by Adam Berlin
(10/28/09)

I craved raw fish. And like an addict, from the first time I ate perfect sushi, carefully cut, colorfully presented, dark soy sauce, green wasabi and white rice highlighting the delicate pink and pale and red fish flesh, I was smitten. It was like love.

All of my money went to eating sushi. I worked and I went out to eat. I worked to go out to eat. I ate sushi until I was full and then I rested and ate more sushi until I was beyond full. Unlike other foods, the craving was back the next day and as I plodded through my nine-to-five, I dreamed of sushi, all kinds of sushi. Plain sushi and sushi rolls, simple rolls wrapped in seaweed and inside-out rolls rolled in sesame or roe, maki tuna and yellowtail and salmon and eel and combination rolls, exotic, innovative rolls. And the more sushi I ate, the better the sushi needed to be. A ten-dollar hand of blackjack becomes dull with time and so the player bets twenty-five dollars and then one hundred dollars a hand and when he wins, he bets more, thousands of dollars just to keep the high high going. A gambler who bets six figures a hand is called a whale. Fish and addiction. The addiction of fish.

The first time I fell in love was at Nobu. I was there with a first date who had a reservation, made a month before. She'd just broken up with her boyfriend and to exact revenge she went to Nobu without him. I'd met her at a bar the night before, and she'd invited me out. I'd always liked food. The New York City social life is defined by food, meals out at name restaurants the measure of cool. So we went to Nobu after drinking at a nearby bar, and to keep our buzz going, to keep concentration from cutting into the high, we'd asked the waitress to order for us. This was no diner waitress pushing the daily leftover special. At Nobu everything was fresh and so the waitress had suggested this cut and that cut of fish and, drunk, we'd taken all of her suggestions.

After the miso soup that tasted of faraway seas, after the creamy-spicy shrimp tempura, one of the best dishes I'd ever eaten, after the delicately glazed cod, the sushi appeared. When I hadn't been staring into my date's eyes, which I already knew were good enough to stare at drunk but not sober, I'd been watching the sushi chefs work. Our table was close enough to distinguish the different widths of the knife blades. There were two wiry men who cut the raw fish in fast, crisp gestures, and one man, tall for a Japanese man, with the thickness of an athlete grown-up. The muscles under his white chef's suit looked menacingly solid and his face was strong and impenetrable, a block of a face that enforced the inscrutable stereotype. He cut the sushi like it was a show, but a show for himself, his gestures economical. After each cut he'd wipe his knife with a hint of flourish, and when he placed the flat plates of sushi on the counter for the waitstaff to pick up, he would nod, once, for himself. I was drunk so I thought I could hear the sound he wasn't speaking, the internal sound he made each time he nodded his head. Haiii. Like a karate movie, fist through a board.

The platter was set on our table. It was a piece of art. The different colored rolls were beautifully arranged, each with a mosaic inside, flecks of green and orange highlighting the more subtle fish colors, the fanned tail of a shrimp emerging from the center of a large roll as if beckoning us to eat. And we ate. The hot wasabi and salty soy sobered me and my sushi-drunk was better than any alcohol high. I ate beyond full. I couldn't get enough of the raw fish. If I'd been fucking instead of eating, and I would not have traded those Nobu rolls for anything, not anything, my cock would have been ripped raw.

When we left the restaurant, me walking chivalrously behind my date who'd insisted on paying since, she desperately said, I'd made her forget her ex completely, I made eye-contact with the thick sushi chef. He nodded once for me and I nodded once for him.

I had no type. I had fucked them all, every age and race and ethnicity, from every continent, and not because I was playing Around The World. It just happened that way. I'd think most thirty-seven year olds, if they were still single and enjoyed the single life that was New York City, would have been around the world several times. But when I saw her, walking out of Sushi Samba just before I was walking in, I stopped. Nothing made me stop when sushi was the destination, but she did. My sushi could wait an extra minute even if I had spent the day in my cubicle dreaming of Brazilian fusion rolls. She was beautiful, but there are many beautiful women in New York City. She wasn't the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, not at all. Her eyes were a little too close together and her nose was a little wide and her body, while thin and fit, did not have the long, lean minx-quality that was as close to a type as I came. But her mouth was perfect. Her lips were the color of the best cut of tuna, rich and red and moist-looking and, seeing her lips, I couldn't help but think about what her other lips looked like. I pictured her. I pictured myself in her. My cock inside two perfectly cut, sushi-colored lips. I had to stop. And I had to talk. I wasn't even drunk, but I was drunk with wanting her and so, standing there on the crowded side of Seventh Avenue, I forced myself to block out the noise and block out my need for fusion rolls served with three flavors of dipping sauce, and I looked in her eyes instead of her mouth.

