A Gift in Disguise Ch. 09

There is another aspect of shifuku. This one involves young men exhibiting certain traits.

Because the shifuki were so sexually astute themselves, so capable of recognizing and correctly interpreting sexual signs and signals, they sometimes recognized in their own sons those indicators of femininity, latent homosexuality, that they knew would make life difficult for a son growing up in the male-dominated culture.

To try and protect their sons from future cruelty from other men, some shifuki encouraged a particularly effeminate son to become more manly by engaging in sex with them, their own mothers. Again, in concept it was educational rather than sexual. However, it is also indisputable that both mother and son often experienced far more sexual pleasure than they were eager to admit. Perhaps the shifuki mother realized during sex that her son was really far more masculine than she had thought. I suppose in our modern era this effort by mothers to suppress a son's homosexual, bisexual, or transexual manifestations would be seen as cruel itself, but times were much different then.

Lorraine, Kim, Jamie, Emily, and I have all seen a remarkably similar sexual maturity and tolerance in you, Tom.

In high school you abstained from coitus in deference to your classmate Linda's preference for mutual masturbation. In doing so, you both achieved extremely intense sexual gratification with little or no associated guilt or remorse.

When your fraternity brothers set you up with the transgender woman in college, you were not repulsed by his preference. You even freely acknowledged being aroused by his kisses before you knew he was a man. You might be surprised to know that there are some women who are very attracted to men to respond as you did. We see your acknowledging your arousal by another man to be a sign of a man who is confidently masculine, not one uncertain at all about his own gender identity.

On top of that you have accepted that Jamie is in fact a woman even though she was born with a penis rather than a clitoris and vagina. Beyond simply accepting Jamie's physical anomaly, you easily and comfortably embrace it to give her more sexual pleasure than she had ever hoped any man could."

As Marta spoke, my mind briefly wandered to Sharon Madison's enthusiastically encouraging me to allow newhalf professional photographer Misako Sato to photograph me, even knowing his photos of me would likely cause some men and women to become sexually aroused. Without knowing of my relationship with Sharon, Marta's comment seemed to clarify what I had already suspected: That Sharon Madison hoped to see, literally see, Misako and I have sex together.

Marta's voice regained its control over me as she continued.

"When Kim told you of her fantasy about sex with her son, you participated in her fantasy rather than being repulsed by it.

You exhibit many of the traits that I saw in Emily and that I've seen in other shifuki as well."

"So you think I've been exposed to shifuku somewhere, somehow, by someone before I met you and Emily? That doesn't make any sense at all. I grew up in a small farming community where if a guy had sex with a girl, they darned well better get married, whether she got pregnant or not. And most often she did and they did. I doubt that anyone there ever heard of shifuku. I sure hadn't. Not there, not even here at the university. I've never even dated an Asian woman, let alone ..."

"I understand, Tom," Marta cut me off probably knowing what I was about to say. "But with a better understanding of shifuku, don't you agree that your sexual behaviors in high school and college and now more closely resemble those of someone who was not only exposed but was taught it?"

When I didn't answer, she went on.

"But to answer your question directly, no, I don't think you've ever been exposed to shifuku, at least not before you met Emily and me. And even if you had been, by that time your sexual traits and preferences had been well-established.

Based on my experience with you, what I have to consider after getting to know you better is that shifuku may have been something of an illustrative device that Asian women in past generations could use to explain their own even deeper understanding and acceptance of their own sexuality and appetites. But given that it gave them so much pleasure that would otherwise be denied, they sought to carefully ensure its continuation through the generations. It is also clear to me that shifuku gives us women a much clearer vision of a man's sexual drives as well.

Centuries ago, Asian women may have perceptively recognized that human sexuality was deep-seated in our minds. Maybe through intensive focus and training they found ways to access that recognition to make sex pleasurable for themselves even as their men and even most other women would try to deny them that pleasure."

