The Painting of a Man

The sound of my loneliness–-the flow of water from the large waterfall faucet at the end of the small pool; the rush of wind against the window panes behind me; the general hum of emptiness that filled the room–-was interrupted by the naked man entering the onsen. 

I had come down from my hotel room to find an empty bathhouse, and, fighting a feeling of disappointment I couldn’t quite explain, I proceeded to fumble through the Japanese bathing rituals all alone: changing out of my clothes in the datsuijo; sauntering naked and somewhat awkwardly into the bathing area; sitting on a small stool placed at one of the many shower stalls that lined the walls; using the handheld shower head to bathe while staring at my foggy reflection in the mirror; taking the katateyuoke–a small wooden bucket with a handle extending straight up from the rim–and slowly dousing myself in the scalding water of the hot spring bath before submerging myself; and finally, settling under the heavy blanket of the sulfur tinged water. 

The relief that came from the intense warmth was immediate and spectacular. 

I rested there for some time when a squeak and a low rumble came from the heavy sliding glass door that separated the onsen from the datsuijo. I opened my eyes in a flurry of curiosity. The naked man–-maybe in his early forties with a thin, lanky frame but a small belly, a mark of his age, and a mop of black hair on his head–-entered the onsen carefully, head bowed as he rolled the door closed behind him. He cut across to the showers, passing through the low light of the onsen like headlights through mist, his skin a muffled illumination. 

He sat down at the centermost shower and grabbed the shower head. He sat perfectly straight, his right arm jutting out and bent at the elbow. His position looked practiced, studied. He had found the mathematically best angle at which to shower himself. He turned his head slightly and met the stream of water with his face, before moving the shower head down to his chest and back, the water adding a gloss to the glow of his skin. 

As I watched him, which I had tried very hard (and yet in vain) not to do, the room seemed to gather around him, to stretch towards him, to frame him on all sides. The onsen, I realized, had been incomplete prior to his entrance. From where I sat, he was cut in half by a low wall in the middle of the room, which acted as a somewhat ineffective barrier between the shower area and the hot spring baths. The soft overhead light tumbled down onto him through the humid air like cotton balls, softening the colors and angles around him. At his edges were the small dividing walls that cut each shower stall off from the other, the dark blankness on either side sinking into the background and propelling him forward. The dividing walls supported thin, white pillars that drove up into arches that rolled across the ceiling like low, snow-covered hills. As I followed the arches up and down and around the room, the onsen was transformed in my mind into a gothic cathedral and the man, the showering centerpiece before me, became its god. 

Finally, he finished, turning off the water and standing, methodically placing the stool back where he found it under the spigot. He picked up the small towel he had placed on the dividing wall and started to walk towards the bath where I sat. He didn’t cover himself. Before descending into the pool, he stopped to use the katateyuoke, as I had, but much more gracefully. Placing the small towel on his head, as was customary, he sat down in the steaming water across from me and took a deep breath, his stress taking to the air alongside the steam. 

He had, throughout all this, not once looked in my direction. I wasn’t even sure he knew I was there. I was desperate to catch his eye though, to initiate some sort of acknowledgment, some sort of contact that might bind us together for a moment, however flimsy. But the more I tried, the more ridiculous I felt. Was I not worth even a surreptitious look? But I took the towel sitting on my own head and wiped the thought from my brow, reminding myself I’m in a place I’ll never return, then chiding myself for caring so much about the attention of a man whom I had never seen before and whom I will never see again.

When I had convinced myself to move on, to direct my attention behind me to the black Japanese night flooding in through the window, is when I saw him glance in my direction. I stopped, my torso contorted to the right in preparation for a turn. Feigning a stretch, I contorted myself to the left, before settling back against the wall of the pool. But as I sat back down, he stood up.

I was sure I had misread him, that I had gotten too eager, that I had somehow offended him deeply–in a way that I couldn’t understand–and that now he would leave. 

He didn’t leave. 

Instead he headed for the notenburo, the outdoor pool just on the other side of the windows behind me. I had seen the door leading to the outside, but, panicking at the thought of getting locked out, left alone to freeze to death (or alternatively, catch heatstroke while awaiting rescue in the pool and subsequently drowning), I had avoided the option altogether. 

He looked at me again as he pushed open the door, and I knew that I had not misread him. 

I counted sixty seconds in my head and emerged from the pool and followed him outside. The frigid air immediately leapt upon and clung to my wet body. Its sickly tentacles wrapped around every part of me, sucking the heat from my skin and the air from my lungs. I nearly turned back, unsure if the brief walk to the hot spring–-and whatever might happen with the man inside it–-was worth it. But seeing him there, somehow having framed himself in the center of the pool, I was drawn to him. 

