One Night

Okay. Here's the deal:

This is the story of a one-night stand. I've had them before. Most of the time I don't feel good after. This one is different. I feel good about this one. I'm posting the details here because this is part of my Tokyo existence. Part of my life.

You can read the details or not, it's your choice. But if you know even before reading that you don't approve of this kind of behavior, don't bother emailing me after to let me know that you don't approve.

I probably love you--but I definitely don't care what you think.

One Night, Stand

In the club, while we’re dancing, Muji gives me a lesson in how to make eye-contact. “Hold-release. Hold-release. Hold-release. Hold-hold-hold.” He demonstrates, then he makes me practice until I get it right. I try it on a guy in a black velvet jacket. He’s standing at a table, drinking. He smiles at me and I smile back.

After a bit, one of the tall black men in the bar comes over to me. We dance together for a bit, then he pulls me close to him and kisses me. Then he starts this patter in my ear about how much he’s attracted to me and how I’m his type and how he will treat me right. I tell him that I only date women and it doesn’t deter him a bit. He tries to reach into my pants and I yank his hand away and go and dance with someone else. After a bit, he comes back and tries the same tactic. He tries to convince me to step out of the club with him for five minutes and I don’t agree. My friend comes over and says, “Go with him.” I ask why and his response is, “Why not?” It’s not good enough. The man comes back and tries the same shit as before. Jeeze, I think, give me a fucking break already. I go and dance with someone else and ignore him when he comes back. After a few more tries to get my attention, he leaves me alone.

I’ve ditched him in favor of dancing with a very short Japanese man who’s wearing a very self-conscious hip-hop outfit with a hat turned backward and a ridiculously thick chain around his neck. We dance for a bit and he kisses me and it doesn’t mean anything so I let him do it. After a bit the man in the black velvet jacket, the one who smiled at me, comes over. It’s not me he wants, but the man I’m dancing with. I mean, he wants to talk to the man I’m dancing with. Black velvet man tells his hip-hop friend in Japanese that he’s going home. I say in English, No, you can’t go home. You have to stay and dance with me. He smiles and says again he’s going home. I reach to put my arm around his neck and accidentally poke him in the eye. I apologize profusely and ask if he’s okay. He’s fine, he says. It’s okay. I put my arms around him and make him dance with me.

Even in the dark club, I can see he has a pleasant but plain face, rounded cheeks, flat nose, and the tiniest eyes I have seen on a man yet. We’re the same height. He has a longish shag haircut dyed the dull brown that is fashionable at the moment. He’s in jeans, and the ubiquitous layers, a black t-shirt under a striped button-down shirt and black velvet jacket. I run my hand under his jacket and feel that he has a solid country boys body, not the Tokyoites slight metrosexual build.

We dance and I kiss him and it’s the nicest kiss of the evening, so I do it again. We dance and I kiss him again and it’s still nice, so I pull him into a corner of the miniscule club and I keep kissing him. I run my hands under his black velvet jacket and pull him close to me and I kiss him. He presses against me and kisses back. Finally I’ve had enough.

“Do you want to fuck me?” I ask in English. In response, he takes my hand and leads me from the club. Outside, I ask where he lives. Kichioji. I ask where we’re going. Just a minute, he says. He leads me to a game center, which is what they call the video arcades that dot the landscape of neighborhoods like Shibuya and Shinjuku, the areas of Tokyo popular with the teens and twenty-somethings. “Chotto matte,” I say to him. Just a minute. He apologizes. He has to use the bathroom. I laugh, say okay, I’ll wait.

While he’s inside, I go outside. People stare but I am inured to it by practice and, tonight, liquor. He comes out in a moment and apologizes. He takes my hand and leads me away. I ask where we’re going and he says something in Japanese and all I understand is the end, the part where he asks me if it’s okay. I say it’s okay.

As we walk I ask him basic questions in my broken, drunken Japanese. He says he works for Tokyo Denki, Tokyo Electric. Cables. Cables? Cables. He's a lineman for Tokyo Denki.