"You," I said, simple and clean, one-word raw.

She didn't say anything. But her eyes were clear and she didn't move her eyes.

"Even if you're full, even if you're stuffed, come back inside with me and let me buy you one more roll," I said.

Her lips parted in a smile. Her teeth were white, white as rice, highlighting the healthy pinkness of her un-lipsticked lips. She knew her lips were beautiful, that they needed no enhancement. But she didn't know, I didn't think, that her lips looked good enough to eat.

"I'm with a friend," she said. "He's just using the bathroom."

"A friend?"

"Yes." Her voice was playful. Maybe she'd been drinking sake and the whole world looked fun. "A friend."

"A friend, or a boring date you just realized is only worthy of being a friend?"

"Well done," she said.

I took my business card and put it in her hand.

"Call me," I said. "You have to call me. We'll go out for sushi. We'll go out for the best sushi we can find."

"I love sushi," she said and her smile was up-to-something. Her eyes were alive.

"I love it too."

"Well then," she said.

"Tomorrow," I said. "Call me. I think your friend is coming out of the restaurant right now so hide my card and call me tomorrow and we'll eat sushi together tomorrow night."

I was right. It was her friend. He came over to her and took her arm, tentatively, and she let him, but I wasn't really watching him. I was watching her and, like magic, my card disappeared into her hand.

I went into Sushi Samba, sat alone at the sushi bar, ordered a full plate of spicy tuna and yellowtail and fusion rolls. I watched the sushi chefs work. It was a performance the way they rolled, cut, separated, displayed the sushi on colorful plates. I took my chopsticks from their paper holder, moved one stick against the other, wood on wood, like making a fire.

I picked her up at her door. I was never this chivalrous, good-looking enough to simply hold a door once in a while without ever having to pay for a cab, but she was not just another woman. Her mouth, when she came out of her midtown office building, was as I remembered. Her lips were almost more perfect. The perfect thickness, the perfect color. The perfect texture, I guessed. I had already kissed her in my head, had already bitten down on her lower lip, had already tasted the salt of her blood, like the salt of the sea. I forced my lips away from her mouth and gave her a polite kiss on her cheek, but let my lips stay there for a moment so she'd know I more than liked her. I'd made reservations at Haru on the Upper West Side. Nobu had been booked solid and I didn't want to spend hours drinking cocktails at a nearby bar until a table at Nobu Next Door could be secured. Bond Street was booked. Blue Ribbon Sushi was booked. I wasn't the only one who lusted sushi.

Haru was not great, but it was good, and some nights it was very good, and that's where we went. On the taxi ride up, we made small talk, ran through abbreviated versions of our biographies. She knew it was just talk and I knew it was just talk so after a while we stopped talking background and just talked, punching and counter-punching like we'd known each other for a long time. The cab pulled in front of Haru and I reached for my wallet. While I handed the driver the bill, I looked at her lips.

Haru was crowded, but I had a reservation and they gave us a nice corner table in the back where we could sit next to each other and have a view of the other diners and of the sushi chefs rolling and cutting.

"I love sushi," I said.

"I love sushi too," she said.

"Why?"

She looked at me and smiled. It was an impossible question. You can look up love in the dictionary and the definition is meaningless. Sushi's definition would be even further from the truth, a simple noun defined as simple raw fish, but the woman in front of me knew it was more, knew the word didn't come close to what sushi was, and I could see her thinking, really thinking about the why, and then I could see her forming her answer. I admired how she thought before she spoke and I watched her mouth move, just slightly, as she went from one thought to the next to the revision of the thought into words before she spoke.

"Sushi is pure. It tastes pure, tastes like it should go into your body, and it looks pure. They're perfect cuts of fish, as if they could be stacked one on top of the other. When I eat a lot of sushi I picture it in my stomach, the pieces stacked one on top of the other. And then I picture my body taking the pieces into it, one perfect piece at a time, the fish flesh making my blood red and my flesh pink and my skin smooth and my heart strong and alive. That's why I love it. It's pure. It's the perfect food."

"When it's perfect, it's as perfect as anything in the world," I said.

The sushi came. The raw flesh glistened so wetly it could have been alive. I had read of such sushi. A master chef would take a fish from a tank, cut off a strip of flesh, throw the fish back in the water and the fish would swim, while the chef prepared the sushi.

