Tokyo Stirs: (Short Stories about Asia)

by Harmon Cooper

  ‘Um…’ Henry thought for a moment. Slow down, Henry. ‘Normally, I stick to beer—’

  ‘Your last night!’

  ‘You know what? You’re right!’ He indicated to the waiter to bring them two shots of tequila.

  ‘So, your adventure?’

  ‘It’s a long story. All you need to know is, I came here searching for a part of myself and I didn’t find it. At any rate, I was able to relive some memories, and take a look at my life through the scope of history. So I guess I found a different part of myself. I found perspective… ummm… on myself.’

  ‘That seems very stupid,’ she said. ‘Very strange answer!’

  ‘Yea, it really is,’ Henry said.

  ‘Which part you searching for? You have both leg, both arm, both ear, both eye, both hand, both feet. I think no part of you missing.’ She laughed as the bartender placed the shots in front of them.

  Min-ji threw back her shot without waiting for Henry.

  ‘I guess you’re right.’

  Her hand landed on his arm and she began softly pulling at his hairs. ‘Many arm hairs too.’

  ‘Thanks?’ Henry took the shot and winced. ‘You’re a smart lady, pretty too.’

  ‘Really think so?’

  ‘I do. I really do.’

  Not long after, another round of drinks was set in front of them. They toasted.

  ‘What are the odds?’ he asked. Keep cool, Henry.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What are the odds of meeting you on my last night?’ he asked mostly to himself. He didn’t need an actual answer, better to let things play out. ‘I wish I had met you when I’d first arrived! We could have traveled a little or something. Oh, what am I saying? Damn that tequila shot! Maybe I’ve had a little too much, getting too honest, you know?’

  ‘You want margarita? Here you take now.’ Min-ji shoved her margarita in Henry’s face. The glass tilted out of her hand, spilling onto his pants.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘Oh so sorry!’ She dropped her hand onto his crotch to wipe away the ice chunks. ‘I clean!’

  ‘It’s fine. Damn that’s cold,’ Henry said. Min-ji’s hand returned with a stack of white napkins. A few people in the pub started to watch her wipe down his lap.

  ‘Just a margarita people,’ he said aloud, not sure of where his confidence had come from.

  ‘I don’t care if people seeing,’ Min-ji said.

  She dropped a handful of wet napkins onto the bar top. The bartender swooped by to clean up the mess and gave them both an irritated look. Min-ji scooted her bar stool closer to Henry. ‘I don’t care. Don’t care.’

  ‘I think you’re drunk, Min-ji,’ he said. I know I am.

  ‘Maybe little. I don’t care, don’t care.’

  She kissed his cheek. Henry instinctively looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching. Did he really look that much older than her? Did it look bad for either of them? The people that had been watching just a moment ago had already turned their attention back to their drinks and conversations. No one cares.

  ‘I don’t care either.’ He bent forward and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘What you doing?’ she asked, careening her head away from him.

  ‘Sorry.’ He shifted his gaze away from her. Easy, Henry.

  Her smile grew large again. ‘Another margarita?’

  ‘You haven’t finished the one you spilled in my lap!’ He held up the glass which still had a third of the contents left. ‘You got to finish one job before you start another.’

  ‘You finish, I want a different… how do you say? Taste?’

  ‘Flavor.’

  ₪

  Henry and Min-ji burst into his hotel room smelling of alcohol and spontaneity. She tossed her purse onto the chair as Henry scooped her into his arms, leading her to his bed. She struggled to unwrap her scarf while he pried at her jacket, attempting in vain to unbutton it. Her high heels somersaulted into the air.

  ‘Let me do it,’ she said between kisses and giggles. Her hands pushed his away and she went to work. The jacket fell to the floor. She raised her arms so he could pull off her top. His watchband scratched her shoulder and she yelped.

  ‘Watch,’ Min-ji said.

  ‘Damn thing,’ Henry mumbled as he yanked it off. Margo had bought for him for their tenth wedding anniversary; he’d been meaning to toss it.

  He slid behind her and began kissing Min-ji’s back. Her skin, pink and delicate, gushed like fresh paint into the crevices of her loose bra, past her waist, her knees, stopping only as it hit the tips of her toes.

