The heat starts to get to me. I crave a climate-controlled labyrinth. I stop. Look for signs. I need the station. I find an underground entrance. Lumber down the stairs, through a dimly lit tunnel and into the station. Into the enormous surge of bodies. There’s a trick to navigating through these crowds without bumping into people. You fix your eyes above the heads of the people. Eschew eye contact. Plot a course like a Zen monk doing walking meditation. Single-minded. Empty of connection. It works for me for a good forty-five minutes. Chin up. Eyes dead straight. But eventually I need a smoke. Looking for a cigarette machine, I’m herded by a crowd surging from a bank of turnstiles. I see the glow of the machine over the crowns of heads. Drifting away from me like a stray helium balloon. I’m heading toward the exit. The glare of natural light comes as a blow. In a panic, like a dumbstruck animal, I turn back, but the crowd behind me prevents me from backtracking. It’s straight ahead—to the street—or to the left—under a pedestrian walkway.
A sour smell gets stronger as I make my way under the walkway, duck under steel girders, and come to an open area. I look around at the tiny settlement in front of me. Dozens upon dozens of cardboard boxes fashioned into little homes—painted with swirls of color, surreal portraits, grim cityscapes. Smoke rises from fires set under tiny hibachi, the acrid smoke from kerosene heaters mingled with the smell of grilled fish. Little huddles of billy goat–bearded men sit crouched on their ankles, drinking sake and cans of beer.
I make my way along a walkway between two rows of cardboard homes. Peering in, now and again, at the tiny makeshift rooms. Some of them gussied up with curtains and photographs grayish-green with age. Music wafting out of others from cassette-tape players. The twang of the Koto, the click and roar of baseball broadcasts leading me along.
Out of habit, I clutch my purse tight, feel the hard lump of my disposable camera. Feeling touristy, I take it out. Focus on a mural painted along a series of refrigerator boxes. A frightening cosmos of disembodied heads. Just as I’m about to hit the shutter, a tall, bony man flies out of the trap door hidden among the heads. Howls at me, lunges at me, wielding a stick. I start to back up and fall into the entrance of another box, waking up the tiny man curled inside. Throaty screams everywhere. I look frantically for the way back into the station. The man with the stick chases me back under the girders. Making my way through the knot of people streaming out the exits, I slip into the compartment of a revolving door. Breathe the stale station air like a fish plunked back into water. When I turn around, a Japanese guy is standing there. “They don’t like to have photos taken like things in a zoo.”
He’s taller than most Japanese men, brushing six feet, with tanned skin and heavy-lidded eyes. His T-shirt reads AMERICAN USED FREAK.
“Thanks for the advice,” I say.
American Used Freak stares at me for a minute. My heart rate makes its way back to normal.
“Do you live in Japan?” American Used Freak asks.
“Live,” I say. “In a manner of speaking. Yes.”
I look up at an electronic sign. It tells me it’s thirty-two degrees Celsius. It tells me to drink something called Pocari Sweat.
I gulp on the thick air. There’s something weird about American Used Freak’s eyes. Something cold. Something that doesn’t add up. He’s too old to be a student. But he doesn’t look like a salaryman. His hair is too long. The details are all slightly off. The loose jeans and sneakers. The Rolex watch and stiff posture.
I realize I’m still clutching the envelope from Ms. Nakamura. The paper is dissolving with my perspiration. I can see the scowl of some prime minister on the ten-thousand yen notes. Worst-case scenario: I could be on the missing-girl adverts. The missing girl could be dead. I imagine a garbage-bag sarcophagus. Somewhere hidden, damp. Where it’s quiet. Worst-case scenario: Kazu will never call me again.
I look at American Used Freak. He hasn’t shifted his gaze. Worst-case scenario—he could be a psychopath. My little voice says, Who gives a shit. “Do you want to go to a love hotel with me?” I ask.
I’m seventeen. Mom was right. I’ve found my niche. I’m the school slut. My venture into the social realm is over. I watch a lot of documentary television, smoke until my fingers turn yellow, and barf up my food for kicks. Whispers follow me like Pigpen’s swirls of dirt. At school, my favorite place is with my head stuck in my locker. The slams and rummaging in the adjacent lockers reverberate like thunder and lightning in my ears. It’s all I can hear. I learn to love the smell of rotten fruit and leaky ballpoint pens. I have no face. No swollen eyes. I’m not really here.
