The following is an excerpt from the story Kyoto Woman:
Tired, hungry, defeated by the tiny guidebook map of the area, he had reached that meltdown stage of talking out loud to himself and others. “Come on, baby, do it, just do it. I know you can.” Granted, on the streets of Kyoto, it was less than likely that the Japanese cyclists streaking past him on the sidewalk would comprehend his perverse exhortation to run him down, but even assuming a language barrier, knowledge of English was not a requirement for recognizing a loony in their midst on the heavily trafficked boulevard.
Men didn’t ask others for help in locating the whereabouts of a restaurant, or anything, especially when they had a map in hand. Not real men. Hadn’t he read as much? And yet, in a span of twenty minutes he had stopped two women on Kawaramachi Dori, and in pleading English asked them for directions. Was that so much to ask? Could they at least tell him if he was getting close? Offer him a clue? His tone, the whole emotional current directing his speech brimming with accusation at a world and its people whose only desire was to thwart him. The first had sent him off in the wrong direction and why should be believe the second one was directing him properly either?
Konnichi wa. Sumimasen. Aregatō. In two weeks he had learned three words. And the last of the three, the Japanese word for “please,” he could not pronounce properly, even after hearing it repeatedly.
The nature of his distress had really not changed through the years. At sixty-one as at age eleven, a consuming self-loathing filled him and a hatred of God for having brought him into this world with such a glaring deficiency of gifts. Was map-reading not a measure of intelligence as much as those blocks on the sixth-grade IQ test he had trouble assembling to replicate the pattern in the pictures?
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