Ghosts Of The Matsuri (or, The Three Friends)

It was not so many moons ago, on the night before Matsuri, that three young men were gathered to practice tying their fundoshi. Although there would be helpers tomorrow who very ably (and tightly) bound festival participants in crisp white cloth, these three men had already taken to the wearing of fundoshi. They wanted to arrive already attired, having each assisted one of the others in dressing:

The fairer-skinned friend learned the exact tightenings and twists prefered by the darkest friend. This friend in turn learned to wrap their tawny friend, who assisted the first, fairer friend in knotting his fundoshi.

These three friends had observed older men wearing fundoshi at an onsen, and had inquired with the gentlemen on how to tighten the cloth. Each friend learned from a different teacher. One friend learned from a stocky teacher. One learned from a slim gentleman. The third friend learned from a muscular sculpture of a man.

Each of the three friends had adopted idiosyncracies and customization of their teacher. One friend liked his fundoshi elegantly finished and braided. Another friend prefered his fundoshi efficiently cinched with little regard to loose ends. The last friend enjoyed his fundoshi tight, as though ready for battle.

It was as they joined one another that night before the festival, in the first friend's apartment, that the news broke. A terrible tsunami had struck the village where their fundoshi instructors lived. Many people fleeing the shoreline were swept away when a bridge came unmoored from its ancient wooden pilings. Among the lost were their three tutors, witnesses said. The men mourned, saying prayers for those lost in the tsunami. It was a somber meeting as they loosened their robes and stepped into the center of the apartment.


All three friends had different bodies. One friend was lithe and tall. Another was rounded and smooth. The third friend was hairy and thick. Each man was still dressed in underwear as they gathered in the middle of the room. The youngest friend wore trim boxer shorts. The middle friend wore conservative white briefs, while the eldest friend wore form-fitting trunks. This would be a special fundoshi tightening, honoring their deceased friends. Each man put his fingers under the waistband of his friend's underwear, and slid them toward their ankles. In so doing, each man bowed low to the earth, and to one another, and to the memory of their lost comrades. Each man drew a deep breath of the other.

Each man kicked his undergarment to the nearest corner. Before they would reach for the fresh sarashi rolls and begin dressing one another, they all took a lingering moment to feast their vision on the each other. One man was classically proportioned from his rolling shoulders to his shapely manhood. The next friend seemed to thicken before their eyes, swinging a little lower with his every move. The last friend's cock had been pointing skyward since before they had disrobed.

Also before they reached down the woven rolls of fabric that would take form on their hips, they poured cups of saki. Each said a small speech for their teacher:

"He was gentle but clear. He moved steadily and explained how to tighten my fundoshi as he offered suggestions and encouragements. We became fast friends and we wrote letters every year to stay in touch. I visited him a few times, and we went to hot springs and bath houses. He would compliment my fundoshi and my muscles and it would bring a gentle fire to my cheeks. He would give me very thorough massages that left me in near bliss. After moving my fundoshi aside and letting my fully engorged curve escape, he would fellate me expertly. When I was thoroughly wetted down, he would roll me over and mount me, having previously anointed my valley with coconut oil. He was a sweet, thorough and attentive lover, making sure I climaxed first but never rushing things. Afterward he would hold me in the candlelight, the only man who ever has."

"He was stern, handing me the fabric with a grunt. He tied his own fundoshi a little too quickly for me to follow, and I made many false starts. He seemed a little exasperated with my questions after a while. As for me, I was mortified by my growing erection, which I tried to fight down, but no matter how trivial or mundane my thoughts I could not quell my rising member. Our difficult lesson continued, and I struggled with the fabric on my uncooperative hips. His eyes narrowed, he stripped off his fundoshi and wrapped it back on with exaggerated slowness. Despite his gruff demeanor, I grew to respect him, and by the time I had perfected my fundoshi I agreed with his methods. As I stood before his approving gaze, he surprised me by bending down and exposing his cherry blossom. I quenched my eager rod in his body without ever loosening his fundoshi, using only spit to make me slick. He responded with an eagerness and a sexual thirstiness that astonished me, yet his body was radiant and beautiful and his sudden ardor was contagious. After I thoroughly plunged his depths and finished abundantly in his mouth, I left him laying there like a wet quivering mountain of satisfaction, purring like a cat. I've never seen him since but I frequently pleasure myself to the memory."

"He was a simple honest man, as genuine and unaffected as you can imagine. He explained that the fundoshi was just a few simple twists and bends, then asked if he could demonstrate by tightening a fundoshi on me. He talked me through it, then talked me through tightening his fundoshi for him. That took five tries! He was naturally well endowed and handsome, yet betrayed no amorous intent toward me. Even when I brazenly felt his penis through the sarashi cloth, he moved my hand and laughed it off. We never copulated but we became lifelong friends. We often wore fundoshi to the beach, or when laboring side-by-side in hot weather. I began to spend summers in the village and he helped me rebuild my house there after a storm. It's a wonder people live there, having to rebuild so often and losing so many to the sea. They say the drowned return to them, causing the abundant fish harvests. It seemed a strange belief to hold. But back to our companion, he taught my wife to play the lute, and it became her passion. Now she sings beautifully and I shall hear his beautiful laugh in every note she plays, their two spirits mingling and spinning apart again into so many songs and wonderful passages. This is just one of the many profound gifts he gave me as a true friend."

