Choto Temple Ch. 02

Here's Chapter 2 (of 14, altogether). I really appreciate the feedback, whether by voting or by dropping me a line. Hope you like Chapter 2!

*****

"I love Japan, and so many things about Japanese culture, but the lack of furniture drives me nuts," Zerzinski said, as he sat down on the couch.

"Why don't they all get back problems from sitting on the floor all the time?" he continued. "I don't know how that works."

He had a warmth about him that I hadn't expected. I had never met him til now. But the way he was generally depicted back when he was in the news cycle was as a difficult, taciturn kind of guy with all sorts of questionable motives.

The vibe he gave off to me, though, was that of an upbeat, relaxed guy. And it would seem that he has plenty to be upbeat about.

He proceeded to act the way one would expect a convivial host to act, asking me how my trip to the mountain was. Of course he knew there's no direct way to get there without a private jet or something. So the journey is always a bit of an adventure.

"Shall we get started?" I asked, after what seemed like an appropriate amount of small-talk.

He breathed deeply. More like a sigh.

"Sure."

"Giving interviews isn't your favorite thing to do?"

I hoped he knew I was referring to the sigh with that question.

"You haven't given an interview in ten years?"

He paused before answering.

"Before I started teaching high school, I was playing a lot of music. I did a lot of seat-of-the-pants touring. With bands that were always falling apart after a few months and such.

"But anyway," he went on, "what can happen after an interview is a lot like what happens after you play a bad note. But with amplification and an audience. Well, good or bad note. It's amplified. The effect is much bigger than it would be if it stayed in your bedroom."

"As a musician and a journalist myself, I completely understand your point."

But I was still waiting for his answer, and he knew that. He sighed again.

"They say when you start meditating, don't mention it to anyone for the first five or ten years."

He paused before continuing. "I was a pretty level-headed, self-confident guy before the diagnosis, I like to think. But I think most people would have a challenging time with what happened to me, and, well, I did, too. I didn't see the point in talking about these things with journalists anymore, so I stopped."

I looked at the MP3 recorder to make sure it was working properly, and opened my notebook to where I had been outlining interview topics to cover.

"Can you say in your own words, where are we? What is this place here on this mountain in rural Japan?"

Zerzinski paused again. He was clearly a bit hesitant, if not tense, since the interview part began. I imagined eventually he'd loosen up. At least I hoped so.

The expression on his face reminded me of the expressions on the faces of many politicians I'd interviewed over the years, who are always so careful about how they phrase things. Lest someone out there read into something a meaning or attitude they didn't want to communicate.

"Well, one thing this place is," he said, "is a pretty impressive example of the adaptability of Japanese culture."

"Did you teach social studies when you taught high school?"

There was something distinctly teacher-ish in his delivery, and I had to ask.

"Yes, for many years."

He smiled, and looked a bit sheepish.

"Sorry, please continue. How does this place exhibit this adaptability?"

"Well, they've taken a modern problem and a modern solution, but found a way to interface between these two things in what is in many ways a very traditionally-oriented process.

"They formed a temple, involving different kinds of training, service, and rituals. They've taken what could potentially be a very uncomfortable or inappropriate, taboo kind of thing, and made it honorable and even exciting."

"Exciting for you?" I asked.

"Undeniably, it is exciting for me. And I've never said otherwise."

He was sounding somewhat defensive, but I went on with my line of questioning.

"All the women of the world wanting to have sex with you is basically a positive?"

"Not all," he corrected. "But a hell of a lot. Yes, there's quite a silver lining. But it comes with challenges."

"What sorts of challenges?"

He breathed deeply before answering, and paused to take a sip of the sparkling water that was making a faint bubbly noise. I imagined the sound of the bubbles I'd hear later when listening to the recording, as I also took a sip from my glass.

"I guess mostly the same kinds of challenges involved with winning a really big lottery jackpot. Or having a massive, runaway hit in the Billboard charts."

He paused thoughtfully.

"Well, more like winning the lottery," he continued. "Because the fact that this happened to me is completely coincidental, it has nothing to do with talent. Which is another one of the challenges involved."

