In which the resilient city of Tokyo is once again under siege and the city’s citizens must run for their lives from a giant foreign monster who has brought his own eating utensils.
“Just don’t forget,” Jimmy coos over the phone as we discuss the details of his upcoming trip to Tokyo on my dime. “You owe me.”
Normally that is no way to talk to someone who’s just spent over a thousand dollars on a plane ticket for you, but I can’t deny he has a point. I’ve been away for over a year now in one of the world’s most neon cities while he’s been back in sepia-toned Raleigh living the life of a starving artist, dealing with a cocaine-obsessed roommate, and constantly fielding questions about me from friends that he has trouble answering, like, “How’s Tim doing?” and “Is he ever coming home?” and “When is that cheap fucker gonna fly you over there?”
I do owe him. He’s been very accommodating of my oat-sowing. He deserves a vacation, and he’s going to get it. There will be temples, there will be shrines, there will be many, many Japanese pancakes.
“I know, I know. Listen, you’re coming, and we’re going to have a blast. I’m so excited!”
“No you’re not,” he deadpans.
“Yes I am!”
“Whatever. Anyway, is there anything I can bring? Do you need deodorant or magazines or anything?”
“Yeah, can you bring me a Cajun chicken biscuit from Bojangles? And some of the spicy fries? Oh, and some Pillsbury strawberry cake icing?”
“Sure.”
I can’t wait to see him holding that sweet, sweet pink frosting.
I remember fondly our last night together, the night before I left Raleigh. We’d gone for a romantic dinner at the Waffle House, the one downtown on Hillsborough Street where people go to get shot. We sat, ordered our burgers, and then I had a nervous breakdown. Have you ever cried and eaten greasy hash browns at the same time? If you ever plan to, bring extra napkins.
But though I was seriously losing my shit, my brain aflame with last-minute panic, Jimmy was holding up pretty well. When we first got together two years before, he quickly figured out that I had a bit of wanderlust in me that would eventually need to come out. (I think it might have become evident when I said, on the morning after our first night together, “I hate this fucking town; God, I can’t think of anything worse than staying here for the rest of my life!”) An army brat, he’d had his share of moving around the world, uprooting his life every few years, and was now completely uninterested in pulling up stakes again. Like me, he was desperately poor with no health insurance, but he liked being in one place. He was working on his art and enjoying his new job at a frame shop. Leaving Raleigh made no sense for him. So he’d resigned himself to the idea of my leaving. But because we’d drifted so effortlessly into each other’s lives, we both knew we wanted to stay together through my Tokyo jaunt.
So there we sat at the Waffle House, two years down the road, and I was leaving the next day. I don’t think either of us was convinced that it was realistic to try to maintain a long-distance relationship since I’d be gone for over a year. But that night we vowed to try. With the help of regular phone calls and some good porn.
As I sat sobbing and causing a scene like a toddler who hadn’t had his nap, a group of painfully upbeat teenagers in hipster garb walked in, sat down, and then one of them, presumably their leader, headed to the jukebox.
“Oh my God, Jimmy, if that skinny bitch puts on the ‘Waffle House Song’ I’ll just die!” I blubbered.
“I’ll slap her. Are you gonna eat your pickles?” Jimmy said, comforting me.
“Nmph. Tkmh,” I said, my mouth full of mucus, soggy red eyes bulging. I hadn’t touched my cheeseburger. He’d cleaned his entire plate.
There was an understanding here. He was being strong for both of us. He was holding it together because he knew I couldn’t. My system was too overwhelmed. And though his was too, he’d decided to take the reins and not allow us to sink into maudlin dramatics.
“You need to wipe your nose…God, get a napkin or something,” he said, laughing. His emotional bravery was heartbreaking.
The waitress arrived with our extra order of scattered, smothered, and covered hash browns. No doubt she cast her sympathetic eyes over us as we struggled to keep it together, our last night together, our farewell banquet of grease and butter.
“I’m gonna enter some stuff into the New American Paintings contest next month,” he said, trying to remain strong.
A fresh harvest of silent tears burst from my exhausted eyes. I began to make embarrassing noises when I inhaled.
Jimmy let my tears run their course, deciding at this point that silence was probably golden.
“Your burger’s getting cold.”
A few oceans of tears and mucus later, hunger finally gripped me and I downed the thing in three bites. As I chomped, he sat staring at me, his gaze a mixture of love, irritation, and acid reflux.
