That guy you knew in high school who wore his Boy Scout uniform to school? He moved to Japan and stole everyone’s girlfriends.
The western wind of Japan whispers the story of a lone white man from a tiny town in North America (or was it England?) who came to the land of the rising sun to seek his fortune, to see how they live on the other side of the world, or to simply experience his first fourteen-hour plane ride. He was a modest man, a clerical assistant at the local community college in his mid-to late twenties, with ice-blue eyes and a bright, friendly face. Also, freckles, buckteeth, a birdcage chest, and a mullet that curled up on the edges.
He had never really had a girlfriend, unless you count the poster of Princess Leia he’d had on his bedroom wall since 1977. But something deep within him told him that there was a place in this world for guys like him, and that it was probably not in any English-speaking country. More likely it was in faraway Asia. So he got a job as an English teacher in Japan, packed his bags, and came to the great city of Tokyo to explore a country that had always held a certain fascination for him, with its famous sculpted gardens, traditions full of nuance and studied elegance, and amazing technological feats like Fujiyama, until recently the fastest and tallest rollercoaster in the world. Also because, if the Internet is to be believed, the high school girls are all total slags and really short skirts are part of their school uniform.
This mysterious stranger hoped to God he was in for a major life change. And sure enough, something magical happened when he deplaned at Narita Airport, boarded a train, and headed towards Tokyo. People took notice of him. At home he was nothing, a nobody, an eyesore. A piece of lint. A yellow sweat patch on a dirty old white T-shirt. A pocket protector. But as he settled into his new life in his new country, he became blissfully aware that he was no longer Invisible Vince from Vicksburg or Nobody Nick from Newcastle. Yes, in Tokyo, he was GaijinMan. And he had three dates this week.
There’s a saying here amongst us gaijin folk, reminiscent of that proverbial “tree falling in a forest and no one being there to hear it” question: If a white guy in Tokyo is rambling on and on and on about absolutely nothing interesting and there’s no one remaining at his table to hear it except for his Japanese girlfriend who can’t understand him anyway, does he still need to be bitch-slapped?
Actually, I just made that up, and I’ve never actually said it out loud, but the more I quietly ponder this question while studying at a café or reading on the train or browsing at the record store as I’m forced to listen to the unabridged ramblings of some Western goofball explaining the Fourth of July (or was it Guy Fawkes Day?) to his newly minted Japanese girlfriend™, the more I think the answer is a resounding, “Good God, yes! Somebody shut him up!”
We gaijin are here for many different reasons. There are the lost souls like me, desperately in need of a battery recharge, who are convinced that living for a few solid years in a country that is completely devoid of Big Gulps and commercials for Plavix might just allow us to find ourselves; there are the nerds who have been obsessed with Japan since childhood and refuse to leave the country until they can properly read a daily newspaper (these are the ones who end up in Kyoto and will be there until they die); there are the artists, writers, photographers, musicians, and/or actors (not to mention architects, entrepreneurs, and other professionals) who for one reason or another have found their niche in Tokyo and feed off it for creative inspiration; there are the folks who use Tokyo as their base so they can travel easily to other parts of Asia; then there are the guys like my former roommate Sean whose number-one priority and sole reason for being in the country is to screw Japanese girls. But no matter what brought and keeps us here, we all have one thing in common, and that is that the moment we walk out of our doors and into the Japanese world outside, we are different, special, and interesting without even trying. Even if we are the most retarded people to ever emerge from our hometowns, here in Japan, where 99.9 percent of the people are Japanese, we are mysterious and exotic. And in my case, unnecessarily tall.
I saw my first GaijinMan when I was living in Fujisawa and almost stopped dead in my tracks. He had oily black hair parted on the side and combed over. He had a face speckled with acne. He had patches of beard scattered here and there. He had a briefcase with papers sticking out of it. Most amazing of all, he had an impeccably dressed, porcelain-skinned, drop-dead gorgeous Japanese girl on his arm. And she was smiling and intermittently leaning her head down on his shoulder as they walked.
“What the-” I said, doing a double take as I passed them on the street. I was deeply troubled, wondering if the earth was still round and pigs still unable to fly.
But I eventually came to grips with the fact that GaijinMan, though not nearly as prevalent, is as much a part of contemporary Tokyo as giant television screens, mangled English signs that say things like “Happy Merry Christmas Day,” and cell phones that double as stereos, personal computers, porn interfaces, and best friends.
