Dear Lon,
Right. I take your point. Let us see if the ways we frame our thoughts and
the words we can find to express them are worth
the effort.
The beginning of this first chapter dates from the moment I walked into the
home of Julie Meech’s parents
one day when you were to give a performance in their living room. Besides
my curiosity about that there
was a greater incentive for me to attend. You had already told me of the
dock-fingered window washer you had met
and how charming it was to have him curl up and drift off to sleep beside
you with his hand wrapped around your dick.
You said he would be at the event. I was prepared to be interested. No
surprise, one quick glance around the room
was enough to identify him, and another glance from him to me kindled the
flame. I made a date for us to meet a
day or so later, and from that time one in the fall of 1968 I could think
of little else. He asked me to his little room
in Komagome and I brought him once to Kyoto to stay with me in that house
where I lived on the mountain path
behind Ginkakuji leading up to the top of Daimonji-yama. Through all this
not one single full-blown sexual episode occurred,
much as I desired it. Looking back I don’t see how it could have been
otherwise, given the ambiguities running through him.
And it was precisely these which attracted me the most, as if I were doomed
to be frustrated in every erotic encounter.
Then sometime early in 1969 our paths parted and I didn’t see him again
until the early 1980’s when just like you I bumped into
him by chance. He was walking toward me on a street in Kamakura. Joy! Once
again we resumed meetings, at a different level
this time. He came to Kyoto a couple of times, met Isao and then slipped
out of sight with a new wife, as I said, to somewhere
deep in the hills of Niigata prefecture, where I hope they are both still
happy today. There is no way of finding out. He is
a lovely person, somewhat sad in his limitations of opportunity, but I
guess no more so than the rest of us if we could take
a god’s eye view of everything. My best memory is the trip we took in dead
winter to his family home in Sakata on the Japan Sea
coast. Snow country. All that part of town later burned to the ground.
From years before meeting him I had developed a taste for his type. A
clever Chinese professor I had at university and who knew
me very well described this type as the “honest woodcutter.” But of course
in every so-called type there are infinite varieties.
I was to learn that some “woodcutters” were quite ready to engage in almost
any sort of sex, playful or not so playful, at any time of
night or day. That is where Thailand enters the story.
I have an old friend who teaches philosophy at the University of Hong Kong.
For many years he had been going to Thailand
and always brought back photos of the boys he met and described his
sporting life there with a kind of subdued relish that amused me.
I would critique the photos and we would have another drink, then move on
to more intellectual matters. Nothing ever really
stirred me to follow in his footsteps… until one day. In his latest album
of photos was one fellow who looked straight out not at the
camera but directly into my eyes, or so I fancied anyway. He was the
absolute epitome of the “woodcutter”, the “woodcutter”
writ large in gilt lettering, if you will excuse the hyperbole. I decided
on the spot I had to meet him, and without any delay booked
a flight to Bangkok. I knew where he hung out– in the park at the outdoor
gym in the late afternoons- so after checking into a
low-dive sort of hotel nearby I beat a quick path there. A bit late as it
turned out, or maybe just in time, for as I was entering the
park he strolled out. He gave me a sidelong look and continued on his way
with a slow, dreamlike rolling gait I came to know
and love. I followed him awhile but did not approach. The next day I went
earlier and made contact while he was exercising
bare-chested. And what a magnificent body it was, in every department. A
smile to die for, delicate hands of an artist, oddly so
for someone who had been working in a blacksmith’s shop when he was first
discovered. Preecha Narkwichit. Him I do know
how to find every time I go to Bangkok. There are too many stories to tell.
But after all, a sad boy, who has become a sadder man,
even with my friendship to rely upon. Change is to be dreaded above all.
Look at America.
Next chapter will retreat from this territory to the more demanding one of
the occupation to which I devoted my energies. I’d never
call it a business and even less, a profession.
That is, if you want to hear any more.
To you it may all sound slightly drivelish.
Jim
Entry of Letter from James Freeman –
August 17, 2007