He leads me down a couple of side streets and I ask if we’re near the station. I wonder where we’re going. We turn down another side street and I look around and suddenly realize where we are.

We try two different hotels. The first is full. The second is very expensive. He wonders something aloud in Japanese and I say something in English and he asks me if it’s muzukashi, if it’s difficult. He’s asking me if I’m changing my mind. I say, no, it’s not difficult, and he leads me back to the first hotel.

The room is 7,600 yen for a “stay,” five or six hours. A “rest” is ninety minutes and costs less, about 5,000 yen. I want a “stay” because I’ve already missed my last train and a taxi home would cost over 10,000 yen. I tell him I’ll split the cost of the room with him. The negotiations are fast and mostly in Japanese. A sign in English on the wall next to the desk says that at least one of the people checking in must be able to speak Japanese.

The woman behind the counter (actually a small slot in the wall at about my hip level) tells him that the rooms are full at the moment but one will soon open up. We will have to wait in the miniscule, immaculate lobby (nothing more than a small hallway) for about twenty minutes. How do we occupy ourselves during our wait? I look around. There is a tiny alcove with two side by side upright chairs facing a television screen set into the wall. A tiny ledge holds an ashtray. We step into the alcove, ignore the chairs, ignore the television. He pushes me up against the wall and kisses me.

The elevator door opens and my companion steps away from me quickly. We must apparently maintain some semblance of propriety in the presence of others. I lean against the wall, see my amused smile reflected in the mirrored wall opposite. Another couple exits the hotel, walking quickly. It will take a few minutes for the room to be cleaned. but then it’s all ours.

I understand the basic process of checking into a hotel, but that process is somewhat varied for this particular hotel. For example, the front desk is mostly blank wall with a small passway at (my) hip level. We have to select the room from a lighted board by pressing a button. There is no need to see anyone’s face, although after hearing our discussion, which is partly in English (a habit I can’t break), under the guise of clearing up a slight misunderstanding a woman comes out of the office to have a look at me. I don’t think it’s very usual for a Japanese man and a Western woman to check into this hotel. The usual couples are both Japanese or the man is Western and the woman Japanese.

He digs in his wallet. I have about 9,000 yen on me and I hand him a 5,000. He adds 3,000 to it and hands it through the slot. He hands me the change. Then he digs in his wallet. The 10,000 he pulls out is clearly from an emergency fund. He gets change and hands me another two thousand. I just trust the Japanese when it comes to money, so I take it.

We pay and get the key to our room, room 505. It’s a run of the mill hotel room, pastel colors, a big bathtub, a queen-sized bed that seems enormous to me after months and months on my narrow futon, a tiny couch, a big television set with a pixelated porn channel. He goes to the bathroom, comes out, says the room is nice. I turn off the television, go over to the bed and sit. We kiss and then undress.

We make love and I don’t come but he does, not quickly but soon, shuddering against me. We both laugh. After, he holds me close, a sweet gesture characteristic of every Japanese man I’ve been with. I go to the bathroom, come out, lay down against him. I turn on the light to answer an e-mail from Muji who’s asking where I am. As an answer, I take a picture of me and my companion and e-mail it to Muji.

After I send the e-mail, I turn to my companion and kiss him again. He has trouble looking at me, a kind of politeness that I find odd even after months of confronting it. He faces me but keeps his eyes closed. I use my fingers to pry them open and I make a face and he laughs. We lay against each other talking. I ask questions. I find out that he’s 29 years old (I tell him I’m 34 and he says in English, “No problem,” and I laugh. It’s not a problem for me either.) I find out that he has no girlfriend and when I ask him if he has a wife, he laughs, “No, no,” he says, the idea unthinkable, “No wife.”