When Jimmy and I got together, we had both pretty much given up on finding a guy to spend our lives with who wasn’t a complete disappointment. We’d both been around the block several times. Jimmy came out when he was fourteen and was promptly sent off to a mental institution by his loving, hysterical mother who makes Piper Laurie from Carrie look like Barbara Billingsley; he then developed into a serial monogamist, having one unfulfilling long-term relationship after another. And me? I’d been around the block more in the sexual sense. (Is it considered a one-night stand if they kick you out of their bed before daybreak?) By the time our paths crossed, we pretty much immediately realized we were two potential peas in a pod: we shared a mutual love for Purple Rain-era Prince, tuna noodle casserole, Gore Vidal’s bitchy smugness, and Pedro Almodóvar’s use of primary colors and trannies.
Even better, we hated many of the same things (giant poodles and local gay bars being the first two among many). When I was able to convince Jimmy that Siouxsie Sioux could wipe the floor with Grace Jones if the two were ever to come to blows, our relationship was taken to the next level. I had a feeling it was true love when Jimmy, describing Alanis Morrissette as she performed on Letterman, uttered under his breath one of the finest and most apt similes I’d ever heard: “Plain as homemade soap.” And I knew I’d found the man I’d spend the rest of my life with when he smacked me in the face with his dick one morning-not as an overture for sex but just to say “good morning” as he was leaving the bedroom to make coffee.
Always a man of very few words and an effortlessly agitated artistic temperament, Jimmy, when he does speak, tends to create the wrong impression when he meets new people. He just doesn’t try that hard to make people like him. Not because he’s an asshole; he just doesn’t think about it. He once told my friend Dani that her quiche was “delicious, almost as good as mine.” He complimented a friend’s band one time by saying they “sounded so much better than the last time I saw you guys.” And when he first started coming to family dinners at my parents’ house, he would sit quietly and respectfully through dinner and then as soon as he was finished, he’d get up, wash his plate, put it in the dishwasher, and then plop himself on the living room sofa with my parents’ Parade magazine before anyone realized he’d left the table.
“They have lots of good drugs-you know, medicines-for depression now,” an aunt visiting from California who came to one of these dinners once said. She was convinced Jimmy was clinically depressed. But she’d never had the opportunity to see how his face lit up when talking about Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown or Law of Desire. She’d not witnessed him singing along to Prince’s “Pussy Control” in our living room. She didn’t know that sometimes he laughs and says the word “turd” in his sleep. He’s not depressed. He’s just artistic.
But I have to admit I’m worried. I’ve been away for a year, and while Jimmy’s getting on with life at home, I’m living a completely separate life from him now, and it’s a life I’m really enjoying. Worse still, I’m smitten. Yes, I’ve been seeing someone behind his back, and though I think he knows, I’m dreading the talk we’re going to have to have about this third wheel. My new lover is complicated, schizophrenic, unwieldy, fast, and furious. In short, I’m in love with a crazy bitch named Tokyo. And she takes a back seat to nobody.
Over the past year during out periodic phone calls I’ve tried my best to convince Jimmy of my baby’s otherworldly charms.
“I saw a bunch of young girls dressed up as Victorian England-era prostitutes in Harajuku today!” I’d say.
“Interesting,” he’d reply after a long pause, during which he’s sucking in a massive bonghit.
“Oh my God, I got groped by a gross old man in a rush-hour train in Shinjuku!” I’d beam.
“Uh-huh,” he’d reply after drinking down a couple spoonfuls of NyQuil.
“Vitamin drinks in tiny cans are really popular here! I just drank three and chased them with vodka and then ate a big sushi!” I’d rave.
“Yeah, can you send me some money?” he’d respond. “I need paintbrushes.”
Tokyo is a hard sell for Jimmy. At least on the phone. He’s jealous of her. To him she’s nothing more than a home-wrecker. A harlot, a vixen, a temptress in a foreign land with her restless arms all over his boyfriend. He knows that every day I’m walking her streets, slurping her noodles, shoving my big feet into her tiny bathroom slippers, pushing myself onto her trains, sliding in and out and in and out and in and out of her underground tunnels. And yes, I am doing all of that. But when I get Jimmy over here, he’ll do it too. And he’ll love it. He’ll fall for her just like I have.
Oh yes, it will be an epic, sexy, disgusting ménage à trois. Two charming men. One hot city.
I sit breathlessly at the arrivals gate at Narita Airport. After waiting for a while for him to deplane, I decide to go get some coffee from a nearby kiosk. After paying, I turn around, take a sip, and burn my lip, for down the ramp comes Jimmy, his shiny head sweating and shining like a beacon, his face a desperate shade of gray, his huge tote bag slipping slowly off his shoulder. He weaves in and out of the people in his way, and once he reaches the arrivals lobby, I rush up to greet him as he passes me by and walks out the automatic doors and into the fresh air, the first he’s felt on his face in probably about seventeen hours.
