Buddhas and Bikinis - Vetbook

It was a Sunday night, mid-year holidays.
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Buddhas and Bikinis 22
I was packing for the long ride to Townsville. Hiroshi had already moved in to my
one-room college dorm three months earlier. She was sitting at the desk in a flowing one-
piece cotton dress, writing. There was a stillness about her, reminding me of those small
eddies in a stream that are formed by underwater rocks, where a leaf floats at the centre
while the water whirlpools around it.
I was her Superman. She was the first real woman I had known. She had so simple
an adoration of me, so replete of expectations. So worshipful.
hurt.
I am so fucked, I thought.
She had been back from Japan only five days. I had missed her presence so much, it
I stood behind her, slipped my hand down her shoulder and cupped her breast. She
leant her head against my arm but continued her ferocious writing.
‛You don’t know how to stop working, do you?’ I asked.
She smiled, ‛I stop when I die you know that because you ride like a crazy man on
that bike and one day you're gonna stop too and I hope its not into a tree. I’d kill myself if
you weren’t here, now leave me alone or I’ll never finish this, you sex fiend.’
I was supposed to be helping Hiroshi edit her thesis, Husserl versus Nagarjuna;
differing opinions, same perspectives. I knew very little about Husserl's phenomenology,
an early twentieth century philosophy about existentialism. However, Nagarjuna was a
buddhist, and I was an expert in that topic, seeing as I was sleeping with one. But the more
I read her thesis, the more I disagreed with both branches of philosophy. I was a scientist,
reared on Bacon’s scientific method from childhood, instilled by my fiercely intellectual
father who believed that evidence-based methodology must be employed for understanding