SO I INITIATED MY ADVENTURES, exploring sexual persuasions that might accommodate what were at the time still doubts regarding my identity, when I turned twenty and returned to my city, Hiroshima. The story began with T, whom I met on my second trip to Hiroshima. I started with her because I saw in her asexuality the roots of my own distress—a lack, a void not only of desire but also of allies, of models, of companions. But I had already met N before that, on my first trip. I looked her up because she was a renowned expert in sexual deviations. You see, out of loneliness I was willing to ascribe to myself whatever kind of sexual deviation necessary, as long as it would give me a label, something written, an entry in a dictionary of bizarre creatures. Out of loneliness I treated myself unfairly.
N and I arranged to meet on a bench in front of the sculpture at the center of the park. Everything was green. I was surprised because the last time I was there the trees had been utterly shorn of leaves. The earth’s temperature reached 4,000 degrees Celsius at ground zero. To fully realize the scope of such a massive figure you’ll likely need another point of reference. Let me offer a few statistics for comparison: the sun’s maximum temperature is 5,800 degrees; steel melts at 1,500. So there are your references. My city blistered under temperatures ranging from that of liquid metal in a forge to that of the sun. Like those walking lumps with heads swollen to three times their size, other images populate my memory and the testimonies of others. The people looking skyward when the bomb fell were inevitably described in very precise terms: a verb, to hold; a plural noun, eyes; a phrasal verb, to come out; and a second noun, sockets. When I left the school on the day of the explosion, I remember walking by itinerant men and women holding their eyes with their hands to keep them from sliding out of their sockets. N’s eyes—I thought the first time I saw her—were so black they looked hollow.
N wasn’t a hibakusha. She’d always lived in Hokkaido and wasn’t even aware of the attack when it happened. It took a week for the news to reach her, and since it was impossible to grasp the new weapon’s magnitude, she gave it the same importance as she did one of the combustible bombs that had already been used to destroy 70 percent of Tokyo. Nobody who wasn’t in Hiroshima that day could have conceived of a greater force than what had already decimated 70 percent of the country’s largest city. N listened to my stories, but the truth is, I’d seen something she hadn’t, and it made me nervous to think she’d never be able to grasp the nature of my suffering. I wanted to share my experiences, but at best all she could see was something that wasn’t there anymore, like the light of a dark star. So I provided the same statistics I’ve given to you: over twenty thousand bombs like the one that destroyed Hiroshima are scattered across the planet.
I began by sharing some of the photos I’ve kept over the years. I figured it was as good a place as any. A gentle introduction, easing into the main issue that so many people find paradoxical; they’re always surprised to hear me admit that the bomb actually had a positive effect on my appearance, and that I could no longer recognize myself in photographs prior to that Monday, the sixth of August. The bomb—I acknowledged as much to N as well—changed parts of me that I had detested and outlined new features I tried to fix surgically later on, once I had saved enough money. My comments might seem categorical, but the explanation is really quite simple: I was already a victim prior to the attack, and from within that milieu, the bomb alone saw me for what I truly was.
I looked beautiful in the photos. It was probably this appeal that led a visibly stunned N to ask the question she did. She asked if I’d had sex again. I told her I’d been with three men, each of whom were scared off by something they saw. I wasn’t sure because I hadn’t ever seen another female sexual organ for a comparison, but the procedures must not have been as successful as they had promised. From then on, I wouldn’t let anyone see that part of my body, not even the doctors. That’s how I know—even now—that none of my physical afflictions could have originated there. My sexual organs are as strong as an atomic shelter; the problem is that unfortunately, nobody wanted in for a very long time.
I went back to an experience I had one night on a Florida beach. Something happened that made it click from outside of myself, and I could appreciate the disorientation a man must have felt entering me. I reviewed it scene by scene. And narrated it to N in that order:
I went out to sit quietly in the sand alone to contemplate the sea as I often did, which is to say to contemplate nothing, to think about nothing. My hands were sunk into the sand, probably probing for dampness on their own. It was through my hands, I think, that I first felt something that pulled me back to consciousness. Something was pushing against my fingers. Then I felt the same pressure against the soles of my feet, now bare. I jumped up. My eyes had adjusted to the dark to the point that I could make out the little mounds of sand around me. At first it looked like little holes were opening into the sand, but then I realized that there were bodies inside the empty holes. Little heads, appendages, beaks, and the shells of thousands of turtles breaking out of the eggs their mothers had laid, now synchronized by the ticking of a common biological clock. I watched them crawling out of myriad nests all around me, circles whose diameter must measure the exact size of an adult turtle. There were so many that they looked like ants. Once they’d emerged from the sand, you could see the whole turtle, though, and they were beautiful, much lovelier than insects. I knew—because I had once been told—that the newborns had to make their way to sea immediately. Unlike us, who are born in the air, they must return to the water. Each one is on its own, without help. They’re born smack into the worst threat of their lives, that space between the nest and water like an open plain full of the kind of predators that work in borderlands. It was such a privilege to be there at that precise moment, and I was eager for them to reach safety.
But instead of scuttling toward the shore, they started moving in the wrong direction, toward the highway. I started to panic. I got closer and could see the trail of slime they leave behind, the viscous material that had protected them inside the egg. I was ready to shoo away any predator—a fox, a dog—with a stiff kick. But how could I save the most important thing of all, that moisture I intuited as being so essential, similar to the lubrication that dried up inside of me before saturating the man who ran away after undressing me, discovering me, seeing what not even I could explain yet. That’s how they were going to cross that dry asphalt on the road separating the beach from the big city. The light pollution wasn’t as bad as it is now. But the artificial lights were overbright in some stretches. The turtles were confusing the lights of the highway with the moonlight, the sound of the cars with the waves, and were swarming in a direction opposite to that which thousands of millions of others, same as them, had respected since the dawn of time. I kept still, watching their fins fumble awkwardly, poor little marine reptiles taking their first steps on land. That’s how they migrated, swimming without water toward the lights of the cars whooshing speedily by in a constant susurrus, unawares of that disoriented army marching against itself. It started to drizzle. I couldn’t stand the sight of it: the tiny turtles testing their new lungs in a puddle of tar, car oil, and water sans salt.