Chosen Path

We talked all night. Tokyo is 13 hours ahead of New York, so although he had had a very long day, he showed no signs of being sleepy. He took me into his confidence and taught me a great deal. I have stolen the trust of a great many very powerful men. This man give it willingly for his friendship with my father. I wished I could have returned his gift, but he knew more than me even of the art of reading people's intentions. He was brilliant, much more so than he lets on.

On his first breath deep enough to show his fatigue, I slid my hands over his shoulders and untied his tie, leaning up against his back and curling my legs behind me. I worked the buttons of his shirt, feeling the warm, rough skin of his chest and the cotton collar of his A-shirt.

"Why are you doing this, Yumi," he asked, "why did you come here? You're too good for this. You can do anything. You can be anyone. I'm a lecherous old adulterer who uses the trappings of power to seduce unwitting women, but you know better than to be impressed. You know your own power. Why would you choose this?"

As he spoke, I continued down his shirt, unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants. I answered him with a whisper into his ear. "I came because I want to know something. I saw how you worked the crowd downstairs. I have read how you manage the Diet, how you dance among the opposition. Every day, you deftly manipulate large groups of people to get what you want, to do your job. I want to know what happens when you face only a woman alone, when she cannot oppose you, when you act out of desire instead of duty."

"Your mother must never find out. It would be my ruin."

"As it would be mine," I whispered, "come." I stood and walked slowly into the bedroom without looking back. I had worked my kimonos fairly loose through the course of the night, but my obi was still tied in a drum knot. I held my hands behind me in position to release it, and I bowed my head to expose the nape of my neck. I waited.

His footsteps approached slowly until he stood behind me, so close I could feel his breath tickling my neck. As I began to pull my obi apart, my sleeves tugged and slipped down over my hands. He wrapped his bare arms around me, crossing the long tails of my sleeves behind my back and dragging them forward, tying them in a gentle square knot in front of me. I relaxed my arms into their baggy, silken wrappings and whispered "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For taking over." He knelt behind me as I spoke, reaching down to lift the hems of my kimonos and slide his hands slowly up my legs, along my split-toed stockings and beyond them, rising to my pelvis, where both hands moved counterclockwise around my torso. He stood, lifting me from the ground and bending me over his forearm. His other arm behind me pulled my skirts up over my obi inside out, leaving me bare from the waist down.

As he carried me forward to the bed, I bent and spread my knees to kneel for him on the edge with my face down against the duvet. I felt him behind me, teasing me, but then his hands slid around the outsides of my shoulders and took hold of my collars, which he pulled open and back, freeing my chest to press against the duvet's intricate quilting. I closed my eyes, arched my back and breathed deeply with anticipation.

I shrieked ungracefully when his hand came up inside my thigh and spun me fast around the axis of my spine, arcing my open legs into the air and dropping my hips into the arm he cupped under them. With my head against the bed and tucked tight to my chests, I saw his trustworthy face between my legs, beyond by breasts and the parted silks of my kimonos. Instead of pulling my arms free, I grabbed at my obi through their sleeves to untie it while he kissed me, slowly and lightly at first, exploring the tender flesh beyond the scope of my vulva.

Untying the obi gave me something to do with my hands and what was left of my mind. With his free hand, he pushed my stockings down past my knees, then caressed me everywhere while he kissed me more firmly, more directly and his freely tussled hair tickled the insides of my thighs. It seemed like an impatient age had passed before his fingers and tongue began to embellish upon his lips' increasing efforts. I relaxed, fumbling ineffectually with the complex knot in my obi.

I usually think of sex like a dance. I carefully count the rhythm and place my steps precisely. That time I couldn't, or rather, I didn't want to. He teased me slowly and thoroughly enough that I could not perceive the passage of time, knowing only how he touched me everywhere in one elongated moment. That moment ended when I felt an arm come up under my shoulders, partly lifting me and throwing me farther onto the bed, far enough that my feet rested flat on the duvet with my knees slightly bent.

He descended on me, wrapping my shoulders in his arms and kissing me while he disassembled my hairstyle and slowly drew his penis up and down along my labia. I pushed my hands down farther into my sleeves to pin them behind my back and let my head fall to rest. He chose his own placement of every careful kiss while I waited and guessed wrong every time. As I felt him start searching for my vagina, I wrapped my legs around him and adjusted my hips to bring him to me. He moved slowly and steadily, still kissing me and plowing his fingers into my freed hair.

I remember very little else. I was lost. He moved me but stayed pressed against me. I lost track of his caresses, barely cognizant as his grasp slid out my arm that he had pulled it free from its sleeve. He showed me what I had told him I wanted to know, and indeed, I could not oppose him, neither in action nor in thought.

I woke at sunrise, lying on his chest in a pile of silk. I kissed him very lightly and slid off without waking him. I folded over a blanket to cover him then closed the curtains against the morning light. Just inside the door to the suite, I found the bag in which I carried my clothing and equipment. His aide must have brought it up from the dressing room downstairs. After changing back into my street clothes and brushing my hair, I looked just like any other woman, headed downstairs to hail a cab. The guard didn't see me leave either. I was never there.

As I rode away from the hotel, lurching along in traffic, several things occurred to me. First, I had walked through security too easily. An arbitrary person off the street would not have been able to come near that room. For that matter, very few people could. There was no badge, no warrant, no staff uniform, no utility access, no disguise, no identification with which I could so easily have entered that hotel room. I was invited.

Second, I spent more than six hours talking to a man with whom one cannot simply make an appointment, a man who summons people to his office if he wants so hear from them. Lobbyists regularly make millions of dollars of campaign contributions in hopes of having their voices heard for an infinitesimal fraction of the time I had. Furthermore, thousands of people make careers out of guessing what a man like him might be planning, things that he had told me outright.

Finally, I had been tutored in politics by a master of the craft. I carefully took those lessons to heart, replaying in my mind all the things he had said. Over and above all of that, I found one thing about the experience so shocking that it made me afraid, in a way, of myself: I could do it again. I could do it any time, and every time I did, I would get better at it.

A geisha's ultimate end is entertainment, elicitation of some enjoyable feeling or creation of some pleasant memory in her clients. With skill and dedication to her art, she can make those feelings and memories pure and perfect, even blessed. What I had done felt different than that. My ultimate end was my own power, power for the sake of power alone. I remained silent for my entire journey home, contemplating my motivation and wondering if I was wrong for it. I decided that I was not.