  Don’t fuck this up, Henry.

  After a failed attempt to find his long lost lover, Henry was being reminded by God – whom he’d written off years ago as cruel and vindictive, or perhaps fate, the devil behind our encounters both good and bad – that life was still worth living and hadn’t ended after his divorce from Margo or for that matter, his failed attempt to find Hee-yun.

  Min-ji turned to Henry to unbutton his shirt. He sank his hands to the small of her back and pulled her in closer. She climbed on top and straddled him, arching her back forward. She fell onto his face with sloppy wet kisses. Her mouth tasted like tequila and spearmint gum.

  ₪

  Hours later, Henry awoke naked and blanket-less. His lower back hurt and his head felt like someone had run his brain through a blender. Min-ji had curled into a ball under the thin sheet next to him. The early morning sun shone through the curtain, illuminating the room in a soft yellow hue. The blanket was on the floor, the air slightly damp. Henry began searching for his shirt, eventually giving up and returning to the bed. Min-ji stirred, yawning as she rolled onto her side.

  ‘Hi.’ She kissed him softly on his shoulder.

  ‘I was cold,’ he said.

  Min-ji yawned again. ‘I make you warm.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Come here.’

  She moved closer to him. He could feel her breath feather against his collar bone.

  ‘You find now what you looking for?’ She laughed quietly at the irony of her own joke.

  ‘Less or more.’

  ‘Good, maybe we meet again. Less or more.’

  ‘I know we will.’

  Silence fell on them. Henry started to drift off to sleep again when the question came to him. ‘Min-ji, where did you say you were from again?’

  ‘I born in Songtan,’ she said. ‘I moved to Seoul when I was seven for school.’

  Henry felt his lungs constrict. He chose his next words carefully. ‘What is your… mother’s name?’

  ‘Name Hee-yun. She die when I was born. Why?’

  Henry didn’t say anything. His heart was practically in his mouth now, lashing at the back of his teeth.

  ‘Why? What is it?’

  ‘Nothing, Min-ji, nothing,’ he whispered as he pressed his body next to her, determined not to cry.

  Dreaded

  [7]I’m quite envious of him, really I am.

  His blond dreads thick as ancient bamboo and expertly formed, ratty and dark at the roots. His kurta lightly striped faded white by the bright sun over Lakeside. Seven pill-shaped wooden buttons scale down his chest like a ladder, baggy Nepali cotton shorts are tied like sacks below his knees. He is everything I am not. He is The Dreaded Man.

  The Dreaded Man rides by my hotel room every morning, the sound of his red scooter amplified by a hole in the muffler. A thin Asian woman hugs his back, her high cheek bones buried in his dreads. She wears a hemp skirt and a faded black hoodie with an Om symbol sewn on the back.

  Hanging from The Dreaded Man’s face is a pair of clown-sized sunglasses. He blazes by, smiling out from under his oversized glasses, like the men in the small caravan that followed Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. A Deadhead drunk off Electric Kool-Aid. A Burner. A Day Tripper.

  They park in front of my hotel, they come to my door, they knock twice and I let them in. She’s an author, he’s The Dreaded Man, and somehow, I’ve become their friend.

&n
bsp; ***

  I’ll never be adequately dreaded. The thought struck me after first seeing The Dreaded Man and his girlfriend blaze by on his scooter. I’d stopped in for a shave at a small Nepali barber shop across the street from my hotel, the interior of which was lined with mirrors – even above the lintel of the door – making it appear more funhouse than establishment for male grooming. I sat in the peeling pink barber’s chair looking up at the mirror’s reflection at the back of my skull. A bald spot had started to form years ago, spider-webbing outward like spilt water, a mark of shame.

  I couldn’t quite claim that I wanted to be dreaded, (the upkeep alone on those mighty locks seemed to be quite the hassle) but I did admire the idea of being dreaded, the idea of showing the world how little you cared about your appearance yet at the same time going to great lengths to grow your hair, dread it, maintain it and replicate the lifestyle associated with those who are dreaded.