We ate quietly. There was no need to dilute the experience with talk and she seemed to know this. Her lips were as perfect as sushi and I pictured the pieces of fish stacking up in my stomach and then another picture came to me. Her lips. Not her lip lips, but the lips hidden by the tablecloth that shielded her lap. I pictured a piece of those lips stacked in my stomach and I felt a rush go through me, more intense than the greatest craving. I put my chopsticks down and looked at her and I nodded my head, like the thick-muscled sushi chef at Nobu

"I want to take you to Nobu one day."

"There are sushi places better than Nobu," she said.

"I know. But Nobu was my first and I want to take you there."

"Why did you stop me last night?"

"I had to."

"You didn't have to. How did you know I wasn't dating a jealous man who would hurt you if he saw you giving me your card."

I lifted my arm, made a muscle, asked her to feel it.

"So you would have hurt him."

"I don't fight," I said.

She moved her hand over my forearm.

"That's the muscle of a hoodlum," she said.

"I was born with it."

"You have hoodlum in your blood."

"I have sushi in my blood. Or it will be in my blood. First I have to stack it in my stomach."

"That's the image I have," she said and picked up a piece of yellowtail scallion roll, dipped it in the soy and wasabi, moved it into her mouth.

"It's a perfect image. Can you keep stacking?"

"I can stack sushi all night," she said and there was no hint of sarcasm in her voice.

"Then we will."

I called over the waiter and ordered more. More and more. I watched the waiter move to the sushi bar, place the order. The chefs started cutting.

I took her to my place. I never took them back to my place, preferred the option of making a speedy bolt in that limbo-moment between drunk and hungover, but I wanted her in my place. I didn't want to know where she lived or how she lived. I didn't want to know anything about her. It felt more pure that way. I just wanted to know her, know her lips, know how they felt. I had kissed her in the cab. Her lip lips were perfect and I tested her immediately, kissed her and kissed her and then I pressed my teeth into her lower lip and she took it without a flinch of protest and I pressed harder and she took it and I grew bone hard. I tasted the salt of blood and stopped biting. I kissed her lips gently. The cab stopped. I took her hand, took her up to my bedroom, undressed her on my bed.

I liked to keep the lights on. A friend of mine, a hunter himself but not a lover of sushi, was the same way. We loved to see it, spread it. We always joked how we would be happiest to go to bed with a miner's hat on our heads, the attached flashlight providing the perfect beam of light to look deep. It was all about the mystery for us. We weren't tit men. We weren't ass men or leg men or feet men or eye men. We were cunt men. It was all about the slit of skin, the pink flesh, the mystery, which, we knew, we'd never fully see no matter how bright the light. But I kept the light on and her lip lips had not lied. Her cunt was perfect. She had waxed so I could see its perfect definition, its perfect symmetry. I put a finger inside her and opened the two lips, the color of perfect sushi. I worked another finger in and opened her more and then I put my cock inside her and did what I did best, listened to her, put my head in her head and listened to what would get her there, sensing the tide and then moving to it, closer and closer, picturing the beginning of her orgasm like a small wave, just starting, still far from shore. And that's what I said in her ear, that's what I said in all of their ears, but none of them had ever felt perfect. I worked for her, talked to her about the wave, about the growing wave, moved to the growing wave, and the wave started to gather water, started to gather strength, the salt water starting to foam, and I moved to it, harder to it, faster to it, talking to her the whole time, making her picture the wave, making her realize I was the only man who could truly fuck her, the wave getting bigger, her voice starting to take over my voice, and I fucked her and fucked her until the wave peaked, was right there, too high to fold in on itself, too high to go back, too high. It was going to crash.

"Let it crash," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"Let it crash all the way. Let it all go. All of it."

"Yes," she said.

"Go," I said.

The wave crashed. I lifted myself up, straightened my arms, looked down at her lips, perfect lips, sushi-perfect. I felt the wave start in myself and kept my eyes right there, right there.

For a full month, every Saturday night, we met and ate sushi and fucked. Each time in bed I went further and further. I pressed my finger hard into her palm, moved my finger up her wrist, up her forearm, hard, harder, streaking her skin red, and I listened. I listened to her sound, listened to hear if it was pain or pleasure. I pressed harder each time and the sound was the same sound she always made, only louder. Pleasure. I took her nipple between my thumb and forefinger and squeezed until my fingers cramped, and the sound was pleasure. I took a knife from the kitchen, moved it along the inside of her thigh, then back, back and forth, pressing in harder every time and finally I cut the skin, a thin line that didn't really bleed and would heal in a moment and the sound was pleasure. She took it and then she took me and I came into her, my sushi-fed sperm shooting forward, strong and strong and strong.

