It is strange that it hasn't occured to me until now, that I have my own Lover story to tell.
When I was 15 years old, a shy, tremulous Japanese exchange student came to stay with our family. His name was Matsuo, and as my father, headmaster of the local highschool and president of Rotary Club, had organised the exchange, the first house he was billeted in was ours.
He arrived fresh off the plane carrying a suitcase filled with packets of dried octopus, seaweed and exquisitelywrapped gifts of green tea, bamboo fans and Mt Fuji scarves. We had never met a Japanese person before and our knowledge of anything Asian extended as far as the local Chinese restaurant (we loved chicken chow mien and fried rice and used to take our own saucepans down to be filled to the brim) and the songs from the Mikado my dad had performed in with the Shepparton Amateur Gilbert & Sullivan Society.
Matsuo spoke no english, and carried around a tiny pale blue dictionary which he would leaf through with his long thin fingers. He was slight, short for a man I guess (same height as me), and blinked like a fawn startled in the forest. He was no shrinking violet either and had studied Kendo, the martial art of swordsmanship practiced with bamboo swords. He showed us his moves in the backyard and I was suitably impressed. My brother and I were big on judo, always trying to drop each other to the ground with a judo hold.
I don't know if it was he who showed me all his packets of dried fish, or whether I went snooping in his wardrobe and found them there. I don't think he ever tried to give it to my mum or cook it for himself. I remember his showing me how he would place his clothes under the mattress to 'press' them. Advice from his mother I guess, in case we didnt have an iron.
He started school in my class although he was a couple of years older and soon made friends with the local school boys who took great joy in teaching how to swear and generally behave badly.
As far as I know he had no formal English lessons but he picked it up fairly quickly. We took him travelling all around Victoria, out into the bush and up into the mountains and he became part of our family. It was a big deal for my ex RAAF dad even though he hadn't fought against the Japanese, it was a gesture of reconciliation and I know Matsuo understood the weight of it . So much so that in the years to come he would always refer to my mother and father as his Australian parents, and every Christmas a beautifully wrapped and boxed gift would arrive, green tea, sake or perhaps a silk scroll.
Matsuo moved on to stay with other families, by which time he was more confident and had even developed an aussie sense of humour. But I think we were the lucky ones as we got to experience his early days at close range. And as we sheltered and loved him as a family member he began to blossom. Not that love was ever expressed verbally in our family, but we each found our own way of letting him know. I was fascinated by his Asian otherness, his shyness, his beauty, his slightness, his nervous gestures, his laugh.But most of all it was his vulnerability I loved, I'd never seen that in a male before and he seemed to accept me exactly as I was too. That was our unspoken pact — one of acceptance. I can't remember any romantic gesture between us although there must have been some tension in the air. I certainly had my fantasies late at night as I listened to low volume jazz singers on the radio I kept under my bed. But what to do when your father is the high school principal and a fierce one at that, which is what makes the second part of this story even more startling.
We moved to another town the following year, to another Education Department house right next door to yet another school. I only had two years of high school left and in the second of those years another Japanese Exchange student came to stay. My brother had left home to study in the city so we were a smaller family to welcome and take him in as before, only Daiki was every different from Matsuo. Physically he was shorter, with a chunkier, with a squat body, confident ( make that over confident), with not an ounce of vulnerability showing. Good looking, but not beautiful. Energetic, speedy, competent in English, he was the kind of guy who looked like he would get what he wanted in life. We did all the same things, took him touring around the country side, introduced him to our Aussie way of life, which he embraced wholeheartedly. While I quite liked Daiki and all his brashness and bravado, another part of me wished he had a touch of Akira's humility and sensitivity.
Our family wasn't the same either. We were all a bit fractious and tense. I was studying for my final exams and had been fighting with my dad over my right to sleep and study in the bungalow ( a room detached from the main house, like a granny flat) He finally agreed, but seemed to be saying no to everything else I wanted to do, banning me from going out to parties with friends and making me stay home and study, telling me I would end up a shop girl if I didn't put in three hours per night.
When dad ended up in hospital with a heart attack, I didn't seem to care. At least he would be off my back for a week two. My mother Marj took to her bed with the stress of it all and my little sister must have been spending time at a friend's place.
It was the end of summer, still hot and steamy. no aircon in those days. Daiki and I were left to our own devices. To beat the heat we were lying about on the loungeroom floor with the fan on, watching black and white TV. At one point, I happened to roll over and our arms touched. It was electric, like two live wires igniting. We got into a serious pash, and rolled around some more. I'd done this before with boys of my age after the pictures or at parties in someone's lounge room when we turned all the lights off. But I sensed this was different. This boy was not a boy but a man. He told me he wanted to sleep with me, that he was already experienced, as his father had taken him to a brothel when he turned fifteen.
