As Handsome Does

Handsome Is As Handsome Does

After all that talk about maintaining my principles, I broke down and spent the night with the handsome businessman.

The who?

You remember: The very handsome, very married businessman who just renewed his contract so that he could take my class.

We met after Friday’s class and had a few drinks. I did feel a little guilty as he took a call from his wife (he didn’t leave the table), saying, in Japanese, “No, no” and “With a teacher from The Kaisha” and “It’s okay. No, it’s okay.” I felt a little guilty, but it wasn’t enough guilt to keep me from going with him later to--

But wait.

Before I tell that story, let me back it up a bit and start instead with another story. This one is about:

Rars

The phone rings and Chie answers. She speaks very briefly with the person on the other end and hangs up. I say, “Dare?” (Who?) and she shows me a message, Ben-san, it says, Rars called. It goes on in Japanese to say that Ben is to call him back please.

“Rars?” I say. (Replace the first R in that word with an L and you have the name of one of the trainers for The Kaisha.) She says, “Yes, Rars called for Ben-sensei.” I say, “Rars?” She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Rars,” she repeats. Then she says, in that beautiful way that balances disbelief with...something else: “He tried to speak Japanese to me.”

I laugh.

Okay. All of that was backstory. All of that was just to introduce you to Rars.

Let’s jump ahead to yesterday, to the seminar I attended in Nishi-Shinjuku, the one where we were had to learn how to sell the new materials that The Kaisha puts out twice a year for students to study on their own at home. Yesterday I got into my respectable business rig, prepped a lesson to teach at the seminar, and hopped the train into Shinjuku. Walking into the building, I ran into Mark, one of the trainers who happens to be my favorite trainer (he actually gets stuff done and doesn’t glad hand people much). We shook hands and he launched into a story about how one of his sons had been sleepwalking a few nights before.

I listened with the appropriately polite interest that one uses with such stories, made the appropriately polite comment at the end, then rode the elevator up to the sixteenth floor, to The Kaisha head offices. Two Japanese staff members greeted me and directed me to the meeting room.

I walked in, introduced myself to the two people who were already there, and found my seat. I happened to be at the last table, the table furthest from the door, and my back happened to face the door, so I didn’t see Rars come in. I did hear him speaking to the other people, so it wasn’t a surprise when he came over to where I was, said hello, and made the introductory small talk. Then he said, in that casual way that people affect when they want to try to be cool about having found your ‘blog: “So those were some interesting pictures you posted online.”

I nodded and said something like, “Oh, so you found it?”

Rars backed very immediately and very self-consciously into a defensive position. He was expecting, I think, for me to have some kind of mini-meltdown at being exposed.

But here’s something:

For one thing, I don’t do mini-meltdowns (unless, of course, the nearby 7/11 runs out of Crunky, and then all bets are off). And for another thing, I have a few lessons under my belt, lessons that I learned from another diary on another site--a diary that I kept for almost six years, a diary that I’d posted nude photos of myself, my actual weight, essays about my demon of a father, the details of a relationship I had with an abusive alcoholic, everything and anything you could ever want to know about me (and a lot of things that people never wanted to know about me, including the stripper chronicles). I’ve done online demons, I mean. And I don’t do meltdowns.

So a mini-meltdown over someone thinking they’ve exposed me? Not so much. I’ve grown accustomed to the beautiful and frightening feeling of exposing myself--so to speak. Being stripped--exposed--is a piece of cake, and it doesn’t scare me much anymore.

Welcome to putting your art on display and meeting the people who want to own pieces (of you). Welcome to riding a motorcycle on the streets of Albuquerque. Welcome to packing up a comfortable life and leaving your friends and family and moving to another country. Welcome to a constant state of exposure.

I nodded at Rars and asked, “Which photo are you talking about?”

He replied with an eloquent, “Uh-uh-uh.”

He babbled a bit about how people didn’t expect for their diaries to be found and how they didn’t expect for their pictures to be found and how uh uh uh and how they didn’t expect uh uh uh--and I thought, wow, he’s kind of nervous about this.

