Closing my hand, I pushed the habaki out of its saya, and let the tip of my thumb brush against the cold steel of my blade along its clouded hamon edge.  My fingers lightly gripped the tightly wrapped silk, and I felt my blade float free.



My eyes closed, I listened to the waves sliding through the small rocks at our feet that lined the shore of the bay where we stood.  I felt the wind, cold and moist from the breath of the ocean against my face.  As I breathed in, the salty, pungent scent of the sea filled my nostrils.  I held the breath in my lungs for a moment, and then exhaled deeply.  The taste of the adrenaline in my mouth faded, and was replaced by calm.

"I'm ready."  I heard Toshiro exhale.

I opened my eyes.

The night had fallen long ago, but the dark violet tinge to the black sky reminded me of the last of the fading light after sunset.  Stars filled the sky from the mountains to the east to the city skyline in the west and the entire bowl of vast ocean that lay to the south in front of us.  It was a calm night, quiet and still now that the rain had passed.  The moon floated three hands high above the horizon where ocean met sky, casting a silver light on the slowly approaching waves and on the thin clouds in the distance.

I nodded to Toshiro.

My thumb brushed against the Matsudaira clan mon engraved into the habaki of the shinken katana I held in my hand.  Tonight, as warriors of my family have done for a hundred generations, I would have the honor of aiding my best friend in seppuku -- here at the edge of the bay that we came to together for the years we knew each other.  Here, where as children we practiced our kenjutsu with our bamboo boken.  Here, where as young men we came to retreat from the pains of our lives.  Here, where now as warriors, we would now execute Toshiro's final solution.

I heard his wakizashi slide free from its saya, as he took a deep breath.









Seven years later, I stood at the podium at Toshiro's wedding, and I remembered that night as we stood along the edge of the bay.

The woman he thought was the love of his life told him, just hours before, that she no longer loved him and instead was leaving the state to be with another man -- a man who Toshiro already dispised for his dishonest, dishonorable, rodent-like personality.  To lose the love of his life to a man like this was a dishonor he could not bear.  After slicing his wrists with an X-acto knife unsuccessfully, he called me near three o'clock in the morning and told me to pick him up.  He asked me to help him die in the way our ancestors did -- by seppuku... by ritual suicide.

At his wedding reception, seven years later, I gave the best man speech based on one of our favorite songs -- a song that first brought us together over sake and sushi and laid the foundation of our lifelong friendship.  This song is called "The Last Song" by X-Japan, and my best man speech was based on this song.  This is part of that speech:

...In the depths of suffering, Toshiro called me up in the middle of the night, one night; and we took our swords, and went to the edge of the sea.  There, at the edge of sanity, so close to the end, under the cloudless sky, there was this song.   It starts like this:     Watching the stars till they're gone Like an actor all alone Who never knew the story he was in Who never knew the story ends Like the sky reflecting my heart All the colors become visible When the morning begins I'll read the last line     The next line in the song is my favorite.  It goes:     Owarana-i ame daki-shi-meta yoru ga asa wo muka-eru kokoro wa ma-da nu-re-ta mama   (Endless rain embraced me as night approaches morning My heart is not yet soaked)   I told him that night that fate, that destiny, had a reason for everything; and that while he and I were suffering at the hands of fate -- that one day the night would pass into morning and the seemingly endless rain in our lives would cease.   In the endless rain I've been walking Like a poet feeling pain Trying to find the answers Trying to hide the tears But it was just a circle That never ends When the rain stops, I'll turn the page The page of the first chapter     I swore to him many things that night, one of them being that I would be there beside him when the endless rain ceased, when we could finally turn that first page of the next chapter...

That night seven years earlier, Toshiro didn't plunge his wakizashi into his gut and disembowel himself.  I didn't aid him by decapitating him with a single, clean tameshigiri cut to the back of his neck.  Toshiro wasn't dead.  And seven years later, I wasn't in prison for murder.  Instead, that night we found renewed hope, and seven years later I found myself at his wedding, marrying the woman that ceased his endless rain.

Toshiro and I live our lives by an old Japanese proverb.  Translated, it means:






We met in seventh grade, in that group of eight whose fates became inexplicably intertwined as we formed that first circle of desks in Ms. Tsoulos' class.  He and Christy became an item soon afterwards, like me and Katie.  They left our school to go back to their home districts. but not before Toshiro convinced me to join his Kendo dojo where I stayed for many years afterwards -- where he and I became best friends.

We came to that very same bay as teenagers, as kendoka, looking for others to practice our kendo with out of class.  We formed a small group who would meet at the edge of that bay, and we would hold informal practice sessions there on the hard-packed sand.  We thought that place, those times, made us into men.

What we didn't realize was that it was that night we went there to commit seppuku that we became men. 

It was when we faced death, and looked it in the eye, and without fear of death or any punishment neither human nor divine, made a choice.

A choice to live.

Yamato Damashii does not require one to die.  Yamato Damashii requires one to live as if he is already dead -- to fear nothing, to never surrender, and to never give up.  To live as if one is already dead, and has been given a second chance to live the life he lived over again.

