The Cook, the Swede, and an Extra Lover

I have never had much luck with threesomes.

My first was pre-Japan, back in San Francisco. Sean and Mark were good friends of mine, a clean-cut and stable couple with a house in the suburbs and an adopted four-year-old daughter. John, twelve years my senior, was a lawyer on the verge of being made partner, while Sean (just a year older than me) was a personal trainer and nutritionist. With their matching, no-nonsense haircuts I used to joke that they looked like a pair of Mormons. Neither of them had anything to do with the gay "scene," and were always pushing me to find a nice boy to settle down with. Of course, this never stopped them from inviting me over to sing for my supper with lurid tales of sexual misadventure.

Anna, their daughter, had retired upstairs to bed one evening as we sat up talking over a few glasses of wine. As usual, they pressed for details of my recent encounters, and I told them about an art student I had been seeing. After I finished, we sat sipping our drinks for a few moments. That was when Sean cleared his throat.

"Have you ever had a threesome?"

I raised an eyebrow. "No, actually never." I confessed.

The two looked at each other in a way that completely telegraphed what was coming next. "We've been wondering," Mark chimed in, "if maybe you would like to try one with us."

For a moment, I thought they were putting me on. The idea of either Sean or Mark propositioning me was roughly as inconceivable as Mother Theresa pole-dancing topless in a strip club. But they were, in fact, serious.

"Our tenth anniversary is coming up," Sean said, "and you know neither of us have ever done anything like that before. We were thinking it might be fun to try, just once. And when we thought about who to ask, both of us immediately thought of you."

I wasn't sure how to take that. Part of me--the kid who was always the last guy picked for the dodge ball team way back in my junior high P.E. class--was touched. The other part wondered if they just thought I was the most likely of their friends to agree.

"I mean, we both think you are hot," Mark added, as if reading my mind. "And we know you and trust you."

"Nice save," I replied, and I promised to think about it.

In the end, of course, I said "yes." It was something I had not tried yet, and on some bizarre level that bothered me. I prided myself on being adventurous, and to say "no" would have been to have missed a golden opportunity. So I figured I had nothing to lose. After all, Mark and Sean were safe, known qualities, and responsible people, the safest people I could possibly experiment with. In fact, before we "did it," we went out together to get HIV tests (at their insistence). Then the date was set. Anna would be away for the night and the house would be theirs.

At the time, I was renting a beautiful old Victorian in Oakland, California with two housemates; Maggie--a beautiful half-Chinese girl--and Denise, a firebrand from Kentucky. We had no secrets. I remembered changing my clothes several times as I got ready for the event, and Maggie asking me, "hot date?" Without missing a beat I looked at her. "Threesome." "You don't live a life like the rest of us, do you," Maggie laughed.

But it didn't matter, in the end, what I wore. By the time I showed up at their house, both Sean and Mark had dipped into the liquor cabinet to "loosen" up. Bear in mind these were not drinkers. Clearly they were nervous. And thus the night began.

My recollection of the evening is chiefly this; in porn, it always looks so easy. But as events began to unfold, I found myself wishing we had a lighting crew and a director. It was like playing "Twister" without the little spinner thing. No one had any idea to put what where. I kept wanting to look off stage to find where my mark was. Between all the jockeying for positions and confusion over what our roles were, the evening degenerated rapidly into laughter and affectionate cuddling. Hot, it was not.

Then came the Cook and the Swede.

It was several years later. I was in Tokyo in Nichome, and I met a cute Japanese chef. We started dancing, and things got hot and heavy. Later in the evening, after a number of Singapore Slings, he had yanked up his shirt so I could see and feel his washboard abs. "I have a boyfriend," he suddenly blurted. This was the source of some confusion because his hand was on an area of my jeans one did not normally associate with boyfriendom. "He's hot and he's Swedish, you know, like ABBA?"

"And meatballs," I replied.

The Cook laughed. "He keeps begging me for a threesome. How about it?"

The Swede it turned out was a banker, and a well-off one at that. The Cook lived with him in a fashionable Tokyo address. The Cook had called ahead to announce he was bringing me back, and when I arrived I found a fairly attractive European hunk waiting. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed, his square-jawed head demanded a beard, horned helmet, and mead cup. But he was more than a little drunk when we arrived, and as we talked, he continued to drink.

As events moved to the bedroom, it was clear the Swede was already entering that drunken zone where the demand for passing out supersedes the desire for sex. There was a bit of promising foreplay all around before he finally collapsed.

"Thank God," the Cook replied. "He is always too drunk to fuck. God, I am starved. Let's have sex. He won't wake up."

It occurred to me that this wasn't so much a threesome as the Cook cheating on his boyfriend literally right beside him. But the idea of screwing a guy a few inches away from the passed out form of the guy he was living with was a low even I could not sink to. I told the Cook as much as I excused myself to find my discarded underwear.

"Oh fine!" Said the Cook. "Two guys who can't get it up!"

Realizing I was in the midst of something larger than me, I excused myself to go. Despite my escape, the Cook continued to call for several weeks, begging to meet up somewhere when his boyfriend was not around.

Needless to say, I have yet to try another threesome.

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.