NEXT TIME, I'LL TRY THE SALMON...

Once upon a time, a Greek gentleman by the name of Socrates wrote, "the unexamined life is not worth living." Actually, what he really said was ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ, but close enough. I'd like to think of the philosophy of this blog as something similar, say, "a sex life too boring to blog about is not worth having," or something along those lines. With that in mind I am committed to writing about the good, the bad, and the frankly awful. This one falls into the latter category.

Masahiko was the wealthiest guy I've dated here in Japan. An architect for a major Tokyo design firm, he travelled all over Asia on building projects. His apartment was fantastic; spacious, skylights, heated floors, jacuzzi bathtub, the works (which considering rent in Tokyo, where a ten foot square closet can cost a thousand bucks a month, meant an impressive amount of yen). Just three years older than I, he seemed to have it all. He was good-looking, had a sharp sense of fashion, and his taste in men--mainly me--was exquisite. On top of all of this, he was generous. After just two months together he bought me an over-priced watch for Valentine's Day. Yes indeed, Masahiko had it all, and was willing to share it. That turned out to be the problem.

We met in GB during my first year in Japan. He was in a suit, and an expensive looking one at that. Walking into the bar he had ordered a martini, looked around, and immediately made a beeline over to me. His pick-up line ("I haven't seen you here before...I would have remembered") would have been vomit-inducing anywhere else in the world, but in Japan was earthshaking. Not only did his English sound perfect, he had broken the time-honored Japanese tradition of sitting around like a block of wood waiting for the gaijin to make all the moves. How could I resist?

We chatted awhile before he said, "I hate this place. Let's go somewhere real." "Real" turned out to be the New York Grill on the 52nd floor of the Park Hyatt Hotel (if you've seen Lost in Translation, you know the place). Now, the standard move from a dive like GB was to an equally shady pay by the hour love hotel; the Park Hyatt was calculated to impress. It did.

We had several drinks...pricey drinks. As just a poor, underpaid teacher, I grew concerned. But when the time came to settle the bill, he insisted on covering all of it. "I get paid too much," was his excuse. Of course, it was too late for me to catch my last train, and a taxi back home was out of the question. That meant the night was going to go two ways; A) I was going to spend it alone in bar somewhere waiting for the first train, or B) he was going to take me back home, which, after having let him pay for all my drinks made me feel a bit like a Thai money boy (but which I would probably go along with because I really wanted to jump his bones). In the end, I was wrong on both counts.

For as we reached the lobby, I excused myself to use the restroom. When I returned, he presented me a key card to one of the rooms in the hotel. "I am not going to sleep with you yet," he said, "but it occurred to me you missed your train. My friend is the manager here and I got you a room for the night."

I was dumbfounded. I'm not sure whether the fact that he just snapped his fingers and got me a room at one of Tokyo's best hotels, or the casual way he'd just said he wasn't going to sleep with me yet was more jarring. But in the end I took the room and spent the evening alone, but in a truly fabulous bed.

He called the next day to see if I had made it home okay, and to ask my address. He was thinking of coming out my way for the next date and wanted to know where I lived. It was a ruse, of course, and one that invited some comment from my housemates when a delivery of roses appeared for me at the door the next day. A guy had only done that once for (to?) me before, and he turned out to be a nutjob. I should have read something into that.

We didn't meet near me the next time. Instead, we met in Yokohama, where he surprised me with a dinner cruise. For dinner we had the choice of salmon or Alaskan king crabs, I went for the crabs (I can't eat enough of them). After a remarkably romantic evening, where I learned the whole of his backstory (father worked for the Japanese Ambassador in London, went to school in Britain). This explained the extreme un-Japaneseness of his overconfident approach. At the end of the evening we kissed (an amazing kiss) and went our separate ways.

The third time he asked me if I was free for the weekend. I told him I was. He informed me he had reserved a room at a resort in Hakone, a room with a private onsen. For those who don't know, Hakone is a beautiful and mountainous region outside of Tokyo, known for its onsen (Japanese hot springs), it's scenic views, and being more expensive than young teachers can afford. Of course, what he told me immediately following his hotel reservation swept thoughts of price from my head again; "I thought it would be the perfect place to make love to you for the first time."

Now, I should state for the record that usually, I do the seducing. This is not always the case, but it had been 7 times out of 10 in the States and 9 times out of 10 in Japan. The matter of fact way this guy just informed me we would be having sex should have offended me, but I found it intriguing. Maybe it was time to let someone else drive for a change?

So I agreed. We drove up to Hakone in his car, and my breath was taken away by the beauty of the jagged mountains and deep, wooded valleys. The resort itself was unbelievable, made up of small, private bungalows, each with its own natural hot spring bath. The room was spectacular, and from the hot spring tub, you had an amazing view of the mountain valley plunging down before you.

"You've been to onsen before?" He asked. I nodded. I knew the drill. First you stripped, usually in a locker room full of guys, and then hit the showers where you scrubbed yourself thoroughly from head to foot. Only after you rinsed off did you actually enter the bath.

Masahiko smiled. "You realize this was all just a way to get you naked?" I told him he didn't have to work that hard.