One day, I’m walking home from school. I cut through the University of Toronto. There’s a place by one of those ancient old buildings. The ones obscene with stonework and stained glass. There’s a place, under a fire escape, looking out at a field carpeted with dirty snow and dead grass. I like to get stoned there.
I’m crouched down smoking one day, when I see Mom. She’s walking with her shoulders up by her ears, bracing herself from the wind racing between the buildings. The woman with her has no hat on. She has that haughty Germanic beauty. Her shoulders are relaxed. She has short, spiky hair, so fine and blond it looks like feathers. She puts her arm around Mom’s shoulder, leans into her. I close my eyes before they kiss.
The joint hisses when I crush it out on the ground. I think about genes. A high school pariah who just might be a schizo dyke. Beautiful.
We rent motel rooms after the prom. It’s an old honeymoon motel from the fifties. Someone tells me the tubs are heart-shaped. We have to pay a damage deposit. The rooms smell like Lysol and something feral.
“You’re not still sore about that thing in the woods are you?” Tony asks.
“What thing?”
“We were kids,” he says. “You know?”
There’s a yellow water stain on the ceiling. Someone who left the bathtub running. Someone who didn’t get their damage deposit back. It looks like a Rorschach test. Siamese twins joined at the shoulder. We were kids. Yes. What are we now? I wonder.
He grabs me and pulls me down onto the bed. “Fuck, I want you so bad.” We’re on our sides, his hand grasping my hipbone like a handle. Our noses are almost touching. I can smell his breath. I think of Eskimos. “You’re killing me,” he says. For a minute I let myself imagine reaching over for the lamp on the bedside table and splitting his head open with it. I can feel his cock pressed against my thigh. I don’t feel excited. Or scared. I feel the tug of the inevitable.
After it’s done, the knocking starts. “Stop hogging the room Ton!” someone yells. I sit up on the edge of the bed and look at the table lamp. See that it’s screwed into place on the synthetic woodgrain of the nightstand. I go into the bathroom and run the water while I pee. A short hush, then cheers. The slap of high fives. The water comes out brown, then yellow, then white. The tub is tub-shaped. I’m disappointed.
When I go out, someone hands me a can of Canadian. Each time the door opens, a gust of air blows in. Someone yells, “Shut the fucking door!” It’s the kind of night between winter and spring, when the air feels like a tonic. I want to throw the windows open. Luxuriate in the last sting of the cold.
Alone is not about people at all.
After graduation, I get a job at a bagel shop. We have twenty different kinds of bagels and twelve different toppings. I’m snotty to the customers, but my boss doesn’t care. Something about the way I ignore him leads him to believe I’ll eventually sleep with him.
I want to get my own place, but I can’t seem to save money. It’s all I can do to keep myself in weed and diet Pepsi. Mom and I are at each other’s throats.
Dinner conversations go something like this:
“What’s this?”
“Weanies and beanies,” Mom says chirpily.
“Fuck, Mom. This isn’t dinner!”
“Maggie.”
“It’s prison slop.”
“You used to like weanies—”
“Yeah, so did you,
” I mumble. Then louder, “It’s starch and lard. Where’re the veggies? The greens?”
“They’re tofu weanies and beans in a tomatoey sauce. Now eat up!”
“This is shit!”
“You’re welcome to cook for yourself.”
“Oh go lick pussy, Mom.”
She picks up our plates. “Lovely, Margaret.” Dumps them in the sink. “Lovely.” Beans slip like lava down the drain.
Frank eats alone in his room.
I take the train with American Used Freak. He buys his ticket from the machine. Doesn’t offer to pay for mine. The carriage is nearly empty, but he stands up. Holding on to a hanging strap with both hands. Swaying with the jerk and pull of the train. We don’t talk.
When I was ten, I watched the neighbor’s dog pull a hedgehog through a chain-link fence and tear it apart. I imagine, as we make our way, in awkward silence, from Shibuya station to Love Hotel Hill, that sex with American Used Freak will sound something like that. Desperate and hungry. Plenty of slobbering and groans.