It reminded me of the day at The Kaisha when Ken, my manager, accidentally walked into the bathroom while I was peeing. (I had forgotten to lock the door.) Poor Ken screamed like a girl and ran away, and I just about fell off the toilet laughing. A few minutes later, he was still blushing and I knew he had told the story to everyone because I walked into the back room and everyone broke into giggles when said loudly, “Kenny, please try to stay out of the bathroom when I’m using it. Thanks.” Later, after everyone had dispersed and Kenny and I were alone in the prep room, he said very softly to the computer screen, “I saw Blendy on the toilet.” And I laughed and said, “Yeah, well get used to it, because when we’re married, you’re going to see a lot more than that.”

I asked Rars who had found diary.

A few more people had come in and I could feel the energy in the room shift as the new arrivals figured out what Rars and I were talking about.

Rars babbled about how someone's hobby was searching the internet for journals about The Kaisha and how uh uh uh that uh was their hobby and uh--

“So it was Jim?” I asked.

Jim is one of the trainers I actually like working with because he’s just a nice guy generally and too, he gets a little nervous around me (not like Rars I guess). I think he doesn’t quite know how to take that I’m not the average Kaisha employee. For example, I’m not unsure of myself and that marks me as someone that he (and the other trainers) can’t easily treat like a child, can’t use the techniques that they’re used to using when they deal with a majority of foreign teachers. By that, I mean, most of the trainers are unused to dealing with people who are adults. Most of The Kaisha teachers join up right after college and don’t have much life experience (as they call it in college). That, or they are adults in the loosest sense of the word, adults in age only, adults whose life experience leans heavily in a “Would you like fries with that?” direction. But that’s not me.

I will also say that I guessed Jim because Rars said that the person who found my diary was a sort of habitual (my word, not Rars’s) internet surfer and Jim is just that kind of guy.

“I won’t say who it is,” Rars said, “but that’s their hobby. Looking for web sites about The Kaisha. They spend a lot of time doing searches for them.”

I replied, much to the mirth of the people who were listening in on our conversation, “Don’t you guys have enough work to do around here?”

“We don’t do it on company time,” Rars said quickly.

He babbled a bit longer about how, uh uh uh, it’s all fun and games to read until you hit the part about yourself and then it’s like--ulp. He explained that, of course, he didn’t have time to read all that stuff.

Yeah, right, I thought.

He babbled a bit more, then walked away to talk to someone else. When he had gone, I pulled out my phone and emailed Dave about the situation, asking him to pull the blog and photos until I had a chance to look at them with new eyes. It was gone from the web that afternoon. (Thanks, babe.)

So, you might be thinking: Why pull it and then put it back?

Here’s the deal:

The Kaisha gig is a gig just like any other. No gig is so sweet that one won’t have complaints about it. That’s what it means to have a gig, right?

Right.

For example, I often write about my immediate supervisor, a woman who I love, but who is new to the position and, like many of The Kaisha trainers (like many people all over the world), not used to dealing with real adults. I have, of course, criticized her managing skills from time to time. But, honto, I actually really like her, have a lot of sympathy for her, and wouldn’t ever want to hurt her feelings. There are probably some things that I wrote that might cause her to worry about herself and her ability to do her job. She’s young and inexperienced and learning things as she goes, and I don’t want to be the person who tinges that process, makes her doubt herself, makes her feel bad about some mistake that she’s made. (And, yeah, I’ve been the too young manager still finding my sea legs. I know it’s not an easy place to be.) I wouldn’t want her to read online that she has, in her dealings with me, done something that I thought was inappropriate. (And, too, let’s face it: I’m not the easiest person to deal with, and though I’ve come to terms with that, other people are still on some kind of learning curve.)

Dave asked, when I spoke to him later, “Were you worried that you might lose your job?” And I was, like, what? Worried about losing this gig? All that means to me is that then I could come home to my friends and family and to the giant fountain drinks that I habitually jones for here. Because on some days, on days when I’m paying 400 for a 1.5 liter bottle of diet soda, I miss 79 cent Big Gulps more than--well, more than I’d care to admit.

And too, I heard the echo in my head of one of the other teachers sarcastically, cynically saying, “Fire me onegaishimas’!”--Please fire me--to the head teacher.

Anyway, I assured Dave that there’s nothing about losing a job that would make me doubt myself or my abilities.

