Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries (21 page)

Your typical Japanese Joe finds it difficult to say the word “gay” without giggling, as if by uttering it he is professing to believe in mermaids. I sit on the train again and watch four young inebriated professional men stumble onto the train. They are impeccably put together, their skin polished to a fine shine, their hair sculpted in tight waves, their tailored suits pressed, their rock-solid masculinity melted by alcohol into a fluid and suggestible ambivalence. I look at the ringleader of the pack, the loudest one to whom the others obviously defer. He rubs his face languorously with his perfectly moisturized fingers, stands with his legs far apart and his crotch tilted out. He is telling a story and repeatedly putting his arm around his drunken colleague next to him to stabilize himself as he sways back and forth. I wonder if he realizes how often the young girls on the train gaze at him as he banters with his be-suited colleagues—joking, laughing, snorting, backslapping—and how more than a few of these girls really wish that the guys would just shut up, unbutton their tailored shirts to the navels, whisk their hair out of their eyes, and start making out.

I know I do.

“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.