Each drained his saki, and poured another cup for the spirits. Each man reached for the woven roll of sarashi cloth, and let it unfurl like a banner. One man held a long, pure white gauze that the slanting light in the room shone right through. One man held a woven white and navy mameshibori pattern of repeating beans. The final man held a gorgeous fabric the color of fine jade. Each man rotated so his fundoshi assistant could best begin dressing him. One man held the end of his fundoshi in his teeth while the friend behind him pulled and twisted the cloth backward between his buttocks. One man cast the fundoshi's end over one shoulder and anchored it to his belly with an open palm while the helper behind him reached between his legs to gather up his genitals into a neat bundle, then wrapping it and cinching it with minimal twists. The final man took charge, moving his mate this way and that and spinning him around by the shoulders while decking him out expertly in his fresh fundoshi.

As soon as each man was satisfied that his friend's fundoshi looked perfect, they each began to notice a tingle in their loins. Some form of arousal was common among the friends, but this was not arousal. It was as if a vibration passed through the fundoshi each man wore. It was amplified at the points where the twists and bends converged. Soon it was a steady hum. The air above them seemed to separate into three. In each sky stood one of their beloved teachers, clad in a fundoshi of flaming scarlet. Each looked down on his student, and each smiled. Each apparition held out his hand, and when he opened his palm a magical treasure flew from it to the forehead of his student.

The wealthiest teacher gave the even-tempered young man a small stone. It was black and round and smooth and warm to the touch. It was Comfort, in physical form, a sort of ease of the spirit and lifting of the worries. Instantly the young man's bow smoothed. His eyes, naturally wary, became clear. He opened them further. The hard work lines on his body flexed sinuously, with a new flexibility as tensions melted away. Always concerned with appearances, the young man now saw his shallowness and forsook his old, fashionable ways.

The teacher who had been a university professor gave the spontaneous young man a book, which merged with his mind and disappeared within him. He could see all its pages at once, he could see each one alone. It was an impossibly intricate history of mankind, of the planet and its non-human denizens, linked with diagrams of astonishing beauty and detail. Someone had painted the pages, with sensitivity and inventiveness. Who, or what, had written this book? As the lay lines of multiple intersecting universes appeared before him, he understood the selfishness of his ways, seeing how impetuous decisions had led to all his difficulties. Now he could project decisions along the myriad possibilities illustrated in the book. He was to find that simply foreseeing the outcome does not negate the need to make the decision.

The teacher who had been a monk while alive gave the mellowest of the friends a fiery gemstone that occasionally flashed blue with ice, or green with the scent of spice. It fused to him, between his delicate clavicles, like a diadem at the top of his pectoral architecture. He was a dreamy young man, full of ideas and marvels, a master of prototypes and experiments-in-progress. The gem erased every trace of them, only the things he had completed remained. Free of the baggage of his unrealized inventions, he was disoriented yet strangely ecstatic. Though he never ceased being a compassionate young man of peace, he suddenly scintillated with a new, infectious fire. It would prove to be the greatest gift of all, this gem which trimmed away the detritus of a still active, youthful imagination. The young man soared to heights unimagined before, he achieved remarkable things in focused chapters. Gone were the half-written poems and half-built clockworks. They were consumed and mutated by his new visions, just as brilliant and unconventional, but now born of purpose and diligence.

The three young men stood holding hands in a euphoric circle. A dancing light inhabited the space between them, grazing their bodies. Each man was a receptor for the energy of the light. The ecstasy of the spirit world pierced and motivated their bodies, which quivered like bowstrings. They moved closer together, closing the circle until each man held the other two in his arms. They gazed at one another with pure love. The skeptic loved the gullible. The storyteller loved the pragmatist. The warrior loved the pacifist.

The moved even closer, tightening their embrace. Now their groins pressed together, and each was fully erect, again feeling the vibrational energy throughout every inch of their fundoshis. One man's fundoshi vibrated slowly and deeply. To his left his companions fundoshi vibrated at a teasingly rapid pace. To his right his companion's fundoshi hummed in waves, pulsing and oscillating. With their bulging loincloths pushed together and the rigid length of their genitals separated by only a few taut layers of cloth, the friends swayed and bucked, pushed and swiveled in an ecstatic male dance.

Their teachers disappeared. One turned into a waterfall. One turned into a tiger and went to sleep. One turned into the scent of cherry blossoms and wafted away.

The men thrust into one another, their loins joined in a hungry and throbbing trinity. Their scrotums tightened in unison, their anuses flexed. With the sound of a far-off chime, each man began to cum in his fundoshi. Their wetted pouches continued to slip and slide against each other as all three friends climaxed abundantly. The dancing light between them flashed through many colors in a random and beautiful display that each friend described differently. One said it was like fireworks. One said it was like colored lightning. One said it was like a riot of butterflies.

The light ascended through the ceiling of the apartment, disappearing. The friends, panting, surveyed their glistening bodies and cum-soaked fundoshi. It was then that a courier arrived, out of breath, noticeably blushing at the scene within the apartment and unable to hide his pink cheeks or the bulge in his pants. The fetid air smelled heavily and sweetly of sperm. However he had arrived with important news:

"There were survivors of the bridge collapse," he began, and the friends exchanged looks in worry and fear. "Your comrades..." One friend felt a tear slide down his nose. Another friend's throat tightened. The third friend listened impassively. "Your teachers have been found, clinging to debris. They are safe and unharmed."

The jaws of all three friends dropped. If their teachers had all survived, what spirits had just visited them...!

The End?

Happy Halloween!