Underwater Fireworks

{Warning: this story contains strong sexual themes and explicit descriptions of sexual acts.}

Matsuri hadn’t washed her hands thoroughly enough. She could still smell the liquid desire that had leaked from within her earlier in the night when she had masturbated behind a tree. The scent of her vagina clung to her fingers and clouded her mind. She wondered if a penis had a similar scent, or if it was very much different. Maybe it was muskier. Thicker. Stronger. She hoped so. She wanted that to be the smell on her fingers: semen and the scent of her husband’s desire; not the scent of her own longing.

She loved festivals, and enjoyed the line of food stalls lit brightly from within as yokai patrons lined up to eat. And yet, she could not focus. The takoyaki (octopus balls) made her think of men’s testicles. The ikayaki (fried squid) made her think of the suction cups lining each tentacle, and those suction cups made her think of blowjobs. The beer in her hand was the only thing at the festival that she didn’t directly link to sex, and yet, it was a primary offender in her increasing fixation on the carnal: the more she drank, the more her longing for sex presented itself.

“Ooh, it is rare to see a human at the Night Festival.” The voice was lilting and strange, as though it had to travel a very long road for the reward of spilling its syllables into the cool air of the Japanese alps.

It was a Rokurokubi. He looked like a human man, but his neck stretched impossibly long, as though made of rubber. His neck swayed back and forth, seeming to have some measure of trouble holding still the head atop its great length.

Matsuri reached up and lightly caressed the long neck of the Rokurokubi man. “I like your neck. It makes you look funny, and funny is good, because funny makes happy. So your neck makes happy from funny, and that means by just existing, you are good. Most people can’t be good by just existing, because most people don’t have long funny necks.”

The Rokurokubi man’s laugh rushed forth, speeding down his elongated esophagus like a car on a race track and zooming out from between his lips at top speed. “You have a strange way about your words. What is a human girl doing at a yokai festival?”

“My husband is a yokai. He’s a Komainu. Well, no, he’s not. I mean, he’s not my husband. Not yet. He’s going to marry me tomorrow, and then he’s going to make love to me. I’ve never made love before, but I’m very excited. I can only think about it and nothing else. What if I’m not good at love-making? I think I will be. What if I don’t like it? I know I will, though. Oh, and my husband is a Komainu. He’s just not my husband yet. Are you married, Mr. Rokurokubi?”

“I am married. My wife is a fellow Rokurokubi.”

“Is marriage lovely? Is love-making lovely?”

“I enjoy it. But I guess it depends on who you are, and who your mate is, and what you both like, and how those likes go together. At night, my wife and I stretch our necks out of our home and travel the sleeping town in that way, but back in the house, our bodies are having sex with each other. After we have both orgasmed, we retract our necks, and sleep through the morning. You will learn what you enjoy together with your husband. It will be like going on an adventure of discovery.”

Matsuri thought about all the things she wanted to try with her husband, and the things she did not want to try, and the things she knew she would like, and the things she knew she wouldn’t, and wondered if there was anything between all of these other things; something she hadn’t even thought of that they might enjoy together.

“A human girl at a yokai festival?” The voice was that of a Tengu standing in line at the beer stall. Tengu are forest guardians, with red faces, bushy eyebrows, and tremendously long noses. This Tengu had his wings folded neatly on his back.

Matsuri reached up and lightly stroked the Tengu’s nose. “I like your nose. I wish I could make my nose really long like that, and then I would set things on it, like plates of food, and I’d carry the plates of food on my nose to my husband. He would laugh at that. Well, he’s not my husband. Tomorrow he is my husband. He’s a yokai.”

The Tengu’s bushy eyebrows wiggled with his laughter, and his nose swung up and down. “You are a strange human girl! I will buy you a beer. But you can’t just have beer. I will buy you squid, too. Do you drink beer? ”

“Oh, yes, I drink a lot of beer. I think I drink too much beer. I’ve never made love, not yet, but sometimes before my husband and I kiss, I like to drink beer, or sake, or plum wine, and hold it in my mouth, and let my husband drink it from inside of my mouth while we kiss.”

“HaHa! I like you, human girl! You have very strange desires. I was married to a human girl one hundred years ago. The romantic mingling of yokai and humans is a brilliant thing! Make sure you use your husband's special qualities as a yokai to spice up your bedroom nights! My human wife used to request that I penetrate her vagina with my nose, because my nose is very long, and my penis is very small. It has been one century since she was alive, and still, my nose has never been as warm as it was inside of my Yuko. Oh! Here is your beer and squid.”