The sex was, simply, spectacular. Masahiko washed me from top to bottom, and then we made love right there on the floor of the shower. Every lover, like a dance partner, has their own moves, their own rhythm. The trick is to fall into step with them. With Masahiko, I did what I usually never do...totally let go. And it was like standing naked before a thunderstorm, or waist-deep in the sea letting the waves wash over you. It was an experience.

This was followed by soaking in the blisteringly hot water, followed by more mind-blowing sex on the floor. After stepping out for an exquisite dinner, we had more sex in a chair, on the wardrobe, and in bed. He had told me he used to run marathons and I believed it. His stamina was incredible.

As was his libido. Over the next few weeks, we would meet two or three times a week and have sex two or three times a date. He took me often to his place, which between its magnificent view and beautiful paintings, was exactly the kid of place I aspired to have one day.

Three months into sleeping together, and nothing seemed to slow down. Masahiko was insatiable. We were spending more and more time together, but as i was about to discover, it wasn't enough.

For those of you who have had the experience, the signs are unmistakable. But the time, it was all new to me. As spring warmed into summer, I found myself...well...scratching areas of my anatomy best left unscratched. It was a minor itch at first, but it soon became maddening. It wasn't until after a shower, when I saw one of the tiny little bastards in my hand, that I knew what was happening. I immediately flashed back to our second date. I should never have ordered the crabs.

Judging from the fact that we had been sleeping together for three and a half months, and that I was not seeing anyone else, it was pretty clear that Masahiko's sexual appetites were not satisfied with just little old me. I confronted him without any teary-eyed drama. Yes, he had gotten the crabs. He had been too embarrassed to mention it. But he had only had sex with someone else "once" since we started seriously dating, yada yada yada.

The last time I saw Masahiko (the only character in this blog whose name has not been changed; give someone crabs, expect your name to get used) I showed up at his place with my newly shaved genital region to collect my things. It took a week or so, but I was finally able to wash that man right out of my hair.

Not to mention my bedding.

GOODBYE

I started this blog a month after Kenji left for New York. I guess it was my way to say "goodbye" to him.

It doesn't matter what I want

It doesn't matter what I need

It doesn't matter if I cry

Don't matter if I bleed

You've been on a road

Don't know where it goes

Or where it leads...

When he accepted the job, it left him with only six weeks to relocate to New York. We fought a couple of times in those early days as I tried to come to terms with what was suddenly happening. It ended when he said to me, "You can break up with me if you want." Because at that moment I understood what he was telling me. No matter what I did--even if I threatened to break up with him--he was going to New York anyway. New York was more important to him than me.

It doesn't matter what I want

It doesn't matter what I need

If you've made up your mind to go

I won't beg you to stay

You've been in a cage

Throw you to the wind

You fly away...

For the next few weeks, we did not fight, but we moved around each other like ghosts, trying to make as little noise as possible. For my part, it didn't register what was happening. Suddenly, for no reason at all, Kenji was leaving me. No one had cheated. No one had lied. There were no money problems. It was just all coming apart. Just like that.

I had changed my life for this boy, "The Boy." Meeting him had changed me. I had found someone I really thought I could spend the rest of my life with, and I had always thought he felt the same way. But I was wrong, and there was precious little I could do about it. It didn't matter to him what I wanted...he was going. So I decided to let him go with my dignity intact.

I watched the first couple of weeks as he struggled to find a place to live in New York. He searched several websites, but could find nothing in his price range. Kenji would never, of course, have asked my help, despite the fact I knew New York well. He knew it would have been too cruel. But at the time, I was on summer vacation, and had all day every day to myself while he went off to work. I decided to be a gentlemen about it. I wrote an ad in his name on Craig's List, looking for apartments. Within a day or two I had dozens of responses. I spent most of my summer vacation corresponding with these people on his behalf, until I found what I thought was the best apartment for him.

My friends all thought I was an idiot. "You are HELPING him leave you???" Maybe I was. But other than throwing a tantrum, I didn't know what else to do.

He cried the night before he left. I heard him sobbing in the bedroom. "I am so selfish," he wept. "I am leaving you alone."

I suppose I could have said "Yes, you are. You told me you loved me, and that you wanted to live with me. Then you changed your mind. You are going and I don't know if we will ever be together again. I don't know if I can ever trust you again."

Instead, I hugged him. "Shhh. Don't worry. Get some sleep. Everything will be fine."

That morning, his parents came to take him to the airport. It was nearly a two hour drive from our place, and I decided not to go with them to see him off. How could I? How could I ride back in the car with all of them after Kenji had just left me? What could I possibly say as I spent all that time trying to keep up a brave face? I wasn't that Japanese yet.

Instead, I hugged him briefly at the door. Unable to say "goodbye," I said "see you later." Then he was gone.

For days I rambled around our apartment alone. It suddenly seemed so big, so empty. I had left my friends all behind to live with him, and this is where it left me. Alone. I had no idea what the future held for me.