Becoming men that night on the edge of the bay, with our shinken katana ready to commit seppuku, wasn't about going through with the act.  It was being able to face death, and then choose to live...

...because while fear of death is dishonorable and cowardly, fear to live is even more dishonorable and cowardly. 

That night, after standing at the edge of the moonlit bay for hours, I finally returned my shinken katana to its saya and let its habaki click back into place.  We walked out to the farthest point in the bay we could, stepping along rocks until we were completely surrounded by water, and stopped when the ocean would lap at our feet.  There, we talked -- about Christy, about the past, and about the future.  We talked about life ahead, and we talked about the essence of Yamato Damashii.


That night, my romantic notions of ending one's life through suicide ended.  I realized that night that suicide was not about dying honorably -- it was about running from life. 

It was about giving up the fight.  It was about succumbing to the struggle. 










As I sat in the chair beside Reiko's bed in the ICU, I remembered that night; and I remembered the things Reiko told me when she slipped back into consciousness.


She told me that everything was a struggle, that ever since she was young, she always struggled.  People expected her to do this, and that -- and at every step of the way, she struggled.  She told me she didn't expect me to understand, because everything came easily to me -- but she didn't want to struggle anymore.  She wanted the struggle to end, because the struggle had overwhelmed her and she felt as if the value of living wasn't worth the struggle to live.

The thing that worries me the most about Reiko right now is that she didn't go to the brink like Toshiro and I did.  Yes, she faced death -- but she succumbed to it; and the only reason she's still alive is because we brought her back... not because she chose to live.  She didn't make that choice to live.

Toshiro's story had a happy ending.  Seven years after that night by the bay, I was his best man in a wedding where he married the true love of his life.  Reiko's story though, I was not sure of.  But the lesson here is that choosing death is final.  Things may be bad now, and the struggle may be difficult -- but we never know what the future holds for us; and for us to give up the chance for a better life ahead is foolish.  If we end our lives, we will never know.  For Toshiro, it was finding Mariya.  For Reiko, who knew what it would be.

I finished my seven-minute best man speech at Toshiro's wedding that night:

Tonight, I give away my best friend to the only woman who is worthy of him. The song ends in a fitting way: I see red I see blue but the silver lining gradually takes over when the morning begins I'll be in the next chapter     The silver lining on the clouds does gradually take over.  The rain eventually stops.  And the morning always follows the night.  This song, called "The Last Song" was the first song for me and Toshiro.  It was something else for us back then, a song that talked about the end -- about suicide.  Tonight, this "Last Song" is indeed the last song for the last falling of rain before this night ends and the morning comes.      The cycle we began so many years ago, in the depth of night, in the baptism of rain, ends now.   Tomorrow, Toshiro and Mariya will wake up for the first time as husband and wife, as the light of the rising sun finally extinguishes the darkness of night and owaranai ame, the endless rain, is finally no more.

Toshiro's endless rain was finally no more.

I wish Reiko had done the same thing.  I wish she had told me... I wish she'd come to me and told me that she wanted to end her life. 

Although my romantic notions of suicide are long gone, I would have wanted to be there with her -- to approach the brink with her, to let her hold the liquor and the pills in her hand, and stand there at the edge between life and death with her and let her stare death in the eye.

...to stare death in the eye, and be able to feel no fear and instead choose to live.

But this didn't happen.

And now my duty to her became more difficult, although it is not one that I would flee from.  I would do whatever it took for her.

Suicide and death are not pretty, romantic things.  I spent almost twelve hours in the emergency room with Reiko that first day, and the memories of what she had degenerated into, I will carry in my heart for the rest of my life.  It's not a thing of flowers and eloquent speaking for the dead.  There is no beauty in death, and there is certainly no beauty in being alive but dying. 

What I needed Reiko to know is that the rain does eventually stop.  The silver lining on the clouds does gradually take over.  And one day she would wake up, and find herself in the next chapter.  And I would be right there beside her, doing whatever it takes, to bring her into this new life.

I watched the bride and groom making their way around the courtyard, hand-in-hand, stopping to laugh and toast with their guests at the end of the night.


Sixteen years ago, I would have never thought that it would have been Paul and Jasmine out of the eight of us in our little group in our 7th grade class getting married.  I brushed the sweaty mass of hair back off of my forehead, exhausted from the long day of wedding events.  Only the closest of friends remained now, talking and dancing in small groups; most of whom were my old friends too, some going back as far as we did.

I removed my suit jacket and lay it on the back of the chair beside me, pushed the cuffs of my sleeves up to my elbows, and put my cufflinks into my pocket; before taking a long swig out of the bottle of Perrier-Jouet and letting the bubbly champagne run over my parched lips.  Their wedding was the most beautiful wedding I had ever been to, followed by a gorgeous reception in this beautiful private club overlooking the city skyline.  I sat in the shadows, taking a long-needed break from the socializing, near the edge of the plaza where the cliffside dropped off; surrounded by glowing white christmas lights on the vines falling from the trellises above and on the trees around me.