"So you think maybe that rather than our learning these sexual secrets from someone else, they may already be embedded in everyone's brain, men and women?" I asked.

"I think that Lorraine's, Emily's, Kim's, and Jamie's contact with you strongly suggests that. Because of your sexually restricted upbringing, you are in some ways what social scientists might call the nearly ideal control subject. If you didn't learn the shifuku body of knowledge from someone else, then it could have been somehow hard-wired in you as you were developing as a fetus. And if that's what happened with you, then it's reasonable that it could also have happened with others, both men and women."

"But why me? What caused it to suddenly appear in me? And why not in other men, too?"

"A good question, Tom. Assuming the traits comprising your sexual 'gift' reside somewhere in each of us, then the more precise question may be to ask what circumstances trigger it in some people but not in others?"

"But Marta, you also said or at least implied that if shifuku was practiced on a man, he might die. Yet I didn't experience any adverse side effects at all from Emily's attack on me. Even if I was somehow subconsciously aware of her sexual interest and had also somehow communicated my willingness to her, wouldn't you expect something bad to have happened to me?"

"Past generations of shifuki probably would have. Today with our better understanding of medicine, not necessarily.

In generations past and even today, it was and is common for younger Asian women to sexually engage older men. If the stories are true about some men dying during sex with a shifuki, it seems more probable that the strain of the intense and prolonged sexual stimulation from the younger women simply caused the older or less fit men to have massive heart attacks or strokes. And since the male-dominated culture would have wanted to protect the deceased man's honor at all costs, a story that he had died during sex would be embellished as a testament to his sexual prowess even at an advanced age. That simple explanation is at least plausible. Without documentation or other evidence, there's really no way to know."

"But how do you explain the apparently beneficial health effects Lorraine and Kim have supposedly experienced after having sex with me? If Lorraine had atrial fibrillation, shouldn't her condition have been unchanged rather than improved? And how was I able to restore Kim's ability to orgasm when you weren't? Both of them have also said their bodies' outward signs of aging seem to have stopped and even be reversing. How do you explain that?

And what about Jamie? She swears that since she and I started having sex with each other, her erections have intensified in hardness and duration, and her ejaculations are much more powerful and voluminous. And all of them believe their mental acuity has improved noticeably.

Their physiological changes that suggest some effects of aging have been stopped or even reversed seem to defy explanation."

"Maybe you should have become a lawyer, Tom. That's a well-reasoned argument," Marta said appreciatively. "The only explanation I can offer is that somehow your sexual interaction with them has triggered not only some as-yet unidentified and unproven sexual memory banks of their brains, but it has triggered other memory storage as well.

Maybe many the physiological health benchmarks of our youth are archived in our brains and you've found a vehicle for opening the archival vaults of time. If we can open those vaults for increased sexual pleasure, then maybe we're able to draw from different ones that have stored the health and vigor of our youth. Who knows? Maybe your research project with Kim will unearth some of the answers we're seeking.

There's something else, Tom.

Emily was reviewing the videos Lorraine and Amanda took of you having sex with them and the one where Kim was masturbating you on the CT scanner. She spotted something the rest of us have overlooked. All three of them experienced orgasms, though Kim's was spontaneous. Their reactions were almost identical. That's odd.

Generally, women display orgasms differently. Some show almost no outward signs while others become animated and very vocal. So for three separate women to experience nearly identical physiological responses with you is certainly an indicator of something.

At the moment of orgasm, their eyes would fly open and nearly all their muscles seemed to become paralyzed. If they were moaning or screaming in pleasure, their voices were silenced and their faces froze, locked in whatever expression they wore when the peak of their orgasm hit. If they were thrusting their pelvis toward yours, they continued in that motion. Then their bodies seemed to begin to convulse, sometimes violently and erratically, all the while holding your erupting erection tightly either in their pussy or in their hand.