We set the alarms on our phones. I turn down the lights and we lay against each other not talking. He falls asleep before I do and I lay in the dark and listen to his breathing shift into sleep, deepening. It’s early, about one-thirty. When I wake up, it’s still dark. I check my phone. 3:08. I consider waking him up but don’t. He’s told me that he has to work in the morning. Instead, I lay beside him and listen to the chaotic Tokyo soundscape against the backdrop of his deep, even breathing. Delivery trucks and souped up motor scooters rumble through the tiny streets. Two crows fight over garbage, their voices joined by a third. It starts to get light about three-thirty, so I get up and close the shutters. Then I have a bath, bathing the way the Japanese do, first by washing and rinsing outside the tub, then soaking in the hot bath.

He wakes about five. We fool around but don’t have sex again. I get dressed then he does too. He picks up and examines one of the two condoms that came with the room. He puts it back on the nightstand. I laugh and pick it up, put it in his pocket. "Omiyage," I explain. He laughs, kisses me.

I explore the room, find a tiny microwave, a set of cups and a basket with tea bags, the makings for coffee, biscuits. I make tea for him and coffee for me. As we drink our tea, I lounge on the couch, American, my feet up. I spill coffee on myself trying to drink in that position and I laugh. He sits at the edge of the couch, straight backed, Japanese. He doesn’t--maybe can’t--look at me. I would have once found this behavior odd.

I ask and find out that he’s from Nagoya originally, but he has lived in Kichioji in Tokyo for the last eleven years. I don’t ask what he studied in college because by his age and the time he moved to Tokyo and from his job it’s likely that he didn’t go to college. I also find out his name. It’s Manabu. I tell him I live in Higashi-Mukojima and work in Ginza. I tell him it’s a boring commute. He doesn’t--maybe can’t--ask me questions about myself. I would have once found this behavior insulting.

He turns on the television and we watch a bit of pixelated porn. It’s some kind of contest. Three people sit at a table and watch as two men, naked from the waist down, get hand jobs from women in pastel negligees. I can’t tell if the one who orgasms first is the winner or the loser. After the contest is over, the participants are interviewed by the panel that’s watched. The women continue to kneel at the feet of the men they’ve jacked off. One woman says that her guy was a good kisser.

After a few minutes, he switches the channel and watches the news and smokes cigarettes. I put on a minimal bit of makeup, try to make myself presentable. I ask if he’s hungry. He is.

We leave the hotel.

As we exit, we come face to face with another couple, two young men in business suits, probably on their way to work. They are Japanese enough that I can barely discern the shift in their expression when they see us.

We walk the streets toward the station. I ask about a restaurant, tell him anything’s okay. We agree on a Yoshinoya.

On the street are the young men and women who are always on the streets of this part of Tokyo. I comment on one woman’s platinum beehive hairdo and mahogany tan. Is she cute? I ask him. He shakes his head in disbelief, not agreement.

On the street, enormous black crows are tearing apart the garbage bags that’ve been put on the street for the morning pickup. I like them because they’re so huge and wild, just like this city.

I tell him that I like the crows. He shakes his head in disbelief, not agreement.

In front of the restaurant two men are fighting.

I say they are fighting and your American Brain probably pictures blows, angry words, shouting. But this is the Japan.

Tthe two men are surrounded by about fifteen other men. One of the participant’s arms are being held by another man who is standing behind him. The other participant is standing, his arms folded. They are about two feet apart, looking directly at each other and speaking in slightly raised voices. My companion seems hesitant to cross the street because the crowd is in the street next to the crosswalk. I think, Wow, this is nothing. If playground fights in America were this sedate, we’d probably encourage our kids to fight more. I cross the street and he follows.

We go into Yoshinoya together and sit at the long counter in the tiny restaurant. I eat part of a bowl of chicken and rice, and he has a more traditional breakfast of fish and rice, seaweed and miso soup. I ask. He has one sister, younger. We exchange email addresses over breakfast and then he walks me to Shibuya Station. He walks me all the way over to my gate and he gives me a long, warm hug and I say thank you and he says thank you in return. It’s one of the few English phrases he is sure of.