Almost every straight white guy I know has a stunning Japanese girlfriend. Every guy. Whether he looks like Steve McQueen or Steve Buscemi. These are guys who would be resoundingly dateless back home, guys who go to Star Trek conventions, guys who talk through their noses and use the word “prototypical” in everyday conversations.
Yes, sometimes it seems like obtaining a Japanese girlfriend here is about as difficult as catching a cold. If you stay out long enough, you’re bound to get one. Now, this is not meant to disparage Japanese girls. I love them. They are beautiful creatures and are surely the most sublimely and ridiculously dressed girls on the planet. They must have their reasons for accepting dates from all these Barney Rubbles. But what’s really going on here? Is there that much of a discrepancy between Japanese and Western concepts of good-looking? The answer is an emphatic maybe. I ask my roommate Akiko, who has a thing for black guys, what she thinks of some of the beautiful women walking around with unattractive Western men one day when we are sitting outside a kissaten (coffee shop) in Koenji. As if conjured by my very words, an absolute doll-baby of a young woman with flowers in her hair approaches holding the hand of a short white guy wearing orange shorts and Birkenstocks with socks and sporting an impressive potbelly. And a Mickey Mouse watch.
“Like them,” I say, pointing to them with my big nose.
“Oh, she not so pretty, I think,” Akiko replies.
“Nu-uh! Are you serious? She’s beautiful!”
“Mmm, not so beautiful. A little cute. Looks a little stupid.”
“OK, but still, look at the guy she’s with, Akiko! Look at him! Isn’t it amazing how brazenly unattractive he is?”
“What means brazenly?”
“Umm, like, you know, openly.”
She looks back at him as they pass, adopts the expression of a disapproving aunt, and says, “Yeah, he need shower. Or, how do you say…makeover.”
Though she does admit that the guy is far from a twenty-four-hour sex bomb, I am surprised she doesn’t feel the imbalance of the match as deeply as I do.
“She rebellious, I think,” Akiko says upon further consideration. “Maybe want to make her parents anger.”
I can see the confrontation with her mother right now. She sits at her vanity applying lipstick when her mother rushes in pleading, “Chieko, darling, why you date ugly white man?! He wear tuxedo T-shirt!”
“Shush, Mother,” Chieko hisses as she applies another flower to her hair. “He take me nice restaurant! We go hot spring this weekend!”
Then the doorbell rings and it’s her still-unshowered date, standing at the door in a jacket, tie, and jean shorts. Mother answers the door, takes one look at his flip-flops, and jumps out the window.
Rebellion or not, whenever I see an Asian babe with one of these schmucks, I want to take her by the hand, pull her to the side of the street, thump her on the forehead, and say, “Look, maybe you don’t realize this, but this guy is a former president, vice president, and treasurer of his high school geometry team, and I think they still have weekly meetings!!”
The sensitive nerd in me at first wanted to congratulate these guys on their great luck. After all, I’m sure many of them have never been properly laid and, hey, everyone deserves a little hot loving. But my initial good wishes are turning to nerve-prickling dread and massive irritation the more I have to deal with the GaijinMen at Lane.
Yes, we have several of our very own GaijinMen haunting the classrooms, the hallways, and the teachers’ room with their puffed-up egos and idiotic hairstyles. The other day I was walking through the lobby of the school, where lots of students gather between classes to chat with each other and with teachers passing through. The Lane G-Men love sitting out in the lobby during their lunch hour or whenever they have a free moment because it affords them the opportunity to chat with the lovely girlies who gather around any available teacher just bursting with questions about English.
I hear GaijinMan Brody explaining the word freaking to a girl and her friend who are confused by its use in the sentence, “This is freaking ridiculous!” which they heard one of the teachers saying as he stormed out of their classroom earlier that day.
Brody is a mama’s boy from Vermont who probably needs help buying train tickets, putting his glasses on the right way, and eating steak. And he should definitely never be encouraged to explain anything because, as cutting off someone’s head customarily leads to torrential blood flow from the neck, asking Brody a question about anything, however small and insignificant, invariably leads to a flood of unnecessary sentences, tangents, biblical references, and literary allusions that are impossible to stem. And you, the unfortunate captive audience, must ride it out until you can back out of the room far enough to make a quick getaway when he blinks.
“Well, it has several different meanings, really,” the professor explains with a confident smile. “It comes from the word freak, which means a strange or abnormal person. Freaking is usually used as an adjective. Often we use it as a slangy alternative to the terms really or very when we are describing something.” He folds his arms and smiles, pleased with himself. He’s only just begun.
“Desclibing,” one of the girls, Ai, says with a quizzical look, probably having understood about 20 percent of what he’d just said. “What means desclibing?”