  For the dreaded person, there appears to be a wide spectrum of free-spirited personas to choose from: obscure yoga guru to dub reggae connoisseur; hemp grower to strict vegan conspiracy theorist; unemployed writer to organic entrepreneur; Wall Street occupier to Steampunk blogger. A grass-fed, local, narcotic laced, pranayama, bicycling, peace sign waving, Zapatista, system fighting buffet of possible personas. It’s a look as defining as a pressed military uniform, a badge and a baton, a gavel and a grimace.

  I would never be adequately dreaded; I would remain Tommy, an envious man lost in Nepal blowing his 401K to escape.

  ***

  The following morning, I opted for breakfast at the restaurant attached to my hotel. I sat in the center of the restaurant with a copy of a book called Once upon the Ganges, which I’d found at Pilgrims Book House in Kathmandu.

  A Nepali named Laxman, who’d served as a Queen’s Gurkha Officer in the British Army had founded the restaurant a few years back. The menu explained that at the age of sixteen, Laxman had walked three days to the nearest British recruitment center ready to sign up. He went on to fight valiantly in Borneo and serve in five countries. Bored in his retirement, Laxman went into the restaurant business.

  As I sawed into a dry omelet, a man whom I instantly recognized as Laxman strut into the restaurant with the crisp gait of a former soldier. He greeted the host, who had since placed his hands in prayer position and was bowing gracefully. Laxman marched around the room, stopping at a few waxy vines near the window and indicating to the host that they needed watering. He smelled the flowers near the register and straightened the placard with his namesake.

  As soon as he settled two tables away from me he began addressing the chef, who had emerged from the kitchen with his hands also in prayer position. The crackle of a broken muffler sounded outside. A trace of red settled in the corner of my eye. Seconds later, The Dreaded Man entered without his girlfriend.

  ‘Ayo Gurkhali!’

  He greeted Laxman with his hands in prayer position and sat down in front of him. They began speaking in Nepali, Laxman alternating between laughing and coughing. I listened attentively, hoping to place The Dreaded Man’s accent, hoping to somehow discover more about him. He sat with his left knee over his right and his right hand over his left, both hands resting on his lap, a striking image of the way my father used to sit.

  The floodgate of suppressed memories poured freely at the spark of his gesture. In that instance, The Dreaded Man had my father’s eyelashes, feathery things that reminded me of dusty moth wings every time they clapped together. The gesture reminded me of a picture of my father I’d once found tucked away in an old photo album simply labeled THEN.

  The gritty photograph had been taken in 1967, the date scratched onto the back by a dull pen. My father’s arm was draped around my mother’s shoulders, her eyes hidden behind John Lennon sunglasses. Over their shoulders was San Pablo Bay, its waters glistening like sun reflecting off tinfoil.

  Not long after the picture had been taken, my father had been drafted, boot-camped, and sent to torch the jungles of Vietnam. On the day he left for Asia, he learned that my mother was pregnant. Seven months later, as he sweated and toiled through sultry swamps and daily ambushes, my mother sweated and toiled in a San Francisco hospital delivery room. I was born three weeks premature, but healthy. They eventually separated after my fourth birthday.

  Tea was brought to The Dreaded Man, ending my rumination. He took his first sip and his sunflower eyes traced the circumference of the room, slowly touching down on my omelet-cutting hands. They skipped to the book sitting on the table, traveled up my forearms, traversed my shoulder, arched across my cheeks, and settled just above my nose. Pupil to pupil, man to Dreaded Man, man to father, father to son, son to man who resembled his father, man to complete stranger.

  I dropped my knife and looked away. The ding of my knife against the plate seemed to echo to the far corners of the restaurant and I grew red with embarrassment.

  Laxman said something and The Dreaded Man began laughing. It started as a low gurgle, rising in pitch, faltering and finishing with a deep vibrant sigh, a sigh that seemed to sit on top of the conversation like an umbrella floating out of a cocktail, or perhaps a phone number scratched onto the front of a plastic notebook – its presence felt, but not overtly blatant.