At the end of the night, I sat there listening to Vicky, our sultry French-expat friend who had also been with us since the 7th grade, singing Blue Moon, sounding like Billie Holiday, accompanied by the jazz band that we'd grown up with together.  It was a timeless moment -- it could have been 1950.  It could have been 1986.  It could have been today.

I sighed, and put my bottle of champagne down on the white tablecloth in front of me.

Paul and Jasmine worked out, in the end.  After the eight of us first met in that first class in the summer before 7th grade, they were the success story.  And as much as I was happy for them, I wished it was me and another one of our group of eight whose wedding it was that day.

I turned away from the party, and looked out at the city lights.








"Katie."  The cute honey blond girl sitting to my right in our circle of eight said, introducing herself, smiling brightly.

We were eleven years old.  The eight of us sat in a circle, one of four circles that Ms. Tsoulos formed out of her class.  I kept looking over Katie's shoulder, at the gorgeous girl with the light blond hair and dark blue eyes in the next group beside us.  I'd never seen anybody so drop-dead gorgeous in my life, and every time I looked at her in the last half hour since that first class started, she made me feel like a puppy in love.

"Jodi."  Katie leaned over to me and whispered.  "Her name is Jodi."  She grinned at me.

I blushed.  It was bad enough that somebody noticed me staring at Jodi.  It was even worse that it was so obvious that this girl Katie who I hadn't even noticed until five seconds ago noticed that I was gawking.

"Thanks."  I shrank back in my seat, feeling the ache of cold sweat on me.

"Paul."  My cousin said, as we went around the circle introducing ourselves.  Paul was the archetype of the Asian nerd.  Thick glasses, bowl-cut hair, short and chubby, with FOB clothes (and not the cool kind either).  He looked like the fat happy kid on the yellow can of fish oil pills that our parents would make us take; complete with corduroy shorts and knee-high athletic socks and Shen-Yang sneakers.

The introductions continued around our circle of desks.  A young Brett Farve looking kid introduced himself as Gabe.  And the biggest Japanese guy I'd ever seen, his hair pulled back and up in a ponytail, introduced himself as Toshiro.  Then there was a small, skinny Korean girl in black-and-white striped pants named Christy.  Then a freckled, bespectacled girl in a green sweater with way too much frizzy brown hair named Serena.  And finally, beside me, a girl that Paul and I both knew of already.

"Jasmine."  The girl next to me introduced herself to us. 

She looked like Paul, except female.  And with a simple ponytail instead of the bowl cut, and without the FOB clothes.  Instead, she wore the black shorts and white shirt that she seemed to wear every single time I ever saw her.  The reason we knew who she was; was because she had been student body president among many other things at the school that she had come from, including being some kind of cello prodigy, and national scholar, and did things like file away every piece of schoolwork she ever did into a series of file cabinets.

She looked a little uncomfortable sitting next to a thuggish street urchin from the projects.

That would be me.








Paul and Jasmine became best friends that summer.

Katie and I hung out together, mostly because we didn't really fit in with anyone else.  Katie, me, Toshiro and Christy for the summer at least; Toshiro and Christy leaving our school at the end of the summer to go back to their home school in the next district.  I started going to Toshiro's Kendo dojo after he invited me to check it out one day, and I ended up staying.  Toshiro and I started playing on Gabe's paintball team that summer too, going on to take 3rd in a State championship.  And Gabe and Serena started dating each other just two weeks into the summer.  If there was anyone I would have thought to be getting married in the future, it would have been Gabe and Serena, not Paul and Jasmine.

But there was something about Paul and Jasmine.  It's funny, but Katie could see it.  She told me one night, two years later as we hung out on our hill, that she knew Paul and Jasmine would get married one day.

I thought she was insane.

"Paul and Jasmine?"  I gave her the face.  "no way."

"Mm-hmm"  Katie replied.  "look at them, they're so meant to be."

"How come?"  I asked.  I had no clue.

"Because they love each other, they just don't know it yet."  Katie looked up into my eyes.

It would be Paul and Jasmine who would go on to be the perfect couple that never was a couple.

They were always together.  Inseparable.  There was never any drama like there was between me and Katie, Toshiro and Christy, and Gabe and Serena.  They were always on good terms, never fought, and were always there for each other.  They played in the orchestra together, with him becoming principal violin and her becoming principal cello.  They even ended up in the state Youth Symphony together.  They were in student government together.  They were in science club and whatever-nerd-club together. 

For six years their friendship grew, until one night -- the night before our high school graduation.

Paul told me, years later, that it was that night when it all changed.  They were on the graduation committee together, and they were working late into the night in their small group getting the last details ironed out.  They were together at her house, and Paul told me that it was seeing how dedicated she was and how hardworking she was, combined with the bittersweet feeling that got to all of us as our high school graduation came, that pushed him to realize how he felt.

Even Katie and I, who were already on the social fringe, felt the tug.  We would be parting ways with people we had known for four, six or even twelve years; never to see them again after the coming night.  Paul and Jasmine were going to the same school though, so it didn't matter so much to them -- but there was something in the air that night.