I waited outside Nobu. I knew the kitchen closed at midnight, but I didn't know how long the sushi chefs took to close their station. There were knives to be wiped clean, counters to be scrubbed, fish to be wrapped, uniforms to be put into the laundry, hands to be washed. I pictured what they had to do. It passed the time. I wondered if I would even bother washing my hands, or if I would keep the fish smell on me at all times.

I watched the diners coming out of Nobu, glowing from fish and sake. They were different from steak eaters. Steak eaters looked slow. Too full, they were more interested in sleeping than fucking. The sushi-eaters were full of life, their blood fortified, the stacked fish in their stomachs providing energy, not sucking energy the way meat did, pulling blood into the stomach so that the rest of the organs, the rest of the muscles grew fatigued.

The last people came out, two couples, together, laughing and glowing. Each couple walked hand in hand, energy in their steps, moving fast into the lit darkness of New York City.

The sushi chef came out.

He was shorter than he looked behind the sushi bar, but his muscles were as thick, his arms bunched up under a T-shirt, his neck mighty, his broad face hard. He was done performing and his brutality seemed more quiet, more dangerous.

"Excuse me," I said.

He turned to me. He looked at me. He didn't say a word. He didn't nod.

"I always admire you when you work," I said. "And I wanted to know, what's the trick to cutting perfect sushi?"

"The trick?"

"Maybe that's the wrong word. What's the technique?"

"A technique takes years to perfect."

"I don't have years," I said.

"Are you dying?" he said.

"No. But I have to know."

I looked the sushi chef in his hard eyes, made my eyes just as hard, like before a fight, when you put everything away, all life away, like you could fight to the death because your eyes are already there. I had the same nervous feeling going. I was alive and dead at the same time. Nine times out of ten the other guy backed down, but there was no back-down in the sushi chef.

"A sharp knife," he said.

I waited.

"The sharpest knife," he said. "I brought my knife from Japan when I came here as a young man."

"What else?"

"You must commit to the cut. You must never hesitate once you start the cut."

"Never hesitate," I repeated.

This time the sushi chef waited. His eyes were more open now, taking me in, letting me take him in.

"I want to cut a piece," I said. "I feel like I'll fully appreciate eating sushi if I know what it's like to cut the fish."

"You already appreciate sushi."

"How do you know?"

"When I'm working, I see everything around me. I have seen you in Nobu many times. Every time I see the pleasure in your face."

"I love sushi," I said.

"Haiii," he said and smiled. He nodded his head once for me and started to walk away.

"Wait," I said and he stopped.

"I need your knife," I said. "Just for one night. I promise I'll return it to you tomorrow. I'll be here as soon as you start your shift. I'll be here before you start your shift. I promise."

"Do you know how to use a knife?"

"You commit to the cut. You never hesitate."

The sushi chef looked at me. I let him into my eyes. The sushi chef turned, walked into Nobu, came out one minute later with a leather case. He handed the case to me.

"I start my shift at four. Exactly at four."

The sushi chef walked away and I stood there for a moment, leather case in hand, the knife inside. Then I opened up my cell phone and made the call.

I met her downstairs and paid for the cab. I treated her like a princess. I'd never believed in princesses, too jaded to see the fairy tale in anyone, but when I thought of her, thought of her in the world outside my bed, I pictured her as a fish princess, swimming through the crowds of New York City, raising herself above the people for a playful moment before diving back down. And when she was with me, I pictured her coming up for air all the way, the most beautiful fish princess, but unlike a fish, whose colors were most vivid underwater, she was perfect on land, most perfect spread out on my bed. And I felt perfect too. Inside her was where I was supposed to be. Inside me was where she was supposed to be.

She kissed me hard. I kissed her hard back, bit into her lip.

"Where are we going?" she said.

Whenever we met, we ate sushi first. Pieces and pieces of sushi and then, nourished, we would be ready.

"We're eating in," I said.

"In?"

"I already ordered. Lobster tempura rolls. Inside-out maki rolls. Yellowtail and tuna rolls. One eel roll for you. And one roll with nothing in it."

"An empty roll?"

"For me."

She smiled and I smiled. I took her hand and walked her into my building, up to my apartment, into my bedroom. I undressed her and spread her out on my bed.

I kissed her lip lips, and moved my tongue down, between her breasts, over her stomach, around the inside of her thighs, circling, and then I spread her lips apart and tasted her, fresh and salty, licked her and listened to her rhythm until she was almost there, right at the line, the line that separated coming and not coming, as impossible to measure as the line between sky and ocean on the horizon, and that thin. I kept her there, kept her there until the door buzzer rang and I took my head from between her legs. She kept moving herself forward, fucking an imaginary me.