Those orgasmic convulsions continued for longer than normal orgasmic tremors usually do, and when they began to subside, the women's bodies began to vibrate. During vibration, the motions weren't as exaggerated as during the convulsive phase, and the women's voices returned. Their sounds were unintelligible, however they pulsed in sync with the vibrations. Finally their muscles began to relax as their seemingly unending orgasm began to wane. Eventually they started breathing normally again.

Even Kim who was only giving you a handjob experienced it, though her responses were somewhat less pronounced than the ones shown by Lorraine and Amanda. That's probably because her orgasm was completely spontaneous; she hadn't expected merely giving you a handjob in a clinical setting to arouse her as much as it did.

So I wonder, Tom. Have you noticed that in other orgasms you've experienced with Lorraine, Kim, and Amanda?"

I thought back but because I was in the throes of orgasm myself, I hadn't really been looking for details like that. I was shaking my head "no" in response to Marta's question, but I interrupted nonverbal response when something occurred to me.

"No, not with them. But..."

"Go on, Tom," Marta urged.

"With Jamie. Almost every time. She'll be riding on top of me and grinding our cocks together between us. When we both cum at the same time — that's nearly all the time — what Emily describes she saw in the videos is what I see with Jamie."

Of course, I didn't tell Marta that Sharon has an almost identical reaction as Lorraine, Kim, Jamie, and Amanda. And with my mind briefly considering Jamie and her cock, I flashed to a fleeting image of Misako Sato.

We were still at the table, and Marta's hand was still resting on top of mine. I was once again conscious of it, but now I didn't want to move it. Marta's wordless and rather strange but not vacant gaze held me. So did her apparent indifference that her robe was slowly exposing more and more of her breasts.

Then Marta's voice became intensely serious.

"Which brings me to this, Tom. You asked why did this 'gift' only appear in you but apparently never in other men?

It probably has appeared in other men.

When my mother taught me about shifuku, there was another story, an even more mysterious one that to this day I have never revealed to anyone else - not Lorraine, not Kim, not Jamie, not Amanda. Not even to Emily. Although I think that because of your exchange with Emily on Lorraine's porch, it's probably time for me to pass it along to her. And to you. It may help relieve some of Emily's anxiety about what she did to you and why she did it."

Marta took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. It sounded like a sigh that could either have been resignation or relief at having made an important decision. Then she began.

"Mother also told me about the sainō yutakana mono, the gifted ones.

The saino were men, not women, whose sexuality and sexual powers seemed to parallel shifuku. Yet nothing in the stories of either the shifuki or the saino ever made any kind of connection between them. A shifuki wouldn't necessarily recognize a saino, or vice versa. Their worlds were separate and distinct even though they probably occasionally crossed paths.

As one story goes, a saino was immune to the unpleasant side effects shifuku inflicted on most men. In fact, the saino were rumored to be the only men who could fully satisfy a shifuki's sexual appetites when she craved sexual satisfaction from a man and not another woman. With a saino, a shifuki could supposedly deliver and receive all the pleasure she would normally have with another shifuki.

With that much going for them in the male-dominated society, you would expect the saino would have been venerated as some kind of sex gods. In fact, it was not so.

The saino were evidently physically indistinguishable from other men. They were what we would today call pretty much average. They tended to be younger men, usually in their late-teens to mid-twenties, though their virility reportedly continued strong far later in life than for most men. The saino were healthy and fit, however they did not go out of their way to tone and flaunt their bodies to attract women or other men. They didn't outwardly advertise their sexual prowess. But neither did they necessarily work to conceal it to the extent some variant shifuki like Emily do.

They were noticeably intelligent, comfortable in deliberative contemplation and intellectual pursuits as they were participating in unquestionably challenging athletic events. They were decidedly masculine, but they were quietly secure in their masculinity without feeling the need to aggressively and regularly prove it to every other man or woman in sight.

Sexually, the saino were definitely a cultural enigma.

