Taste

"Thank you," she said, when she was able to speak again. I took a step back to survey the damage. Her makeup had run down her face, and her hair was a total mess. "Clearly, I'm in no shape to drive," she cracked, as she wiped away the last remnants of a tear.

Part 4 of 6: The Pictures

Janet threw up in my toilet the instant we got upstairs. Maybe it was the jolty elevator, or her soul-bearing story, or the entirety of everything that had happened to her that finally did it. Through the bathroom door, I asked if she needed assistance, but she shooed me away. I let her know there were extra toothbrushes in the drawer and granted her some privacy. To make myself useful, I boiled some water for a pot of tea.

Janet emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later looking much better. She'd washed her face, fixed her hair, and brushed her teeth. Her eyes were still a bit bloodshot; she'd probably cried some more in the bathroom. I handed her a cup of tea and told her to drink some.

"I'm terribly sorry," she said, grabbing a seat on my sofa and sipping her tea. "I know I'm not very good company right now. I promise I'll make it up to you."

I told her not to worry and implored her to try to relax. She placed her cup on the coffee table, slumped onto the sofa, and lay there, squirming in place.

"I may have made a mess in your bathroom," she said.

Again, I told her it was okay, that I would attend to the mess when I had the chance. Her eyes moved down to the sleeve of her blouse where she spotted some rogue vomit.

"Ah shit," she exclaimed, "I'm a total disaster right now."

"You can borrow a shirt for tonight," I told her.

I went to my room and fetched a Star Wars T-shirt from my closet, the smallest shirt I owned. Janet was still sprawled out on the sofa when I came back, her eyes closed. "I'm not sleeping," she said, when she heard me return. "I'm just resting my eyelids."

I handed her the shirt and told her to put it on. She tried to unbutton her blouse but struggled with the first button. "Let me help you with that," I offered, sitting down next to her and undoing it for her. With her eyes still closed, she thanked me and allowed me to undo the others. With the last button unbuttoned, her shirt flung open to reveal her smooth stomach and a simple bra. I clumsily removed her blouse, folded it, and placed it on the table. She sat up, opened her eyes groggily, and took the T-shirt from me.

"I know I've inconvenienced you enough," Janet said, pulling the T-shirt over her head, "but would you mind if I crashed here tonight?"

"I would prefer it," I told her, realizing only afterwards how my words could perhaps be misconstrued. "I mean, I don't want you getting on the road in your condition—is what I meant. You can take my bed, and I'll sleep on the sofa."

"No way," she shot back. "I'll sleep on the sofa. It's your house after all, and I'm the guest. Besides, I'm practically asleep on your sofa already."

Having slept on my sofa plenty, I knew she would regret her decision in the morning. First, the cushions were old and unforgiving; they were soft in places that needed to be firm and firm in places that needed to be soft. Second, the living room got extremely cold at night, even in the summer months.

My arguments, however, wouldn't hold up in Janet's court, and she staked her claim to the sofa. I brought her a blanket and pillow and tucked her in.

"Have it your way," I said. "But if you change your mind in the middle of the night, feel free to join me in my bed. Just push me over to the other side if I'm asleep."

Janet was fast asleep by this point and didn't respond. I kissed her on her forehead and retired to my room, stripping down to my boxers and climbing into my bed.

I woke up the next morning to my phone ringing on my bedside table. The sun was peeking through my blinds; the clock on the wall read 8:43 AM. I picked up my phone, saw that it was my mom calling, and took the call. She wished me a good morning and asked if I wanted to meet up for dim sum in an hour. I told her yes and then remembered Janet sleeping on the sofa.

"Hold on a sec," I said, still a little groggy from being woken up so early. I went out to the living room and saw that Janet was sitting up, half-awake. My ringing phone must've woken her up too. "My parents want to have dim sum in an hour. Wanna join us?"

Janet nodded, groggily. I relayed her message and then ended the call. Janet sat up, stretched out her arms, and yawned. I sat down next to her and asked how she was feeling. "You were right," she admitted, cracking her neck. "Your sofa sucks."

I looked down and realized to my embarrassment that I was in just my boxers. Janet caught me looking and told me to relax. "I've seen you in much less," she remarked, bringing up instances in the past when I'd had girls over at my parents' house and, of course, the onsen in Japan.

