by Cynthia Dane
“Anything but beer.” I needed to simplify my English more. I honestly wasn’t used to having this issue with other foreigners in Japan, almost all of whom commanded English like it was their natal language, even if it wasn’t. Were Hadrian and I going to have to speak in Japanese to get our thoughts across?
“Okay, no beer.” He ordered himself beer and pointed to the wine list as he ordered for me. Oh, great. He probably thought that was a safe bet, but me and wine? Went together only slightly better than me and beer. I loved me some regular grape juice, though.
That also wasn’t the only thing he ordered on my behalf.
I perused the entrée menu while he went ahead and ordered us a regular sized pizza, French fries, and a large salad. At first, I thought that was for him. (You know, men and their healthy appetites.) Then the menus were taken away. I hadn’t ordered anything.
If you’re older than me or from a select few other places even in America, you may wonder why I was weirded out. I had never had this experience before. Not on a date. Never in my life had a man gone ahead and ordered for me. Wasn’t that passé back home? I know that in Oregon you would’ve been smacked up the side of the head if you dared order on behalf of someone you just met – that shit barely flew for people you had known for twenty years.
Then again, this guy was so fine he could’ve ordered me up some haggis and I would’ve been all over it. Me. The woman pickier than a cat when it came to her food. Yes, even her Italian food.
Hadrian was already glued to his food when the surly waitress walked away. Awkward.
At first I didn’t know what to think. This man had ordered me stuff to consume without consulting me. (Other than asking if I was okay with alcohol.) Now he wasn’t even looking at me. Oh, God, I was on one of those dates…
His phone was in front of my face. Hello, Google Translate. Apparently communicating with me by any means possible was what was most on his mind.
“Do you like for the atmosphere like this?” Well, it was Google Translate…
I looked up at him. “Yes?”
He took his phone back and punched something else into it. “Please I try my English.”
“What language do you speak first?” Was that too complicated of a sentence? Was I making things worse? This was supposed to be a nice and relaxing date.
Hadrian has some of the most expressive eyebrows I had ever beheld. They weren’t necessarily thick, but they were as black as the hair on his head and moved every time he thought about what I said. I knew that look. Teaching Japanese students English for over a year taught me what that look meant. “How do I use English? Oh, fuck, what is this American woman saying? They talk too fast! They use too many slang words! This is a pen?”
“I am from Greece.”
“Oh, so you speak Greek?”
“Yes. I speak Greek.”
I don’t think I had ever met a speaker of Greek before. “You speak Japanese too, yes?”
“Oh, yes, I speak Japanese okay. Not so good, though.”
“Bullshit!” He jerked back at my exclamation. “You ordered dinner perfectly. I majored in Japanese. I think maybe your Japanese is better than mine.”
Was he blushing? Maybe not, but he had no problems waving away my statement with a shy smile. “No, no, my Japanese is no good. I don’t study it. Just learn.”
Let me tell you, as someone who has studied Japanese for most of her life, a textbook teaches you nothing. Not like how living in Japan teaches it to you.
“But you speak English. It is the best.”
“You think so?” I was used to hearing that. I could never understand why everyone around the world was so obsessed with English (aside from the ubiquity of it, I suppose) but it often explained why my fellow Americans rarely felt compelled to learn other languages. Why bother when everyone else was learning English?
“Yes. I want to learn English most! But… English is maybe… fifth language.”
The waitress brought him a beer and me a glass of white wine. “Fifth? You speak four more languages?”
“Yes. I speak…” He counted on his fingers. “Five. Maybe six.”
Holy shit! “What do you speak?”
He considered that question before rattling off a list of languages. “Greek, Kurdish, Turkish, Russian, Italian, Japanese…”
“And English! So that’s seven.”
“I don’t speak English. It’s not good enough.”
Keep in mind that so far we had been speaking entirely in English with only a smattering of Japanese. Damn polyglots. And here I loved to slyly move Spanish into my list of languages even though I am so bad at it now. Shit!
“I think Italian is most beautiful.” Hadrian nodded. “Italian, Turkish, Kurdish… Greek is okay.”
“I love Turkish and Russian. I listen to music from Tukey and Russia because I love how it sounds.” I wasn’t lying, either. Check out my Turkish pop music playlist on Spotify sometime. “But I think Spanish is the most beautiful language.” I have a problem with it, honestly. It does things to me. Terribly wonderful things.
Yet Hadrian made a semi-disgusted face. “Spanish is not good. Does not sound nice.”
“Really?”
“Yes, yes. Italian is more better.”
Well, at least he wasn’t going on about French. I had a bit of disdain for it at the time.
“Do you study English?”
“I try to speak English when I can, but it is hard to study.” He typed into the translator again. I couldn’t help but notice he was translating from both Greek and Kurdish. Later, he would tell me he was half Kurdish, his family having immigrated to Greece by way of Turkey. My love for geography got a heavy workout that night – and here I thought memorizing all the prefectures of Japan was an amazing feat. By the end of that night, I had refreshed my entire recollection of not only the Mediterranean but parts of the Middle East as well. “I speak some at work. And Italian. I learn Italian from work.”
“Wow. The Italian restaurant?”