Although they were heterosexual, they were remarkably and uncharacteristically tolerant of men and women who engaged in homosexual or bisexual practices as well as fetish behaviors. Even though the saino had a decided preference for sex with women, very often women older than them, some occasionally engaged in sex with other men, though by description it sounds as if it was frottage or mutual manual masturbation rather than oral or anal. When asked, they were disarmingly candid about their own sexuality and sexual practices, but in an informative rather than boastful way.

The saino's appearance and behavior caused them to rarely be regarded as sexual competitors by other men. Since the saino never revealed his sexual partners and bragged about his own sexual feats, other men rarely paid much attention when seeking out women.

However, the saino's traits and behaviors had just the opposite effect on women. Women of all ages and sexual orientations who experienced a saino developed an abiding trust in these rare men. A few stories tell of women who could confide in the saino with the same trust as with other women. Women described the saino as being respectful and accommodating to the woman's sexual wishes and desires. In contrast to the typical Asian male, the saino were not sexually domineering or demanding unless that was what the woman clearly indicated she wanted to enhance her own pleasure.

The saino was a consummate role-player according to the woman's wishes. Often the saino was thought to be able to read a partner's mind, because he could adapt to his partner's sexual preferences with little verbal communication or prompting. Women found that the saino would willingly and smoothly integrate their sexual talents into the women's own sexual fantasies and desires. In some instances, that participation included cultural taboos such as adultery, incest, exhibitionism, voyeurism, and even cross-dressing and other fetishes, all done to enhance the sexual pleasure of the saino's woman partner, not just himself. The saino could play all roles between rough-sex bad boy and sissy with equal ease, each in response tailored to his woman partner's desires and with the goal of completely fulfilling her sexual needs.

Curiously, a woman with a saino would sometimes be satisfied by simply watching him masturbate for her. A saino was able to achieve resounding orgasms while masturbating and watching the woman. Other times she would orgasm spontaneously while manually masturbating him. The women attributed some magical, almost hypnotic quality and sexual power to the contact of the saino's penis with her hand.

Yet the stories suggest a saino's penis was unremarkable in size. The consistently average size of the sainos' penises seemed to enhance the perceived magical quality they held over the women. Apparently the women came to realize that it was the saino's sexual adaptability and versatility rather than the size of his penis that so ably satisfied them. Some women told of being driven to climax with no other contact than a saino's penis becoming hot and fully erect in their hands. Even more surprising were stories attributed to women about these men who could themselves be completely sexually satisfied without penetrating her.

Then there were stories about women whose sexual desire had waned and who had been unable to orgasm for years being inexplicably brought to fiery climaxes and having their sex drive restored when stimulated by a saino. And among women who had previously required clitoral and vaginal stimulation to orgasm, some of them found that nipple stimulation by a saino was by itself sufficient to result in orgasm. A saino was thought to be able to bring a woman to orgasm simply by using his fingertips and lips to stimulate nongenital areas, frequently the woman's neck, ears, underarms and wrists.

But the most unusual trait of the saino was his uncanny ability to adjust the timing, intensity, and duration of his own sexual satisfaction, most often his own orgasm, to coincide exactly with that of the woman. And beyond that, the saino could pace and prolong his own release so that it allowed the woman to experience consecutive orgasms as if it was one long one. Most women experiencing such a prolonged and intense orgasm would immediately fall into a brief but restful sleep-like state lasting a few minutes to a couple hours. They would awaken feeling sexually satisfied and rested and completely at ease and with no feelings of guilt from their frequently forbidden sexual activity.

My mother told me that if a shifuki did have sex with a saino, even she might not be immune from the post-orgasm sleep. Apparently some were, others were not. However, those shifuki experienced remarkably intensified and prolonged sexual satisfaction from the saino above and beyond that received from other shifuki. The fragmentary stories offer no explanation why that might have been so, though one might speculate that it had to do with the perfect combination of the shifuki's exceptional mental discipline and the saino's sexual adaptability to his partner. At some point, both the shifuki and the saino could hold back no longer and they climaxed together more thunderously than would even seem possible."