Author's Notes: Sorry for being so late with this. My sleep schedule is weird right now.
Nightmares in adulthood are often associated with outside stressors or exist concurrently with another mental disorder. Ken just wishes they would stop.
Oneirophobia
4.
Where are you? I can't find you.
Ken wakes up and realizes that he has an erection. It is the most demanding erection he has ever had in his life.
The bedroom is dim and muggy. The sheets are tangled around his legs and his chest is bare. He blinks. The ceiling fan above him spins lazily, at times disrupting the thin band of light that emanates from a bathroom door left ajar. On one wall there is a window with shut Venetian blinds, which are old, yellow, dusty, and beginning to flake. He can hear a city beyond them, already steeped in the motions of daytime: cars fighting the gridlock, people yelling at one another, doors opening and slamming in tandem, the cacophonous crunch of trash cans as they're emptied into dumpsters the next alley over. That is the world outside—separated from him by a few feet of brick and plaster and glass. His mind is strangely blank.
He lifts his right palm and looks at it, squinting through the dimness. The all-important lifeline is there as it should be, but then he feels confused because he isn't sure which crease the lifeline belongs to. But it doesn't matter.
"A dream," he says thickly into that same moist palm drawn near. "It was just a dream."
The dream slips off of him like sweat and he sits up to greet awareness. He is naked and his lips are chapped; he licks them to mellow the rough edges a little and wonders where he is. This is his bedroom. He knows that he shares it with someone else. With his mind still blank, he feels peaceful despite the urgent and dark emotion that tickles his epiglottis and evades swallowing. Someone moves past the bathroom's doorway, blocking out the light temporarily. The ceiling fan spins onward and the city outside seems no less loud.
Now he can smell cologne: light, alluring, romantic, and maybe spicy. A week ago he had a dream about a special evening out, maybe for an important anniversary, forever catalogued in his mind by that scent. But dreams aren't real, of course, and his dreamt evening out will probably never reach reality—because they don't ever have evenings out together, because the scent-wearer he shares his bedroom with is too busy for sentimental things, because Ken spends dinner each night eating ramen and watching television for mind-numbing hours on end. Dreams are wonderful, though . . .
Suddenly his hand slides beneath the twisted sheets without approval, obeying an instinct buried too deeply to be neutralized. His hand doesn't stop for addled thoughts and continues on, flicking chipped fingernails over the navel and then finally cupping around his hot urgency with the familiarity of an old friend. He leans back down and services himself—as simple as that, like pouring milk into cereal—and then lies there in the mugginess. The sheets are wet and disgusting now, but he finally feels satisfied.
The bathroom door opens and steam rolls out in a stifling wave. A man rushes out as well, toweling his hair vigorously, because he needs to leave as soon as possible. He is important and he has appointments to keep. The damp towel flops onto the bed and he picks up a belt from the dresser, slides it through the loops of his pants, and buckles it tightly. He looks fit and trim, and Ken receives a delicious half-second view of the man's flat, bronzed stomach before a silky black shirt is tugged into place over it.
"Daisuke," Ken mumbles. That is the man's name. It is the only name Ken has ever considered significant. "Daisuke?"
"Have you seen my watch?" Daisuke asks as he straightens his shirt and does up the opal buttons. His voice is brisk and pertinent. "I lent it to you yesterday because you had that job interview."
The watch? Ken tries to think through his spent grogginess. The watch—the one made of burnished silver that twinkles in the sunlight. Yesterday he couldn't stop looking at it. He wore it on his left wrist and kept checking the time while on the subway that went across town, hoping he looked as important as Daisuke did even though he was dressed in plain cotton instead of silk. (Daisuke let him borrow the watch, but resistance met additional entreaties to borrow a silk shirt. Ken had already ruined enough good shirts accidentally.)