I relaxed a little and shared a laugh with her. It was great to see Janet in better spirits and cracking jokes again. We didn't have a lot of time, so I let her sleep in a little longer while I showered first. Afterwards, I laid out a clean towel and another T-shirt for Janet.

After her shower, we sat around my place to pass the 10--15 minutes we had before we needed to head out. I thought about what Janet had said earlier about seeing me in much less, and my mind inevitably returned to the video I'd seen of her—also in much less. Since we were being candid with each other, I thought I would turn up the heat a notch.

"Remember Miu?" I asked, fetching my laptop and booting it up. She saw what I was doing and put two and two together. "Yeah, why?" she answered, her curiosity tickled. "Do you have pictures?"

"I do," I responded, launching iPhoto on my laptop and finding them. "I must warn you though, some of these pics are quite—graphic. Can you handle a little nudity?"

"Of course," she replied, slapping me on the shoulder as if I'd just insulted her in the worst possible way.

Janet sat down next to me on the sofa and leaned in closer. I clicked on the first photo, enlarging it to full screen. Miu was seated across from me at a Denny's. She was wearing a modest green blouse and smiling at the camera. "I took this picture during our second meeting over Golden Week," I explained.

"She's pretty," Janet remarked.

I pressed a button, and the next photo popped up. This was one of Miu in my bedroom, taken from just above her nipples and revealing her bare shoulders and neck—a playful photo with only some implied nudity.

"You're sure you can handle this?" I asked, rhetorically. Janet punched me in the shoulder this time and told me to scroll to the next one. The third photo was of Miu from her neck down. She was lying on her back in a compliant pose, stark naked, beckoning for me to come to her.

"This was right before we had sex—obviously. Taking photos was her idea. She wanted pics of us to masturbate to whenever I wasn't around."

"She's got a terrific body for an older woman," Janet pointed out. "Hopefully I'll look that good when I'm her age."

I didn't know how to respond, so I said the first thing that came to me.

"I'm sure you've got a smoking hot body too. Hard to tell with all your clothes on."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, hitting me for the third time in as many minutes. "Wouldn't you like to know!?"

I knew exactly what the next photo was. My fingers trembled at the thought of how Janet would react. Even though I already knew what her answer would be, I asked if she still wanted to proceed anyway. Rather than hit me this time, she just gave me a sober look as if to say, Get on with it!

I pressed a button, and a photo of Miu taking my dick in her mouth appeared. Even though the head was fully engulfed in her mouth, there was still plenty of shaft to ogle. The next photo was similar, taken from a different angle. Each subsequent photo featured my cock in either Miu's hand, mouth, or pussy. I didn't say very much about each photo, and Janet said nothing at all. Several of the pics were quite blurry, with Miu working frenziedly on my cock, completely oblivious to the camera. A dozen photos later, and we were finally at the last one: a photo of Miu's face covered in my cum, her fingers playing with some jizz she'd wiped from her smiling face.

Janet did not react right away and just sat there, speechless. I knew what I'd done, but it was too late to take it back. Her eyes remained glued to the screen, transfixed. Eventually, after what had felt like an eternity, she turned to me, her face in utter shock.

"What——The——FUCK!?"

I feigned shock and bafflement and asked her what the big fuss was. She shook her head rapidly from side to side like a dog trying to shake mud from its coat.

"You just showed me your dick!"

I continued to act surprised.

"Pics of my dick," I corrected her, adding, "I don't understand. Just now, you said you've seen me naked before."

She twisted her face into a ball. It was now her turn to be confused.

"When did I say that?" she argued, adamant that I'd imagined it. I brought up my parents' house; I brought up the onsen.

Janet punched me square in the shoulder.

"I said I'd seen you when you were naked," she clarified. "That's not the same as seeing you naked. I never saw you naked at your parents'—ever! And that goes for Japan too. How could I? You were sitting the whole time, and the water obscured everything!"

I let her continue.

"And even if this is some misunderstanding like you claim, what you showed me just now wasn't just a little nudity, it was—"

She searched for the right word.

"—Pornography!"