It doesn't matter what I want

It doesn't matter what I need

It doesn't matter if I cry

Don't matter if I bleed

Feel the sting of tears

Falling on this face

You've loved for years

The Apartment, Part One

By the end of the first year, Kenji and I were looking for a home together. My relationship with him was very different from any relationship I had ever had before. Kenji was so open and warm, so completely comfortable with his feelings, that years of scar tissue and defense mechanisms were slowly being washed away. I was in love with him, and I was starting to believe that maybe I had been wrong all those years. Maybe living "happily ever after" really was possible.

But of course no life is a fairy tale. Not even a gay one.

Getting a new apartment in Japan is a daunting task. Being such a relentlessly modern country, it is easy to forget that just a hundred and fifty years ago Japan was still a feudal state...at least until you rent. Landlords in Japan still live like the medieval aristocracy (accept they can't behead their tenants anymore). In a land were, well, land is the most precious commodity, they can demand anything and basically get away with it. Despite being extremely small, Japanese apartments are famously expensive, but that's just the start. To move in, you are expected to pay the first two months up front, and on top of that a "contract fee." This is, essentially, a "gift" to the landlord equal to a month's rent. If you are lucky, this gets you into a two or three-year rental contract. When that expires, in order to renew you need to give the landlord another "contract fee." With all all "gifts" to the landlord, you might expect an appliance or two. But apartments in Japan come completely empty, no appliances, no light fixtures, nothing. Thus moving in and setting up house can cost a hefty sum of cash.

By the end of our first year I had the money, and we started looking for a place together. For a gay couple, this is the closest most of us can come to actual marriage. It was an exciting time for me, despite the hurdles. And there were a lot of those.

For starters, as I mentioned, young Japanese men and women rarely moved out of their parents' house before marriage, and the idea of housemates is largely unheard of. When we told the first few real estate agencies we were looking for a two bedroom apartment together, they were not shy about telling us most landlords would reject that. Young married couples were perceived as stable, two unmarried guys sharing rent was not. And since landlords could cherry-pick the tenants they wanted, they wouldn't be shy about giving us the thumbs down.

We kept each other's spirits up, going from agency to agency, sure the next one would help us out. Hopes were dashed again and again. I began to get irritated. I had a great, stable job, good references, and plenty of money. Being rejected because I didn't fit the narrow parameters of the Japanese norm was ticking me off. In addition, the apartments we were seeing were less than stellar. I began to suspect the agents were showing us the bottom of the barrel to give us the brush off.

We moved slowly out of the center of the city into the suburbs. There we found an agency that--though skeptical--seemed willing to play ball. So long as my employers were willing to be my guarantor, and Kenji's father (a city official) was willing to be his, they saw no problems.

The first place they showed us was "the one," and I knew the moment I saw it that Kenji and I would live there together. It was a large (by Japan's standards), two bedroom apartment (two because he wanted to keep up the pretense to his family we were "just friends"). It had a decent kitchen, a great balcony, and plenty of space. This was going to be where Kenji and I really started our life together, and the first real home I had made in Japan.

Shopping for the apartment was a blast. Picking out the furniture, the lights, the drapes, really made us feel like a couple. And being able to see him every day, to have him in the center of my life, was the best feeling I had had in more years than I could remember. He was mine and I was his. We were for each other.

And this is how it was for three years. We had great Christmases together, with me buying a full-sized tree. We had our friends and his family over for dinners. Having a passion for making cocktails, I bought a large bar and was always having people over for drinks. Kenji's friends, as well as his older brother and wife, were frequent guests, and we would all laugh and drink late into the night. Looking back, those were the happiest three years of my life.

Until, suddenly, it all came to an end.

Meeting the Folks

Let's do the Time Warp Again...

About four months into the relationship, Kenji stunned me by asking me to do something so deviant, so unheard of, that at first I thought I must have heard him incorrectly. I made him repeat the question.

“Do you want to meet my family?”

Like most young Japanese men and women, Kenji lived at home. This was perfectly normal in Japan, a nation roughly the size of California, but with fully one-half of the entire US population crammed into it. Land was like gold, and rents tended to be far beyond the reach of younger, unsalaried workers. While large companies often ran dormitories for their unmarried employees, those who worked part-time jobs, or in the service industry, usually remained at home. Kenji, who was just finishing university, had a part-time job in an electronics shop, occupied the same bedroom he had grown up in.

I’d been to his house once. Usually he came to my place, but there had been a time when his parents were away for the weekend and I spent the night with him in his room. There was something vaguely kinky about the whole thing, making love in what was obviously a child’s bed, with posters and plastic models looking down from overhead. It reminded me of San Francisco, when I dated a Vietnamese guy who was a student at UC Berkeley. 27 at the time, I found myself staying over in his dorm room, having flashbacks to my own college life. That experience had been completed by the inevitable roommate-walking-in-on-us-during-sex shtick that was a required part of living in a dorm. The same evening, some drunk students had a 3 A.M. fire extinguisher fight outside the door, reminding me of all the reasons why I didn’t miss being in a dormitory. I was getting way too old for that crap.