He loved that watch. Its qualities reflected the exorbitant price: scratch resistant mineral crystal face, thick and authoritative-looking strap, water-resistant case. It had an analog timepiece, but for the sake of pointless luxury it also had a digital clock, alarm, stopwatch, and calendar. The latter functions Daisuke forbade Ken from toying with, but Ken poked at the buttons anyway. Motomiya can change the settings back anyway, he said to his conscience. Don't worry about it.
He got lost after returning to the surface streets and ended up being late to the job interview. Stern Mr. R— sitting behind the desk checked his own watch when Ken ambled in. Just as Ken opened his mouth to speak, Mr. R— frowned and dismissed him without even hearing an excuse or apology. Ken stood frozen in the doorway, unable to believe he had not been given a chance to make amends, and a pretty young intern had to gently guide him out by the arm. Her hands were soft and cool, the first pair of hands he had felt in a while, and he ached for Daisuke. In the foyer she pointed out his watch and said—no joke—that its aesthetic features meshed well with his own. Ken looked at her blankly and she blushed.
"It isn't mine," he said weakly. "It belongs to a friend."
The job interview was something he had been looking forward to, and he fucked up completely by being late! He couldn't keep even this one simple appointment that Daisuke had gone to all the trouble of arranging for him. Too late he realized he should have brought a map like Motomiya had said to.
"I'm sorry—it's just—" She was flustered judging by how fiercely she chewed on a fake nail. "You look so familiar. Do I know you?"
"I'm friends with Motomiya Daisuke," he said. The man's face flashed into his mind, the tilted lips forming words: Don't tell anyone about our private life, Ichijouji. After that there came a series of the private things: rushed sex and unrequited adulation and lonely nights and comfort food and . . .
"Motomiya Daisuke-sensei?" the intern exclaimed through her teeth. "That famous scientist who figured out a cure for the common cold? He's a genius!"
"He really is," Ken agreed. It was true. He was used to reactions like this, and he tried to smile. "We're friends. Sometimes I'm in the background when he makes an announcement, so you might've seen me there. And sometimes we go out together. We've been to this office building . . . but I can't say I remember you . . ."
The intern gasped again. "In that case, you have to get Motomiya Daisuke-sensei to come back here so you can introduce me to him. I can't believe you know him!"
"KEN! Are you listening to me?"
As if doused with ice water, Ken snaps out of the memory and his eyes land on the angry face looking down at him from the bedside. He winces. This is Motomiya Daisuke, Motomiya Daisuke-sensei to be specific, the scent-wearing man who has been asking about the watch while juggling the task of finding his wallet, money, and car keys. Daisuke is famous. Daisuke is a genius. Daisuke wants the watch, he wants it now, and he just said something about irresponsibility and how much he is disappointed in Ken.
"I have a meeting with the board of trustees," Daisuke hisses. Daisuke is a famous, genius pathologist who works at the local university and has discovered the key that opens nature's lockbox of secrets. He has much more left to discover; he doesn't have time to deal with his lethargic, forgetful boyfriend. "Why do you always do this to me? I told you to set that watch on the dresser when you were done with it."
"I would've if I could've," Ken says quietly.
Brief, beautiful confusion enters Daisuke's expression. "What do you mean?"
It was an accident. Ken returned home from the botched job interview, and since the house stayed empty and he felt so sorry for himself, he went into the kitchen to make a gluttonous late lunch. The watch was precious, he knew that, so he took it off and set it beside the chopping board while he prepared some handmade pasta. It was an accident—he swore it—because he had just set the water on boil when he turned around with the strainer, misjudged his distance from the counter, and knocked the watch into the sink. It spun around the chrome bottom once in an ellipse-shaped path, making a frightful noise of metal against metal, and then plunked into the disposal. Ken didn't react in time to catch it.
"That makes no sense at all," Daisuke says. "The watchband would've caught on the rubber flaps that cover the disposal."
"The watch is made of a heavier metal," Ken protests, sitting up in bed with the sticky sheets still wrapped around him like a shroud. "It is heavy enough to go past. I saw it happen!"
