After my evening with Lizzi, I awoke considering my new sexual orientation. I was no longer what anyone would consider a pure heterosexual, as I had been in the past. I had undergone a transformation.   I got up from my bed and went to look out the window. It was still the early part of the fall semester, with autumn underway. The breezes had become more refreshing than in summer. I decided I would change the name of the new sorority to Kappa Pi. I wanted to call Lizzi and tell her this, but after some reconsideration I thought it was too soon to call. Instead I went about my mental wanderings.

I was in rather a different mindset compared to the previous evening. No more carnal lust, associated with the moment of orgasm that was something near death-like. I am analytical now, more cerebral. I wondered how I would categorize myself? I know I am anatomically female. This I enjoy as much as a young woman can. I like flaunting my figure. I make my choices about what to wear based on how much it shows of my curves. I am an expert when doing that in order to attract men. And I did very similar things to attract Lizzi. I wanted to be sexual with her so I assumed that in order to attract her I ought to appear as feminine as possible. After all, at first sight, I had been primarily attracted to her femininity. As time passed I discovered I found her to be charming in other ways, too, but I would have had sex with her at almost any time. The delay was only due to the fact that I wished not to offend in any way. Besides, I was doing something entirely new for me. I sorely wanted to get it right.

So I must be bi-sexual? What kind of category is that? Can I fit in, if one thinks in term of absolutes? Not really. There must be a gradation of hue in between white and black, female and male. I know of androgyny. But surely a specimen like me must be XX chromosomes. Here I am, perhaps just temporarily, seeking out a female partner because men have become a bit passé. Then again, perhaps I’ve been hiding my homosexuality. Perhaps I’ve been a conformist to fit in. It gets confusing; I remain at my window. Again the changes associated with the signs of autumn. Changes … transformation… seasons. I am reminded of my mother.

My mom. I called her Ally-san. Everyone thought I was saying “Allison.” Everyone knew her as Allison Tanaka. That’s how the doctors at the hospital knew her. The hospital where she died. I was born when she was nineteen. She had come to Honolulu as a Japanese exchange student. Just before she died, when I was fourteen and able to understand, she explained how I was conceived in a campus dorm room. The young man, an American from the mainland, quickly retreated from Oahu, and was not to be seen or heard from again. That was his reaction to a pregnant girlfriend. Ally-san kept on until the pregnancy became all too obvious. She found it practically unbearable having to tell her parents, who may have demanded an abortion if they had found out soon enough. Mom figured she was giving herself a break when she decided to stay on in Hawaii. She wasn’t going to return to Japan. She would stay in America with her infant daughter, Akiko, who, having been born on United States soil was automatically granted the rights of citizenship. So it goes with documents like the Constitution. Mom had to abandon her scholastic pursuits in order to raise me. Well, perhaps not had to, but that’s what she did anyway. She became a domestic. The good fortune befell her of coming into the employment of a wealthy family. They provided free, comfortable housing on the estate they owned. Her salary wasn’t much, but free housing on Oahu was a godsend. The story went that the well-to-do family my mom worked for had had some bad luck with hired help. Expensive items in the house seemed to disappear at times. Although mom’s English was something of a pidgin, and she was non-talkative anyway, the family was willing to overlook her lack of experience, and also me, because Mom was totally honest and trustworthy. We were by ourselves a good deal of the time. The family conducted most of its business on the mainland somewhere. That’s where their primary residence was.

Mom and I spoke more together when she was in the hospital than ever before. I had never been unsure regarding her maternal love. She would have died for me. In a way she did. She simply didn’t speak much. In the hospital things changed. We talked a lot then. She spoke openly of death. Mom used the example of the caterpillar and the butterfly. We had seen caterpillars building cocoons in the gardens where we lived. We knew that inside the cocoons caterpillars underwent their hidden transformations into butterflies. One couldn’t see it happening until the butterflies emerged. Then one knew that somehow the caterpillar hadn’t actually died to be gone forever. The caterpillars underwent their mysterious transformations into butterflies. In both forms of its existence the caterpillar/butterfly shared equally in what one could call “reality.” Very different realities, to be sure, yet equally real. Mom’s explanation of her death (the doctors had told her the cancer was terminal) was just the same as with the caterpillars and butterflies. It would be a transformation of life force. So she told me to try and understand that she wasn’t going away forever and ever. This I came to believe. I hadn’t realized at the time that my mother was talking, in a roundabout kind of way, about Buddhism.

