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.

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.

The Starbuck's Boy

Like anyone would be

I am flattered by your

Fascination with me...

Once upon a time, in the magical kingdom of Nippon, a school teacher met a boy. It was the teacher's first year at the school, and the boy's last. The boy was a third year, as the Japanese school system divides junior high and senior high into three years each. That made the boy fifteen years old.

And he was not a happy boy. A good English student (the subject the teacher in question taught), he was nonetheless the butt of all his peers' jokes in class. The teacher did not quite understand what it was that made him so vulnerable to attack, until he overheard the boy's homeroom teacher talking. This boy, who we will call "Takuma," had confessed to his classmate (and supposed best friend) that he thought he might be gay. The "best friend" immediately told everyone else, and left Takuma at the tender mercies of all the other boys.

Now, this story only works if you accept that the teacher had no ulterior motives. But being gay himself, he felt sympathy for the Takuma, with whom he had always had a good relationship with anyways. So one day after class, when Takuma lingered and suddenly burst into tears over the abuse, the teacher made a decision. He told the boy that he was, in fact, just like him. And he assured the boy that no matter how bad junior high was, someday he would outgrow it and find someone to love. Then he could look back on it all and laugh.

Things went well at first. Then, one day, Takuma came after class and gave the teacher a drawing he had done. It was the teacher's face, drawn from memory. The teacher accepted it, and then Takuma told him that he really liked the teacher, that the teacher was kind. He told the teacher he wanted his first boyfriend to be like him.

Like any hot blooded woman

I have simply wanted

An object to crave

The teacher made it clear to Takuma that he already had someone, and that Takuma was far too young. "Wait a few years, and you will find the guy you love."

Then the boy graduated, and the teacher did not see him for four more years.

It happened like this; Kenji had just left me three weeks before. I was devastated. Empty. I wandered around like a zombie with his heart torn out. Japan had never seemed more foreign to me that it did then, a hostile place of people who lied behind their smiles. I didn't want to even leave the house. But of course I did...I had a job, and now that Kenji had left me, I had to take care of everything on my own. I had to go out and deal with the world. I had to treat it like I always had. Thus it was that quite innocently I stopped in the Starbuck's one day, just after work.

I ordered a Grande size Cafe Mocha, and then waited for the barista to make it. He was a tall young man--taller than me--and very handsome. It took a few seconds for me to recognize him. Takuma had somehow gone from all arms and legs to dead sexy. Just in four years.

He recognized me as well, and we chatted while he made my coffee. Then I went off to my table.

Like any uncharted territory

I must seem

Greatly intriguing...

Takuma appeared before I had finished my coffee, having taken his break. He was a freshman in university now, and an English major. He wondered if we could meet sometime so I could help him with some college homework. Enough time had passed that I had forgotten my misgivings, and I had certainly tutored former students before. I arranged to meet him at my place--the place Kenji and I once shared--where I often taught students.

He arrived. I had made coffee and I helped him with his homework. As the night wore on, he seized his courage, and suddenly tried to kiss me. It was awkward for me and maybe more so for him.

"I never stopped thinking about you," he told me. "I would like you to be my first."

I don't think you unworthy

I need a moment

To deliberate

There was most certainly a time when a very hot 19-year-old would have been just my cup of tea. And God, the boy had become dead sexy. But I was twice his age. The boys kept getting younger and I got older. At best, they could feed my vanity. At worst--if I made the mistake of giving them my heart, the way I had with Kenji--it would mean only more pain. There was also the problem of Takuma being a former student.

Must be strangely exciting

To watch the stoic squirm

Must be somewhat heartening

To watch shepherd meet shepherd

So I told him "no." I told him I was still in love with Kenji. I told him I was too old. And I narrowly escaped with my dignity intact.

It was yet again more sign of the damage Kenji had done me. I was acting like an adult.

Lyrics by Alanis Morrisette, "Uninvited"

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

GROWING PAINS

As I mentioned before, the trouble with dating a younger guy is that you suddenly have to vicariously live through all those growing pains again.

Shortly after we moved in together, Kenji had to make the transition from university life to the workplace. Certainly, he had it better than I. Despite graduating near the top of my class, I was shoved out into a severely depressed job market, and the best I could do was mixing paint in the hardware department of Sears. I lived in a little $400 a month apartment in West Philadelphia, chock full of cockroaches and the occasional rat, but entirely devoid of air conditioning. Each day and night, I drove back and forth to work up the Schuylkill Expressway, a vicious stretch of road that was constantly bumper-to-bumper traffic. I lived off of instant noodles and Hamburger Helper. But that was long ago. Now with me at his side, Kenji was able to move straight from school into a fashionable apartment, complete with all the amenities. We bought beautiful furniture, dishes, drapes. There was never a cockroach to be seen. And since I finished work a little before him, I bought and cooked dinner every night, waiting for him when he got home. Whenever his 20-something friends came around, they always commented with envy that he was living in a "real" apartment.

