Sunday, November 16, 2008

MUTT Ch. 6--On Asian eyes

What is it about some Asian eyes that's so impossibly desirable? I've often wondered about this. I think most Western men look at an Asian woman's eyes and feel they’re somehow defective in relation to his own tribe's eyes; he feels they're somehow aberrant. But why does that make them so sexy? There's something that seems weaker about Asian eyes, as if the skin of the eyelids enfolding them were a bit too taut, a bit too delicate; as if the eyelids were not as they should be, as if they could be easily torn. And behind the narrow slits of the Asian woman's eyes--two jet-black pools of ink. Their eyes are often so dark that the pupil is indistinguishable from the iris. The impression is one of impassive solidity; such dark eyes have a strong inscrutability that contrasts with the weakness of the delicate skin enclosing and hiding them.

Certainly these elements--the feeling that the eyes are somehow defective; the impression that they’re also somehow weaker; the unreadability of eyes so perfectly black--clearly all this has something to do with the erotic charge an Asian woman's eyes have in the Westerner's mind. Or at least in my mind. I can't speak for others. But I have to admit I was looking forward to exchanging glances with just such eyes when I accepted the job in Taipei. And already on Day One I'd caught this woman's glance in a bank, and here already she was driving me somewhere we could be alone. I may have been tired out from the flight across a dozen time zones, I may have been literally lost, but all this certainly boded well for the coming year in Taiwan. Or so I thought as her car wove its way through the maddening Taipei traffic.

She parked the Benz in her garage. We got out, and she opened a side door onto a large courtyard. I could hardly believe my eyes. There were about two-hundred dogs in that courtyard, and they all started crowding around us, greeting her. It was a bizarre sight for the middle of a big city. Why in the hell would a woman who drives a Mercedes have so many dogs? I stood there unsure what to make of it, the dogs nervously pawing at my calves and licking my hands. They all looked like mutts and street dogs saved from the gutter. She had an orange plastic kiddy pool in the shade with a hose running into it. That was for their water. When she led me back into the garage, I noticed three tall stacks of huge bags of dog food. She was smiling as she led me up the stairs to her flat. I was surprised by all the dogs, but figured it was a good sign that the woman I was picking up was a serious dog lover. I too loved dogs.

On to Chapter 7

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