It is often said that squid smells like semen. Matsuri closed her eyes and breathed deeply the scent of the fried squid, holding the tentacle up to her nose and kissing it, imagining it was her husband’s penis. She dunked the squid tentacle into her beer and let its flavor soak into the liquid, then she drank in greedy gulps, her eyes still closed, and she hoped the taste in her mouth was similar to semen.

“There’s a weird one.” The voice belonged to a woman who was draping her body over a pudgy man with round spectacles. The glitter of the moonlight on the river below was less of an affecting image than this woman. It was a striking sight. Like the bridge they stood on and the river below it, the bridge existed not only in tandem with the river, but connected to it intrinsically, even though the beauty and power of one far outshined the other, they seemed inseparable in the same vein. This woman and the pudgy man were like the living representations of the bridge and the river.

The woman pressed her mouth to the pudgy man’s ear, as though whispering, but she spoke clearly and loudly, her eyes on Matsuri. “Does combining the beer and squid make the beer taste better, or does it make the squid taste better? Why does she do it?”

“It’s because I’m horny and I want to know the taste of semen.”

“That’s not possible. Semen doesn’t have its own taste. It changes depending on your man, and what he eats and drinks. Some guys taste delicious and sweet, like fruit. Some taste salty.” She pauses to bite the pudgy man’s ear. “My man tastes sour.”

The beautiful woman caressed her less beautiful man with one of the nine bushy fox tails that spilled out from her kimono. Matsuri reached out and touched the tail.

“My husband is a Komainu. Well, he’ll be my husband tomorrow. He has soft fur like yours, but he stays in his man-form a lot. One time, when we were cuddling, he transformed into a Komainu, and I fell asleep against him. He was a giant, breathing blanket filled with human warmth. Is it bestiality if we make love while he’s a Komainu? I never thought about it before. We don’t kiss when he’s a Komainu, but sometimes we do cuddle. I don’t want to have to make love to his Komainu shape, because it looks like a weirdish dog, but either way I will be making love to a Komainu, just one shaped like a man most of the time.”

“My man and I sometimes do it as a tanuki and a fox. Mostly we do it as man and woman. I like to masturbate for a really long time, and when I’m in the deepest throes of the fantasies born from my masturbation, I’ll stop, and I’ll write the fantasy down, and my man, my tanuki, will shapeshift into whatever is needed to bring the fantasy to life, and we’ll create it together. Except this time, he’ll bring me to the orgasm I didn’t reach before. But don’t think about it now. Just wait until you’re in bed together. You’ll find your pleasure together. Lose yourself in it. Don’t think about it beforehand; don’t make decisions on it when you’re clear-headed and not wanting. But when it is happening, when you’re creating the love, let it be born freely. Lose yourself to the wildness of it; allow to freely flow the meaningless cries of your desire. Give him the most primitive, lovely part of your being, and let his love drip onto you like honey.”

Matsuri thought the mountain valley was much like a vagina, and the river that penetrated through its length much like a penis. As a child, she had loved to dance in the ankle deep waters of wild rivers, and it had seemed that the rivers danced with her. Every splash was like the thrust of an ankle or the swing of an arm. Every movement she made caused a movement in the water, and together they danced. Marriage must be like dancing in a river. When you move, the water moves, both in ways you can and cannot anticipate, but the primary thing is that you are affecting each other; you meld together, unable to do anything entirely alone.

Now, instead of dancing in the wild river, Matsuri sat in it and masturbated.

It seemed to her that sex and love are different things. She could pick any man out of the night festival and spend the night with him, but they would only be having sex. Meaningless less. They would not be making love. When you make love, you’re affecting each other with a touch and a caress. You’re creating love with every little movement, and no one creates it exactly the same. Love is individual. It is art and it is river dancing

As she masturbated, she imagined she was alcohol, addictive and irresistible, and her husband was drunk on the taste of her and the feeling of her warmth, and their desires spilled into each other like a badly colored picture, the colors refusing to stay within the lines. She did not know all the intricacies their marriage would present, or how losing her virginity would feel, or exactly what they would each discover about themselves when in bed together, but she did know it would be beautiful and wonderful, and it would feel good, because she loved him, and he loved her, and she was ready to create that love. Then her desire exploded from her vagina, like underwater fireworks, the embers of it flowing warmly downstream.