I lead him to the same hotel Kazu took me. Choose the Marquis de Sade Room. It has fancy pink furniture, a four-poster bed splayed with various ropes, gags and cat-o’-nine-tails. At the last moment, before pushing the button on the illuminated panel, I check my mobile phone to see if Kazu has called. Be patient. Be patient. I could go home and sit in my room. Listen to the cockroaches scuttle behind the walls and worry about money and visas and my sanity. I could. I look over at American Used Freak, who hasn’t said a word since we left the station, who looks strangely stoic and handsome in the kind, muted light of the private lobby. I push the button.
When I come out from the shower and drop my robe, American Used Freak makes a sound, the kind of sound you’d make as you take a last suck of air before jumping from a high place into deep water. There’s a moment of hesitation, some sweat that collects like dew above his lip.
I walk over to him, stand close, so that my nipples harden against his T-shirt. “So, American Used Freak.” I put a finger to his chin. “What’s your name?”
It takes a few seconds, but a smile creeps onto his face. A crooked grin. He grabs my finger and brings my hand down to my side. “You can call me Used,” he says. “No need for formality.”
I toss him a coil of rope, push aside the cuffs, the riding crop, the whips and blindfold, and curl up on the bed. In the fetal position. Somewhere between seduction and submission. Used skillfully binds me to the ornate headboard, puts a finger to his temple in contemplation, then proceeds to stretch my legs, spread-eagle, to the bedposts. As soon as I’m bound, after Used tugs at the knots to test their strength, when I’m sure I can’t wriggle my way out, a sense of calm blankets me. There’s no use struggling. I go completely limp. My body begins to feel like a rubbery, lifeless thing. I have the feeling that something is being drawn from my belly, through my skin, through the dirty mattress, the smoky carpet, through the ground, to the center of the Earth. I turn my eyes and find myself in a mirror, relieved that I’m still here. Still solid.
Used doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t even take his clothes off. With a languid nonchalance, he makes his way around the room. Dims the lights. Switches the music off. Buys a beer from the vending fridge, pulls a chair up to the end of the bed, and lights a smoke. In the dark room, with the shadows playing on his face, Used looks like a different person. Older. Less chirpy and benign. Fear squeezes my heart. I’m getting wet.
Time passes. Three cigarettes. I’m dying for a puff, but I don’t ask.
“You like this,” he says.
I stay silent for a moment, wondering if he wants an answer. Something in the way he holds his head, chin lifted slightly, a long ash hanging precariously from the cigarette poised before his mouth, tells me he’s expectant.
“I like to be passive,” I say. “Do you know what that means?”
He takes a deep drag on his cigarette. “I am good at English. You needn’t grade your language.” The words tumble out with his exhale. “Passive. To obey without argument. I don’t like passive.”
I want to explain to him. Maybe being passive is allowing the other part of yourself to take the lead. But I stay quiet. Scan the room. It is windowless, but on one wall there is an illuminated panel framed with velvet curtains, to give the impression of a window. Used stands up and walks to the side of the bed, brushes aside a hair that’s caught in my eyelashes. His hand hovers around my face for a few seconds. I can smell the sharp odor of nicotine, but my craving for a smoke has gone. He smiles. Grabs hold of the pillow and pulls it from under my head, drops it to the floor, and returns to his chair.
“I like these places. Love hotels.” He gives the room a once-over. Nods. “Do you know the words in Japanese omote-ura?”
I shake my head.
“Omote is the front. How can I explain? The mask. In the love hotel there is no omote.”
Used stands at the foot of the bed, cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, and unties my legs. “These things are difficult for gaijin to understand.” The knots seem intricate, but he releases them as you would the laces on your shoes.
“It’s not rocket science,” I say. Trying out my voice.
“No, but it’s subtle. Something Western people don’t appreciate.”
I try to think of something clever. “Wabi-sabi,” I say.
“Ha! Love hotels do not have wabi-sabi. Simplicity and elegance. No.”
“What’s your point then?”
“I am returnee—I was educated in America. So I will never belong in Japan. Truly. But I am certainly not one of you. Lapping at freedom like a dog at his bowl. No appreciation.”