“Yes, I work with Italian food. Some…” He punched something into his phone. When I saw it again, it said “Mediterranean fusion.” Fancy.
“Do you like it?”
“Yes. I want to work with Italian restaurants in America.”
“Really?”
“Yes!” Hadrian had a gorgeous smile. The kind that makes a girl hope that he’s putting his smile all over her by the end of the night. “Right now I get visa to go to America. This January, I go.”
“Wow.”
“So I must practice my English. You help me practice, yes?” He drank the last of his beer. I had barely touched my wine. I needed it now, no matter how bitter and sour it was. (And it was quite a bit of both.)
Because let me tell you… “help me practice my English” is the death blow to any relationship in Japan. Ask any ex-pat and they’ll give you a ton of stories about how they thought they were on a date or made a friend only to find out they were used for free English lessons. So far tonight, Hadrian hadn’t even flirted with me. Oh, he ordered a drink and food for me, but he hadn’t… flirted. When I thought about it, our messages weren’t flirty on his end either.
So for the next few minutes, I tried not to panic. I tried not to fall into the trap of thinking this guy wants to practice his English on me. He has no romantic or sexual interest in me. A tad crestfallen. That was me. I needed to shut down any fantasies I had about this man, but they were not going to happen. I had to prepare myself for that, like I had to prepare myself for him acting like a damn man in every area of life but the one I wanted.
Which happened when the waitress brought our food over. French fries and margherita pizza? Nice. I could do those. The salad also looked pretty delicious… until Hadrian went ahead and poured the accompanying dressing all over it without asking me first.
I hate dressing. Salad dressing is something that should have never been invented, but I digress. As I had forced myself to do many times when in the presence of
new people, I accepted every piece of food, including those I knew would make me sick. I would at least try it, damnit.
(It was as bad as I feared. First, bitter ass wine, and now dressing-drenched salad that made me wanna barf.)
Hadrian tried it too. His face was as bad as mine.
“Oh… oh, it’s not good.”
At least we could agree on that.
He hailed the waitress and got a second beer. I was still working on my wine without minding how quickly I drank it. Pretty soon, I would not be moving like a normal person, but I didn’t know that yet.
“So what do you do?”
Oh, boy. My favorite question in the whole world.
I don’t usually lie about my profession, unless I have a feeling the person is going to be a huge ass about it. I didn’t get that impression from Hadrian, but how the hell did I explain what I did for a living to someone who wasn’t the best at English? Nuances, you know.
“I write books.”
“Books?”
“Yeah. You know, stories.”
“Really? As job?”
“Yup. It’s my job.”
“Wow.” That was the reaction I was most used to from people. Most of the world is not used to people making a solid living off writing fanciful stories all day. Let alone the kind I write. “What kind?”
Here we went. “Romance. Love stories.”
“Aaaahhh.” Hadrian nodded again. “It’s important kind, yes?”
I laughed. “I guess so.” The wine got to me. I had every intention of flirting with this guy to begin with, but now? Thanks to Mr. Alcohol, and the fact he dared to say practice English, I had no more fucks to give. “I write sexy romance books. Do you know 50 Shades of Grey?”
His eyes bulged. Apparently, someone did.
“What?” Hadrian nervously laughed. “Yes, I know. You write like it?”
“Yup.” I pulled my own phone out of my bag and brought up one of my books on Amazon. “See?” I showed him my bestselling cover.
“Can I…?”
I dropped my phone in his hand. “Knock yourself out.” Meanwhile, I was gonna keep drinking this wine. Or knock it over, I guess. My movements were not entirely my own by that point. Luckily, Hadrian was too absorbed in my Amazon profile to give a fuck. (On the other hand… this hand was sticky. Ew.)
“Wow.” He kept laughing, not in making fun of me, but to keep from being too embarrassed to function. “Wow.”
I took my phone back. “You ever meet a writer before?”
“No way.” He shook his head. “Not like that.”
Want to know the other reason I didn’t feel shy about showing him what I did?
Yeah, my feminine wiles were back in action. I figured I had one last effort to see whether or not this guy wanted to sleep with me tonight, or use me for his English practice. If I could put any thoughts of sex into his mind? If I could make myself sound like I was down with talking about sexy stuff? That I wasn’t shy about two people bonking? Yeah. I would do it. Dude, we were on a date. Flirt with me!
(Unless this wasn’t a date, of course. Then he could get embarrassed as much as he wanted. Bye!)
We reached a lull in conversation. How exactly do you follow that up, anyway? Good job, Cyndi.
“So…” I said. “Do you live here by yourself?” Creeper Cyndi returns! In truth, I wanted to gouge whether or not we could go back to his place after this.
His demeanor returned to somewhat serious. “No. I live with my brother.”
“Your brother? He is from Greece too?”
“Yes, we came together.”
“How long ago?”
“Maybe six or seven years.”
“Do you have a big family?”
“Oh, yes. Many people. I have four brothers and two sisters.”
“Four brothers and two…” Here I was, only-child Cyndi.
“My grandfather had twelve children. My brother has six.”
“Wow. You live with all those people?” In Japan? Where the houses could hold maybe four people tops?