He paused again, clearly thinking about how to explain his thought better. I waited silently, patiently. Often the best interviewing technique is to say nothing, while looking attentive and interested. Let the silences happen.

"All kinds of moral quandaries," he finally went on. "I'm just glad this didn't happen to me when I was any younger."

"I don't know how many of the Billboard hits have to do with talent," I interjected. Then I asked my next question.

"Some people say this place is a cult. What do you say to that?"

He chuckled a little. "I love that phrase, 'some people say,' that's a good one.

"I don't know what qualifies for cult status. I'd say the Catholic Church is much more of a cult than this place. If this is a cult, then I don't know who the leader of it is. Cults usually have charismatic gurus, don't they?"

"You're not the leader?" I asked.

"No," he answered decisively. "They formed this Purification Temple, and later also the Choto Temple, basically as a direct consequence of my diagnosis.

"But if someone else had the same kind of unusual chromosomes as me, they would have put them at the center of the thing. I just ultimately decided it was too good an opportunity to pass up, for a lot of reasons."

I was somewhat expecting to meet an emotionally distant, self-important narcissist. But Zerzinski still kept striking me as an intelligent guy who had given a lot of thought to a lot of stuff that most people never have to think about.

"OK, let's backtrack. Let's start at the beginning," I announced. It's often a good place to start, I find.

"To when I was diagnosed?" he asked.

"That's the beginning for you, isn't it?"

"Well, I certainly have tended to see my life in terms of Before the Diagnosis and After the Diagnosis, that's for sure."

"Understandably enough," I said. "But I was thinking of BD."

Zerzinski nodded.

"I'd like to get a picture of what your life was like in the decades before the CDC anointed you the sexiest man in the world."

He smiled, or grimaced, I couldn't tell which.

"What were you into as a kid? What were your early relationships like? Let's dwell on that for a while."

"I was a geeky kid. Spent a lot of time alone in the woods. Or home reading comic books. Or spending all day and night on a given weekend obsessively playing Dungeons & Dragons with my few, geeky friends." He paused. "They were all guys," he added.

"There were no girlfriends in the picture?" I asked.

"The whole concept was just alien to me, though something I desperately wanted. In retrospect, desperately wanting something you don't understand while at the same time totally ignoring it and obsessing over role-playing games is overall not a good sexual strategy."

"You found better sexual strategies eventually?"

"Yes. Learning to talk to girls like they're fellow human beings helped. And playing the guitar. Well, actually the combination of singing while playing the guitar, really. The singer in the band always gets laid the most."

"I'd have to concur with that observation," I said.

Next question. "Can you tell me something about your earliest sexual experiences?"

This clearly wasn't the first time he'd encountered that one. His answer sounded rehearsed.

"They could generally be characterized by their brevity, and by premature ejaculation."

"Any lasting relationships?"

"Not until I was 19. I guess I kind of got the hang of it after that. The lasting relationship thing. They didn't last long for the most part until I was a bit older.

"I was a pretty arrogant, know-it-all kind of hippie kid. But I guess there were attractive enough aspects to me, since there was only a few months during my twenties when I wasn't hooked up with someone."

He paused. "Though at the time it seemed like an exceedingly long few months, I remember well. I was despondent."

"I wonder if you could talk about the contrast between your general relationship with sex BD versus AD? I think this is among the things that really interest readers. And editors."

"Sex."

He paused again and let the short, potent word hover in the air before continuing.

"What can I say, it's a little like night and day. Though thankfully maybe not quite that much.

"I mean, I often wonder what it would have been like if I had been one of those really awkward guys who never got laid, never had relationships, and then this happened to me?

"It might be too much to handle. It already has been, for me, too, at various points.

"Though I know," he added, "that may be hard for some guys to digest."

He looked at me before continuing. I tilted my head in a certain way that almost always successfully communicates I understand, please go on.

"When I was younger, I got into a number of wonderful relationships with a variety of women, some few of whom I even stayed friends with after we broke up. We experimented with polyamory with varying degrees of success.

