Balls

Gender is a funny thing. It is often less about what`s inside your trousers than the fact that you are wearing them.

This weekend, a group of roughly 20 of us piled into a log cabin in the middle of nearby mountains for a final hurrah: the majority of the teachers here are packing their bags in two weeks and going home to wherever it is they came from (America and Ireland, although the Irish girl is in fact going to Hawaii instead and I`ll leave you to work out what that says about Great Britain).

The party was as most parties are: fuelled with drink and music and food and a rather large homemade beer bong and people being sick in the toilet (although not nearly as much as five years ago, which is the key benefit of getting older: knowing when to stop). For the majority of the evening, girls and boys were much of a muchness; the beer bong was enjoyed by both, dancing was done by both, food was cooked and eaten by both, and drink was certainly consumed by both.

At midnight, however - perhaps because Cinderella is ingrained into all of us - the girls all promptly declared that they were tired, put themselves into their pyjamas, took off their makeup and started brushing their teeth. The boys, on the other hand, took a ball outside and started playing touch rugby in the rain.

I went with them, and was the only girl to do so. I was not tired, I was not ready to end the evening, and - as much as I obviously enjoy brushing my teeth and wearing pyjamas - there is a time and a place for touch rugby, and 1am in the pouring rain in the middle of the mountains is absolutely both, as far as I`m concerned. The response, however, was mixed: the seven boys gave me a good natured thumbs up, and most of the remaining girls brushed their teeth on the front steps for five minutes before they went to bed, looking at me with quite readable unreadable expressions (namely that of confusion, disgust and a vague suspicion that it was obviously some kind of desperate and unsubtle flirting effort on my part).

It was probably the best fun I`ve had in Japan; some of the best fun I`ve had ever, actually. We roared, we slipped over, we ended up covered in mud and grass and dripping from head to foot. The lawn was ruined, our clothes were ruined, and if I had make-up on at the beginning of the evening it was in entirely different parts of my face by the end of it. Nobody broke anything, but it was extremely close: there were at least three group tackles that ended up with somebody at the bottom, shrieking about one limb or another.

I played like a girl, obviously. To get the ball I often slapped them; once I had the ball I picked up the edges of my sopping skirt, screamed and ran the wrong way. The boys didn`t tackle me with nearly as much violence as they tackled each other - I was the only person on the pitch not to get headbutted - and when they did run full pelt towards me I frequently put the ball down, lay down in the mud voluntarily and shrieked "I`m down! I`m down! Don`t hurt me!" (And they tackled me anyway.)

When we were worn out, we went down to the pitch black, freezing cold river.
"You know," my friend said as I sat in the water and started scrubbing mud out of my hair, "you`re officially a man now, right?"
"Mmm," I said dubiously, looking at the remaining six boys: all of whom were standing in a line on the bank of the river, rubbing their arms and muttering darkly about how cold it was, and how dangerous, and how they knew a friend of a friend of a friend who had died, once, bathing in a shallow river at night and they weren`t stupid (before putting a toe in, whimpering and pulling it back out again).

Femininity can be lost in more ways than one, however. The same friend has been setting me up as a private English tutor with a slightly older Japanese lady, with whom I had an introductory consulation last week. At the end of the meeting she told me the price she currently pays for English lessons - minimum wage - and asked if I was happy with the same. Embarrassed, I nodded politely and ran away, muttering to myself.

"Ask for more," my friend told me.
"How can I ask for more?" I whimpered. "I`ve already said yes, and that`s what she pays an American at the moment: it would be so presumptious."
"She might say yes."
"But she might be offended! And what is it saying? I`m worth more than the American man who teaches her right now? How can I say that? How can I price myself above another teacher in the same city?"
"You are worth what you tell her you are worth."
"I can`t do it," I muttered. "I`ll just do it for minimum wage and hope that she hates my lessons."

When I had finally got the mud out of my hair yesterday, I got as much courage as I could find and sent her a polite message:

I`m so sorry, but I should not have agreed to tutor you for that fee. I am a good teacher, I have a Masters degree in English and I think I could really help you. It would be wrong of me to ask for less than I am worth.

And then I tripled the fee we had agreed on.

"Nice work," my friend rang ten minutes later to tell me. "She wanted me to ring you . She likes you even more now: she thinks you`ve got spunk. She says she`ll pay whatever you want her to pay."
"Really? Three times what she pays her other teacher?"
"Yes. She says you`re worth it."
"Really?" I said, shocked.
"Yes. Told you."
"Awesome."
"And I have to say," he added, "this is the second time this weekend you`ve impressed me with the size of your massive balls."

Femininity is a precious commodity: valued highly, lost easily and rarely very genuine. It is also, apparently, maintained by being very careful about the kind of fun you have, and having no courage, and no belief in yourself or what you are worth. Which makes it, as far as I`m concerned, a commodity I`m not particularly interested in keeping.

When the boys leave in two weeks, they are being replaced by four girls; girls from Australia, Canada and America. I don`t know what kind of girls they are, or what they like doing, or what they like talking about. I don`t know whether they`ll like the same things I do: if they`ll like South Park, or surfing, or Withnail and I, or touch rugby in the middle of the night. I don`t know if we`ll get on at all.

But I know one thing.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that they all have absolutely gigantic balls.