That night, he decided he was going to ask his best friend Jasmine to be his girlfriend.

But he also decided to wait until graduation had settled down.  After all, he thought, they were both going to the same school.  He wasn't in a rush.  Jasmine never dated, just as Paul never dated.  He didn't want to spring this on her while all this stress was around, and while graduation and the associated emotion was breaking loose everywhere.  He wanted his "proposal" to be stand-alone.

What Paul didn't know, was that a guy named Terrence was thinking the same thing.  Except Terrence moved in first.  Terrence asked Jasmine out on a date the day after graduation.  Paul figured that it was okay -- that Terrence and Jasmine would date for a little bit, and when they were through, he would tell Jasmine how he felt, and he'd get his shot...

...Ten years later.








In ten years, Paul never dated a single woman as he waited for Jasmine.

He thought, the entire time, that if Jasmine and Terrence ever broke up, he wanted to be there, available for her.  They remained the best of friends for that entire ten years.  He was there for her every time she fought with Terrence.  He was there for her when Terrence wasn't.  He listened to her, cared for her, and loved her in the way that a best friend does, all the while never telling her how he felt.

And besides, Paul couldn't be with someone else when it was Jasmine in his heart.  It would not be faithful.

In those ten years, I blew through more relationships than I have fingers and toes, searching for the Right Girl.  Paul however, had the Right Girl from that very first day in 7th grade.  He was just waiting.  One day, Jasmine told Paul that Terrence had proposed to her, and that she had accepted.  Paul's heart broke that day, after holding on for eight years to the hope of Jasmine and Terrence ending their relationship.  Now they would be married, and Paul felt he had no longer had a chance.

But Paul decided that if it wasn't Jasmine, he didn't want to be with anybody else.  He told himself that he was going to be alone for the rest of his life.  And he was okay with that, because nobody would ever be more perfect for him than Jasmine.

One night, two years later, Jasmine called him in the middle of the night.

She had broken her engagement with Terrence.

And while Paul was sorry for her heartbreak and loss, he could not believe how his life went from the blackest pit of night to the glorious light of day in one moment.  After ten years of holding on to hope, keeping his feelings locked up, loving Jasmine from a distance as best friends, after giving up thinking that she would be married and gone... he finally had his second chance.

A week later, Paul told Jasmine how he felt.








Jasmine was gorgeous, I thought, as Paul and my new cousin-in-law walked up to me, sitting in the shadows with my bottle of champagne.

Sixteen years had changed us all.  Paul had grown tall and thin and somehow became the most metro guy I knew, and was actually good looking now.  Jasmine had grown out of her nerdy cocoon and had become a stunning young woman.  Paul was a Federal special agent now, and Jasmine was working on her second doctorate.

I stood up from my chair as they approached, and gave them a hug and a kiss. 

I knew they were concerned.  Even on their most special day, they had enough of a heart to be concerned about me -- knowing that I had just ended my six-year Relationship with The Ex, and that this day they had chosen for their wedding was my (now-ex) anniversary date as well.  They knew better than to ask if I was okay though.  I wasn't, and that's what the answer would always be.

Instead, they pulled up two chairs and sat down with me.  They looked relieved to be able to sit down after all the walking around and busy-ness of their wedding day.  Jasmine took off her shoes, and stretched back in her chair.  For a moment, she reminded me of the Jasmine that sat next to me in that first class in 7th grade, who took off her shoes and stretched just like that at the end of the day.  Paul handed me a cigar, an aged Fuente Fuente Opus X, and we cut his and mine, lighting them with the ST Dupont that Min Yi had given me years ago.

"It makes me sad that we're not all here."  I said to them, letting the thin smoke rise into the still air.

Jasmine sighed, and placed her hand on my arm.

"You know, we talked about a day like this, Katie and I, twelve years ago,"  I told them.  I'd told them before, when they first got engaged.  "we imagined what it would be like -- what all of us would be like today, here."

In the distance, Vicky was singing Moon River now.  We talked, the three of us, about old times.  Times that we thought we'd forgotten in the haze of times long gone.  About the eight of us, who just so happened to sit near each other on that first day in 7th grade and got pulled together into our circle by Ms. Tsoulos; who would end up being in each others lives -- falling in love with each other, facing good times and tragedy together... and about how only some of us made it.

I threw the bottle of 151 at the concrete wall of the building, watching it shatter into a dozen jagged pieces of exploding glass and liquor.


I bellowed as loud as I could, the horrifying sound of my voice echoing through the complex of run-down buildings of the public housing project I lived in, all around me.   I lay back in the unkempt grass, tears streaming from my eyes, choking on my own tears and bile.  I was sixteen years old, and having the very first bottle of 151 I had ever had, a bottle that now lay in pieces on the side of my home.  The lights were off inside.  Nobody was home.

Nobody was ever home anymore.

Not even me.