We were at my place when Kenji extended the invitation, and having made him repeat the question, it still was sinking in. I had dated several Japanese guys, and knew several more. None of them introduced boyfriends to parents. Hell, Shouhei wouldn’t even introduce me to any of his friends, friends of his friends, or any other living being. Being gay in Japan, I had started to get used to the idea of being my significant other’s dark secret, the thing that if it leaked out would cause him only embarrassment. But as I was starting to learn with Kenji, none of the rules ever applied to him. Whether he was too naïve, or some sort of social maverick destined to liberate Japan’s gay community from the shadows, I couldn’t be sure. Regardless, my curiosity was piqued.

“Introduce me as what?” I asked.

“Well, my friend.” He replied. “They already know I come over here a lot. It would be strange if I didn’t introduce you.”

I could see some logic in this. Maybe Kenji wasn’t a rebel after all, maybe he would simply be hiding me in plain sight. Why not? He had lived overseas in Canada and the UK. He had had foreign friends before. Maybe his parents were used to him bringing stray gaijin back the house. Reluctantly, I agreed.

I was sure that Kenji’s parents were perfectly nice people; after all, he was a pretty decent guy. But I also knew how this sort of thing went down in Japan. Nothing in the Land of the Rising Sun ever just was, nothing ever just happened. No, there would have to be ritual, and ceremony, and etiquette. A production would have to be made. But this was Kenji, and he was starting to become important to me. Sacrifices would have to be made.

Time travel is a fact of life in Japan. For someone with family back in the States, you live a day in the future ahead of them. Flying back to New York, I once boarded a plane at 4:00 P.M. and after a twelve-hour flight, disembarked at 3:55 P.M. on the same day. Surely this proved Einstein was right? But aside from the weirdness of speaking to people back home on the phone while you were eating breakfast and they were getting ready for bed, there were other temporal anomalies as well. Japanese young people, by and large, were somehow still living in the 80s. Big hair, thin ties, shiny suits, androgyny…it was all still in play. And the music…well, let’s not go there. By contrast, the generation before them was living in the 1950s. Women wore aprons, and were professional stay-at-home housewives. Men wore suits and hats, went out the door in the morning, and expected a meal on the table when they got home. Japanese home life was thus a kind of Asian Father Knows Best, a time warp that had to be experienced to be believed.

I was not disappointed by Kenji’s parents. They met me at the entrance to their home, his mother wearing the apron. She looked exactly like a shorter version of him with a wig. His father really did look like one of those Fifties TV dads, with the short, slicked back hair, a white, short-sleeved dress shirt, and a cocktail in his hand. They bowed. I bowed. We all did some more head-bobbing as introductions were made. Then they welcomed me into their home.

The older brother was there as well, with his fiancée. Introductions were made again before we entered the living room. True to form, Kenji’s mother had prepared dozens of little dishes, a bewildering variety of food. I was giving the place of honor at the table, and soon his father was filling my glass with beer.

We stuck to our story. Kenji and I had met because he needed help on his Mark Twain paper, and after that we became friends. Everyone seemed to find this plausible, but even if they didn’t, you could be sure they would show no signs of their suspicions. We drank, we ate, I answered questions about my life back home and the inevitable series of “can you eat sushi/use chopsticks” inquiries that all foreigners in Japan receive. At the end of the evening they insisted not on dropping me off at the train station, but driving me all the way home. I was cautious, but I found them all to be genuinely likeable people. His father and I in particular talked late into the evening over glasses of shouchu, a kind of Japanese gin. His mother, however, was clearly no fool. I had the sense all evening that she knew the score. Maybe mothers just make me paranoid.

Having passed through the encounter unscathed, I became increasingly wary as Kenji invited me to more and more family functions. A barbecue seemed innocuous, but then I was invited to his mother’s birthday party. After that, it was Japanese New Year (roughly the equivalent of Christmas). I was becoming part of all the family functions, treated the same way as the older brother’s fiancée. But when I questioned Kenji on this, he assured me that they all thought we were “just friends.”

Nevertheless, I still thought it was rocking the boat a bit too much when Kenji left his brother’s wedding early to come see me. The wedding had been held, coincidentally, in the same seaside town where I was living, so he took the opportunity to come pay me a visit. “Don’t you think this is all a bit too much? Aren’t we making everyone suspicious?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kenji said to me. “You don’t understand Japanese families. Maybe my family knows. Maybe not. But they will never say anything. We won’t talk about it. Ever.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Somehow, having a White Elephant in the room seemed worse to me than if I had never met them at all. Even more troubling, I was really begin to care about these people, and as months became years I started feeling guilty every time I went over there. I felt like I was lying to their faces each and every time they invited me to dinner, and I hated it.

Kenji was wrong, of course. Eventually they would talk about it, but that day had not arrived yet. Until then we lived like those lines in the old Peter Murphy song, Cascade; “We have no image, we’re just called ‘the good friends.’”

It was like being gay back in the 1950s rather than the 21^st century.

The Boy, Part Two

Seeing the world through Kenji's eyes suddenly made me realize how far I'd fallen from grace.

Once we crossed that first barrier together--getting him through his very first sexual encounter with a man--Kenji threw himself into the relationship totally and completely. We had had sex, and in his mind that meant A) he could trust me utterly and completely, B) we were officially a couple, and C) we would be in love forever. It never crossed his mind that I might have lied to get him into bed, that I might have two or three other guys on the side, that I was an emotional basket case waiting to blow up, or that I'd get bored in five minutes. All the things that run through the average gay man's mind when dropping his pants with a new partner were not running through his.

