FRESH YARN presents: Turning Japanese ... by Andy Corren

FRESH YARN presents:

Turning Japanese
By Andy Corren

We were Jews. We were southerners. We were white trash and poor.

We lived in Japan.

The Corren family beached the island of Okinawa in the summer of 1970. We were stranded there by my father, Sergeant Major Sherman Bernard Corren, who was on a mission to train soldiers to skirmish in Vietnam. None of us knew what skirmishing was, but we knew you did it along the line of control. And while we didn't exactly know what a "line of control" was either, we didn't ask. You didn't ask the Sergeant Major questions. You just smiled when he addressed you, packed your bags when he told you to, and moved to a muggy island somewhere in Japan. My father was a phantom, an absentee landlord who genuinely frightened people. And by "people" I mean us. Daddy was a real, live soldier, a trained 82nd Airborne killing machine who could coolly cut a throat or methodically caponize a chicken in the field. Fortunately, due to all this skirmishing and killing, we never saw much of each other, and we never had to fake a close relationship. I was a child-size piece of Jewish furniture, boxed and shipped from one end of the earth to the other, looking for love from a man who didn't know what it was, couldn't show it and never gave it. A direct consequence of this Jewish-Japanese dilemma is that I have spent the past 30 years climbing in and out of bed with unavailable Asian men who have strong, violent hands. But that's really another story.

Japan in 1974 was exactly like the Japan of 2004 -- Japanese. Very, very Japanese. Exotic, hot, colorful, hot, and, well… hot. I remember the heat. And the food. And the bugs. But mainly… the heat. I'm told I was a healthy, curious five-year-old homosexual, more curious than most, and was eager to consume everything about Japanese culture. So I went native. Bamboo bed, flip flops, kimonos and salad bowl haircut. My first spoken language was Japanese. I preferred eating with chopsticks, and the very first meal I can remember is stir-fry. Sunsets were glorious and golden, setting over our crappy yellow and white military house, right there in the Land of the Rising Sun. I felt I was clearly marked out as special! I had been whisked away by powerful Shinto Gods, plucked from the tobacco fields and hog farms of eastern North Carolina, granted a dazzling Oriental life! I was unique! I was no longer American, I was Asian American! Nothing on earth could make this better! Nothing!

Except hired help.

I only inherited two things from my parents: the first was my simmering Jewish anxiety -- which I like to call my "inner Pandora," and the other was my ridiculous sense of entitlement, which I like to call "inexplicably unearned." Let me say again, we were poor. We never, ever, ever had money. We drove used, used cars. I wore my older brothers' older bothers' clothes, rode fifth-hand bikes and happily ate mustard-and-lettuce sandwiches for lunch. Half the time our electricity was disconnected and running water a luxury. If you've never "diverted" water from your next-door neighbor's outside faucet, never showered using a garden hose, you can't understand the thrill I still get every time I turn on a faucet and something other than spiders and brown mud spews out. When we moved to Japan, a raging inner Vanderbilt suddenly sprang out of Mom, and took us all by surprise. Mom, who was raised simply, by simple Hungarian Jews who lived simply. No, not in Budapest, but in Miami. Her people were simple, gassy, Hungarian people. Yet somehow, with her family comfortably settled into Army base life, her husband away slaughtering peasants, her bowling game well above average, my Mom suddenly became… Hungarian Royalty. In a single phone call, she yanked the Corren family, all four of my brothers, my sister and me, all the way from Hebrew white trash to Japanese Landed Gentry. Mom hired a maid. Two maids. Twin sisters.

Meet Renay Corren. Otherwise known as "Rosie," "Rose," "Ray," or "the lady with all those kids." She's the military wife you used to know? From 1956 to 1969? The one who always looked pregnant or always looked stoned, or always was both. She's the one who, if there were twin Japanese sisters at Kadena Base, Okinawa, willing to work as maids to a gigantic Jewish family from North Carolina, could hunt them down, hire them and grossly underpay them. Hi, Mom!