I rolled over into the red dirt and pulled my knees up to my chest.  I had no idea what was about to hit me.  I'd never had 151 before... but that night, when I bought the bottle, I wanted to drink myself into oblivion and 151 was the strongest liquor that Jimmy had on hand.  I had no idea where pulling out the flame arrester and drinking half the bottle at once would take me.

It felt like somebody had punched me in the gut.  But I didn't care.  I'd been punched in the gut endlessly.  By Derrick.  By Anton.  By Tee.  And all the other guys that used to beat the shit out of me until I learned to fight and knocked one of them out.  I wanted this though.  I wanted to feel this.

I was numb.

All I could think about was Katie in Peter's arms.  Wherever they were, in the backseat of his fancy car.  The fucking BMW that his dad bought him for his sixteenth birthday that cost more than my entire family would make in two years.  Peter, who treated her like shit, who belittled her, who tore down everything that I built up in her, who she loved so much that she just took it.  Peter, who sent her crashing down; but whose smile and words could brighten her day when mine had no longer had effect.  Peter, who took my Katie away from me.

I knew what he was doing to her.  Every time I saw her, she looked worse and worse.  And yet, with everything she did to please him, I knew he still didn't really care.

I'll wait for you, Katie.  It meant nothing.

The swirling maelstrom began to overtake me.  I felt like I was melting into the earth in endless repetitions of counter-clockwise motion.  I'll make something of myself, Katie.  We'll run away together, Katie.  I opened my mouth and coughed up bile into the dirt.  Am I dying?  I couldn't breathe.  I didn't care.  I was a puddle of flesh on the dirt now, slowly melting into the ground.  It was my fault.  I should have been a man.  I should have told her.  I tried to say her name.  I couldn't. 

I stopped breathing.








Illyana was everything Katie wasn't.  Everything good about Katie, Illyana was the opposite.

Illyana was the only person I knew who was possibly more fucked up than I was.  She was mean to me, called me a pussy, and liked throwing things at me.  But she understood me better than anyone else ever did.  Katie accepted me.  Illyana knew me.

I opened my eyes, and watched Illyana doing a line of coke off of her marble coffee table.  And I closed them again, sliding one of her Persian sofa pillows over my face.

I opened my eyes, and felt Illyana's hands on me, dragging me out of the grass and onto the back seat of her Mercedes-Benz.  And I closed them again, as she clenched my jaw with her hand to stop me from vomiting all over the leather.

I opened my eyes, and felt Illyana's arms around me, holding me snugly from behind on the floor.  And I closed them again, realizing that she had placed a faceless, legless amigurumi bear in my hands.

I woke up with a jolt, feeling ice water splashing on my face.  I opened my eyes, and through the haze I saw the blurred sight of the projection TV repeating the laserdisc movie Illyana and I had been watching earlier in the night.  She was crouching in front of me in her lacy black Yves Saint Laurent dress, her sharp knee touching my forehead, so close I could see the intricate stitching in the lace against her pale, thin thighs.

"This is why you have problems."  Illyana said, her long black slavic hair falling down her jaw and in front of her exposed collarbones.

"What?"

"Who taught you this shit?"  She cracked back the slide of my .45 halfway and tilted it at me, exposing the empty chamber.

My mouth agape, one eye open, I stared up at her.  She pulled back the slide all the way, chambering a round, and dropped my nickel-plated pistol on my forehead.

"Rudy."  I told her, grabbing the pistol.  I ejected the magazine and removed the round Illyana chambered.

"Your mister Rudy is мудак."  Illyana said, bending down and kissing my forehead, before telling me the best metaphor for the harsh cruelty of life that I would hear for fifteen years.

"Life is like this.  You always be ready to shoot.  Always one in the chamber.  No safety.  Life has no safety.  Someone about to hurt you, you shoot first.  You get opportunity, you always shoot first.  Maybe you regret later, but you cannot regret when dead."

I looked up at her.  Illyana was everything I hated in this world, but she was right.  Illyana never coddled me.  She kicked me in the gut and gave it to me straight.  Whenever I tried crying to her, she threw something at me and told me to shut up.

"I don't know why you like American so much.  American cars shit.  American guns shit.  American girls shit."

I exhaled and rolled over away from her.

"Your American girl... she does not know quality."  Illyana whispered in my ear.

Shut up.  Shut up.  Shut up.  I wanted to tell her. 

And for some reason, as if Illyana had read my mind, she did.  The rest of the night, I only heard one more word out of her mouth, breathing in my ear from behind as she fell asleep.  All I wanted to do was sleep now.  To fall asleep drunk, trying to convince myself that Katie was with me, not with Peter.  That the demented faceless, legless amigurumi bear that Illyana knit for me, in my arms, was Katie.  That the thin arms of this crazy Russian girl that held me from behind were Katie's arms.

For the first night, like a night twelve years later in the midst of the two most painful heartaches in my life, Illyana was there with me, with no bullshit... with just her understanding and the company of cold steel.

"Zaichiki..."  She whispered in my ear.

I turned my head and looked over Laura's bare shoulder at the table fifteen feet behind her, between two other couples dancing on the floor with us.