"So what did you do after that, then?" Daisuke growls. His eyes are burning. "Did you just leave it down there?"
"I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to damage it."
"Why did you decide to tell me this when—oh, I don't know—I need to get to a meeting that is in less than forty minutes?"
"You came in late last night!" Ken can't believe this: last night he had waited as long as he could, but he wasn't a night owl like Daisuke and he didn't think running coffee through his veins was a very healthy thing to do. "I was already asleep. You could have woken me up if you didn't see your watch on the dresser."
Daisuke presses his lips together. "I didn't come home last night at all, actually. I stayed at the labs, working, and just came home to get a shower and a change of clothes. But you could have called me when it happened, you know."
"You never answer your cell phone if my name is on the caller ID," Ken grumbles.
"Come on," Daisuke says impatiently. "I don't have time for verbal sparring. Did the watch really fall into the disposal?"
"Yes."
"I will take apart the trap when I get home tonight."
"I'm not going to wait up for you."
"Ken, I really do not care what you're going to do. I do not want to deal with all of this bullshit right now. Keep the drain clean for today and prevent your imbecility from turning on the disposal. 'Imbecility' is—"
"I know what that word means," Ken says icily. "And do you really think I'd do something like that? Thanks for your vote of confidence."
Daisuke makes a noise somewhere between a growl and an exasperated groan. "The watch isn't the only thing I'm angry about right now. I keep telling you—over and over again—to wear underwear to bed. I will no longer pay to wash the sheets almost every morning because you like to sleep in the nude and are too lazy to get up to take care of a hard-on."
Ken looks at his lap and the grimy sheets that are tangled over it. This wasn't his fault. He woke up like that and Daisuke was in the bathroom! He couldn't have taken care of it properly when it became unbearable. His hand moved by itself. Instinct is a powerful thing—and—and—
Incriminating color bleeds onto his cheeks and he feels ashamed even though he shouldn't. He feels dirty and wrong, like he is no better than the stains Daisuke is grousing about, and he wants that feeling to go away.
"I can make some breakfast for us," Ken says desperately. "It won't take very long."
There is no reply. Daisuke pretends he is alone, a common reaction of his whenever he is pissed off, and the remainder of his morning at home is prompt and unaffected. He walks down the hallway, pads through the kitchen, and opens three cabinets before he finds a box of gritty energy bars. The box makes a vicious noise when he tears it open and empties it out into his backpack. Seconds later he toys with the volume profile for his cell phone, slips on his shoes and stamps them to ensure the heels are snug, and then slams the front door behind him when he leaves.
"I feel dirty," Ken says to no one in particular. "I'm dirty. I'm very dirty. Is that what you want to hear, Motomiya?"
He peels off the sheets, rolls them up, and stuffs them into a whicker hamper he intends to take down to the self-service laundry no matter how tetchy Daisuke seems to be about it. In an irrational moment of defiance, he throws open the wardrobe and purposelessly selects one of Daisuke's better shirts. He models it in the bathroom mirror, admiring the dark blue satin and the gold cufflinks, and then goes on to slide into a regular pair of pajama pants. He feels sticky and disgusting, and yet refreshed.
Breakfast is a quiet, lonely affair that Ken makes less unbearable by cooking from scratch anything he has the ingredients for. Plates of French toast, carrot coconut bread, poached eggs with tomatoes, stacks upon stacks of oatmeal pancakes—he makes enough food for a family of four and then some, furiously stirring and kneading and sifting for hours to ensure that he won't actually think. Recipes are like mathematical equations in that they do not favor emotion no matter how open they are to interpretation and creativity. He devotes himself to them, their prescribed measurements and caveats and helpful hints, and his mind goes pleasantly numb. When he reaches over to the spice rack to get some cinnamon, he remembers that he ran out of it yesterday during a similar cooking spree; he abruptly starts sobbing, doesn't know how to stop when the novelty of tears wears off, and finishes cooking his feast with the saline dripping fast and hot off his chin.