This thought led me back to my transformation. Lizzi had been for me an agent of change. The wonderfully sensual orgasm we had shared was a transformation as well; I had died and been reborn in a new form. The explosion and blackness was like having left one world to enter another. I awoke a transformed Akiko. After thinking about it this way, there was no need for my preoccupations. I could sit perfectly still and content, like the Daibutsu at Kamakura. I’ve never been to see Amitabha in person. I’ve only seen the photographs.

I went to my computer and turned it on. I put in the CD-W with the photograph of the Enlightened One. Before long the image of the bronze statue appeared on my monitor screen. I looked at the statue with its centuries of patina, sitting in “passionless repose and perfect calm,” just as described in the caption. How symmetrical the image is! I drew an imaginary vertical line from the center of the stone in his forehead to where his belly button would be, under the robes. The two halves formed were mirror images. How many times had this image recurred in my mind? The stylized yet seemingly accurate portrayal of the face. The rounded shoulders. A bare chest of a man under the robe, all varying shades of green after centuries of exposure. What could be the connection between Amitabha’s “passionless repose” and my experience that connected the two? A tremendous calm had come upon me, surely enough, after having made love with Lizzi. But our sex together had had nothing to do with meditation. The kind of submission to sensual pleasure should, according to Buddhist philosophy, have led me down a blind path far removed from enlightenment. Despite that I had slept and then awoke in the morning in a “perfect calm,” the memory of Lizzi in my mind and the faint fragrance of her perfume still on my pillow… 

Her unique scent came back to me. It had just the slightest trace of flowers. It had acted like an aphrodisiac for me. The aroma had helped to arouse me. It made me curious, wanting to wander like an explorer. And I had wandered. I had explored thoroughly, touching, caressing, tasting as I went along, and inviting without words being spoken. Lizzi had ventured inside my mind and body. I welcomed her inside to visit, as one might welcome a dear friend of decade’s acquaintance inside one’s home. Eventually I turned off my computer, letting the image disappear. The monitor entered its self testing mode, with the rainbow of 256 colors before me. I turned off the power completely and the machine went back to sleep.

A knock at my door ended to my train of thought. I quickly glanced at my alarm clock, and said “cominggg!!!” in a loud voice. Still adjusting my robe, I opened the door and “my” Lizzi was there. A very warm hearted, playful look was on her face. She was dressed up just a little for going out, it was casual and quickly done; but she was neat and as attractive as ever. Her white cotton top did little to hide the outline and form of her breasts underneath. She removed the top without hesitation after entering and closing the door. Instead of saying “hello,” she told me she should never have left. We pulled each other close. Her scent had been refreshed. It was with me now, no longer just a memory. As we kissed she opened my robe and gently slid one hand to glide along my abdomen and the downwards under my panties. A vision of the orgasmic blackness came back into my mind: a place I had gone to after the sensuality became an explosion and my universe reinvented itself. Still I managed to say “… haven’t showered yet.” Her response: “me neither” prompted us to enter the bathroom together. It was time for us to cleanse each other in preparation.

The pulsating jets of spray and Crabtree & Evelyn soap put us in a wonderful, sensual mood. We bathed each other with greatest care, as a new mother would bathe her infant. We kissed in warm running water, the aroma of freshly cut cucumber all around us. Lizzi smoothed the soap across my body expertly and I watched anticipation growing in her eyes. 

This second time our girlish lovemaking proceeded without hesitation. I knew what my partner would enjoy. Lizzi was not one for preliminaries. I wondered what was going on inside her mind. Was her universe being transformed? How would she describe what was happening? There would be no answers for now. It was my turn…

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