It was early in the relationship, and having discovered sex Kenji couldn't seem to get enough of it, coming over to my place three or four times a week. Always enthusiastic, I was surprised how fast he caught on, his initial clumsiness rapidly evolving into a real sense of what I needed and wanted in bed. After one particularly fantastic lovemaking session, we lay in the semi-dark of my room. He was on his back, I was propped up on my elbow beside him, my other hand resting on his naked (and incredibly flat) belly. He looked up at me and his eyes said it all; he was head over heels in love. He hadn't learned yet not to trust, to always be on guard. His heart was on his sleeve. "Later, maybe a year from now, do you want to move in with me? We could get an apartment together."

Suddenly, I was not a thirty-something gay man. Suddenly I was starting all over again, a young man on the verge of my new sexuality, which stretched before me sunny and blue all the way to the horizon. That was the way he saw this world. He didn't know that sex was the cheapest commodity on the market, that it could be bartered and sold half price and in bulk. He didn't know that men could swear they loved you and see an endless string of other guys on the side. There had been no Shouhei in his life. No one had lied to him, cheated him. He was the boy I once was, thinking that the way the world worked was that you found your soulmate, fell in love, and lived happily ever after.

I realized that night, then and there, that I had stopped believing in love. When the hell had that happened? Had it been when the first person I ever loved walked out, telling me he'd found someone else? Had it been during the endless string of guys I dated after, trying to fill the gaping hole he had left when he went away? I remember that after he dumped me, I dated with the intention of finding new love. One by one, the pattern was the same. We would meet, connect, have sex, and then it all went wrong. He already had a boyfriend. He had a wife. He was just after sex. He disappeared without ever explaining what went wrong. Somewhere in the process, I gave up on the love and settled for just the sex. And once that happened, sex had somehow become boring. Then it had to be threesomes, or sex in the bathroom of a club, or an alleyway...anything to shoot fresh adrenaline into something that had become banal and stale. Like the man behind the curtain, all the magic had been stripped away.

But in Kenji's eyes, I saw it unclouded. That real love. That innocent expectation. That connection. Uninjured, he was content to stand naked before me with his heart in his hands, while I--layered in enough character armor to deflect a grenade--watched. It was at that moment that I understood this was my chance. It was Lucifer's chance to crawl up out of hell and hang with the angels again. A chance to be in a relationship that was not a lie.

I removed the armor, and surrendered. "Of course, I would love to live with you."

Teary eyed, he hugged me, and I realized I had meant what I had just said.

THE 7-11 BOY

I like 'em young.

Having said that, I do have my limits. College freshmen are on the menu. High school boys--notwithstanding my fetish for Japanese school uniforms--are not. Granted they are roughly the same age, but a line has to be drawn somewhere. That is where I draw mine.

But lines get crossed now and again. Especially when a going away party is involved. And lots of liquor. Here, gentle reader, is the whole sordid tale.

When I first arrived in Japan, I had the misfortune of working for a large English language company. Having taught junior high school kids back in the States, the job attracted me because I would have students of all ages. I would work an eight hour shift, teaching seven fifty-minute lessons. Students came in groups of three or less. I had rich housewives from Kamakura, bored salary men, and high school kids. The variety was great, and my co-workers came from a host of other English speaking countries. It was a fun place to work.

Except of course the bloody company sucked. By and large it was "teaching" in name only. We were essentially instructed to humor the students and make them have a good time to come back for more. In addition, we were pressured to "recommend" all sorts of helpful language books, also produced by the company. It didn't take long before I left, going back to teaching in public school.

One of the upsides was that the company had an apartment waiting for me when I arrived in Japan, an apartment I shared with two fellow Americans. Great guys, we'll call them "Rob" and "Ken." Both were straight, and one had a loud Japanese girlfriend ("Mimi") who felt it was important to alert the neighborhood every time she had an orgasm. As both were equally cool about my sexuality, even to the point of not minding if I brought company home, I was happy to put up with even Screaming Mimi.

Across the street from our building was a Sebonerebon (7-11 for the Japanese challenged). Being a household of three unmarried males, we picked up a lot of junk food and beer there. I, however, developed ulterior motives for hanging out in the convenience store the first time I walked in the door.

He was about 20, with long hair and doe eyes, the kind of guy who can make even the ugliest service industry uniform look hot. Like most young Japanese guys, he was just too pretty, his hair always perfectly coifed, his eyebrows neatly trimmed. And his skin was, simply, amazing. Perhaps it was my imagination, but he always seemed to flash me the biggest, most inviting smile every time I walked in the door. But I don't think he spoke even a word of English, and frankly the moment never seemed right to test the waters. I let him get away.

Meanwhile, Ken, who was half-Japanese, promptly introduced me to his favorite neighborhood bar. The owner was a man who could only be described as a Japanese hippy, and in his late 50s looked vaguely like a Native American with the long single braid he wore at the back of his head. The bar was obsessed with Route 66, and had signs and pictures from that historic American patch of road. But the crowd was always fun, and like Ken, I became a regular there.