“Jimmy!” I yelp as the doors open for me to exit. He finishes lighting his cigarette and looks at me with an exhausted smile. I give him a hug. He sure is clammy.
“Sorry. I really needed one.”
“That’s fine. How was your flight?”
He looks at me as if to say, “How do you think it was?” and then he takes a very long drag on his cigarette.
I start pinching his cheeks and lightly slapping them because that’s one thing I do to show my affection. He rolls his eyes, exhales a bunch of smoke, smiles, and squeezes my butt, which is what he does to show his affection.
He finishes his cigarette, puts it out, and in full view of all the other desperate smokers standing outside with us, we engage in a proper public display of affection. (No tongue. We’re not animals.)
“I’m really happy to see you,” he says.
“It’s great to see you too. I’ve missed you so mu-wait, did you bring me my Cajun chicken biscuit?” I ask.
“I brought two,” he nods, his eyes brightening.
I grab and squeeze his hand. “I’ve missed you so much!”
We get on the train from Narita heading into the city. Since Narita is a town well outside the city limits of Tokyo proper, it’s a long ride and gives us a chance to catch up and for Jimmy to see some of the Japanese countryside. As we chat, I can see that Jimmy’s head is spinning as he gazes out the window at the landscape gliding past us.
“Them’s artistic wheels be turnin’,” I say to myself in my best North Carolina drawl as he sits quietly, his eyes passionately drinking in the view.
After a few minutes of silence, I ask him what he thinks of what he sees. He appears to have recovered somewhat from the twilight zone of the trans-Pacific flight and could very well be prepared to offer some solid criticism.
“Well,” he begins, “the airport was, honestly, kind of plain. I was disappointed. Light yellow walls accented with blonde wood panels? Beige carpet? I expected better from Japan. And the place was way too well lit.”
“Hmm. I suppose you make a good point,” I chime in. “Although I didn’t notice any of the stuff you just mentioned. The walls were yellow? Please continue.”
“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” he continues.
“Really? So have you!”
“Drugs and loneliness. But that shirt is way too tight. I’m surprised you can breathe in that thing.”
“Jimmy, it’s the biggest T-shirt I’ve been able to find here.”
“You should have told me. I could have brought some. Anyway, you should probably throw that shirt away before you come home. It’ll scare the cat.”
“How is Stella?”
“She’s been talking a whole bunch of shit about you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, she said you treat her like a redheaded bastard cat and you need to at least send her some Japanese catnip or something. She also called your momma a bitch. She’s pretty pissed.”
“Aw, bless her. So, have you got anything positive to say about your trip so far?”
“Actually, yes,” he begins, looking out the window. “The quality of light is just brilliant, and the trees actually look exactly like they do in the Japanese watercolors I’ve seen.”
“Good, good.”
“And the way all these rice paddies and fields are laid out, it kind of reminds me of a painting Van Gogh did of the French countryside.”
“I’m sure the French would slap in you in the face for saying that.”
“Whatever. I’d slap them right back.”
We get to my apartment in Koenji and unload all of Jimmy’s stuff. Then we spend a manic ten minutes having gay sex and then we take a big gay nap. When I wake up, Jimmy’s rifling through his bag searching for something.
“What’re you looking for?” I ask, rubbing my eyes.
Jimmy pulls a fork out of a balled-up pair of socks. “Found it. Can we go eat?”
We eat at a local Yoshinoya restaurant, a cheap fast-food chain where the specialty is what is called “beef bowls”-thin slices of seasoned beef over rice. Jimmy cannot hide his enthusiasm for the ordering protocol, which involves very little human contact and admirable efficiency: you walk in, put your money into a machine, push a button, get a receipt, sit down at a semicircular counter, and hand the receipt to the enthusiastic worker behind the counter. Your beef bowl and miso soup will be with you in a matter of seconds.
“Is Jimmy impressed?” I ask as he digs in with his fork.
“Yes, he is. Pass me the ginger.”
One point for my mistress Tokyo: she makes a quick, sensible, delicious meal.
After our late lunch we take the train to Shibuya because I want to show Jimmy Tokyo’s crazy side, the side that cakes its face with panda makeup, bleaches it’s hair until it looks like a pile of straw, and slips on its pencil skirt, rainbow knee-socks, and foot-high platform boots and thinks that’s a perfectly reasonable state in which to face the world.