This might have softened the blow a little, but Kenji still had to go out into the world. Japan being a fairly conservative nation, the first thing he had to do was cut and dye his hair. In college, it had gotten long, and he lightened it to brown with streaks of blonde. This was unacceptable in much of the Japanese workplace. So he had it trimmed short, and colored pitch black. Even his mother said it didn't look like him any more.

His reward for the image change was a job in an electronics store, selling mobile phones. Though he never complained about it, I think it must have been hard for him to watch me work. As a teacher, I had holidays off all the time, got home much earlier in the day, and earned double what he was making. But then again he hadn't been around to see me suck up to Sears customers in that awful red vest. I had come a long way, baby, and was far ahead of him in the game of life. And of course I was more than happy to share everything I could with him.

For a guy who had spent years learning a second language (English), working in a phone shop was completely unrewarding for him. But no matter how many times he tried to get something where he could use his English skills--such as working at an airport or in a hotel--he was shot down. Watching him go through it all reminded me of my own frustration back then, when the harsh realities of the world completely dashed my adolescent expectations.

Things began marginally better when he landed an office job working for a telecommunications company. He still didn't get to use English, but he was now in an office environment. This was a blessing and a curse. Now he had to wear a suit everyday, and I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the cute young guy I started dating just two years before. In the "gentle" hands of the Japanese workforce, it didn't take long to turn him into a drained, overworked, salaryman husk. There were times when I even tried to convince him to quit, to just be my "kept" house boy. But he wouldn't have any of it. He'd been brought up too well.

Another area where harsh reality set in was "me." Kenji had never been in a relationship before, let alone lived with someone. The romantic ideals he might have had must have quickly burst when he saw how bleary-eyed and miserable I could be before my morning coffee. But in this area, at least, I think he learned to accept. His affection for me never seemed to wane, and after our occasional arguments, we always made up passionately.

The one area of living with "me" that was more difficult was keeping our relationship hidden. True, we'd gotten a two-bedroom apartment, but the fact that we were practically joined at the hip must have rang some alarms with his family. They were, as Kenji had told me they would be, very polite about it. I was warmly included in family functions; in fact, when Kenji's nephew was born I was right there at the hospital with the rest of the clan, no questions asked. But this bothered me. I had made the decision to "come out" back in the States, and being forced to relive life in the closet grated on my nerves. I could live with the little things (like when one of his female friends drunkenly confessed she was madly in love with my "housemate" but couldn't figure out why he never noticed her), but when it came to his family I felt like I was lying all the time. They were always so kind to me, and I was being increasingly dishonest. Kenji knew I was unhappy with it, but never dared to break taboo.

But he had been wrong about one thing; the discussion he had thought he'd never have with his parents did eventually come around. Unfortunately, it also heralded the end of "us."

Having lived together three years, and been together just shy of four, Kenji finally got the opportunity he'd been looking for. The telecommunications company he was working for was opening an office in New York City, a place I had brought him to twice to meet my family. After endless attempts to get a job where he could use English, one was finally dangling in front of him.

There had been a time I think, when he was still in college, that Kenji genuinely believed all he wanted out of life was me. And I had been a damn fool for falling for it. Your 20s are meant to be a roller coaster, the wild twists and turns, the ups and downs of discovering who you are. Kenji was discovering, apparently, that what he needed was a chance to use his skills and a chance to prove to himself he could do it on his own. He needed that more than me.

The discussion started with his mother. He explained that he wanted to go work in New York for a couple of years. She asked him if he would get married when he returned to Japan. Perhaps he was feeling brave because he thought he might be departing, perhaps it was just the opportunity he was looking for. Either way, he told her marriage was not in the cards, and that he was more than just my "housemate." The irony of him finally telling his mom about us, as he was contemplating leaving me, was not lost on me.

And as for me? Well, that was growing pains of a new sort. Ten years ago I would have thrown a fit. I would have begged him to stay. But I knew from my own experience that there comes a time when you have to stand on your own two feet, when you had to go out and face the world alone. How could I--the guy who had dropped everything to try the challenge of a life in Japan--deny him the right to do the same in the opposite direction? Wanting more than anything to stop him, I instead found myself supporting him in any way I could.

To my horror, I realized somewhere along the line I'd stopped thinking about myself and instead was thinking about my partner.

I had grown up.

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.