When one of our co-workers decided to leave the company, Ken and I planned to throw him a going away bash at our local bar. We didn't bother to rent the place out of anything because we were expecting a smaller crowd. The evening in question began with several pitchers of beer, reminiscences about the job, and bitch-sessions about the company. After a few hours, our gang was getting whittled down, leaving a hardcore four of five of us who were now sucking down whiskey. I think I had even abandoned the ice by that stage.

So through the haze of alcohol, who should I spy walking in but the 7-11 boy, and with him a 30-something Japanese gentleman, also good looking in a kind of salaryman way. When the boy saw me, he immediately seized his companion's arm and dragged him over to our table, sitting down across from me. Ken was sitting just to my right.

Through hand signals and a smattering of English on their side and Japanese on mine, it became clear to me that 7-11 Boy and Salaryman were a couple. Though we chatted on for some time, my memories of the event were dimmed by the swirling caldron of beer and Jack Daniels brewing in my gut. At some point, from my perspective, the lights went out.

I awoke to sunlight burning my face. In true Dracula fashion, I flinched out of the light. As my senses began to return, I realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore, and that wasn't Toto lying down next to me.

It was the 7-11 boy, naked, more magnificent than I had ever imagined him to be. Suddenly it dawned on me that I had gone home with him, had sex, and had not even the slightest memory of the event! I didn't have much time to process this information before something stirred on the opposite side of my body. Salaryman, also naked, was waking up, and smiled when he saw me.

Screw the Lost Weekend, this was the lost threesome. How did I get there? How did this happen? Almost immediately the alarm went off, and the two leaped out of bed. Salaryman rushed into the shower first, put on a suit in record time, and popped out the door. This left me alone with 7-11 Boy.

Trying to play it cool, I asked if we could see each other again. he readily agreed. We exchanged numbers, as I noticed several condoms strewn across the floor. At least we seemed to have been safe. I started to ask him about the night before when he told me he had to get ready for school. Confused and badly hung over, I thought he meant university.

As he tugged on his clothes, he opened the closet and out came the Japanese boy's high school uniform. I must have audibly gulped. I had been sure the kid was at least 20, but in Japan it was so hard to tell. But wait a minute? hadn't he walked into a bar and been served last night? Then again, I was in no condition to remember what he was drinking.

As he buttoned up the uniform, I nervously asked how old he was. I didn't understand the answer so he indicated with his fingers.

16.

Stunned, I asked where we were. It was his mother's house, but she usually stayed the night with her boyfriend. Then I asked who the Salaryman had been. I didn't understand the answer until he showed me one of his high school year books.

Salaryman was 7-11 Boy's PE teacher.

Less than four months in Japan and I had already landed myself in a threesome between a high school kid and his phys ed teacher. This country was going to be the death of me.

Post Script: It goes without saying that I never set foot in the 7-11 again for fear of actually running into him. I actually had to send housemates to buy supplies for me. Fortunately, I left the company and the apartment not too long after these events.

GAY JAPAN, Part Two

Being me, one of the first things I did upon arriving in Japan was seek out the gay scene. As Janet Jackson so eloquently phrased it, “I’m not the kind of girl who likes to be alone,” so after two nights in Nihon it was time for a hook-up.

My Lonely Planet Tokyo guide told me that the main gay scene in the country was there in a district called Shinjuku Nichome (just “Nichome” to both its victims and its regulars, the two of which are often confused and frequently the same thing). The guide didn’t say a lot, but it named a few bars that were foreigner-friendly (an issue I’ll get to momentarily). Living outside the city, I decided to take the fifty-minute train ride in and scope things out for myself. I had a pocketful of money, so even if I couldn’t score I could check myself into a hotel.

As befits any epic quest, finding Nichome was like seeking the bloody Grail. I had maps, but in the maze-like streets of Tokyo getting spun around is easy, particularly if you can’t read Japanese. I circled the area several times before finally discovering this hidden Shangri-la, only to be severely disappointed.

Except for late Friday and Saturday nights, when the bars fill to capacity and start leaking out on the streets, Nichome looks like any other part of town. Used to the gay scenes in Manhattan, San Francisco, and Bangkok, I was expecting dance clubs brimming with topless Japanese hotties. What I found were tiny, hidden closets where subdued regulars huddled around bars too shy to make eye contact. I exaggerate…but just a little.

Like most aspects of Japanese life, the gay scene is separated, labeled, and neatly arranged into several tiny Type-A divisions. While hitting a bar in, say, the Castro met rubbing shoulders (and occasionally other body parts) with straight men and women, gays of all strips, and equally diverse specimens of lesbian. The bars in Nichome each seemed to cater to one specific variety of clone. Most didn’t open their doors to women, and most excluded foreigners. Each focused on one particular -sen.

A –sen is a type you are attracted to. For example, a gaisen is a Japanese individual attracted to foreigners, while a gebusen likes chubby boys. If you didn’t fit the profile, stepping into a particular bar could be a chilling and chilly experience.