We exit Shibuya Station along with 2.3 million other people, 90 percent of whom are at least ten years younger than us. Shibuya is where the young people of the greater Tokyo area come to play videogames, smoke cigarettes, visit “love hotels,” and, in a financial pinch, sell their underwear to appreciative and deep-pocketed salarymen. I ask Jimmy if he feels like doing any of these things.
“You know,” I prod, “to try and fit in with everyone else.”
“I might be willing to sell my underwear,” he says after a minute of reflection, “but let’s wait till Thursday and see how my money’s holding out. I’d like to get a few more days’ wear out of it.”
“Gross.”
As we pass under the three giant television screens the sole purpose of which appears to be to give the nation epilepsy, Jimmy breathlessly gasps, “It’s like Blade Runner.”
“Isn’t it? Or at least I, Robot.”
In Shibuya we do what the both of us were put on this earth to do: record shop. Tokyo has the best record shopping any indie pop-grime-jazz-krautrock-acid fusion-dream-pop-dub-trip-hopafrobeat-grunge-eurotrash-neujazz-freakbeat-hip-hop-electroglitchpop-freak folk-old school-electro-minimalist-reggae-dance-hall-girl group-lounge-punk-goth-new wave-house-new world-old world new world-shoegazer-noise pop-new wave revivalist-folk-electro-folk-rhythm and blues-Jpop-gospel-French pop-Bulgarian noise opera fanboy could hope for. That band from Perth from the eighties that only released one single but it’s the best song you ever heard? It’s here somewhere. And you know your friend who is in that god-awful band that somehow found the time in its busy schedule of totally sucking to put a CD together? Tokyo’s got that CD. That song you’ve been kicking around in your head for a few years but have never committed to tape? Also here. And it’s expensive.
We go to my favorite store, Disk Union, where the narrow aisles present a tough but rewarding challenge for any customer with a waist over thirty inches. We wade in and look around, twisting and angling our heads so as to read the titles and allow people by, but Jimmy ultimately succumbs to a crippling claustrophobia before even getting to the Momus and David Sylvian sections, and he takes his leave after just forty-five minutes of browsing. I reluctantly put back on the shelf a Madonna twelve-inch on skin-colored vinyl and follow him out.
“Well,” I say, trying to assuage Jimmy’s guilt over forcing us to leave the record store so prematurely, “there’s a CD shop for big fatties just around the corner.”
“Great, let’s go there.”
We browse in a few more spacious record stores, and Jimmy excitedly finds something. He gasps, holds it up, and walks determinedly toward me. I look at it and realize that this find is something that could mark a turning point in his trip: a Japan-only release of a best-of by Japanese electro pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra.
“We wants it,” he hisses in his best Gollum. “We neeeeeeeds it!” He nudges my shoulder over and over with his head.
“OK, but if I buy this for you, you have to use chopsticks at our next meal. And greet the waitress in Japanese.”
“Whatever.”
“And you have to eat whatever I put in front of you.”
He considers this last point with a pensive and dreamy glare.
“OK,” he finally agrees. “But don’t get pissed if I puke in your lap.”
We meet my friend Shunsuke and his friend Chieko for lunch at an izakaya in Shibuya. It doesn’t take long for the two of them to start chatting like old friends, even though Jimmy keeps calling Shunsuke Shinjuku, as in:
“So, Shinjuku, how long have you lived in Tokyo?”
or
“Shinjuku, have you ever been to the U.S.?”
or
“So, Shinjuku, you like Celine Dion. Why is that?”
“Jimmy, his name is Shunsuke!” I finally correct him. “Shun-suke! Shunsuke.”
“It OK,” Shunsuke says, laughing. “I just make new name for Jimmy. I call him Miami. Is OK?”
“Sure,” Jimmy says. “Better than Kernersville.”
Our waitress arrives, breathless, stressed, and with no time for small talk. A perfect candidate for Jimmy to bludgeon with his newly acquired Japanese.
“Jimmy,” I say, holding up the expensive CD I just bought him and nodding in the direction of the waitress.
“Cone nishy wa,” he says with a big smile.
Shunsuke translates for her.
“
,” he says. “He’s trying to say hello.”
She smiles, bows slightly, and says “sank yuu” to Jimmy. He looks at Shunsuke.
“Thanks, Shinjuku.”
“You’re welcome, Miami.”