  The man’s laugh triggered yet another memory. Over the phone, I’d cautiously told my father that his new Ford Mustang was the result of a late mid-life crisis. He’d laughed at my statement, saying that a mid-life crisis was less a crisis and more of a reward, a hurdle to be celebrated, a hurdle that some psychologist-cum-neologian had senselessly defined. He laughed once again as we said our goodbyes.

  Two weeks later, my father’s brand new Mustang galloped over a guard rail. The driver’s side tire had gotten caught in a pothole, a minor concern had my father not been cruising at 130 mph.

  For all I know, maybe he laughed as the car had spun out of control. Maybe he was reminded of being dropped from a black helicopter into a wild jungle, wind from the blades beating the palms, a hastily read letter from my mother squeezed in his palm. As his Mustang tumbled, maybe he remembered what he’d done, the smell of the sulfur, the weight of his gun. The clink of the ammunition, the pressure on the trigger necessary to extinguish life, dog tags stuck to the sweat of his chest, a wet cigarette hanging out of the corner of his friend’s mouth as he fired up the flamethrower, his face ruddy from the blazing foliage, black smears of oil and grime all both of their bodies.

  At the precise moment that his Mustang smashed into the cliff, maybe my father finally came to terms with what he had witnessed, the look of terror in enemy faces and the mirrored reflection in his. The true leap from boy to man, Son to Father, life to death, Father to death, death to Son.

  A man passing by in a small truck discovered my father’s overturned Mustang. The man stayed with my father at the hospital until I arrived. He didn’t say much, aside from the fact that his name was Henry Latchman, and that he knew what it felt like to lose someone. He was nearly as shaken up as I was.

  The room grew dark and small as I neared my father’s dead body.

  ***

  One could argue that curiosity killed my father, the same curiosity that nearly landed me in jail three days after seeing The Dreaded Man at the restaurant.

  I had become bored and lonely in Pokhara, sick of perusing the streets at night, shopping for souvenirs, and avoiding tourist companies. After a long afternoon nap that stretched into the sunset on the horizon, I found myself with a watered down strawberry daiquiri at the bar of a dimly lit restaurant called Amsterdam.

  I sat alone, next to a candle with a decade’s worth of wax baked onto what used to be a candle stick. There was something strangely depressing about its years of caked-on wax, something that only worsened my disposition. I wanted to peel the wax away, to start over, to let the candle breathe.

  I listened as a Nepali band sitting on stools strummed a Bob Dylan song on the stage at the far end of the bar. The answer had long since blow
n away. I downed the daiquiri and asked for another, this time settling on a pineapple one, hoping the change in mixer would come coupled with a change in mood.

  Outside a lone taxi driver rolled by in a small white car with Shiva and Vishnu stickers attached to the back windshield. He occasionally leaned his head out the window, asking foreigners if they needed a ride. Somewhere. Anywhere. People drifted in and out of black crevices which had started to form on the main road.

  A doughy Nepali man across the street jumped and clamped down onto a metal handle. He used his body weight to pull a thick sheet of metal over his shop windows. He withdrew into the darkness of a nearby alleyway. A subfusc curtain fell over the city. The world that was Pokhara – a beautiful lakeside town that embodied everything that seemed to be right about Nepal – had twisted into something undistinguishable and frightening.

  I finished the daiquiri in one gulp, settled my tab by tossing a thick roll of rupees onto the table, and with two fluid strides, I too escaped into the darkness. I headed east, not really sure of where I was going.

  ***

  A breeze picked up, carrying with it the smell of lake water and burning gasoline. I drifted like a ghost into another bar and was turned away by a small Nepali boy wearing a crumpled white dress shirt and a shiny black vest with pinstripes. I continued further into the abysmal streets.

  A sign that had caught my eye over the course of the last week beckoned me: X DANCE BAR. It couldn’t really mean what it appeared to mean, there couldn’t really be a strip club in a peaceful resort town like Pokhara. Not in overtly religious Nepal, not in the country where the Buddha was born. Filled with curiosity and shame, I ducked under the sign, lumbering down a narrow corridor that opened into a small shadowy courtyard. The X DANCE BAR was nestled under a tree with murky branches overhanging the entrance. A man stood outside the bar, his shadow spooling over a short Nepali woman.