A man, awkward looking and dressed well but uncomfortably -- as if he were dressed by his female friends.  A woman, dressed as if she were going out for a drink with a friend -- her outfit was cute but un-provocative. 

I couldn't hear their conversation, but I knew what was happening.  I've seen it happen hundreds of times.  The pretty girl who made her rounds with her flowerbasket had stopped at their table -- that pretty girl with her flowerbasket that was often either a blessing or the kiss of death to a night between two people spending an evening together. 

The flowerbasket girl had asked the man, of course, if he would like to purchase a rose for the woman.  I watched him fumble for his wallet nervously.  I watched her sit up straight, and put her hand on the table in front of him, telling him that he didn't need to buy her a rose.  I watched him ignore her, handing over a crumpled wad of bills to the flower girl, and I watched her thank him and hand him a single red rose.  I watched the woman shrink back in her seat uncomfortably, and tell the man something.  Something I couldn't hear, but I knew.

"What are you looking at?"  Laura asked me, noticing my mind wasn't there on the floor, dancing with her.

"Table to our right."  I replied.  "I'll turn you a little bit."

"Oh, poor thing."  She replied, as I turned to let her see the couple.

"Yeah, poor guy -- he had no clue."  I shook my head.

"Poor guy?"  Laura laughed, putting her face back on my chest.  "Poor GIRL."










Up until the point where the flowerbasket girl makes her way to a table, the relationship between the man and the woman is arguably in a quantum state.  At this point, their relationship is like Schrodinger's cat in its box -- both alive and dead at the same time. 


When the flowergirl asks the man if he would like to buy a flower for the woman, the box is opened.

The woman was attractive.  I'd glanced over at her several times that night.  I watched her interactions with the man she was with.  I could tell by the way she was dressed, the way she spoke to him, and her subconscious body language, that she saw him as just a friend.  He, however, failed to make the correct observations, and now he was falling into the woman's romantic abyss.

I thought about a conversation I had once with June over coffee two years earlier, as she was studying for the Bar exam.

"What do you consider a date?" June asked me. "A date?"  I looked at her blankly. "Yeah, like what separates a random dinner with a person of the opposite sex to a date?"  She explained. "Two people meeting for the purpose of exploring possible sexual or romantic relations,"  I replied.  "It's the intent." "Is that your definition, or Webster's?"  June laughed. "Mine."  I smiled. She rolled her eyes, shook her head, and smiled back. "Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea"  I continued.  "The act will not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty."

Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea -- The act will not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty.  The concurrence of Mens rea (the guilty mind), coupled with Actus Reus (the guilty act), determines culpability.

In plain english, it's not a date unless it's acted upon with the understanding that it's a date.  It could look, smell and taste like a date, but if the parties involved don't see it as a date, it's not a date.

Culpability becomes more complex because the date is an interaction between two people -- so an additional requirement is necessary; and is the problem our flower-buying couple in question faced: 


A date is not a date unless both parties view it as a date.  Actus Reus -- the act itself, is not enough.  Mens Rea must exist.  To be a date, both parties must demonstrate an overt act in pursuance of the intent.









Women, imagine if you will, that you have three ladders.


These three ladders stand in a bottomless abyss.  Every man in your life who you are not incestuously prohibited from having sex with is on one of these three ladders.  The ladder any particular man is on is determined by whether you see him as a friend-only, or somebody you wouldn't mind having sexual or romantic relations with.

One ladder is for those you want to be friends-only.

The second ladder is for for those you wouldn't mind having sexual and/or temporary romantic relations with.

The third ladder is for those you want to be in a long-term romantic relationship with.

This is easy enough to imagine.  It's because this is how you categorize the men in your life, whether you know it or not.  Every man in your life has a ranking on your ladders.  The higher the rank, the more you want him.  He can move up or down as you choose, or as his behavior towards you dictates.  Some men are frozen in stasis on your ladder for moral reasons -- for example, he may be your friend's boyfriend or he may be married:  He is on Ladder 2 or 3, but you won't move on him.

Women can move men back and forth on her ladders.  Generally speaking, a woman places a man on one ladder immediately upon meeting him.  As time passes, the woman can move the man from ladder to ladder as she so chooses.  She has a "magic carpet" that can transport men back and forth safely across the bottomless abyss.

A man cannot move himself between her ladders.  If he wants to move from one ladder to another, he will try to jump.  The problem with this, of course, is that if he fails to catch the next ladder, he will end up in the bottomless abyss, likely to fall forever and never be on any of the woman's ladders again.   This problem is compounded by the fact that he makes the jump blind, without knowing how far away he is from the ladder he needs to make the jump to.  The only way a man can successfully move between a woman's ladders is by convincing her to move him. 

I listened to June continue. "What if you have no intentions but it comes apparent later on in the date that that is the intention of the other party?"  June asked me. I nodded. "Because for some reason, that always seems to happen to me... I meet a guy, find him really interesting and want to get together with him to learn more about him - on a friends level."  She continued. I remained silent, listening to her. "It ends up though that he has other intentions and I... I end up feeling sheepish and awkward that I didn't know that was the signal I was giving and I kick myself over it because I lose a potential close friend."  She finished, "I don't understand what changed..."