He moves to my head. In the moment it takes him to untie my hands, I glance over to the mirror. Without the pillow to prop up my head, I can only see a sliver of myself. The ash from his cigarette falls on my neck. “So sorry,” he monotones, and roughly flips me onto my belly.
“Ura is what lies behind.” He collects my hands and feet and holds them together in a little bouquet, twists the cord around, ankles to wrists until I’m hog-tied. Steps back for inspection, mumbles a little in Japanese (Dou shiouka? What shall I do?) and wedges the pillow under my hips. “Ura is the true thing.”
My neck and back are starting to ache.
“Are you uncomfortable?” Used asks.
I shift a little bit. Open my knees a bit wider.
“If you move the next position will eventually hurt, and the next one. You ought to get used to how it is now.”
Used is quiet for a moment. I can’t see much—some bedsheets, a patch of wall, the sliver of me in the mirror. My sense of hearing gets sharper, as though I’ve been scanning radio frequencies, going through the crackle and hiss and finally turning the knob just so. I hear the room—the hotel—perfectly. The sound of Used smoking. The suck and the long exhale. I hear, through the wall, the sounds of a couple doing it. The creak of the bed. The rhythmic ah-ah-ah of the girl.
Used is at the side of the bed. His hand on the inside of my thigh. I want to change the energy in the room. I lift my hips an inch, let out a little moan of anticipation. “See how wet I am?”
“I could kill you and no one in Japan would care. Only about bad press maybe.”
“That’s not true,” I mumble into the pillow. “Someone would care.”
Used takes his hand from me and moves away. “Just wait,” he says. I hear the hiss of a beer can opening. “I’m going to tell you something.”
Used’s Something
“When I was a high school student,” Used tells me, “I knew a girl. There was always gossip about this girl, maybe because she was quiet and beautiful. Very white, with small lips. Probably because she had no mother. She lived alone with her father. No one knew about her mother. Perhaps she died, or ran away with a lover. I don’t know. The girl had an odd name as well—Lily—like the flower.”
“I thought at the time that Lily and I were perfect for each other. My father’s company had sent him to
England for six years. I had gone to school there. I was what they call ‘returnee.’ My Japanese-ness was less than others’ maybe. And I could speak English. Anyway, I was good at sports and taller than the other boys, so I got some respect that way. Still, I was different. Like Lily.”
Used and Lily would meet in the afternoons at her apartment, when her father was still at the company. She had a small, Western-style bed and her room was filled with all sorts of girl things. Posters of singers, dolls and toys, stacks of comic books. In the absence of a mother, Lily kept the small apartment clean for her father, but her bedroom was a mess. The floor was carpeted with clothes, every surface was cluttered with makeup, the window and vanity mirror were a collage of tiny Print Club machine photos. It almost hurt your eyes it was so full of things, but Used liked being there. She’d make a snack and some tea, and they would talk a bit. Then she’d crawl under the covers of her bed, pull the duvet up to her chin and look at Used.
As soon as he took his school-uniform jacket off and found room next to Lily on the small bed, his cock would get hard and his face would flush. This seemed to do something to Lily, push some trigger, as if arousal began in another person, and only after she saw it would it move to her body. Taking care not to let the duvet fall below her collarbone, Lily would shimmy out of her clothes and press herself against Used. She would never let him remove his clothes and she would never, under any circumstances, let him see her body.
They never had sex, but in the sincerest, sweetest meaning of the term, they made love. Used felt as though he wanted Lily to pass through his skin, to be absorbed into him.
Used assumed that after a few weeks, Lily would lose her shyness and he’d be allowed to see her body, but it never happened. If anything, she became more and more vigilant about keeping the covers pulled up to her chin at all times. He wondered if maybe there was a scar or a burn on her body—some mark she was too embarrassed to show him. Under the duvet, after they’d made love, he would run his hand over her thighs and back, along her abdomen. The skin seemed uniform and unflawed. A little trail of fine hairs led his hands down from Lily’s navel to the tuft of hair on the gentle rise of her pubic bone. He observed her body without eyes—charted it—and Lily would moan a little or fall into a light sleep.
Lost Girls and Love Hotels Page 9