I don't remember if Marj emerged from the bedroom or what we ate for dinner. Maybe she sent us down to get fish and chips. We would have watched more TV as we ate (hopefully the Mavis Bramston Show was on) and pashed some more. At around nine, Daiki would have made sounds like he was going to bed in my old bedroom next to my parents room. I would have gone out to my bungalow which the sound of the screen door slamming would confim. Daiki would have crept out not long after, holding the door so it didn't slam, cushioning it into its place. Then he would have walked a few steps to my room. He wouldn't have knocked but walked straight in. Another screen door to contend with but maybe he didn't even worry about that one. All the reasons my father hadn't wanted to let me sleep in the bungalow were about to be played out. It hadn't occured to me once that outside the boundary of the family home, I might fall prey to the needs of the opposite sex.
After years of bad sex ed talks I knew how babies were made and I knew I didn't want to make one that night . Daiki probably didn't want to either but he hadn't come prepared, unless he had some special techniques up his sleeve that his father had taught him. I wouldn't have believed him anyway. Nice girls like me didn't even know what a condom or french letter looked like so what could have been a night sensual delight turned into one long wrestle while he tried every way possible to get his albeit small penis inside me, I tried everyway I could think of to fight him off. In the process I would say he managed to deflower me several times with his digits for he seemed desperate to get some part of him inside me.
We must have slept and woken up together in the early hours before he crept back to his bedroom. I do remember feeling elated because despite the tiresome wrestle now I could say I had slept with a man. The trouble is I wouldn't be telling a soul, not even my best friend, as Daiki and I had made an agreement during the night that we would keep our affair a secret. We knew that offering this kind of welcome to the new exchange student was not quite what the Rotary Club or the headmaster had in mind and that if we were found out someone's head would roll.
I didn't let him spend the night in my bungalow again. When my father came home from hospital it was thankfully all too difficult and not long after that Daiki went to stay with another family. But we did arrange secret meetings disguised as cross country training. After school he would head out of town on one route and I on another and we would meet up on a green hill top overlooking the river. We would lie down on a carpet of dandelion flowers and he would paw and poke me with his fingers again. I longed for the tenderness a different kind of lover could give me, but from him it was never forthcoming. Eventually one day after school by the big pine tree near the woodwork room I told him I didn't want to continue, that my exams were coming and I had to concentrate on my studies. He broke down in tears and begged me to change my mind. I felt hard and cruel but I wouldn't budge. 'My mind is made up,' I said. 'I'm sorry, it's over.' I never really liked him anyway I told myself. Not the way I liked Matsuo.
When I was 15 years old, a shy, tremulous Japanese exchange student came to stay with our family. His name was Matsuo, and as my father, headmaster of the local highschool and president of Rotary Club, had organised the exchange, the first house he was billeted in was ours.
He arrived fresh off the plane carrying a suitcase filled with packets of dried octopus, seaweed and exquisitelywrapped gifts of green tea, bamboo fans and Mt Fuji scarves. We had never met a Japanese person before and our knowledge of anything Asian extended as far as the local Chinese restaurant (we loved chicken chow mien and fried rice and used to take our own saucepans down to be filled to the brim) and the songs from the Mikado my dad had performed in with the Shepparton Amateur Gilbert & Sullivan Society.
Matsuo spoke no english, and carried around a tiny pale blue dictionary which he would leaf through with his long thin fingers. He was slight, short for a man I guess (same height as me), and blinked like a fawn startled in the forest. He was no shrinking violet either and had studied Kendo, the martial art of swordsmanship practiced with bamboo swords. He showed us his moves in the backyard and I was suitably impressed. My brother and I were big on judo, always trying to drop each other to the ground with a judo hold.
I don't know if it was he who showed me all his packets of dried fish, or whether I went snooping in his wardrobe and found them there. I don't think he ever tried to give it to my mum or cook it for himself. I remember his showing me how he would place his clothes under the mattress to 'press' them. Advice from his mother I guess, in case we didnt have an iron.
He started school in my class although he was a couple of years older and soon made friends with the local school boys who took great joy in teaching how to swear and generally behave badly.
As far as I know he had no formal English lessons but he picked it up fairly quickly. We took him travelling all around Victoria, out into the bush and up into the mountains and he became part of our family. It was a big deal for my ex RAAF dad even though he hadn't fought against the Japanese, it was a gesture of reconciliation and I know Matsuo understood the weight of it . So much so that in the years to come he would always refer to my mother and father as his Australian parents, and every Christmas a beautifully wrapped and boxed gift would arrive, green tea, sake or perhaps a silk scroll.