"I had a lot of good sex, but that's all relative. I mean by some standards I was maybe a bit of a Casanova. In a typical year, especially when I was trying to make a go of it as a musician, I was often in some kind of sexual relationship with five different women in different parts of the world."

"A girl in every port, as the saying goes?"

"Well, that's the idea, perhaps," Zerzinski said. "But really, no. Five - that's maybe five ports. Or more if they're mobile.

"But it's a totally different situation to now. I mean five, that's a lot more than zero. But a lot less than 365."

"Point taken."

"But those five - they wanted me for who I was. I mean maybe they liked me because I played music, but at least that's a skill that I learned over many years, you know? Not just some exotic chromosome I happened to be born with."

"Hm, that sort of takes away your sense of agency, doesn't it?" I asked.

"Indeed it does," he replied immediately. "But I'm more or less at peace with that, now, and able to just enjoy life, for the most part. It's a good life."

"It seems like there might be some positive aspects to it," I joked weakly.

Next question. Editor's choice.

"Robert, when I say the phrase, 'especially memorable sexual experience from your youth,' what's the first thing that comes to mind?"

He looked a bit distant, as if trying to pull an old memory out of a part of his brain he hadn't accessed in a while. Then he smiled.

"I'll call her Eva. Wellesley College. Our first night together is etched in my mind like it happened last week.

"It was all so real, so unusual back then. I didn't feel like I had to remind myself that I'm not living in a dream. It was a dream, and it was real, and just electric. Well everything seemed more real back then.

"The band I was trying to keep together at the time was all in Philadelphia. They had driven there from Connecticut the day before, like sensible people, to have a little time in Philly before the gig the next day.

"Me, I went north instead, where I was featuring at a little open mike at Wellesley College. Which is in the suburbs of Boston."

"Yeah, I grew up in New England, too, actually, near you, in Connecticut," I interjected. "Sorry, please go on, Robert."

"Right on. What town?"

"Westport."

"Ah, the Gold Coast. I grew up in New Canaan, among the bankers."

"Ah, yes, I know it well. There's a train station there. OK, so you're at Wellesley..."

"Wellesley, yes."

He continued where he had left off. "So I'm doing this little open mike feature. Which was totally not worth bothering with from a financial or professional perspective.

"Except that I had been exchanging flirtatious messages with a student there who I met the last time I had a gig at the college. I invited her to come to Philly with me for the weekend, and said she could just come with me after the open mike. She agreed, which was thrilling.

"I barely knew her, so I figured we could have some time to talk while driving. Since I needed to be in Philly the next day, I figured it'd be better to drive at night at least part of the way.

"So we were having a good time talking and sharing stories about childhood. Though for her that was essentially the year before, and it was a bit disconcerting for me back then each time she began a sentence with, 'last year, in high school.' But she was clearly not a kid anymore, anyway."

He was sounding perhaps a bit apologetic. He continued.

"We were enjoying the drive and the conversation, both, I thought. Then we were through most of Connecticut, and I was thinking, it would be good to start looking for a motel or something. But by the the time I had that thought, we were on the fucking Gold Coast."

"And everything's twice as expensive," I added helpfully.

"Right, and I was living pretty hand-to-mouth at the time. So I thought, we need to get to the other side of New York City, well into New Jersey, before the prices get reasonable again. But by this time, there's something unexpected happening in the passenger seat.

"Eva would interject in between other topics of conversation, 'are we going to stop soon?' And every time she'd say this, she would unbutton, unsnap, or unzip some article of her clothing.

"In between unbuttoning things, she'd be caressing her body, putting her hands in various places under her clothing. And otherwise behaving in an extremely distracting manner.

"By the time we got to the George Washington Bridge, Eva was completely naked aside from her panties and socks. As I was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike I was really trying hard to pay attention to the road.

"Though I was also thinking, I'm sure I could just stop anywhere and Eva would be into fucking in the car or something. But I didn't want to fuck in the car. I wanted to get to a motel.