June didn't understand Ladder Theory.

When an evening out fails horribly like the way it was failing horribly for the couple Laura and I were watching as we danced together fifteen feet away, one or more of several things happen:

1)  The guy is embarrassed, discouraged and heartbroken if he was trying to be on the relationship ladder.  For one of these reasons he never sees the girl again.

2)  The guy realizes that he's never going to get into her pants, if he was trying to be on the sexual ladder -- and quits.

3)  The girl feels betrayed by a guy she felt was a friend and never speaks to him again, not understanding the way a guy thinks is different from the way a girl thinks.

4)  The girl feels awkward with the guy to the point where she doesn't feel comfortable to hang out with him again.  They never see each other again.

When the flowerbasket girl comes around offering her flowers, she is forcing the man to make a decision to discover what ladder he is on.  If he doesn't buy the rose, he is sending a signal to the woman that he is not interested and is lowering himself on her ladder.  If he is already on Ladder 2 or 3, buying the rose increases his position on the ladder.  If he is on Ladder 1, buying the rose in the hope of romancing or sexing the girl makes him fall from the ladder into the bottomless abyss from where he will never return.










Now men, imagine you have the same three ladders.

You can't, can you?  That's because you don't have three ladders.  You have ONE.



Men have only one ladder.   That ladder stands in an pool of water.  Every woman in your life who you are not incestuously prohibited from having sex with is on that ladder somewhere. 

Every woman is on your one and only ladder -- your mating ladder, whether you think she is or not.  The women who are above the waterline on your ladder are women you would mate with.  You may want to love her and romance her, and be a great guy for her... or you might genuinely want to be her friend.  You may even be able to remain celibate because of your religious convictions -- but really, in the end, don't lie to yourself... you still wouldn't mind mating with her.

The women who are BELOW your ladder's waterline however, are NOT women who you would normally mate with.  These are the women who become your friends, and friends only -- not only by her choice, but by yours as well; that you would NOT mate with under normal conditions.  This is not to say that being a guy's "friend-only" means you are not a good person. 

If a woman above a man's waterline, it means she is a candidate for any position other than "friend-only".  If she is below his waterline, it means she is a "friend-only."  A woman's position on a guy's ladder has nothing to do with her quality of person.  It just means that he just wouldn't mate with her for whatever reason he has.

A good example is the male-female relationship where the two are not related but see each other like brother and sister.  They are so close in that regard that it's obvious the man feels that the woman is of the highest quality.  Yet, he is not sexually attracted to her, and thus she is below his waterline.

Some guys have higher waterlines than others.  Some guys have really low waterlines.  The waterline can change, and represents the mental state of the man and how desperate he is to get laid.  The waterline changes if the man is drunk, high, or hornier than normal.

This does NOT mean that all men are womanizing bastards and will cheat at the drop of a hat should a woman on his ladder become available -- there are things like morality and loyalty that keep a man faithful. 

Loyal men don't have two ladders.  Loyal men are like every other man, with their one ladder -- they just freeze (put into stasis) every woman on the ladder while he's with somebody.

Now, what men don't realize is that women are not the same as they are.  Men think women have one ladder; and that just as women move up and down a man's ladder and that whether she is a friend or not, every woman his waterline is a potential sexual partner.   So when the flowerbasket girl comes around and offers a rose for the man to give to the woman, the man assumes that the rose will increase his sexual standing since obviously (to him), the woman is on a date with him (after all, why would she be out with him if it wasn't a date?).

And before he realizes what happens, the man finds himself falling into the woman's bottomless abyss.


Men:  The key to success is knowing what ladder you are on and figuring out a way to move to a better ladder; or if you're on a good ladder, to increase your status on that ladder.

Women:  The key to success is knowing what ladder the man in question is on, and making it absolutely clear to him what ladder he is on.  Don't play games with the man.  He likely doesn't even know there is a game at all.  Be clear about your objective with him.










"I have a clue."  I smirked, turning my eyes away from the couple we were watching.


Laura smiled at me.  She let go of my hand, and slid her hand up my wrist, pushing up at the french cuffs and playing with my cufflinks.  She dragged her fingers up my sleeve, to my shoulder, and pulled on the lapel of my suitjacket.

"Yes you do."  She grinned.

I pulled her into me, pressing her body firmly against mine.

"You liiiike me."  I joked, raising an eyebrow and grinning back.

She laughed, and rested her head against my shoulder.  I brushed my hand up her back, and into her long chocolate-brown hair before resting my fingers and palm against the back of her head.  I let my hand comb through her hair, before stopping and holding her back gently against me.  I heard her sigh.

"Maybe."  She smiled.

I looked up from the stove, and smiled at Chieko and June sitting at the dining table and laughing together by the window ten feet away.