Matsuo moved on to stay with other families, by which time he was more confident and had even developed an aussie sense of humour. But I think we were the lucky ones as we got to experience his early days at close range. And as we sheltered and loved him as a family member he began to blossom. Not that love was ever expressed verbally in our family, but we each found our own way of letting him know. I was fascinated by his Asian otherness, his shyness, his beauty, his slightness, his nervous gestures, his laugh.But most of all it was his vulnerability I loved, I'd never seen that in a male before and he seemed to accept me exactly as I was too. That was our unspoken pact — one of acceptance. I can't remember any romantic gesture between us although there must have been some tension in the air. I certainly had my fantasies late at night as I listened to low volume jazz singers on the radio I kept under my bed. But what to do when your father is the high school principal and a fierce one at that, which is what makes the second part of this story even more startling.
We moved to another town the following year, to another Education Department house right next door to yet another school. I only had two years of high school left and in the second of those years another Japanese Exchange student came to stay. My brother had left home to study in the city so we were a smaller family to welcome and take him in as before, only Daiki was every different from Matsuo. Physically he was shorter, with a chunkier, with a squat body, confident ( make that over confident), with not an ounce of vulnerability showing. Good looking, but not beautiful. Energetic, speedy, competent in English, he was the kind of guy who looked like he would get what he wanted in life. We did all the same things, took him touring around the country side, introduced him to our Aussie way of life, which he embraced wholeheartedly. While I quite liked Daiki and all his brashness and bravado, another part of me wished he had a touch of Akira's humility and sensitivity.
Our family wasn't the same either. We were all a bit fractious and tense. I was studying for my final exams and had been fighting with my dad over my right to sleep and study in the bungalow ( a room detached from the main house, like a granny flat) He finally agreed, but seemed to be saying no to everything else I wanted to do, banning me from going out to parties with friends and making me stay home and study, telling me I would end up a shop girl if I didn't put in three hours per night.
When dad ended up in hospital with a heart attack, I didn't seem to care. At least he would be off my back for a week two. My mother Marj took to her bed with the stress of it all and my little sister must have been spending time at a friend's place.
It was the end of summer, still hot and steamy. no aircon in those days. Daiki and I were left to our own devices. To beat the heat we were lying about on the loungeroom floor with the fan on, watching black and white TV. At one point, I happened to roll over and our arms touched. It was electric, like two live wires igniting. We got into a serious pash, and rolled around some more. I'd done this before with boys of my age after the pictures or at parties in someone's lounge room when we turned all the lights off. But I sensed this was different. This boy was not a boy but a man. He told me he wanted to sleep with me, that he was already experienced, as his father had taken him to a brothel when he turned fifteen.
I don't remember if Marj emerged from the bedroom or what we ate for dinner. Maybe she sent us down to get fish and chips. We would have watched more TV as we ate (hopefully the Mavis Bramston Show was on) and pashed some more. At around nine, Daiki would have made sounds like he was going to bed in my old bedroom next to my parents room. I would have gone out to my bungalow which the sound of the screen door slamming would confim. Daiki would have crept out not long after, holding the door so it didn't slam, cushioning it into its place. Then he would have walked a few steps to my room. He wouldn't have knocked but walked straight in. Another screen door to contend with but maybe he didn't even worry about that one. All the reasons my father hadn't wanted to let me sleep in the bungalow were about to be played out. It hadn't occured to me once that outside the boundary of the family home, I might fall prey to the needs of the opposite sex.
After years of bad sex ed talks I knew how babies were made and I knew I didn't want to make one that night . Daiki probably didn't want to either but he hadn't come prepared, unless he had some special techniques up his sleeve that his father had taught him. I wouldn't have believed him anyway. Nice girls like me didn't even know what a condom or french letter looked like so what could have been a night sensual delight turned into one long wrestle while he tried every way possible to get his albeit small penis inside me, I tried everyway I could think of to fight him off. In the process I would say he managed to deflower me several times with his digits for he seemed desperate to get some part of him inside me.
We must have slept and woken up together in the early hours before he crept back to his bedroom. I do remember feeling elated because despite the tiresome wrestle now I could say I had slept with a man. The trouble is I wouldn't be telling a soul, not even my best friend, as Daiki and I had made an agreement during the night that we would keep our affair a secret. We knew that offering this kind of welcome to the new exchange student was not quite what the Rotary Club or the headmaster had in mind and that if we were found out someone's head would roll.
I didn't let him spend the night in my bungalow again. When my father came home from hospital it was thankfully all too difficult and not long after that Daiki went to stay with another family. But we did arrange secret meetings disguised as cross country training. After school he would head out of town on one route and I on another and we would meet up on a green hill top overlooking the river. We would lie down on a carpet of dandelion flowers and he would paw and poke me with his fingers again. I longed for the tenderness a different kind of lover could give me, but from him it was never forthcoming. Eventually one day after school by the big pine tree near the woodwork room I told him I didn't want to continue, that my exams were coming and I had to concentrate on my studies. He broke down in tears and begged me to change my mind. I felt hard and cruel but I wouldn't budge. 'My mind is made up,' I said. 'I'm sorry, it's over.' I never really liked him anyway I told myself. Not the way I liked Matsuo.
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