We order a number of small dishes to share, the way real Japanese folk do. I make sure that one of these dishes is the one on the menu that looks like a plate full of fried popcorn shrimp from Red Lobster. Jimmy loves popcorn shrimp, as do I. I’ve had this dish before, two weeks into my Japan odyssey, and it really altered my perception of what I can voluntarily put in my mouth, chew, and swallow. It was fried chicken gristle, and it felt like eating deep-fried knuckle. As an American Southerner, I stand firmly behind any food that is deep-fried. It’s part of who I am. So even though I had a profound distrust of this new dish, I continued popping those little suckers into my mouth and negotiating them into my stomach. Ick. I couldn’t stand it. But I ate more. So gross. Then I ate more. Revolting and unequivocally foul. I couldn’t stop eating. Wanted more. What a horrid culinary delight! Disgustingly delicious! I finished the plate myself. No food had ever filled me with such a fervid ambivalence. I haven’t tasted that crunchy gristle since, but I am dying to witness the awakening of Jimmy to its existence. He’s a Southern boy too, born with a fried drumstick in his hand. I’m going to test his limits.
When the plate arrives, I place it in front of Jimmy and hand him a pair of chopsticks.
“Go for it, little man.”
He takes the chopsticks, separates them, and positions them in his right hand just like any red-blooded American would who is recovering from a horrible accident during which he was stabbed repeatedly in the right hand.
Using both hands, he manages to get a piece of fried kernel between the two sticks and lifts it to his mouth.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Grating of teeth.
Crunch.
Grimace, furrow of brow.
Grinding and then grating of teeth.
Crunch.
Wonderment.
Crunch.
Swallow.
Picking of teeth.
“You like it?” Shunsuke asks, doubtful.
“I like the fried part,” Jimmy responds. “What’s inside it?”
I can’t hold it in any longer.
“It’s chicken gristle!” I hiss excitedly. “Chicken gristle! Gross, right?!”
“Hmmm,” he says.
“Don’t you love and hate it?! Doesn’t it make you want to throw up and eat some more?! Isn’t it just immorally appetizing?!”
He picks up another piece, this time with his hand, and tosses it into his mouth. His crunching is less reticent now, his grimaces and brow furrowing more often giving way to thoughtful expressions of acceptance and, after a few more nuggets, unconflicted, decisive satisfaction.
“Actually, it’s not bad. But it needs better dippin’ sauce.”
Jimmy and I circle Tokyo, and she does her best to show him what she’s got. And what does she got that Jimmy might like? She’s got the Rainbow Bridge that takes you to the Odaiba district on Tokyo Bay, voted the best place for a date in the city, with its miles of shopping, street performers, amusement parks, game centers, and even a fake Statue of Liberty. She’s got the crazy kids dressed in their finest gothic threads and having a pose-a-thon next to Harajuku Station. She’s got the dancing Elvises in Yoyogi Park. She’s got the serenity and heart-stopping beauty of a hidden Japanese garden just off of the bustle of Omotesando Dori. She’s got the tallest building in the country in Ikebukuro and the glass capsule elevators running along the outside of the Mitsui Tower building in Nihonbashi. She’s got the labyrinthine underground malls and subway paths, which are a really fun place to hide behind a pole and watch Jimmy get confused and then a little worried. Best of all she’s got lots of food and, to Jimmy’s delight, an abundance of forks.
“Look, Jimmy! Isn’t it beautiful?” I ask Jimmy as we stare wide-eyed at one of Japan’s most marvelous sights, the majestic Mount Fuji, which on a clear day is visible from Tokyo.
He doesn’t answer. He looks impressed and awestruck, but more than a little scared, like a child sitting up in bed, eyeing his bedroom closet door, fearful of the hideous monster that lurks behind it. But why? Why does Jimmy look so pale, so panic-stricken, so pop-eyed? Is it the experience of looking at something so beautifully formed by nature and nature alone? Is it due to the vertigo one gets sometimes when seeing in person a sight normally only seen in pictures and postcards? Or is it because he’s currently at the Fuji-kyu Highlands amusement park just outside of Tokyo, strapped in beside me in one of the world’s fastest and tallest roller coasters, the Fujiyama (“Mount Fuji”), from which Mount Fuji is clearly visible, and which is currently at the beginning of its great initial ascent of eighty meters? We’ll probably never know.
We clamber up towards the summit, and when we reach it, the coaster momentarily straightens out, allowing us a brief respite from abject terror before nose-diving back to the ground at warp speed. Jimmy’s gleeful screams fill my ears as my cheeks flap in the wind and spittle splashes upon my chin and neck. We drop and drop and drop. Then we twist, turn, twist, ascend, nose-dive again, and finally, finally the carriage slows down and pulls back into the boarding area. The ride is over. With exhilaration, we realize we’ve survived, that everything will be OK, that we’ll live to eat another Japanese pancake. Though just a few moments ago we were tasting our own mortality in the back of our throats and were very close to puking it up, we managed to keep it down and make it through to the finish line. This calls for some green tea ice cream.