“Well,” he replies, clearing his throat, “for example, if I were describing, say, you ladies, I would say, ‘You are really smart and beautiful.’” Then he winks. Oh my God, he winks.
Ai smiles, giggles, and covers her mouth with her hand so as not to offend Sensei Brody with the unseemly sight of the inside of her mouth. Takako, her friend, nods vaguely.
“Or,” Casanova continues, “I might say, ‘That’s a very pretty dress you are wearing, Takako.’”
Takako smiles faintly, betraying a hint of annoyance. She isn’t buying it. She knows where it’s at. (Note to self: befriend Takako.) But Ai is swallowing Brody’s manipulative, flimsy charm hook, line, and sinker.
“Ah, sank you,” Ai says for an unimpressed Takako.
“You’re very freaking welcome,” Brody says with a cheesy grin.
The conversation continues, but I can’t bear any more, so I duck into the teachers’ room where I see Rachel and Josephine sitting at the table grading papers.
“I’ll give you one guess as to what Brody’s doing in the lobby,” I say.
“Talking nothing but crap?” Rachel offers.
“Slinging a bunch of bollocks?” Josephine rebounds.
They are both right.
But I think I’ve come up with a satisfactory answer to this white-dork-with-Japanese-hottie conundrum which will allow me to at least get beyond the sheer bizarreness of it all: the girls want free English lessons and they probably figure that the dorky ones make better teachers. And GaijinMan is more than willing to oblige, for why not? He has the best of both worlds. First, he gets to parade around town with a stunning woman, no doubt sending digital pictures of them together back home to his old chess club buddies. Plus, due to the language barrier, he can rest assured that if his girl’s going to nag, at least he won’t be able to understand it.
But it wasn’t until I found myself the objet du désir of a voracious vixen who had me cornered and was ready to swallow me whole that I began to realize-and even appreciate-the power of the GaijinMan and the mysterious magnetism of his charms.
Now God knows I’m not a full-time stud. Sure, there were a handful of broken hearts when I gave up the game, raised the rainbow flag, rented the billboard, and announced my homosexuality to the world. But I have never been a great charmer of the ladies (or the men, for that matter). So it took coming to Japan to teach English for me to realize my potential as a potent and desirable beast. A lady-killer.
I have a fan. Her name is Yasuko, and she’s a young architecture student learning English so she can study in the States. She’s also a little emotionally vulnerable and needy. And has no gaydar.
I first met Yasuko when I was assigned to administer her level check, a procedure that every new student must go through so we can place them in the right class. She was a returning student, so it was my job to make sure she would be able to manage in the level she was in before.
I sit down, introduce myself with a smile, and ask her how she is. She looks at me wide-eyed, like an animal caught in the headlights of an approaching car. And what kind of car is it? Well, since you ask, it’s a gleaming, sexy, cobalt-blue man machine called Tim.
She trembles a little as she replies, “Fine, thank you,” and attempts a smile.
“Don’t be scared,” I say by way of encouragement. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions, and you answer them the best way you can. It’s just like chatting.”
She smiles and seems to relax a little. “Chattingu, hai,” she says.
“So, why did you decide to take English lessons again?”
She launches into the story of how her longtime Australian boyfriend just broke up with her and now she has no friends because all her friends were his friends and now they won’t speak to her and he keeps saying bad things about her, and she’s so lonely, and now she has no one to speak English with and she thought she was going to get married and so on and so forth. So she decided to come back to English class, presumably to get another boyfriend and meet some new people to hang out with.
I feel bad for her because she seems really desperate and lonely-two emotions I have a long history with. I do my best to put forth an image of brotherly concern and sympathy, reacting to her narrative with lots of concerned furrowing of the brow and “gee, gosh, I’m so sorry.”
In an attempt to steer the conversation away from her personal troubles and towards something more neutral, like what she does for a living, I ask, “What do you do?”
She sighs, and her bottom lip starts wobbling.
“Shit,” I think, wondering if maybe she worked as her ex-boyfriend’s personal assistant and now was out of a job, too.
Then comes a torrent of big, fat, bell-bottomed tears bursting forth from her increasingly blood-red and puffy eyes.
“God, are you OK?” I ask, offering her a tissue from the pack in my pocket lest her nose decide to spring into action.
Through a barrage of mucus and hiccups, I learn that she was just laid off from her job as an office lady at a company that publishes elementary school textbooks. Basically, nothing is going right in this girl’s life, nothing at all. And then she met me. And nothing is continuing to go right.