I took several careful steps, again fearing catastrophe, and made my to the pool, sighing loudly as I squatted down into the water. I tried to cover myself in as much of the dark mineral soup as possible and left only my nose and eyes above the surface, the nippy air crystallizing my wet hair. I remembered myself then and regretted my blaring entrance, picturing my large, white body falling into the water like an ungraceful moon. I quickly mumbled suimasen, sorry. 

I was afraid to look at him–-embarrassed by my desperation and eagerness, my obnoxious Americanness–-and held my gaze to the black sky above us, made blacker by the warm light flowing from the onsen. 

The sound of him clearing his throat brought me back down. He had existed so quietly in my mind that I first thought the sound had come from someone else, and I quickly scanned the area around us for another person. Finding no one, of course, I chanced a look at him. He sat up on one of the large built-in rocks that surrounded the pool, his torso exposed to the cold air. The left side of his body was lit in the amber light from the onsen, the rest of him fuzzy in the shadows. I searched his obscured face for some kind of direction, some kind of insight, a knowledge that he sought to share with me through wordless eyes. But he merely stared back at me as though through canvas, a portrait in front of an observer left to guess at the meaning of his stare, his true thoughts known only to his painter. 

Suddenly, I was consumed with a question. Are you real?

More than anything I wanted to know that he was real. More than anything I wanted to know that I was real. 

As if hearing my thoughts, he stood and made his way towards me, and I inhaled sharply in surprise. The water reached to his knee, exposing the rest of him. Though I had already seen him in this way, his rushing intimacy overwhelmed me, and I turned away, afraid that I would ruin the moment by enjoying it. 

He crouched down in front of me and grabbed my shoulders, pulling me up into the Japanese winter. He took my chin in his hand and drew my eyes to him. His fingers were tiny echoes of his frame, long and thin, and–-despite having been exposed to the winter air for the last several minutes–-still warm. His face was only a few inches from mine, and I finally found his eyes, which reached out to me with their blackness, beckoning me. He removed his fingers from my chin and cupped his hands in the water, bringing them above my head and letting the water fall over my hair and face. With his left hand lightly holding on to my neck, he dipped his right hand in the water again and began stroking my forehead with the back of his hand, moving down across my cheek, to my neck and shoulders, to my arms and my chest. The first layer. 

My skin had warmed under the water and his touch, and I forgot the cold. He put his hand in the water again, and this time started with my chest. He used his fingers to make great swirls on my skin, driving up to my throat and over to my shoulders. He trailed his fingers back down my arms, pulling my hands up and out of the water and entwining our fingers for a moment. He took my hands and placed them behind his neck as he dragged his fingers up towards my face again and on to my temples before running his hands through my hair. The second layer. 

At this, he pulled me closer to him and I could feel his breath on my ear. My chest against his chest. His hands reached down across my back now, coming up again in a broad stroke. He moved his hands to my sides and, pushing me back slightly, thrusted my arms up over my head and pulled them back down slowly, squeezing my biceps, my forearms as he rested them on his shoulders. His movements were soft but deliberate, and for all of his motion, the water in the pool stayed still, undisturbed. The final stroke started at my navel, going up my chest, around my neck and on to my face, where he rested his hands, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones. After a brief moment, he brought my nose to his before dragging his lips across my cheek and resting them back upon my ear. The final layer. 

Our forms were joined and unmoving, etched together. To the beholder, we were an unquestionable fixture of the tableau of the onsen. 

We stayed like that for seconds, minutes, maybe years until he finally whispered something in my ear–-only the last word clear to me, naranai, must–-and pulled away. He stood and walked out of the pool, into the half-light and through the door to the onsen. He didn’t hesitate, or waver, or look back. He was confident in his departure, leaving me to bob in the wake of his fleeting devotion. 

I hurried out of the pool, through the bitter cold and into the glowing warmth of the onsen. He wasn’t there. But now there were several others showering and enjoying the bath. I couldn’t help but wonder if they had been there before and they simply weren’t revealed to me or I to them. 

I thought the onsen had not wanted me. I thought I was unwelcome. Worse, I thought I was invisible. But I was simply not yet drawn. Not yet brought to life. I was in need of a painter, a creator. 

He was my painter. 

I headed for the datsuijo, the massive door lethargic as I tried to pry it open. I entered the harsh fluorescent light of the changing room dripping wet, hoping to find him still getting dressed, but instead found a group of young men, their faces red from the cold or drinking I wasn’t sure, chatting excitedly. I scanned the wooden cubbies to see if I could somehow pick out his belongings among all the others that now sat there, but it was impossible to tell. The group of friends brushed past me, leaving me alone in the room. I counted sixty seconds again, sure that this time he would come find me, that he would follow me back from wherever he was. 

But I knew. I knew what I had already known the moment he let go of me. 

He was gone. He had finished his work. He had left me to dry.