“Arty Farty” was and is the major exception. Though it has moved locations since I first landed, it has always had a dance floor and let all types of people in. Granted, the entire freakin’ bar could fit on just the dance floor of a club elsewhere, but that’s life in Tokyo. The guidebook had mentioned the place as gaijin-friendly, so it was the first place I sought out.

What I lack in ripped abs and bulging biceps I more than make up for on the dance floor, and hoped to use that to my tactical advantage. Naturally, when I arrived no one was dancing. Even the gay bar I used to visit in Tucson saw more booties shaking than this one. This left me with little option but sit at the bar. This was, I would discover, standard operating procedure in the gay Japanese world.

I was soon joined by a young, extremely cute Japanese boy we will call “Hiroki.” In the dim lighting he looked twenty going on sixteen, but since the bars had age limits I figured he had to be older than he looked. I had just come from work, and was still wearing my suit. “Suits” were, apparently, Hiroki’s –sen.

When it became clear that he was going to just sit there until I made the first move, I gambled he spoke English and struck up a conversation. He did, and quite well. I told him I was new in Japan and that this was my first time in Nichome (he did not, however, grasp the meaning of the phrase “fresh meat”). He was from Kyushu, which I new was one of Japan’s major islands, and was attending university in Tokyo to become (he said) a doctor.

We flirted for about an hour. Strike that; I flirted and he sat there with a blank expression on his very attractive face. He offered to show me another bar I might like, and since I was making no noticeable progress with him in the confines of Arty Farty, I figured a change of scene might be advantageous.

He took me to GB, which, though I have never discovered what it stands for probably is just “Gay Bar.” It is the epicenter of the gaisen scene. Located in a single basement room, GB consists of (in no particular order) A) a single square bar in the center of the room, B) stools around said bar, C) a narrow shelf running around three other walls with stools for sitting, D) a tiny little men’s room, E) a horde of middle aged white guys with barely legal Japanese companions, and F) a few mounted television sets constantly recycling all the videos from Kylie Minogue’s Fever. No dancing, just drinking and trying to pick up the guy next to you.

Hiroki and I sat up against the wall, and he told me after the first round of drinks that he would leave soon for another bar, while I could stay and find a boy I liked. Taken aback (having had more than my share of Asian boys in San Francisco, did my charms suddenly not work in Japan?), I told him I had already met a boy I liked…him. With the same blank expression, not missing a beat, he set his glass down and said “let’s go to a hotel.” Success had never felt so anti-climactic. No worries. The climaxes would come later.

I had read about Japan’s “love hotels,” a topic that deserves its very own blog post and will get one at a later date. Suffice it to say now, they are cheap hotels that cater to couples having anonymous sex. Hiroki would have none of that, and wanted a “real” hotel. He walked me several blocks to one that he knew.

The room was a bit more than ten thousand yen, roughly a hundred dollars. For this you got a microscopic room, big enough for a double bed and not much else. For the entire evening Hiroki had been as lifeless and bland as a department store mannequin. On the walk over we had barely spoken, and I was beginning to think the only thing he had going for him was that he was hot. The moment I shut the door, however, Hiroki was all over me, moaning, rubbing, struggling to get my clothes off. It was a bit like flipping a robot’s “on” switch.

We had sex in the shower first. To save space, the toilet was also conveniently located in the shower, which at least gave us a place to sit. After, he told me he had to go. “But we just got here. Couldn’t you stay a little longer?” Instantly he was ready for action again and dragging me to bed.

This was to set the night’s odd pattern. We would have sex. He would say he had to go. I asked if he could stay until morning. We would have sex. Wash-rinse-repeat. He didn’t want to talk, he didn’t want to cuddle, he didn’t want to answer any questions. He just wanted to have intercourse in every way humanly possible, immediately switching to “bland” while we were catching our breath in-between.

The next morning he walked me back to the train station, again like a robot. We might have been total strangers rather than two people who just shared a night of amazing sex. At the station, he bowed, and told me he'd like to see me again, so we exchanged numbers, honestly for my part. But he never called me, and the number he gave me was false. On all subsequent forays into Nichome, I never saw Hiroki again.

This was my first intimate encounter with the Japanese "public" face and the "private" one.

GAY JAPAN, Part One

One might expect the Land of the Rising Sun to be gay friendly. After all, during the Edo Period the samurai, like the Spartans before them, practiced sodomy. Women were fine for continuing the family line, but real companionship and pleasure was often found in fellow men; usual younger boys. An older samurai would take a younger squire under his wing, teaching him not only the arts of war, but love as well. We see this, for example, in the works of Saikaku Ihara (1642-1693). It's even said that the founder of Noh Theater was the lover of the current Shogun (military ruler of Japan) at that time.

But that was, of course, the aristocracy. Japan, in its rush to modernize, embraced middle class Western ways in the Meiji Era (the late Victorian and Edwardian periods). After centuries of feudalism, they tossed the baby out with the bathwater, adopting not only Western technologies, but also fashion, cuisine, and sexual ethics. Prior to this period, meat was not on the menu (for Buddhist reasons). After, eating meat was fine because that is what they did in the West. The same went for the way homosexuality was viewed.