For a tiny Hebrew moppet such as myself, brimming with latent homosexuality and plantation master tendencies, the sisters Sayoko and Kyoko were the greatest playthings ever. They were like human pets, life-size China dolls -- a hateful stereotype, but they really looked like dolls! -- all subservient and pleasant, eager to please good-time girls. The sisters could do everything from weaving a kite out of rice paper to reaching the American cereal atop the refrigerator. I loved them instantly and unconditionally. They taught me how to say "shit" in Japanese (it's kuso!) They groomed my unruly hair with fishy-smelling oil. They told me, in their broken English, and with their every small, perfect gesture, that they preferred me over the four other thick-necked, slack-jawed dick-headed Corren brothers.

When Sayoko and Kyoko came into our lives, that Rising Sun illuminated our modest home, filled it with a golden glow of contentment, prosperity and harmony. All was well at last with the Corren Family.

For about three months.

The Sergeant Major was back. And it was the week before Halloween, which fell that year on a weekend. It was Friday. Soon Sayoko and Kyoko would be leaving for the long, dusty walk back to their village. For their day off. Away from us. Away from all but one of these strange-talking, quarrelsome Jewish people. For on Saturdays, one of the Five Magnificent Corren Brothers got to go home with them. It was a coveted prize among the squabbling Corren kids of Okinawa. How I came to hate Saturdays. With all those brothers competing for the privilege to escort the twins home, you can imagine how often I got to go. Once a month. One fucking time. When the sisters strolled away from our house without me, down that filthy yellow clay road to a village called Futenma, I was… devastated. Abandoned. Torn apart by heartbreak and violent outrage. How could any of my vulgar, chromosomal-challenged brothers understand the graceful beauty of the twins' lilting walk, or the kindness that exuded from the pores of those sweet, simple sisters? How could they understand the joy I found in the companionship of Sayoko's son, Taki? Taki, who introduced me to two lifelong passions: Handsome Japanese television superhero Ultraman, and eating raw beef hot dogs dipped in soy sauce.

The 100% True Story of Ultraman, Japanese superhero. Ultraman came from Nebula M78 to Earth. Having captured the evil monster Bemlar, he was returning to the Space Graveyard when he collided with a Beetle ship from the Scientific Investigation Agency. Hayata, the most gorgeous Japanese scientist & pilot in history, was nearly killed in the crash. A side note: I have been looking for Hayata my entire life, so if you see him, please feel free to give him my email address. Sexy pilot and scientist Hayata had a secret. A very, very short secret. Yes, another detestable stereotype. But Hayata's secret was that he might have died if Ultraman hadn't shared his life-force with him. Isn't that totally hot?! From that day on, whenever Hayata used the Beta Capsule (a long tube one gripped firmly in the right hand in times of great spiritual or physical need), he became Ultraman, with Ultraman powers. He fired beams from his hands, as well as energy rings, anti-gravity power, and, um, fire-extinguishing liquid. Ultraman could also fly. When Hayata became 200 foot-tall Ultraman, he was unstoppable -- until the "Color Timer" flashed wildly on his chest three minutes later. That's right, he had three minutes to hold onto tube and work his magic. Then, as if on cue, when his energy was out, he returned back to human, cute Hayata form. When I first truly understood the legend of Japanese superhero Ultraman, I knew I was gay.

Everything about the experience of staying with Taki, watching Ultraman, eating raw beef hot dogs dipped in soy sauce, was desirable. And definitely sexually confusing. Was it Ultraman's handsome, silver musculature? Was it Hayata's three minutes of masculine, monster-ass-kicking? Was it being the son of a vicious, killer absentee father, eating raw beef hot dogs with an Asian boy in a dirty Japanese village? It didn't matter -- those weekend trips belonged to one person and one person alone -- me. That my brothers would dare to tread on this Holy Communion, would drink the soy of my friend Taki, was an apostasy to me.

That Halloween I had fallen out of the wheel of Futenma Village's fate, as my hated brother Scott took that yellow dirt road in my place. I was out of control. With Ultraman strength, I hurled myself at the chain link fence that separated our white town from their brown village, howling like a shrine maiden at a village god's injustice. Melodramatic? Operatic? Yes! To add insult to injury, the Japanese didn't celebrate Halloween. This bears repeating: Japanese people did not celebrate Halloween.

Try explaining "no Halloween this year" to a lovesick, greedy, fatherless, southern gay Jewboy stranded in Japan. I double dog dare you.

