I'm trapped in a tale by Rumiko Takahashi. A narrator explains "In Japanese culture, the role of voyeur is reserved for women over a certain age." Or did I misunderstand--is it that Japanese women beyond this age are allowed only the role of voyeur?

Either way, Japan is apparently riddled with secret hidey-holes for peeping. Even out in the woods and on hilltops--little caves and pavilions and treehouses built specifically for spying on lovers!

In the tale, I'm in a hotel or inn. In the next suite, a girl named Rumiko I've been traveling with (and have a huge crush on) is still up: I can hear her, see her light under the door. The sealed door between us.

I get turned on and thrash around on the bed, frustrated, wishing she were here with me. Hope she's peeping through the voyeur's crack in the door. I take it for granted there is one, of course. That's standard! But when I check... nothing! It's solid, unlike every other door in Japan...

I feel disappointed to have privacy! I can't seem to just come on to her directly--though I know she must like and trust me, to travel alone with me.

The next morning, she tells me a fable about our situation.

She calls it...

THE CHICKEN WHO DIDN'T WANT TO BE LUNCH

'This rooster wanted to sing and act. So he went out into the world... and the farmer let him go, because he was a defective chicken anyway. He had a bad leg--limped visibly. "Nothin' more useless" said the farmer's wife, "than a limp cock."

'He was skinny, too. Nothing much edible on him. So they let him limp out of the prison-farm, into the world...

'And out there... he found no one appreciated him any more than back on the farm. Now, that may have been because he had no talent as a singer--I don't know.

'But in the end, despite his defects, a woman did find some use for him.

'As soup. She ate him. And that ended his sad stage career. And this story.'

OVER TEA

I'm silent a while, pondering her fable.

Make tea. When it cools enough to drink I sit with her on the verandah.

"Rumiko," I ask, "he would've been killed eventually, on the farm, so maybe he was still better off leaving. How long was his career out in the world, anyway?"

She sips her tea and stares off at the hills, full of voyeur-pavilions.

"Three and a half hours," she says sadly, and I wake.

• Japanese limit older women to voyeurism = I've been watching other couples enviously but never chasing anyone I like.
• Takahashi, voyeurism = her comics are full of sexy little girls who flirt with the "camera." Her males seem less body-aware and are less objectified. Is she only catering to Japanese mass tastes or does this reflect something in her, too? From themes recurring through her work, I think it's at least partly her--she likes drawing girls.
• Girl who travels with me = In Takahashi's Mermaid's Scar, Mana and Yuta wander old Japan like this.
• Hidey-holes and cracks = In Scar, Mana and Yuta meet a horrible 800-year-old boy with a secret shack. In Takahashi's Maison Ikkoku, the hero has no privacy at all--the guy next door constantly sticks his head through a hole in his bedroom wall!
• Defective chicken who wants to act = I just can't crow/boast like most males. Can't act like a man. In American slang, chicken means coward, cock means penis... so the dream hints I'm just too shy or fragile to survive.
• Singer = I'm a singer-songwriter. Beware the music industry, it'll eat me alive!
• Is a defective creature a person or food? Echoes the tale "Ash Princess" in Mermaid's Scar, about Natsume, a girl brought to life magically but not quite right. She tears out livers and eats them raw, seeking a missing nutrient. Monster? Yet a cheerful girl who hopes to heal...
• ACTION: So what's Rumiko's fable propose? "Go out dating and they'll eat you alive?" But home's no better. Pretty fatalistic message! Nothing constructive to suggest? Maybe it's just warning me that right now is not the time to climb onstage...

TWO MONTHS LATER

My voice teacher introduces me to the members of a bizarre band, thinking I might fit in. They like my songwriting. I join. My first band! A real turning point in my life--I thought. But they all smoke tobacco and I'm allergic; rehearsals make me sick. I get a crush on the violinist. She and the lead guitarist are lovers, and soon after I join, they start fighting constantly. When they finally break up, so does the band. The violinist wants to be "just friends". All that investment in time and work and passion--both love and music--goes into the toilet.

Or the soup pot.

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