Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami;

Author:Mieko Kawakami;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 2)
Published: 2020-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

12.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

The event was held on the third floor of a compact building a few minutes away from Jiyugaoka Station. The room itself was minimalist. Picture a conference room, a little on the larger side. A chair sat before the whiteboard at the back of the room, and a microphone was ready on a little wooden table set beside it. Folding chairs fanned out in a semicircle from the whiteboard. When I showed up fifteen minutes before start time, fifty of the sixty or so seats were taken. I left my tote bag on a free seat at the end of the back row and went to find the bathroom.

When I came back, there was a woman sitting in the seat next to my bag. We met eyes and nodded hello. I quickly scanned the room, then read over the program I had picked up by the door. The plan was for Jun Aizawa to spend the first half of the event giving us his story, then open up the floor during the second half to give the audience a chance to share their thoughts.

A moment later, Aizawa came in. I knew him right away. He was tall, wearing beige chinos and a black crewneck sweater. He bowed slightly, took his seat, ran his fingers through his hair to part his bangs, and rubbed his eyelids. There they were: the single eyelids that linked him to his father.

He picked up the mic.

“Hello, thanks for coming.”

Something about his haircut reminded me of a tennis player. Parted down the middle and trimmed around the ears. Perfectly normal. What it had to do with tennis, I can’t say, but that was how I felt. Maybe it was the way his bangs sort of stood up at the roots. Aizawa seemed distracted by the volume of the mic. His voice wasn’t particularly high or low, but something about his manner of speaking left a strong impression. He knew how to enunciate; his voice carried well, but the main thing was the way he took his time, pausing when you weren’t expecting it, which made it feel like you were listening to someone talking to themselves. Like he was sitting alone in the corner, working on a coloring book. That’s how it sounded to me.

Aizawa started by telling us about his background.

He was born in 1978 in Tochigi Prefecture. When he was fifteen, after his father passed away, he and his mother continued to live with his grandmother, on his father’s side. The three of them lived together until he went away to college. One day, not long after he turned thirty, his grandmother told him, “You’re not my grandson. Not by blood.” When he confronted his mother, she revealed that she had gotten pregnant with the help of a university hospital in Tokyo. Since then, Aizawa had done everything he could to find his biological father, but to this day he was still searching.

Next, he started talking about the state of donor conception today.

In

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