There was an all-night Ultraman-a-thon festival on TV, which mother promised I could stay up and watch. A small consolation. While visions of my brother Scott eating beef with my boy husband Taki danced in my head, I was stuck with my family. Knowing that Taki wanted me in Futenma. In my mind, his chocolate eyes implored me to figure out a way to come to him. His bubbly laugh begged me. But it was no use. It was Scott's turn to take the hand of the twins. Scott, who sucked his thumb. Scott, who whipped a wire hangar at my weenie when I was trying to pee in White Lake, inflicting on me the first in a series of minor penis trauma. I despised my six-year-old brother, Scott, and all that he stood for, which, at six years old, admittedly wasn't much more than "Pixie Sticks with Sprite Tastes Good!" I was resolved. I would do something, anything, to grab my mother's attention, to sabotage Scott's walk, to take his place and be rightfully reinstated at Taki's side.

As you might have, first I tried pooping in the front yard. In broad daylight. Taking a luxurious poop in the afternoon, in your family's front yard in Japan is an exquisite, liberating thrill that I recommend to all of you looking for an appropriate outlet for your childhood anxieties. The correct posture is leaning over, hands touching the ground, head perched between the legs. From there I could see our house behind me, through the hard brown rain that fell between my legs. It had been decorated poorly with what few paltry Halloween decorations could be mustered from the base P/X. In my mind, I was pooping on them. My sister spied on me through the kitchen screen, so, in my mind, I pooped on her, too. Any minute, I knew, she would barrel out of the house, my furious mother right behind her, and I would poop on both of them! Poop, poop, poop! Let the entire world be covered in the poop of a five-year-old's despair!

But with hardly a glance, Cathy shut the curtains, and ignored me entirely. So. It was to be like that. I saw instantly that I'd have to work harder. I stood there, alone in the front yard, stewing, while also trying to figure out how one wipes one's bottom when one takes a giant revenge poop in one's front yard. For the record, one uses junk mail.

I tried telepathy, sending mental messages to Taki, mentally willing him to mentally hear me, holding my Japanese radio close to my ears, praying over Tony Orlando & Dawn for us to be connected. But when Jim Croce started to sing about someone named "Leroy Brown," I took it as a sign. I failed again. I was by now convinced that those two smiling, simpering Japanese bitches masquerading as my friends had, in fact, sabotaged my relationship with Taki, and were right then, that very minute, installing pee-pee wounding, thumb-sucking Scott in my rightful place. Desperation grew! And you know what they say about desperate times.

It was after dinner, I remember clearly, because after dinner Mom always went back to bed, "to read." Which was really code for, "I'm going to lie on my side with a joint, a trashy paperback, a can of Charles Chips and a remote control, with the door shut." Out-of-control with Taki bloodlust, I slipped outside, stealthily into the night like a love assassin, into our car, a beat up red Dodge Coronet that usually sat unused. Tiny Yoshi Cabs were the preferred method of travel over the narrow streets of Okinawa. I crawled up into the car, placed my hands upon the wheel, and… well… I don't remember. This is the part of the story where it gets fuzzy. My last conscious thought that night was that I was finally free from my family! That I was headed toward Futenma! Towards Taki! Towards the rising sun. Towards love.

While the facts of what happened that night remain under dispute, this much is true: when I woke up, I was in my father's arms. Wrapped up safe inside those killer Army arms. Frankly, I was a little scared. Of course I thrashed about, cried out for Taki. There it was, one of the only moments I can recall of the Sergeant Major ever touching me with anything resembling tenderness, and all I wanted… was to hug the shit out of a little Japanese boy named Taki. Taki! Taki, save me! Taki, tasukeru!

Seems I had lashed out while I was in the Coronet, hitting either the transmission rod that poked out of the steering wheel (remember those?), or the emergency brake; either way, I hit it savagely, with all my five-year-old, pent-up, Ultraman strength and rage. Of course I was unable to take back what I had set in motion, and the Coronet just rolled down the hill. And rolled. And rolled. Where it was conveniently stopped. By another parked car.

That wasn't the biggest surprise of Halloween in Japan that year. The biggest surprise was… on me. Instead of spending it with Taki, and the pretty twin sisters of Futenma Village, I spent it with… the Sergeant Major. My father, the real, live killing machine. He must have liked how I felt in his arms, because he stuck around long enough for some scary movies, some hot dogs, some Ultraman and… me.