K. No bad vibes meant toward me. That's O.K. too. Any other excuses?"

"Everything you say shows you misunderstand me. Believe me, please. I rely on you."

"I rely on you too. What you're saying, then, is that we have to go back to just being friends. O.K. I release you. You're mad, but I have to respect that."

A smile spreads over Pat's face, but it can not hide his sadness.

Were I to submit to his love, I would suddenly grow uneasy. The words 'I love you' - the antidote to love - would gush forth from his body, and then where would we be? As long as I hang on to my tension, our love will not be the worse for wear. Love changes to cold-hearted malice, in fact, at the moment the gentleness and weakness we share are blown beyond their limitations. Love must be constantly monitored and timelessly renewed, or else, like a machine, it strips its gears, gums up, comes to a wrenching halt, sometimes recoiling with a counter-force strong enough to pull two people apart. Pat is trying to devour as much love as he can before this happens to us. Even he must seriously doubt where our relationship is likely to lead. And he won't face the fact that, although I'll go along with him for half of the ride, the other half remains lodged deep in my consciousness, a place that offers no understanding for Pat, which gives pleasure only to my senses. If Pat thinks love is merely an act, then I would wish to add introspection to that. The self-examination that follows being raped is equal in strength to the act itself; for me, both are equally erotic. Yet self-examination and introspection belong to a private world to which not even a lover has access. I have been stupid. It was careless to have spoken to Pat about the restricted area into which he had inadvertently wandered. Were I to be perfectly honest, our love would be mercilessly dashed to pieces.

That evening we have dinner as a form of reconciliation. Around eleven, we return to the hotel, and I write this. Before falling asleep, I think of Agnes. Exactly what sort of emotion had I invested in her? I dreaded speaking frankly to her about it for fear that, if I did, I might be sending her to her own death. I must go on forever being a hypocrite. This is not a joke.

Sunday

Why is it that when I keep such a serious diary, I feel as though I'm living a brilliant life?

Monday

We go to a gay nightclub. The place is jammed with people trying to sell their bodies for the highest possible price. A sour stink permeates every nook and cranny in the walls, rising up to the rafters, filling even the mouths of the crowd bellying up to the bar. On the center tables, gay dancers wiggle their tight little asses folded in mesh tights, but no one pays any special attention. Countless flies cruise the dimly lit barroom. Flesh markets are the same everywhere. A nice boy comes in and in one swoop, the flies swarm all over his face. And these flies are not afraid to make comments. 'That guy looks like an American loaded with money.'' The Asiatic next to him has his guard up.'

"Can you tell which of the customers is first class?"

Pat whispers at my earlobes. What rich man other than Pat would have a liking for such a rubbish heap of a place! Just look at everyone's appearance. They're all wearing tired old street clothes. And look at the eyes of the men who set the flies flying. Brimming with determination to crawl up out of their poverty. There's one now right in the act of searching out the first class customers.

"You must be considered a first class customer."

"Now, yes, but seven years ago I wasn't much different from most of them here."

"I see. You're telling me you made your way up by grabbing onto one of the biggies?"

Pat grins and motions toward a middle-aged man with thinning hair leaning against the wall next to the entrance

"He's first class. Money and status."

"How can you tell?"

On first glance, he strikes me as no more than a subway attendant.

"See how everyone is discreetly trying to get his attention? They want him to take notice."

Now that he mentions it, I can see that flies are certainly swarming around him too. Does the middle-aged man give off an aura visible only to boys in the trade? Pat says that he had an intuition when he first saw me in his New York nightclub. That guy has good DNA. How could I cope with having my DNA probed, to say nothing of my sleeping face? Still, I suppose I must give credit to Pat's powers of intuition. In essence, the idea is first to identify a guy who appears to be on the road to realizing his American Dream. Next step is to win him over, thereby moving a bit closer to the one who's really got it all. Hovering over Hollywood and Broadway, the mists of yearning and dream intoxicate the gullible. Yet the only thing which emerges from these misty vapors is a signboard on which is written 'The American Dream.' The real American Dream consists of knowing the tricks of getting on in life--making connections, and finally latching on to someone who has it all. The one essential trick of the trade is to always know when to say yes or no. If you get caught in indecision, your aims and principles are on shaky ground. I'm constantly vacillating. That's why people see me as crude, and why I lose bets. I know that thinking too hard dulls your competitive edge, but I still find myself doing it. If you let yourself think about how wonderful last night's sex was while you're out hunting, now you'll lose your prey.

I drink my beer on the hunting-ground where all eyes are fixed on prey and ponder my descent from a race of sedentary rice cultivators. Apparently, it is to regain some of his fighting spirit as a once proud gay warrior that Pat takes himself off, from time to time, to such bloodthirsty nightclubs as this one. Even so, I can hardly believe that I have been such a spectacular catch for him. Were it not for his slightly excessive spiritual capacity, he could never have put up with my crudity.

Did he, I wonder, intend to pass on his luck of the chase to me?

Tuesday

We return to New York via Miami. To the very end, I have the feeling of having been completely confined to the limits of a narrative of Pat's own design. My poor English cannot convey what is really on my mind; all I can do is fib, play the fool, and try to cover up the truth. Yet when I make the effort to consult a dictionary in order to communicate my true feelings to him, I meet only anger. Instead of a dialogue of the soul in words, my attempts only lead to an increase in entropy. Perhaps it would be even worse in Japanese. This language at least provides me with excuses to escape tight spots. What is one's mother tongue, after all, but a language that enables one to swear that black is white, or to throw up a smokescreen in front of an adversary?

I wish that I had begun my diary much earlier. A diary can become a place of refuge from the day's mistakes and embarrassments. There is no more convenient way to give coherence to one's speech and actions, to keep in linguistic shape. For this reason, one writes only lies in one's diary. The very process of writing a diary itself becomes a lesson in how to lie more expertly.

Today I make an effort, in my conversation with Pat, to stick to the subjects of weather and food. Over shrimp cocktails at the Miami airport, we talk about baseball. My hero is Nagashima. His is Pete Rose. When the subject turns to the movies, I tell him that I am a fan of Samuel Fuller. He tells me he is a fan of Yasujiro Ozu.