So, right: For a couple of days, when people typed my url into their browser windows, a blank screen came up. My initial reaction was to pull the plug entirely to avoid dealing with a mess. But instead, I chose to look at it this way: Those blank days, the days when my friends and family and Jim typed my url into their browsers and back came a white screen? Well, those blank days bought me some time, as blank days do. That blank screen was me in conference with The Brain behind closed doors. Having grown secure in anonymity, and consequently somewhat lax, I wanted to go back and see whether entries I’d written could negatively impact others’ situations or emotional states. Having done that, I will say that I did pull (into draft mode) a few critical entries (critical as it relates to the process of critique and not critical as it relates to crucial).

But now of course I’m back.

And, I’m back with a stunner of a tale about the handsome businessman, ne?

However, I will tell you one other story before I jump ahead to the titillating part of the entry:

After the seminar, a bunch of us gaijin teachers were standing around on the Nishi-shinjuku train platform. I walked over and began talking to a couple of teachers who I didn’t know. One of them had overheard the conversation between me and Rars and she told me that one of the blogs that she heard about had called Rars quote that strange little man unquote. I laughed, thinking: But isn’t that something that Rars knows about himself?

So, right. If you’re reading this, Jim: Please pass on to Lars (Lars with an L, babe, and not Chie’s beloved Rars) the news that he is a strange little man. But don’t forget to tell him that I love him for it, ne? In fact, that’s probably the main reason that I love him.

Okay. That’s done. And now I’m ready to write about something else. So:

The Primer On How To Spend The Night With A Very Handsome, Very Married Businessman

First of all, let me assure you that he was a perfect gentleman. He was gentle and assured and confident--everything every woman wants in a man, really.

And now, here’s the story:

After class on Friday, I had to hand out teacher evaluation forms. I made the standard joke about how, if the student wanted to write something good, my name was spelled B-R-E-N-D-A. But if they wanted to write something bad, my name was spelled “B-E-N.” They laughed and several went out to the lobby to write their evaluations. Those several included my handsome businessman. A couple of students were milling around the lobby and I stopped to chat and asked if they wanted to go upstairs to Kachi. A few said yes, a few no.

Four of us went up to the seventh floor, me and three businessmen: My handsome one, one of the infinite number of Hiro’s, and a new student, a young man who has been to two of my classes and who on Friday showed up red-faced and reeking of alcohol and, when he introduced himself, said unabashedly, “My name is K, and I am drunk.” I had to keep myself from laughing and congratulating him on giving one of the best introductions I have ever heard a new student give.

At the bar, My handsome businessman took a chair near me and found subtle ways to pet me:

For Japan, a place where casual touching in public is verboten, his hand spent a relatively lot of time on my shoulder. At one point, his own wristwatch on his arm and his time-displaying cell phone on the table in front of him, he asked, “What time is it?” and took my arm gently between his hands to look at my wristwatch. He has, by the way, incredible hands. They are very large and strong and warm and--

And he found subtle ways to hint, too:

Our lesson that night had been about agreeing and disagreeing with others. The text suggested several controversial topics (controversial in Japan, I mean), things like living together before marriage and tattoos. When we discussed tattoos, no one could quite bring themselves to ask whether I had tattoos, but my handsome businessman figured things out pretty quickly and when, in class, I asked if everyone thought tattoos were okay, the other students wrinkled their noses and said some version of no, of course not. My handsome businessman however, said that it was fine. I said, mischievously, “Really? So your daughter comes home and says, ‘Dad, I’m getting a tattoo!’ and you say, ‘That’s okay with me!’?” His partners laughed and he immediately changed his opinion, saying, “Well...for my children, no. But it’s okay for my girlfriends to have tattoos.” I asked why it was okay for his girlfriends to have tattoos--which was a mistake, because then I found myself in one of those public conversations that should have be private, a conversation in which he talked about the beauty of skin and the decorative effect of tattoos against beautiful skin and...

Ahhh.

We drank. After a bit, Hiro invoked last drain des’ and left the bar, leaving me in the company of Kaz, the twenty-three-year old poised to take over the family’s international shipping business, and my handsome businessman. We drank. I showed them how to drink tequila and they drank it like beginners and called me “strong.” (There are two kinds of drinkers in Japan, weak and strong. At home, for the weak ones, we say “lightweights” and for the strong ones, we just say, “Drinkers,” right? As in, “He’s a lightweight but she’s a drinker.”)

We ate some negligible food and we drank and we drank and we drank.