“How about it, Jimmy?” I ask.
“Yeah, but while we’re here, we might as well visit the haunted insane asylum. Get that out of the way.”
You know how, in the first blush of romance, you spend so much time with someone because you don’t want to be out of each other’s sight and it’s all great for the first few days because you’re all excited and you start mapping out your future together in your head and then the magic wears off a little bit and a few days later you kind of get sick of the sight of them especially after you catch them using your toothbrush-your toothbrush!-and you start to wonder when oh when they are ever just going to go away and sleep in their own freaking bed? I didn’t want that to happen between Jimmy and Tokyo. So after spending a few days locked in a passionate three-way with this fair city, we decide to take a trip south. It’s preemptive day trip time.
So it’s off to Kamakura to show Jimmy my friend the Big Buddha and then to the small rocky island of Enoshima, just off the coast of Fujisawa city, my old stomping ground. We walk across the bridge from Kamakura and onto the island on a beautiful sunny afternoon. We hike up the narrow, winding paths of the island village, visit small neighborhood temples, and sip green tea at little old-fashioned tearooms where the staff are simultaneously fascinated and horrified by us and our big, ungainly American ways. We follow the paved paths as they cut through thick greenery and eventually find ourselves heading down toward a rock outcropping on the side of the island where the land meets the water. I follow Jimmy down, and we alight on the flat rocks, pushed along by the determined Enoshima wind whispering in our ears, “Hurry up, gaywads, it’s beautiful down there!”
We walk to the edge of the rocks and stare down as the water from Sagami Bay licks at the hard edges of the island, and we wordlessly sit for a rest after our long walk. The cold water laps against the flat rocks and into the deep gaps between them. The sun and wind work in perfect concert, ensuring we are neither too hot nor too chilly as we lie back on the rocks and allow the surroundings to lull us into a brief catnap.
I open my eyes a half hour later and feel a bit of a chill. The sun has fallen behind the clouds, though its rays still pierce them in a few narrow, jagged lines. I look over and Jimmy is lying very close to the edge, dipping his hand in the cold water. I realize that we haven’t really talked much about our relationship since he’s been here, and I get the feeling we’re about to. We’ve managed to avoid the topic for a few days, busy as we’ve been with entertaining ourselves. Now that we’re away from Tokyo and in a place where we can actually hear each other, the time seems right. He needs to know when I’m coming home. And I need to decide.
The setting sure lends itself to a good, deep conversation about where our lives are going. “Jimmy, our love is like this water,” I might say, waxing poetic on our future. “It’s deep, it’s cleansing, it’s salty. And it covers three-quarters of the earth. Yes, Jimmy, our love covers three-quarters of the earth. It leaves Sagami Bay and flows out into the Pacific into all sorts of amazing places like Australia and Poland.”
“Our love flows to Poland via the Pacific Ocean?” Jimmy might wonder.
“It’s just a metaphor, but, you know, our love is deep and blue and has the power to sink many ships.”
At this point Jimmy might sigh and say, “Spare me the double-talk. I need dates. When are you coming home?”
“But…what will Tokyo say?” I wonder. “She loves me. Or at least tolerates me.” (OK, she finds me quite irritating.)
I go over and sit down next to Jimmy on the edge of the rocks.
“This is the most amazing place I’ve ever been,” he says.
“Wow. And you’ve been to Kraków.”
“I feel like I’m in one of those Kuniyoshi paintings.”
“Me too. Who is he?”
“A painter.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“You’re coming home, right?” he asks. “Soon, right?”
“Yes.”
“I need to know when.”
I struggle to figure out what to say.
“I really need to know when.”
“OK. How about five months? Can you wait five more months?”
He sighs, dips his hand in the cold water, and flicks droplets with his wet fingers.
“Yeah, OK. I can do that. But I want a kimono. And not one of those cheap ones we were looking at at the Grand Asia Plaza. I want one that feels like flower petals against my skin. Got that? Flower petals.”
I do some quick calculations in my head and try to remember the name of that cheap, secondhand kimono shop in Kichijyoji a student once told me about.
“OK.”
“OK.”
“What if I found one that-”
“Flower. Petals.”
“OK.”
