When friends hear my Japanese pen name they look at me curiously, because I am not Japanese (except perhaps in spirit). I do like to think that my straight dark hair and high cheekbones, maybe something about my eyes, give me an oriental look, but no one in Japan thought so. However, I am getting ahead of my story.

I

Sought

Love

by

DANSHOKU OKAGAMI

as told to

VALENTINE

RICHARDSON

男

The story begins back while I was still a teenager in high school, a little more serious than most of the students and discovering a lot of strange and exciting things about myself. In several of my classes there was a shy, quiet oriental boy whom I found disturbingly fascinating. I made opportunities to talk to him and to be with him as much as I could. Instead of drawing away from me he responded and, almost before we realized what was happening, we found ourselves deeply in love, all our teenage intensities, doubts and confusions swirling about us.

The strangeness of it all, the heightened awareness and alarms, the electric wonder of his touch, the compelling urgency of our emotions, left an imprint on me that I still bear, even though Tommy himself is now all but forgotten. For, after a year of our being constantly together, our parents finally prevented us from seeing each other, and somewhat later his family moved away from the city. But the mark of the Orient was upon me then, as it is today.

I began to delve into the literatures and lore of the Far East, drinking in their strange admixture of that almost narcotic peace and calmness which yet, for me, throbs with a pulsating undercurrent of excitement. For I began to discover, the further I went, that manly love was an ancient tradition in China and Japan. The knights of old each had his loyal page, about many of whom the old tales and legends described a love unto death, while others had willingly chosen to die together, rather than to undergo

one

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