Kaz and my handsome businessman spoke English exclusively. The only time they spoke Japanese was when I was away from the table or when I absolutely insisted that they do it in order to facilitate an explanation during a conversation that I was reasonably sure that I would understand in Japanese. For example, Kaz was speaking of how much it would cost his business if a ship were out of commission for a day. He struggled with the English numerical system as the cost climbed into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Numbers aren’t easy, nor is the conversion from dollars to yen, and in Japanese counting over ten thousand means counting in groups of ten thousand. I said, “Please say it in Japanese.” Kaz, lost in the struggle to say it in English, didn’t hear me. I said his name to bring his attention to my request and repeated myself, adding, “I will understand the Japanese.” And so he said it in Japanese and then immediately switched back to English.

At one point, my handsome businessman told me about having lived for a time overseas. The secretary for the business he worked for was Italian. He had mentioned to her one day that he wanted to learn to speak French and she had suggested to him that he first learn Italian. “Do you know the phrase 'hidden agenda’?” I asked. Kaz smirked but my handsome businessman shook his head. I said, “How about ‘ulterior motive’?” Kaz turned his head so that my handsome businessman couldn’t see his grin. My handsome businessman shook his head again. I said, “Sounds like she wanted you to study Italian for the same reason I want you to study English.”

Ahhhh.

Wakarimashitaaaa.

He understood.

My handsome businessman got up from the table and Kaz mentioned “fashion hotels.” I was unfamiliar with the term, but not the concept. I know them as love hotels, the places where--in crowded Japan people often live with their parents and, you know, spouses--people can go to spend some alone time together. I thought, hmm. Interesting subject that. I asked him if he had ever been to a love hotel and he said, “Of course.”

The bar closed at one a.m. We were told that we would have to leave at two a.m. At four a.m. we were asked very politely (along with about twenty other people) to leave.

I looked at my watch and informed my companions that, because I was working for Ben, I had to be at work in six hours. They laughed. It was still an hour to first train. Let’s sing karaoke, someone suggested. (Maybe it was me, but I’m not admitting anything.) We headed over to the place near The Kaisha and rented a booth. As we choose our songs, my handsome businessman leaned toward me and asked, “Will you show me your tattoos?” he asked. I laughed. “I’d have to take off my clothes,” I said.

They sang in English.

We did karaoke until first train.

My handsome businessman and I were never alone together--not at any point in the evening--for more than three minutes at a time.

At five-fifteen, I said goodbye to my handsome businessman and walked up the street with Kazu to my station entrance. I came home and slept for a little over an hour before I had to get up and get ready for work.

And that, my friends, is how one spends the night with a very handsome, very married businessman.

You Want A What? You Want A Moral To The Story?

Well, jeez, already.

Are you sure?

Okay, I’ll try.

The Moral To The Story Is This:

It's uncomfortable to learn how to navigate impossible situations.

It’s so uncomfortable and difficult to learn how to navigate impossible situations--leaving your friends and family, for example, or sleeping with married men--that we try to do everything in our power to either avoid them or to convince ourselves that they are really possible situations. Instead of facing the impossible, we keep our ruts, and reinforce them, dig them deeper. Instead of facing the impossible, we sleep with married men.

Making an impossible situation possible sometimes means that we block out what might cause us pain at the time. But don't kid yourself. Pain is the cost of doing business-that is, learning how to navigate impossibility--and you can choose to pay now with the kind of currency that we often mistakenly call virtue or morality, or you can pay later with confusion, heartache, homesickness, and depression. You will pay for leaving your rut. Some people stand and say their goodbyes knowing that it will hurt but are willing to face the hurt. Some people turn their back on goodbyes and pay later in homesickness so bad that they end up hopping planes home (as did one young woman, a Kaisha teacher who lasted less than a month in Japan). Make no mistake, you pay for every lesson and it's the universe that decides the currency and the exchange rate. All you decide is whether you will pay now or later, willingly or unwillingly.

We pay. We pay with money and we pay with time and we pay with our bodies and we pay with our minds.

What is the cost of spending the night with a married man?

Well, if you do it the way I did it, it will cost you your share of the bar tab and karaoke. It will cost you a lost night's sleep and an unnecessarily long day of work. It will not, however, cost you your your dignity. It will not cost you any bit of your self-respect.

I don't traffic in certain things: My dignity and self-respect are not up for negotiation.

I have a quote that I've loved for years. This is that quote:

The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what we want most for what we want at the moment.

Now that I think of it, that’s the real moral to the story, isn’t it?