My hands moved quickly now.  Much more quickly than they did ten years ago.  Stirring the sauce.  Modulating the heat.  Grating the cheese.  Flipping the prawns on the grill.  Checking the loaf of Ciabatta in the oven.  Dicing, chopping, mincing, slicing.  Our bottle of wine was uncorked and poured between the three of us, and I took a generous gulp of my favorite Cabernet Sauvignon from my favorite little winery in Napa Valley as I prepared dinner for us.  Ten years ago, this would have been a major production.  But now, it was an every-day dinner for us.

Except tonight, I was making Fettuccine Alfredo by request for June.

I could never make Fettuccine Alfredo without remembering the very first time I ever cooked for somebody I loved -- cooking for Katie, in my parents shoddy apartment in the ghetto, because she told me it was her favorite dish and I wanted to make it for her.

I looked around me.  So much had changed in the last ten years.  I wasn't a poor kid living in the projects anymore.  Instead of a decaying, roach-infested leftover kitchen from the sixties with a range to match; I was standing in my own kitchen in my own place, with granite countertops, a hardwood floor, and Wolf and Sub-Zero appliances neatly tucked into their enclosures.  Instead of using my mother's shoddy, scratched up T-Fal cookware, I was using All-Clad everything.  And instead of eating on a rusty secondhand metal table with a view of the building next door, we were eating on a custom-made Brazilian mahogany table by a floor-to-ceiling window with a view that was spectacular by any standard.

But Katie wasn't here.  And Fettuccine Alfredo was never complete without her.








Katie told me she loved it.

In hindsight, it must have tasted awful, but she told me she loved it anyway. 

What did I know?  I was fifteen, cooking the first thing I ever tried cooking that wasn't instant ramen or chef boyardee.  We had gone to a nice Italian restaurant two weeks earlier, and shared a dinner I could barely afford but I wanted to treat her to anyway.  My parents could never afford that sort of thing then, so I had never been to a place like that.  She told me she loved Fettuccine Alfredo, and not having the money to take her out like this yet wanting to treat her to what she loved, I told her that I would make it for her.

And tonight, even though I knew I was making it for Chieko and June, I wished Katie was here with us to have this Fettuccine Alfredo, made the way it's supposed to be made.

I use top-grade Plugra european butter now.  And fresh non-ultrapasteurized cream.  Fleur de sel.  And Parmigiano Reggiano.  I roll out and cut my Fettuccine by hand now, because this dish needs fresh-made pasta.

Katie was so kind to me then, telling me that she loved the first Fettuccine Alfredo I ever made, with margarine, half-and-half, powdered parmesan and cream cheese.  I scorched the sauce, it was clumpy, and the pasta clung together, half-cooked in places and over-cooked in others.

I still remember her face when she put the first twirled fork-full into her mouth.

No one has ever made that face since.  And I know why.  It's because Katie never took it for granted.  It's because she knew exactly why I had made it for her. 

Just because I knew she loved it. 

She knew I couldn't afford much, but I did what I could.  And she knew I didn't know how to cook, but I was trying my damned hardest anyway.  Because I was the only person in her entire life that actually gave a damn about her in a world of dysfunctional people who said they cared but really didn't.

Now, it doesn't matter what I make.  I could serve a Croquette of Foie Gras and Kogyoku apple confit in black truffle demi glace reduction, and it would be pedestrian.  Because that's just what people expect from me now.  And I knew that yes, Chieko and June would appreciate the Fettuccine Alfredo that I was making for them by request -- but they would just eat it.  It wouldn't matter that I'm using the best ingredients that money can buy, cooked with the best equipment that money can buy, with the best hands that money can't buy or that I'm making it because I care for them.

The love would be there, but they would never feel as loved as Katie did that night eating my disgusting mass of loving slop.








I exhaled a deep breath, letting my hands fall down on the wrought iron railing on my balcony in front of me.

I looked back in through the window, at Chieko and June doing the dishes in the kitchen.  Chieko, like June's big sister.  June, who reminded me of Katie before we started down into the dark places of this world together, ten years ago.  Before Katie fell.  Before I fell.  When we were pure, innocent creatures, like June, laughing as she flung soap bubbles at Chieko.  She was so untouched by the horrors of life, and I would not let these things touch her.  I would not let the things that happened to Katie happen to her.  Not again.  Not to another woman under my care.

I sighed.  My June.  My Chieko.  My place.  I looked down at myself.  The tailored, hand-stitched shirt I wore casually would have paid a month's rent for my parents back then.  And my watch could have paid my father for a year back then.  I would have, then, if I could have.  But life is what it is, now, not then. 

Everything, all of this, all started there that night, with the Fettuccine Alfredo and Katie.  For better or for worse, that dinner changed the course of my life.  But I knew all that I had... it was blood money.  And I hated it.  If it hadn't been for Katie and the Fettuccine Alfredo, I would not be who I was now, where I was, what I was.  But we paid so much for it.  Katie followed me into the deep, dark places of this world, and she paid a toll more costly than mine.  We paid too much for it, Katie.

I wondered, what my life would have been like... what our life would have been like, had we never had our Fettuccine Alfredo that night?