By this point, we were running late to dim sum. As much as I wanted to continue debating this turn in our relationship, I told Janet we needed to get going. She was not pleased and swore to hold my feet to the fire in the car.

"Admit it," she said, accusingly, as we rode the elevator down to the lobby. "You knew exactly what you were doing back there."

Part 5 of 6: The Line

Janet would fly to California the next day. My last day of school came and went, and I was finally on summer vacation too. Having found a cheap flight to Toronto, I called Tommy to let him know I'd be visiting soon.

To pass the days, I hung out with Eunice, often spending the night at her place. By this point, we'd stopped having sex but still enjoyed each other's company. She was ready to find a husband and felt that our continued sexual involvement would only impede her progress. As per our contract, I respected her decision and kept things platonic.

I also did some shopping for my trip, nothing major: just some shorts, flip-flops, and—most importantly—a thumb drive. Why the thumb drive? Well, the only thing I regretted about seeing the video of Janet was my inability to watch it over and over again. I was determined to get a copy of that video, even if it meant I had to steal it.

My Toronto visit coincided with the 2010 G7 Summit. Protestors marched through the city daily while police officers in riot gear were never too far away. The tension in the city, especially in the business district, was palpable.

I did my best to steer clear of these protests. After work, Tommy took me around to Kensington Market, Chinatown, U of T, and Little Italy. We played frisbee golf on the Island, caught a Jays game versus the Angels, and on one of my alone days, I took a shuttlebus to Niagara Falls to gamble at the casino.

On another one of my alone days, while Tommy was at work, I discovered, again to my good fortune, that Tommy had left his laptop on. Knowing I had more time this time, I did a much more thorough search and found not only the webcam video I'd already seen, but three other things I hadn't expected to find.

The first was a video of Tommy and Janet fucking, basically a sex tape that he'd filmed on his cellphone. The second was an entire folder of even more webcam videos. Apart from the one named J, I opened and watched every single one. My favourite was one in which Janet spread her legs wide to reveal her tight, little pussy. She then proceeded to slide a large purple dildo in and out of her while sucking on a smaller black dildo. These I quickly copied to my thumb drive before hiding it at the bottom of my suitcase so that Tommy wouldn't find it.

The third and final thing I found—and far and away the most shocking—was a folder with the photos of Miu I'd shown Janet. I nearly fell over backwards at this discovery. What were these doing on my brother's laptop? How had they gotten there? Had he snooped through my laptop too? I was totally shocked—and stumped!

Eventually, I would figure it out.

Upon my return to Canada, my laptop's DVD player wouldn't play DVDs because it was still region-locked to Japan. After failing to resolve the issue on my own, I asked Chuck, the computer whiz in my family, to help me. His recommendation was to restore my laptop to its original factory settings.

"You should probably back up all your files before we format anything," he advised.

Chuck copied my files to his external hard drive, formatted my laptop, and then transferred the files back. Not knowing much about computers, I thought that that was it, that the files were gone from his hard drive and back on my laptop. This hard drive my brother kept at his place, and I'm guessing Tommy must've gotten his hands on it at some point. What all this meant was that certainly one—and most likely both—of my brothers had seen pics of me having sex.

After my two weeks in Toronto, I met up with Oscar and Janet as we always did. I hadn't seen them in quite some time, and a lot had happened in the interim. While it was good to catch up with Oscar, the person I really wanted to see was Janet. We hadn't talked since the morning she'd slept over, and I was curious to know how she was feeling about everything.

Of course, I couldn't broach the topic in front of Oscar, so the three of us chatted about other things instead. Occasionally, I would look at Janet to see if I could discern anything from her body language. Unfortunately, I didn't know her idiosyncrasies well enough to come to any sort of conclusion. At the end of the night, Oscar drove home, while Janet and I took the Skytrain. Now that we were alone, there was no point in beating around the bush any longer.

"I need to confess something," I said, keeping my voice down so that the people around us couldn't hear. "Do you remember saying how you and Tommy used to Skype? And that on weekends, you would engage in—well—"

I couldn't find a word I was comfortable using.

"—Anyway, in Toronto, I stumbled across some videos on his laptop, videos of you doing some awfully naughty things. I don't know if you even know of their existence, but I was wrong to snoop through his laptop, and even more wrong to watch them. I guess your story had planted a seed in my brain, and I wasn't not going to look for them if given the chance."