Our Tokkaido Line train glides back into Tokyo’s Shinagawa Station, and I snap Jimmy out of the daze he fell into thirty minutes ago as he watched an old man across from us reading a big fat manga comic and picking his nose. We change to the Yamanote train, then to the Chuo Line, and finally reach Koenji. We slump back to my tiny room and collapse onto the bed.
I awake slowly the next morning, wondering groggily what we should do on Jimmy’s last day. I know he’s had a great time, I know Tokyo has shown him her best, but his visit is still lacking that transcendental moment when the world explodes into a widescreen Technicolor and people start dancing around you Busby Berkeley-style. Hmmm. What could we do? Where could we go? Who could we see?
“Oh my God! Fucking Itoya!” Jimmy cries, popping awake and jumping out of bed.
“Who?”
“Itoya! Itoya!”
I stare at him with big dumb eyes.
“The goddamn washi paper store! We’ve got to go there!”
Itoya, of course. Everyone who knows anything about washi knows Itoya. What? You don’t know what washi is?
Well, dummy, washi is a traditional Japanese paper made from rice or bamboo or some such type thing and then dyed and used to make things like art and stuff. Jimmy loves washi paper, and pretty much the only thing on his to-do list when he came here was to go twirl around Itoya, the famous washi paper store in Ginza, a plan that had completely escaped his mind once he’d gotten here and had his mind blown by how thin I am.
So we scuttle eastwards to Ginza on a mission to get Jimmy some artfully made, tradition-bound transcendence.
The first floor of Itoya is your standard stationary shop. (For me, it’s a big pile of “meh,” but those who are into stationary had better fasten their seatbelts.) It’s the second floor where the magic really happens, when the strings start to flutter and the horns start their low burbling. There, for the world to see (if the world could be crammed into a five-hundred-square-foot room) is roll upon roll upon roll, sheet upon sheet upon sheet, of wild, wonderful washi. All different colors and designs. And as soon as Jimmy sets foot in the room it’s like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Except it’s Jimmy and the Washi Paper Store.
Upon our entrance, the floor staff immediately goes on full alert, nodding to each other that there’s a big whitey in the room and he may want to dirty up the place with his greasy American hands. Jimmy doesn’t care. Humming the love theme to Romeo and Juliet, he starts flipping through all the sheets on the closest countertop while I dedicate myself to explaining his behavior to the staff in my serviceable Japanese:
“Don’t worry! Washi is his favorite paper!”
“He came from America to see this washi!”
“He is an artist with the washi!”
The young male floor manager, looking exceedingly worried, starts following Jimmy around to make sure he doesn’t compromise the washi and its proud Japanese tradition.
“He won’t drop the washi!” I assure him. “He is very famous in America for loving washi!”
The manager asks Jimmy in extremely hesitant and uncertain English if he can help.
“Do you have a darker blue version of this?” Jimmy asks, holding up a piece of blue washi, not bothering to adjust his vocabulary or speaking speed for his ESL audience. “Like something a little cloudier and ominous, like a storm is about to break out, you know, like there could be some thunder and lightning coming? That kind of blue.”
The manager’s face falls.
“He ask any darker blue washi!” I translate, and while the manager starts looking for a darker shade, I shadow Jimmy, making sure he’s careful not to breathe too hard on any of the paper.
“Jimmy, you’ve got to speak more slowly and use easier words,” I tell him. “Also, look at him when you’re talking. And open your mouth a little wider.”
“Oh,” he says. “Can’t you just translate what I say for him?” he says.
As much as I want to tell him that my Japanese skills are indeed up to that demanding task-even though just a little over a year ago it had taken me the better part of two weeks to understand the grammar structure of the sentence, “The notebook is on the desk, and the pen is on the notebook”-I don’t think I should commit myself to it. But pride and the instinct to show off beg me to give it a try, so I do.
“Uh, yeah, I guess I could do that.”
“Great,” he says. “Can you tell him that I’d like to see the different types of green he has? With Japanese symbols on them.”
“This is OK?” the manager says, holding up a sheet of dark blue.
Jimmy nods.
“Yes, that is good,” I venture in Japanese. “He also has an interest in seeing green things that you have here.”
The manager smiles, sensing that, for the first time since he began helping us, he just might have the upper hand.
“Green? Green washi, right?” he says, continuing our Japanese tête-à-tête.
“Yes, kanji green washi.”
“Also,” Jimmy interrupts in English, “ask him if they have paler colors with little flecks of other colors in them.”
“Also,” I continue, “do you have bright colors and small various colors on the washi at the same time?”
“And,” Jimmy continues, “do they have any with that little waving cat on them or like one of those demons you see at the temples? Or like those old crazy Noh masks! Ask him if they have Noh masks!”