"Sushi," she said.

"Sushi," I said and went to the door, stood by it, waited for the Japanese delivery man to ring the bell. The bell rang and I paid the man, took the bag, went into the bedroom. I'd bought a flat, aqua blue platter and I put it on the bed. I unpacked the sushi and arranged the rolls on the platter, the eel roll closer to her mouth, the empty roll, just inside-out rice with a hole in the middle, closer to me. I took the leather case and put it by the bed. I moved my head between her legs and took her to the line once more and then I lifted my head and told her to wait.

I loved the sound she made and she was making it.

I put myself inside her and started to move.

I took a piece of the eel roll, dipped it in the soy sauce and wasabi, fed it to her, her lips holding my finger for a moment, her tongue licking a final drop of soy from my skin. She made the sound. She loved sushi.

I fed her the whole roll, all six pieces, and while I fed her I fucked her and I brought her right there, but I didn't let her come. She wanted to. She wanted to after the first piece and she wanted to more after the second piece and up and up, all six pieces stacking up in her stomach, feeding her. I put my head next to her head, my mouth to her ear, and I whispered what I wanted. I moved inside her and told her exactly what I wanted to do and she didn't flinch, just like she never flinched. It would be the smallest piece, the smallest smallest piece, and it would feed me, become a part of me, the most romantic thing I would ever do if she would let me do it and I moved in her and moved in her and the only sound she made was the sound she made.

I lifted myself off her and picked up the leather case. I'd already pictured what I would do so many times, so many times since the first time I'd been between her perfect lips.

I opened the leather case. I took out the knife.

It was the sharpest knife I'd ever seen. I'd read of Ninja swords, how the artisans melted the steel, folded and refolded it, over and over until it could cut a man's hair in two, lengthwise. This knife was not a weapon. But I pictured an artisan folding the steel, testing it on a raw piece of fish, cutting the slightest sliver, perfect. That was all I wanted. The slightest sliver. To be inside of her and have her inside of me, fortifying me, making her mine. It had always been just an expression. Your cunt is mine. I said it in their ears when I was fucking them, making them come, but with her, her perfect lips, her love of sushi, I wanted her cunt to be mine. I wanted to commit to more than the words. I wanted to commit to the cut.

She looked at the knife. I had cut her before, and she had taken it. I pressed the cool steel against her belly and moved my cock inside of her. She made her sound.

"It's a sushi knife," I said, my voice becoming a whisper, as if this blade, this work of art that turned raw fish into works of art, was too sacred to talk about too loudly.

"I know," she said.

"It's from Nobu."

"Nobu," she whispered back. "Where you had your first sushi."

She remembered everything.

"The sushi chef gave it to me."

"Does he know why you want to use it?'

She was breathing heavy.

"Do you know why?" I whispered.

"Of course. I knew before you told me. And I trust you enough to let you."

"How did you know?"

"When we met, you weren't just talking. You gave me your card, you took me for sushi, you take me for sushi every night, and you whisper things in my ear. I listen. I listen between the words. You make me feel good and this will make you feel good."

"You won't even feel it."

"I want to feel it a little."

"Just a little."

"And then we'll say good bye," she said.

"You do listen between the words," I said.

"The words stack up," she whispered and I moved inside of her, to get her to that place again.

When she was there, when she was on that edge, I opened her up, took a piece of her lip and pulled it taut. The flesh was perfect pink. I pressed the knife's fine edge against her lip and committed to the cut.

One. Two.

It was just a sliver, the smallest sliver, a tiny V of raw, live flesh.

A drop of blood formed, bubbled and then popped into a thin line of red. I took her flesh and put it into the empty roll. I did not need soy sauce or wasabi. I wanted this pure. I put the roll in my mouth and held its flavor there and I fucked her for me. She was making her sound and I fucked her harder and I didn't have to tell her to go over now, she knew the words and between the words, all the words, all the meals, all the nights stacked up.

She started to come and I let myself come and right at that moment, me inside of her, her inside of me, I swallowed the roll.

Perfect.

She kept pressing against me. I lifted myself up so I could look down at her. At her perfect lips.

I was the master sushi chef, the story come to life. I had taken a piece of the fish and then I had let the fish go. This fish would keep swimming. I had nothing else to take and so nothing else to give and this fish, my fish, uninjured, just missing a small perfect piece stacked inside me, would swim and swim, her colors vivid, human-vivid, swimming and swimming out of water where she belonged.

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