We finish the level check, and even though her English is a little erratic and unpredictable and she said things like “I am such loneliness,” and “friends don’t happy for me,” I place her in the same intermediate level she was in before since I can’t bring myself to saddle her with any more bad news.
I wave at her as she walks away and wonder if perhaps I’ve found someone-a poor, friendless, frantic female-who is in desperate need of a gay man in her life. Though I’m far from a thoroughbred homo-I don’t have nice clothes, I cut my own hair, I would rather go to the record store than the gay bar, and often I don’t even wear cologne-she could certainly do much worse, and I have lots of pictures of my cat, which Japanese girls just love. Plus, I’m smooth and hairless like a porn star.
I could be the Will to her Grace, the flame to her unlit cigarette, the, um, Bette to her Midler. We could traipse about the city, doing all the things that Japanese girls and their sexy, gay best friends always do: chat about boys over green tea lattes, talk trash about Harajuku girls over pachinko and pizza, and crash one of the many arcades in Shibuya, where we’d saunter up to the Dance Dance Revolution game, I’d slam the machine with my strong gay hip, and she’d follow the lights on the floor, which beckon her to just say “fuck it” and dance the Charleston. As she launched into the cancan as an encore to the oohs and ahhs of onlookers, I’d fold my arms, lean against the change machine, and say to myself, “My work here is done.”
Sadly, Yasuko has very different plans for us, and they don’t involve pachinko, the Charleston, or even Harajuku girls. A few days later, she starts showing up to all of my classes. In very suggestive clothing. At the first class she attends, she wears a tight, navel-baring pink sweater and an ass-grabbing skirt. Trying to avoid looking at her small but admittedly perky and friendly-looking breasts, I say hello and ask her how she’s doing.
“Much better,” she beams.
The next time I see her in class I start to get a little worried. Not just because it was only a few hours later in my afternoon class, but also because she’s changed into an outfit that shows more skin than I am prepared to handle in my capacity as her gay English teacher. I struggle to avoid her amorous gaze, feeling like I’m lost in the wrong fantasy. Is one of the straight male teachers down the hall fending off the advances of a wayward and totally fit male college student and amateur aikido competitor named Takeshi who loves coming to class with his shirt unbuttoned to the navel and staying for extra help after class? In his boxers?
I start trying to behave in a demonstrably gay manner in class so as to fend off her intensifying affections. Lots of limp-wristed gesticulations and discussions of musicals. I also sink so low as to say that my favorite movie ever is A Chorus Line, which surprises even me. All for naught, though. If anything, it’s made her want me more.
She is crazy for me. I am a manimal. A manimal.
Yasuko even goes so far as to talk to Rachel about me, I’m surprised to find out. Rachel assures me that she told her in no uncertain terms that I am as gay as the day is long and that there is nothing short of permanent hypnotism that will make me venture into a relationship with a woman. But there is one key thing that has kept Yasuko from accepting Rachel’s explanation, one thing that allows her to cling to the dream that I am her knight in shining hair gel.
“She said you look at her tits,” Rachel tells me, looking at me like a mother would her teenage son. “A lot.”
I do love tits. It’s a peculiar strain of gay that I have: I’m a queer who would like nothing more than to have the opportunity to squeeze a pair of pert breasts every now and again. Have I been that obvious? I guess so. But the girl wears a Wonderbra, for God’s sake. And even though I’ve never had the desire to rip her shirt off and place my face betwixt her supple mancushions, even though I would rather she just come to class wearing a scuba diving suit, even though I have been having a recurring nightmare where I’m being chased down a dimly lit hallway by one of her nipples, I can’t help but look at them when they are displayed so wondrously. It would be like trying not to notice the lightning during an electrical storm. Impossible, unless you’d had your eyes sewn shut.
I ask Rachel to please come up with a nice way to tell Yasuko that, OK, yes, I did look at her tits a few times, but I also often look at lit candles and sparkling electrical sockets-that doesn’t mean I want to touch them with my tongue. Also that I can’t give her what she requires. And that she really needs to quit showing up at every single one of my classes.
Rachel promises to come up with something, and I’m able to relax and get back to my daydreams about Takeshi.
A few days later, I am walking to my class and I see Yasuko standing outside my classroom, wearing that familiar tight pink sweater. I shudder, fearing the worst: that Rachel was unable to convince her of my disinterest and that I will be forever stuck on this tight pink treadmill until I manage to convince some male student to come into my classroom and stick his tongue down my throat in front of all of my students. (Note to self: something to think about.)
