 |
| http://godzilla.wikia.com/wiki/Shobijin |
I met Atusko as a transfer student to RISD, over the foundation summer session that's required for each and every student. No one gets a waiver, not even Picasso himself (and he probably would've been kicked out for being a total fucking dick who couldn't paint, anyway), because they do not accept studio credits from any school on Planet Earth (or famous artist, living or dead). She immediately didn't like me, but given her rather traditionally affluent Japanese upbringing, she chose to hide it in plain sight, which is really odd when you are exposing yourself in intimate studio classes everyday.
But, like any other generic wanna-be "art fag", she chose to do bitchy battle with me (mostly one-sided, because, honestly, I had no fucking clue what she was thinking most of the time, nor did I really care) by sublimating her lesbian energy towards me in strange and unusual ways. I didn't know she was bisexual until later on in the summer, when my gay fashion design friends finally told me, as we sat gossiping about her and all the other students.
She was a total snob in crits, and overly sensitive. She cried a lot, which gave her very red eyes all summer long, and led to a series of drippy red paintings that were either about human blood or being gay and rolling around in period blood with her ex-girlfriend. We didn't really know, and besides that, it was total schlock shock value and really gross. I should be perfectly honest with you at this point: I have never had a lesbian friend. Ever. I've never met a gay woman who actually liked me enough to be a real friend to me.
Anyway, into this heady cocktail of insane competition and mind-blowing academics, she chose to betray another female student by being one of the weirdest assholes I've met to date, and that is hard to beat for a New Yorker, so it actually helped me to remember her over the years, when I would have forgotten her as just another rich Japanese girl with a typically short haircut that they liked in the 90s. Through her friendship with my friend from Minnesota (who would become a housemate and roommate with me for much longer than I ever wanted, but that's another great story or two), I could at least be around her without being a primary target, because my fag hag fashion friend diffused some of her gay anger at me, and life itself.
And so, unbeknown to her, I actually learned a lot about her by being part of a group, and listening to my new arty, wealthy friends speak. They thought they were extremely sophisticated, which was funny for me as a New Yorker. We'd trade stories about where we were from, and we were from all over the globe, in several different languages. I knew she loved her brother, and that she did the same weirdly passive-aggressive and oddly sexually hostile thing with him over his girlfriend, because in "Depressionville", it's okay to sabotage other people's relationships if you can justify it by claiming "jealously" (even if it's incestuous, which is very cool, hip, and strange). With her, it came about at a red-faced and drunk "goodbye" family dinner at a sushi joint, with lots of free-flowing sake. She showed me the pictures from their last visit, as we sat talking and smoking.
By the end of the summer, she tried to convince me that her zitty, greasy-haired, and dyed blonde roomie was as beautiful as a Supermodel, and that Pam's sister was just as gorgeous, too! "Look, MAAHHRIE!" She showed me some glossy mag of a skincare ad with two blue-eyed models: one blonde and one brunette, like the American sisters she was now lucky enough to know firsthand. "Here's PAHHM, and her seester!". Uh, okay. I didn't have the heart to unload my brief experiences with New York, photography, and modeling, which would have driven her madder anyway, so I just said "Yeah", briefly and noncommittally, and let it drop.
She must have sensed that I had some edge I wasn't divulging to her right away, because she nervously fretted around my summertime dorm room in an old house owned by the school, finally landing on my old cassette types, to scrutinize them and judge my musical tastes. Uh oh. This was also really bad dyke territory for me. Chicks could always tell I really knew music by my collection. And there it was: her dip-shit, passive-aggressive opening: "Ohhhh, MAAHHHrie..." she tsk-tsked over my tapes, "you must not like women!" She pulled out one cassette, "See? You have no music by women!!" It was a frightening thing for her to say aloud, because we were in a room full of just female artists, and every single one of them wanted to sabotage me without getting caught.
It was a great move, but unfortunately for her, I actually did have some female recording artists hidden into the mix, with serious tastes in punk rock, New Wave, Ska, R&B, Jazz, and the blues: genres classically difficult for American women to succeed in. I hit her with Exene Cervanka from the L.A. band "X" and Chrissie Hyde from "The Pretenders", but she clammed up coldly, narrowing her eyes at me viciously. Okay, fine. I also have ONLY BOYS in my family, Atsuko. Oh, right! She brightened up at the suggestion that led to her ripping apart her brother's girlfriend, hence the photos she busted out and passed around.
But it led us to better places conversationally, and the room once again opened up to other people wandering around the dorm, looking for something to do after summer studios quit for the day. A nice gay Mexican kid wandered in with his new redhead "bestie" from Long Island (they LOVED dishing over gossip mags and worshipped Linda Evangelista like she was a plastic mannequin), which spread the weirdo tension around the room more equitably. We got higher and drunker, which led me back to happier memories, too. She dropped an A-Bomb then that I never forgot, and it was the most charming thing I knew about her during our brief and tense acquaintance.
I must have been talking about watching monster movies with my bros, when she cut in excitedly, to top me in the conversation: "Yes! I know what you mean, MAAHRIE. When I was leetle girl in Tokyo, I cried when I saw Godzilla on t.v. I ran to keetchen to mom, and ask her if Tokyo was burning and people die. 'No, Atsuko!', my mommy said. 'Look! Only on t.v. Eats not real!' And she pull back curtain in keetchain to show me city. Not burned! Tokyo okay!"
Hahaha! Awesome!! I didn't care that she hated me in what passed for "subtle" in Japan, or that each and every student in the room wanted to kill me and eat me (or sleep with me) to get ahead. I only knew that one other kid there that summer thought monster movies were great, and I could finally have a decent, well-informed conversation with another girl about my love for all things Mothra and Ghidorah. Finally!
It was a first for me outside of my immediate family circle. So, for that brief respite, during that overwhelmingly hot and unairconditioned summer, I thank you, Atsuko, for finally being real with me, for a moment anyway, in a faraway land that must have been very scary for you, despite all of your family's money, connections, and prestige. "Look out, Atsuko! IT'S GODZILLA!!"