“No, no. Only with my brother. Everyone else is still in Greece. Some go to Turkey.”
“Oh…”
“Yes.” I had no idea what I had unbottled. Hadrian had gone from joking about being drunk off two beers to looking wistfully off into the distance. “My brother and I came here alone. He left his family to make them money.”
“I see…”
“Things are not good in Greece. Money is a problem. In Turkey, things are not better for my family. There are bad people trying to…” He furrowed his brows and punched more words into his phone. “Recruit.”
Oh.
Oh. This had definitely taken a sad turn.
“I hate terrorists,” Hadrian said, as if I would ever question him otherwise. Then again, I was American. He probably heard every ounce of shit an ignorant American could throw his way about politics and war. “They ruin everything.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
From what I pieced throughout the night – because the state of Hadrian’s family weighed so heavily on his mind that he often brought them up – his family was a mix of Kurdish, Turkish, and Greek. One part of his family was from Turkey, where unscrupulous characters that I shall not name often tried to forcibly “recruit” adult men into activities said men never wanted anything to do with. The other part was from Greece and still trying to recover from the economic collapse. They had connections here in Tokyo that allowed the two eldest sons to head east to make a living to send back home. How much were they making to both afford an apartment in Tokyo and send money back home to their families? And Hadrian was moving on to America so soon? I would argue he’d make even less money, although I wasn’t sure exactly what he did. So far I had guessed he was a bartender and not much more.
I felt for the guy. What I had thought was going to be a fun date and possible one-night stand often came back to him talking about his family until he remembered this was a date… best to keep things light.
Still, how could I ignore something like that?
“Maybe America will be a good opportunity for you,” I said at the end of dinner. I stumbled my way to the bathroom, calling over my shoulder, “Lots of fun to be had in America!” I would know. He could be having a lot of fun in this American.
While I was in the bathroom – and trying to regain my tipsy bearings – I once more pondered how things were going on this strange date. Hadrian hadn’t made any moves. He made no references to us going back to his place or to a love hotel. With the language barrier, it was difficult for me to be coy or suggestive. When you’re on a date with someone new, you don’t want to be so aggressive, you know?
Unfortunately, Hadrian was the kind of guy I had to be assertive with. I unzipped my bag and looked at the condoms I scoured my whole neighborhood for. That’s right. I had come on this date with the intent of getting laid, hadn’t I?
I freshened up and sighed. For all I knew, this strange date was going to end with us going our separate ways right after we left the restaurant. Perhaps it was for the best.
Hadrian was already up when I left the bathroom. Had he paid for everything? Damn. I also wasn’t used to that.
“We go?” he asked.
“Sure… where are we going?”
Come on, dude, tell me we’re going to a love hotel…
“I want coffee.” He went ahead of me. At least I got to look at his sweet ass in those tight jeans of his. It was probably going to be the closest I came to seeing his hot body, so fuck it, I was gonna ogle it the whole way up the stairs. Fuck his coffee, though. I could think of something else that started with a C and an O that should have been in my mouth.
Chapter 6
“This place is busy.”
Captain Obvious had already bought me some tea – at least he had consulted me about what I wanted. We were in the world’s largest coffee chain, but it being a neighborhood like Oji, the place was small, cramped, and made for people
studying or working. Hardly the kind of place two foreigners continued their date. (If that was even what we were doing!)
There was one stool available in the whole place. Hadrian offered it to me while he awkwardly stood nearby, drinking coffee. The Japanese men on either side of me looked askance at us. Seriously, how dare we disrupt their emails?
“Can you see?” Only a few seconds later did I realize Hadrian meant to say “Can you watch?” He put his coffee cup down before gesturing to the bathroom. I nodded. The moment he was gone, I pulled out my phone and found a message from my friend.
“How’s it going???”
Sighing, I punched in a reply.
“I have no idea what’s going on. He’s not flirty. Don’t tell me I went hunting for those condoms for no reason. With my luck they’re going to be the souvenirs that nobody asked for.”
“Aw, that sucks. Is he cute?”
“Girl, he is handsome as fuck!” So not fair. I was on this maybe-date with one of the finest foreigners in Tokyo, and I had no idea if this man would even say it was a date! This was actually a history of mine. Men that would never admit we dated, that is. Why would Hadrian be any different at this point?
“Good luck, girl.”
My friend had no idea how much I needed it.
Hadrian came back the moment two seats opened in front of the window. We claimed them as quickly as our able bodies allowed. Finally, for the first time all night, I was sitting right next to this man, and…
He smelled really, really good. Damnit!
We hadn’t sat down for two seconds before a woman passed behind us, grazing Hadrian’s back with her purse. He jerked up, startling the both of us.
“Sorry, sorry.” He pushed his coffee aside. “I don’t like being touched.”
Oh. Oh. Well.
So this guy didn’t do much talking and didn’t like to be touched? How the fuck did I work with that?
Thanks, universe!
“If someone comes up behind me and…” Hadrian demonstrated a friend clasping his shoulder from behind. “I get… maybe scared.”
“Panic?”
“Yes, panic.”
I didn’t want to ask how something like that came about in his life.