True, by Western standards, Japan is still very, VERY gay. Boys and men often appear far more feminine than their Western counterparts, in part because of DNA (they tend to be slighter, less hairy, more delicate looking), but also because of very different attitudes towards masculinity. You will find Japanese boys plucking each other's eyebrows, sleeping together naked, hugging, touching, and horse-playing in ways that would make most Westerners scream "gay! gay!" A recent visit by my (very) straight brother confirmed this. The fashion sense, the hair, all sets off any Westerner's gaydar...despite the fact that the boys are straight.

In addition, there is no religious nonsense clouding the issue here. Neither Shinto nor Buddhism shares the obsession with the bedroom that Christianity has, and despite centuries of missionary activity, less than 1% of the Japanese population goes to any Christian Church. As a result, the Japanese do not have the absurd sexual hang-ups Western civilization has.

But this doesn't mean being gay is fine. It is, in a sense. Gay people are treated fairly well here. And though I don't have any statistics handy, it strikes me from eight years of living here that far more Japanese boys are inclined to engage in mutual kissing, stroking, and masturbation than Western teens, even when totally straight. Being a gay teen or twenty-something is fine. After that, it becomes problematic.

You see, Japan also has a strong Confucian strain from China. That means getting married and having children is a duty to your ancestors. Of course, most Japanese these days don't phrase it that way...they only know that by 30 they should really start thinking about marriage and rugrats. You have no idea how many gay Japanese guys I have known, who despite their parents looking the other way during their twenties, suddenly expect them to marry in their thirties. And a shockingly large number do (and cheat with guys on the side). This makes homosexual experience a prerogative of the young. Gay sex is fine, so long as you get married and make babies.

to be continued...

Being Two-Faced

A few nights before leaving San Francisco for my bright and shiny new life in Japan, a gay Taiwanese friend invited me to dinner. It was years ago and I can't remember the name of the place, only that it was on a hill near Coit Tower and it sold only varieties of quiche. But I digress.

Solemnly, after the plates were cleared away, he gazed at me from the other side of the table. "When you get to Japan," he told me, "you have to be careful. Don't believe anything anyone says. The Japanese have two hearts and two faces."

I was shocked, indignant the way only a young, liberal, former Teach For America volunteer could be. I knew of course that there was still some bad blood between Japan and its neighbors, but "Ning" (all names in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent) was a member of the young Asian demographic awash in and enamored with Japanese fashion, manga, and video games. Surely Ning, who gobbled up Japanese magazines to copy the latest hairstyles of the Johnny's Entertainment idols wasn't holding on to the memory of war atrocities? It smacked to me of simple bigotry, and I believe I said as much to him. Ning just shrugged. "Maybe. But sometime you are going to remember what I said."

Flash forward three and a half years. Shouhei and I had been together for two years, and things were going well. We'd been to China and Thailand together, and he had come back to meet my family in the States. We weren't quite living together, but I had a key to his apartment and spent half my nights there. The sex was happening less often than it had, but when it did occur it was fantastic. He'd said he loved me and I believed it.

If there was a problem, it was that he worked to hard, but this was hardly unusual in a country that coined a word, karoshi, for death by overwork. He left early and came home late, often very late if etiquette required he go out with his co-workers. That he often did not answer his phone annoyed me, but this was Japan, not the States. The rules were different. Almost none of the Japanese guys I had met were openly gay, and they liked to keep their private lives hidden. For Shouhei, that meant keeping me hidden. I had long before put aside jealous suspicions in an attempt to live as I should "when in Rome," to understand him on his own terms.

It was one of those evenings. He was out. I was waiting. I decided to check my emails as I often do, when suddenly a message popped up from another gaijin, written in English. It was only two words.

"Hello Sexy!"

I ignored it. Shouhei had forgotten to sign off and this guy--possibly his ex, whom he was still friendly with--was messaging him. After a few minutes, another one appeared.

"What's wrong? Shy?"

I clicked on the box, but of course the software on Shouhei's computer was in Japanese, a language I was struggling with back then. I wanted to log him off.

"You weren't so shy the other night."

Still ignoring, I made a guess and clicked the cursor on a box I assumed would shut it off. Instead, his email opened. Not his regular email. A separate email, all in English. I read.

There were dozens of emails from dozens of guys, going back the entire two years we had been together. I didn't read all, but I read enough of them. Shouhei had been meeting guys behind my back the entire time, and I hadn't a clue. I remembered suddenly making love the night before, with him looking up at me with soft, sincere eyes, telling me how much I meant to him. It was the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. When-You-Get-Home-I-Am-Gonna-Kick-Your-@$$.

Ning could have phrased his assessment of the Japanese character a bit more diplomatically (which would have been the way the Japanese would have done it), but he was not essentially wrong. They call it here tatamae and hon'ne, saying or doing whatever is necessary to maintain an atmosphere of harmony and peace and the "truth." Most cultures do it to an extent, but like sword-smithing the Japanese have perfected it. It is even part of the language. As a trilingual French friend of mine recently put it, "French is the perfect language for expressing emotion. English is the best language for swearing. And Japanese is the supreme language for dodging questions, being evasive, and hiding what you really mean."

The astute reader may wonder what the photo above had to do with the actual content of this post. I had to get your attention somehow.