He lays down two placemats on the table, then two knives and two forks and two spoons and two napkins, and brings over each dish with the modesty of a world-class chef. Most of it he doesn't touch because most of it Daisuke loves, but he has a slice of carrot coconut bread and ends up crying harder when he tastes too much bitterness. (He must have measured out an excess of baking soda, although the taste doesn't matter anyway when wave after wave of nausea stops by for a visit and they go on to tour the bathroom together.)
The early afternoon is spent storing the leftovers for more quiet, lonely meals. The refrigerator is already packed with plastic containers that hold the untouched breakfasts of the past. He leaves out the bread in case he later feels better about eating, tucks the tableware he used into the dishwasher, and wipes down the counters. Afterward he dries his hands on the expensive silk shirttails, pauses when the wet cloth grows hot from friction, and then decides he doesn't care at all about what happens to Daisuke's precious clothes. The shirt is ruined anyway: it is powered with flour, blotted by egg yolk, flecked in various-colored spices. Before today he would have panicked and pressed a moist paper towel to the tomato juice stains, the sausage grease streaks, the drying butter smears; he would have cried over this, worried about this, suffered from this. But today he can't seem to muster up the anxiety to do anything like that.
His cell phone mocks him for the remainder of the day. He calls Daisuke once every hour, gets the impersonal voice mail system, and leaves a meek message each time that he knows Daisuke will delete straightaway. While not on the cell phone, he keeps it within view as he flips through recipe books, analyzes their lists of ingredients, and tries to understand why this chef used whole cloves and that chef used ground cloves when they both made the same sort of dish.
Daisuke disapproves of Ken's cooking ability because he wants Ken to land a steady job that does not depend on a particular skill—especially one judged subjectively—that might make or break a life story.
"Maybe you could be an office assistant," Daisuke said one night a long time ago. He had come home for dinner, which nowadays is unheard of. "I'm sure I could find some places willing to hire you."
"I'll be the guy who makes copies, orders highlighters, and is in charge of limiting the number of custom pens that my fellow employees swipe. Having the company's logo stamped on the outside really jacks up the price of pens, you know?" Ken rested his elbows on the table, folded both hands beneath his chin with the fork held between them, and stared unwaveringly at Daisuke. "No thanks, Motomiya."
"That is a respectable position to have."
"You're not my mother," Ken muttered, "so don't even try to tell me what is and what is not respectable."
"Okay, then I'll drop the pretenses just for you," Daisuke said, stabbing at his food. "A job like that will be something for you to do. Without it, you're going to mope around here and watch television and waste our cell phone minutes by calling my voice-mail fifty times a day."
Ken felt an embarrassed heat creep up the back of his neck. "I don't call your voice-mail fifty times a day! And even if I did, I wouldn't have to call so many times if you'd simply pick up your phone. Still, I spend plenty of time trying out recipes—"
"For a career that isn't worth it." The other man sighed. "You're going nowhere fast."
"Go to hell, Motomiya!"
Daisuke smiled grimly, picked up his plate, and left to dine in the living room; meanwhile, Ken lost his appetite, slammed a few kitchen cabinet doors, and stewed in his anger until he took an ice water shower to calm down.
Now Ken wonders about the "steady job" proposition as he lays his cheek against the cold paper of an open recipe book. The interview yesterday was a failure from start to finish, and soon Daisuke will learn about that failure—and then what? They don't need the money because Daisuke makes enough to support more than twice their current lifestyle. Maybe the voice-mails are excessive, but Ken is sure he hasn't called more than ten times in one day, ever. And really, it is unfair to call him selfish and obsessive and useless.