A single bead of sweat pierces through the skin of my left underarm, thus opening the floodgates for an all-out perspiration celebration.
The manager hands Jimmy some green sheets decorated with various kanji characters and then starts trying to find some bright colors and small various colors on the washi at the same time. He hands more samples to Jimmy and waits expectantly for more instructions from me. He’s not ready to let us browse freely.
“Are you going to ask him?” Jimmy persists.
This charade really shouldn’t be allowed to continue. My ability to say where I am and where I want to go in Japanese is pretty flawless. My ability to request different kinds of washi paper according to Jimmy’s whims-for which I would have to remember the words to all the colors as well as come up with ways of saying “flecks” and “demons” and probably eventually “Arabian sunset” and “mother of pearl”-are negligible. There’s a bunch of washi here, and we are perfectly capable of sorting through it ourselves. But the Japanese are sometimes infuriatingly unwilling to let foreigners touch and pick things out for themselves. Sure, sometimes gaijin break things or stain them or set things on fire, but only the clumsy ones. I really want Jimmy to search around, find what he wants, and proceed to the checkout. I just need this guy to relax and leave us alone.
“He says,” I begin, addressing the gentleman assisting us in a conspiratorial tone, “that you are really handsome.”
It turns out that if you ever want a pushy male shop assistant who strikes you as a little bit repressed to back off and leave you in peace, all you really need to do is tell him your boyfriend finds him physically attractive. No sooner do I say this than his face turns bright red and he launches into a series of short, nervous bows as he backs away and heads for the safety of the cashier’s counter.
“Jimmy, just pick out what you like and let’s get it,” I say. “I’ve just sent a poor guy into a tailspin of homosexual panic.”
“Oh shit,” Jimmy sighs. “Did you at least ask him how much these are per sheet?”
Jimmy’s full-to-bursting bag shivers and shakes on the floor of the train from Ueno Station to Narita Airport. He flips through a copy of Vogue Nippon that someone had left on a bench at the station and comes to a page full of beautiful kimono patterns. He looks at me pointedly and starts circling ones he likes with his index finger.
“You’re dreaming,” I say.
“No,” he replies, sure of himself. “Predicting the future.”
When we get to Narita, we walk slowly to the security checkpoint, trying our best to slow down the time and delay the inevitable goodbyes. In spite of himself, Jimmy has fallen for Tokyo, in his way. I don’t know if it was when we ate takoyaki octopus balls while walking through the smut district of Kabukicho, when we’d been photographed by excitable out-of-town junior high school students at the Edo-Tokyo Museum as if we were Brad and Angelina, or when we basked in the afterglow of a good, long karaoke session during which we’d taken on Chaka Kahn and Sheila E; but at some point, Jimmy began to look at the city as less of a threat and more as a great dream from which he would soon wake up.
“This place is insane,” he said once as we passed a man walking his monkey in Yoyogi Park. “I see why you like it. It kind of suits you.”
When we get to the security gate, we hug, and both of us tear up.
“Come home,” he says.
“I will.”
He lets go, grabs his bag, and scuttles off to explain to passport control that, yes, he looks like a terrorist child molester in his passport picture, but no, he is neither of these things and nobody can prove anything. Just before he’s out of sight, he turns to me and mouths the words “flower petals” one last time. He slides through security and is on his way home.
I slump in my seat on the train from Narita with a heavy heart. I’m headed back into Tokyo’s arms and feeling more conflicted than ever. My days with her are numbered now, I know. I’ve got to make our time together count. I’ve got to make her show me the things she’s been holding back.
“I really need to see a Japanese lesbian,” I say to her when we are together again and I’m once again riding her Yamanote train westward. “You’ve never shown me one, and I think it’s about time. I’m not afraid. I feel ready.”
She ignores me, and as the train rolls on toward Shinjuku I look at the teenage girl sitting across from me with an electro-shock hairstyle she has obviously achieved with the assistance of a hot iron and a fork. She’s a rebellious little thing, probably worrying her parents sick with her bad attitude, her mismatched socks, and her imprecisely applied lipstick and eyeliner. As she manically texts someone on her cell phone, I notice she’s carrying a fashionable tote bag embossed with a generic black stick figure standing next to a tree, like the figures in those traffic signs designating a crosswalk. Under the picture it reads, “It is forbidding to urinate here.”
That’ll do for now, I guess.
# of pounds lost: 28
# of rumors heard about straight-as-an-arrow fellow teacher who went to Thailand, accidentally hooked up with a she-male, and now is very, very confused: 1