The time for action is now. I’ve got to come clean with her face to face. Sure, in a way I’m kind of loving the attention. Yes, I’m quite keen on the idea of someone planning out their wardrobe in the morning based on what they think I’ll like. Indeed, if someone wants to have endless dreams of rolling around on a sandy beach with me, kissing me all over and telling me how beautiful I am and how they could never imagine living without me, that’s totally fine. And of course, if a young lady wants to take me to expensive restaurants and keep me supplied with a steady stream of French novels, bonbons, and hot Euro porn and yet expects nothing in return, I’m her man. But all of that is too complicated to explain to a student of English, and I don’t know how to say it in Japanese. Despair begins to set in.
I pick up my roster of students before class and sigh deeply as I read through it; sure enough, Yasuko’s name is first on the list of seven students. I look at the topic of my lesson: expressing disappointment. This might not go well.
I enter the classroom and put my name and lesson number on the board as the students file in. I say hello to folks and try to remain calm as I await Yasuko’s entrance. We all chat for a few minutes after the bell rings, and there is still no sign of my tormentor. After a few more minutes, I feel sure I’m in the clear and start writing some opening questions on the board for students to discuss with their partners:
When did you last feel disappointed about something?
What did you do to cheer yourself up?
I would not have wanted Yasuko to answer these questions, so I’m relieved that she hasn’t shown up. The students have paired up and are discussing the questions among themselves. I can relax now and go with the flow of the lesson without having to worry about-
“I’m sorry for late!” Yasuko says as she hurries into the classroom and slides into the first available chair.
Struggling to mask my utter disappointment, I say, “Hi, Yasuko, the questions are on the board; please discuss with your partner.”
Because she’s the odd one out, Yasuko joins another pair of students for a few minutes before I call them all back to report what they learned about their partners during their discussions.
We go around the room and each student tells the class about their partner’s answers to the questions. When we get to Yasuko’s group, one of her partners, a travel agent named Yuki, says in a loud theatrical voice, complete with hand gestures, “Yasuko was disappointed recently because her boyfriend broke up with her and also because she lost her job. To cheer herself up she decide to come to English school, but she think it’s not working. Also, a boy she likes is not liking her.”
“Thank you, Yuki,” I say with an uncomfortable smile.
Some of the young girls in the class whisper to Yasuko in Japanese, asking her who she likes. She demurs and instead directs her gaze at me.
“Tim-sensei, when did you last feel disappointed?”
Crap. I can’t say that it was last week when my Internet connection froze right before it started downloading Brad Pitt’s naked holiday photos. What can I say?
“Oh, it was something very similar,” I fib. “I was disappointed that someone I liked didn’t like me the same way.”
“Really?!” Yasuko says, using the opportunity to dig deeper. “What girls you like? Blonde? Or Asian? Or tall?” Each student leans in to hear my answer.
“Oh, you know, I like the classic beauties: Grace Jones, Cher, and, of course, tennis great Billie Jean King.” If she knows any of these ladies, maybe she’ll give me a freaking break?
Yasuko’s face slowly falls as she probably remembers seeing A View to a Kill as a child.
Yuki chimes in with the follow-up, “Tim-sensei, what did you do to cheer yourself up?”
After thinking for a few seconds, I shrug my shoulders and say, “You know, nothing chases the blues away like a few hours of baton twirling!”
Yasuko’s eyelids dim.
The next day, I wait outside my classroom as the students walk in. I see Yasuko in the lobby chatting with some friends, and I assume she’s here once again to get in her daily Tim sighting. She says goodbye to her friends and then spots Brody walking out of the teachers’ room with his roster and some teaching materials. She taps him on the shoulder and waves a cutesie hello.
“Hi, Yasuko-san,” he says, winking. “That’s a very nice sweater.” Yes. Freaking nice. As she follows him into his classroom, Yasuko looks over at me. I want to tell her all the things I really think she needs to consider: that this guy most certainly has an Oedipal relationship with his mother; that his haircut is featured on at least thirty satirical websites; that in high school he was voted Most Likely to Marry a Xena Warrior Princess Avatar at ComicCon. But what am I thinking? This is my chance to make a clean getaway. Whatever Brody has done to charm her into his classroom, it has clearly worked. And though I’m less than happy to learn that I can be so easily traded in for a guy who wears Tasmanian Devil ties, I have to admit it: I owe him one.
Thank you, GaijinMan. You’ve saved the gay.
# of times heard Tokyo movie audience laugh while watching Hollywood comedy: 0
# of times seen man on train looking at porn on his cell phone: 17