Of course, this was not the complete truth.

Yes, I'd looked through Tommy's laptop, but that had been a good 24 hours before even learning of Janet's sexy Skype sessions. The seed had clearly been there already.

I waited for a response but didn't get one. Janet seemed to be in a trance of some sort, staring blankly at her feet. The muscles around her nose tightened, her breathing quickened, and her face reddened. The train rounded a bend too quickly, causing the passengers to sway to one side. When I looked up, Janet seemed ready to explode.

"I can't believe what I'm hearing," she fumed, still not looking at me. I stood down and readied my apology, but she wasn't done.

"I told that idiot TO DELETE THOSE!"

Every head on the train spun to look at us.

"What—the—fuck?" Janet continued, finally looking at me. "He still has them? He said he deleted them years ago."

It looked like Janet was about to cry. Like me, she was wary of the people around us and didn't want to make a scene. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to calm herself down. When she spoke again, it was in a stern but hushed tone.

"I was worried something like this would happen. That's why I asked him to delete them after we broke up. And now it's happened! Just like I feared. And, of course, it had to be you—YOU—of all people to see them too."

"Well," I interjected, "if it's any consolation, he has the photos of me and Miu on his computer too. I found them when—"

Janet shot me a flabbergasted look that said, What the hell does that have to do with anything? I took it as a cue to shut up.

"Waaait," she continued, finally understanding. "Do you mean to tell me you have Tommy's videos of me on your computer?"

I answered her question by not answering.

"Well, fuck—me!" Janet exclaimed, massaging her temples. She did her best to remain composed, but the news was clearly upsetting her. "So," she continued, "Tommy has lewd photos of you, and you have lewd videos of me."

"Oh, and a video of you and Tommy," I added, embarrassingly.

"WHAT!?"

The train pulled into the station, and several passengers got off. A mother seated nearby stood up and ushered her young son to an empty row of seats at the far end of the train. Janet collected herself as the train crawled out of the station.

"So, let me get this right," she continued. "You've seen my bits; and you've seen Tommy's bits; and he's seen your bits; and he's obviously seen my bits; and I've seen his bits; and I've seen your bits too because—oh God, we haven't even talked about that!"

"And Chuck's probably seen all of our bits because—"

Janet looked like she was going to murder me. I smartened up and dropped what I was about to say. She would be disembarking at the next stop, and I didn't want our night to end this way.

"You guys are fucked up," was all she had to say to me.

The train decelerated, and people moved towards the doors. I felt awful for what I'd done and felt the need to finally come clean.

"Okay, truth is: I found a video of you on Tommy's laptop even before Toronto. It was the night you two went out for drinks. That's one reason I showed you those pics of me and Miu. It didn't seem fair that I'd seen you naked and you hadn't seen me. It's fucked up, I know. Either way, I'll delete your videos tonight—the minute I get home."

The train came to a stop, and an old man shuffled between us. Janet followed him to the door, leaving me standing there alone. There wasn't anything else I could say or do, not in the few seconds we had left. I resigned myself to the fact I'd messed up royally with Janet, possibly even irreparably.

To my surprise, Janet did not immediately step off the train, stopping at the door, her eyes closed.

"Did you like what you saw on the videos?" she asked, opening her eyes and looking forward. I nodded, smiled, and told her from across the train that I did—very much. Her face relaxed, and I thought I saw her smile for the first time in a long time.

"Then keep them," she said, stepping slowly off the train. With one foot out the door, she turned to me one last time. "On the condition that I get a copy of your photos too—you know—out of fairness."

I wouldn't see Janet again till the following weekend. I emailed her my photos and asked if she wanted to come over for beers and a movie. After not hearing back for two days, she finally texted to say the earliest she could meet was Friday. I was free that night, so we agreed to meet up.

On Friday evening, we picked up a 6-pack of beers from the liquor store. I owned plenty of DVDs, so I was sure we could find something she hadn't seen. Janet was dressed the same as always: jeans, sneakers, and a summery blouse that showed a generous amount of neck. Her hair was tied up in a loose bun. It was a warm late-July evening, so neither of us bothered with a jacket.