He sighs and looks at the printed ingredients closest to his nose; all he can make out is FIVE (5) EGGS halfway down the page. He knows the recipe by heart, however: FIVE (5) EGGS, ONE-AND-ONE-HALF (1.5) LITERS FLOUR, FIFTEEN (15) MILLILITERS SALT, . . . PREHEAT OVER TO TWO HUNDRED FOUR (204) DEGREES CELCIUS, . . . BAKE LOAVES ON MIDDLE RACK OF OVEN, . . .
"Voila," he whispers once the recipe is stowed away again in his mind. "Two loaves of challah bread."
His memory is normally dreadful. Birthdays and anniversaries are largely forgettable, so he has a reputation for looking at the calendar, discovering that it is some important day or another, and then rushing about in a blind panic to get things done at the last minute. Daisuke is one year older again? Didn't he just have a birthday? The cards seem cheesy and thoughtless, the flowers wilt and blacken like burnt paper, and the celebratory meals turn into messes that might have tasted better if cooked with more love and less anxiety. Daisuke can taste those frightened tears in the food, but he doesn't know what to call the heavy flavor and determines that it is something like monosodium glutamate.
But there is one exception to Ken's poor memory: recipes. He can rattle off lists of ingredients and directions like a mathematician can equations and proofs. He even knows some of the chemical equations behind certain flavors, with table salt—NaCl—being easiest to recall. (With his head lying there, he thinks about table salt and its equation, and sees this queer vision of dark hair, dark eyes, water, blood, and a dreamlike fog . . . but then it clears up and he is alone again.)
Daisuke cannot fathom why Ken is capable of remembering recipes instead of practical things like dates and times; Ken offers no explanation either, but he knows that he only remembers what he is passionate about. He wants to remember everything, sure—who wouldn't want to remember some of the really important things, like birthdays? But he doesn't, because deep down beneath sentient concerns, in the dark jungle of the unconscious, there survives his passion for cooking, his love for Daisuke that knows no time but eternity, and little else.
Cooking is his gift. He will not smother it, no matter what Daisuke wants.
Without moving his head, he gropes across the table for his cell phone, unlocks the keypad, adjusts the volume, and then places it on the book right next to his mouth. It obscures EGGS with its glowing screen. He doesn't need to look to dial the number.
Twenty seconds later Daisuke's voice-mail picks up: a clipped voice says that a message can be left for Motomiya-sensei, but it ought to be short. Ken starts off his message with a wet sigh, one that Daisuke has come to identify instantly.
"Is there nothing I can do?" Ken asks the phone, pretending that Daisuke is there. "I'm trying. I'm really trying. I want to make you happy, but I want to make myself happy too.
"You don't come home anymore. You never answered your phone before, but you always used to manage to call me back sometime during the day—even if the call only lasted a few seconds because you were between meetings or lectures or something. I wonder if you can hear me calling. Do you just leave the cell phone off because no one other than me calls you at that number? The school gave you a pager and you use that a lot, but you refuse to tell me its number so I won't be tempted to call it. Good move on your part.
"I don't know what to say. Maybe I should say something like 'I miss you' or 'What happened to us?' . . . but those are worthless things that have no real response. I'm not as articulate as you. What do you call sayings like 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness'? Pati—platit—they're all I have for you now. I feel like I should know what that word is, but I don't.
"There are some things I can't give you. You have to know that. I want you to know that. I also want you to know that I never left for the job interview, I broke your watch on purpose, and I think about someone else when I masturbate." These things were not truths, but that did not matter since they were at least confident lies. "I just wanted you to know. I'm hanging up now."
Five seconds after roughly shoving away the cell phone, two seconds after hearing it slide off the table and dully hit the floor, one second after shutting his eyes again, Ken decides that the message he left was the worst thing he could have done. He derives no satisfaction from doing that; he experiences no liberating feelings, no great awakenings. He cannot escape himself.
With a dark and shuttered mind, he wills sleep to come back. The recipe book feels comfortable enough and acts as a surrogate pillow.
He dreams, but then again, he isn't really dreaming. It takes skill to dream about having a dream. Doesn't it?