"But there are no fucking signs for lodging on the New Jersey Turnpike! This was before GPS's. I couldn't believe it. I was going nuts.

"Eventually I just pulled off at a random exit, and there were a bunch of motels there. Somehow or other I got us a room, and we were fucking within about five minutes of going through the door."

Zerzinski paused, as if lost in thought.

I waited a moment before saying, in what I hoped was a playful tone, "don't stop just when we're getting to the juicy part."

I was trying to say something encouraging. It seemed to work.

"Ah, how to describe these things..." He collected more thoughts before continuing.

"Just transcendent. Amazing. She was the very image of African beauty. She had grown up riding a bicycle and acting in Georgia. She was my height, but much thinner. Lean, though endowed with incredible breasts, the size of small watermelons. And just as firm, and impossibly pert. The kind of pertness only possible when you're 19. The only other part of her body that had any fat in it was her gorgeous ass.

"And her whole body, mind, her entire person that night was obsessively focused on nothing but her desire to fuck me. It was so complete.

"Her skin was so warm and velvety, and she smelled so good. There was no question about what variety of sexual intercourse she was ready for that night - just everything I did was met with total approval. Interspersed with shuddering, full-body orgasms she'd have every ten minutes or so.

"Yeah, wonderful night, but probably particularly memorable because of the build-up. Those hours of anticipation stuck in a car on the turnpike while Eva got undressed in the passenger seat.

"And it's memorable because an impossibly beautiful young woman wanted to fuck me so much, just because she liked something about me. All very memorable, because it didn't happen every day, partly. Not like things since the diagnosis."

As if on cue, there was a gentle knock on a door, and one of the walls was sliding open, revealing a beautiful young woman. After a moment I realized it was the same woman I had seen before, standing behind Zerzinski. Now her hair was in a neat little bun, and she was more fully dressed.

She said something in Japanese and Zerzinski translated. "Would you like something to drink? There's an espresso machine. The only one for miles around."

"A cappuccino would be great," I said, and the woman repeated, "cappuccino" and then some other things I didn't understand, and she closed the door behind her.

"Can you tell me about her?" I asked Zerzinski.

"Her name is Mariko. She's a member of the Choto Temple."

"What's the Choto Temple?"

"Geez, it's all on Wikipedia. Don't you guys do research before you interview someone?"

"Sorry, my memory is like a sieve," I admitted. "But it's great to get this in your own words, anyway. All I ever hear about is the Purification Temple."

"Yeah, that's the main thing. The Choto Temple is more an offshoot, an improvised addition to the original plan."

He breathed deeply. "Sometimes it just randomly hits me how completely crazy and surreal all this is."

He took a thoughtful sip of bubbly water before continuing.

"The people on the council in Fukushima originally came up with the Purification Temple idea. Providing young women from the area with a ritualized structure for them to receive this inoculation."

"By 'inoculation'," I interrupted, "you're referring to sexual intercourse, correct?"

"Exactly," he replied, with a slightly perplexed expression that communicated his keen awareness that he's in a strange situation. "So that's the basis of the Purification Temple. The Choto Temple, well, you have to understand the numbers first."

Zerzinki looked at me with his fairly piercing brown eyes, making sure I was following him.

"There are tens of thousands of women who qualify for the Purification Temple. Of those tens of thousands who qualify, there are many thousands who sign up and get on a very long waiting list, since there's only room for 200 of them in a given year. So to add some more surreality to the already surreal, some fairly spectacular women started up the Choto Temple."

"And how does it differ from the Purification Temple?"

"They're volunteers, they're not part of that arrangement. They sort of do their own thing within this context," Zerzinski explained.

"So," he went on, "the Purification Temple visitors come in the evening. During the day, members of the Choto Temple are around. And, well, I hang out with them. And we engage in various activities that are all set out by the Temple."

"What does that involve, generally?"

"It's no secret. 'Choto' is a play on words. Lots of ironic humor here in Japan - you find that out when you actually learn the language. 'Choto' means 'a little,' but it also serves as a mild admonishment, like what someone might say to someone else who's acting a little inappropriate."