Cast Stones, and Other Ni-Chome Tales - 1. I. Cast Stones

I. Cast Stones

 

I don't ask for your pity, but just your understanding –

No, not even that - no. Just for your recognition of me in you,

and the enemy, time, in us all.

Tennessee Williams

 

 

Sometimes the whys and hows of an unbidden past come to haunt a person, and to Nathan they came with some force. Although he'd like to be his old self again, and laugh it all off, he was forced to consider the facts: he was a Back Bay Boy in a Tokyo bar, he was alone, and he was letting himself be consumed by regrets; regrets that did nothing but further isolate him.

The corners of this subterranean place were pinpointed with large monitors that flickered a smooth flowing stream of dance videos. They were like cycloptic brothers, reflecting back and forth each others single eye across the wide-open room. These were mounted near the ceiling and stood perfectly still as they gazed with unattached candor over the assembled patrons. These men, mostly returned the monitors' gaze with equal stoicism, that is, when throughout the long hours of the night, they were not looking at each other with anything but detachment.

And Nathan sat at a corner of the large island style bar seeing none of it. Before him a beer was growing flat and ever hotter within his tortured grip on the glass. He had no friends here, barely spoke to anyone last weekend when he came here the first time, and envisioned this evening ending just as devoid of making any buddies. The Bostonian seemed as lost as a stray kitten, one ventured too far into unfamiliar territory, for this was only his second time 'out' in Japan, and he found it a world of difference from the Boston scene. He was not comfortable in what he considered a back-step in time; this windowless basement, where the walls were all painted black, or mirrored, seemed in his opinion to 'smell' of what Gay bars of the past must have been like. He wanted the clubs, the free hands kicking the air in a night of dancing, and of meeting with people as free as he was, he wanted Boston. Nathan's eyes drifted up to the shadows moving on the screens through murky bar air, redolent with smoke and sour beer fumes. The air itself seemed to be burdened with the seriousness of a former caution, as if the lights were going to come up and blindingly flash a couple of times, meaning all the patrons had to run from the cops. He knew it was a silly thought. In Japan, the authorities never had any problems with Gay people gathering, but still, if this bar were in Boston, a few decades back, he could see him being nabbed, see his name printed in the next morning's Globe, no problem, except for a ruined life. 'Yes,' he thought 'it's this place. There's a guilt-ridden gravity here, like the stale aftershave of a man settled too long in one place. It's that old feeling, that old way of thinking that conflated "excitement" with "illicit," as if that were the only sort of love my kind could hope to get away with.' Nathan shook himself like a small dog. He so hated this place. Hated that at best this place only seemed to offer the prospect of a 'hook up,' and that despite all the decades of progress, that still seemed the best he might be able to achieve.

But he knew differently, though he hadn't always. His puberty was one long nervous strain on his mind, and a muzzle on the development on his emotions, and he equated that unsteady feeling with the nature of this bar. Isolation is what being is about for suppressed Gays, and Nathan kept himself closeted until he was eighteen with the strongest oppression of all; opposition from within. And he hated this bar because it made him feel the pain of growing up again; saw that both loneliness and this place only offered the comfort of a 'sin,' one in the penance of self-hate, the other in the excess of 'guilty' indulgence. Even it's odd name, BB's – or the Basement Bar – reinforced a cryptic existence.

He wondered what he was doing here, where he found himself a fresh face again on the other side of the world, only able to think about the breezy South End club on the top floor of an old warehouse where he had once been new, and where he later found Benjamin with his sorrowful smile, and dark eyes that promised a sad, but true acceptance of those he looked at. The place where those many months ago Nathan had decided to give up on Massachusetts for a while, and did so because he had nothing to keep him there; a string of soured love affairs may in fact have compelled him to go the quicker. So on that night, barely two weeks before his departure, he had no hopes of finding anything but his usual buddies and a good, mindless time, but Benjamin smiled at him; but Benjamin looked at him; and instantly his former loves faded away to boyish insignificance – for Benjamin had looked, and in him was Love itself.

Through the noisy swirl and beating musical pulse of the club, Nathan first saw Benjamin talking with friends. The young man's seeking but friendly smile wafted to Nathan as easily as the dark-eyes boy raised the tiny red straw of his cocktail glass to his lips. Nathan had never seen someone so open, and yet so mysterious.

To Nathan's eyes the stranger was a Latino youth of about eighteen or nineteen, with dark and satiny skin, and soft ringlets of brunette hair. On the roofline of the intriguing smile now offered to him, Nathan perceived a straight and light shadow. There a mustache was growing-in almost against the will of the persistent youth of the owner who doggedly willed it into being. The nature of this soft face hair stated that Benjamin was in his formative years even more clearly than his rose-touched cheeks.

In a moment Nathan excused himself from his buddies, and grinned to see Ben do the same. They met on neutral ground, wisely free of friendly interference in the form of 'advice.'

"I'm Nathan."

"Benjamin."

They took hands, ostensibly to shake, but neither saw any reason to let go. So they only tightened a reciprocated and sustained embrace with their fingers. And they didn’t need to say anymore.

Nathan, now lost on the other side of the world with his regrets, thought about going back to that club; though the time was never to return, Benjamin would be worth trying to do it for, if only the young man with the Mona Lisa eyes could forgive the reasons for Nathan's regrets.

"I'm going to Japan." Nathan had to confess that first night.

"Oh," Benjamin said. "When?"

"Two weeks."

"Well – then we better make the most of it."

And they did by seeing each other everyday, spending most nights together in Ben's apartment, or in Nathan's room at home. And each day, almost each moment, Nathan fell deeper in love. By the first weekend, Nathan hated to tell him they could not spend the two days together. His high school buddies had organized a going away camping trip.

"Why can’t I go?" Benjamin asked.

"I'm not out to my friends." Nathan felt shame to confess, but it was an honest shame for the first stinging time in his life. Honest because instead of self-denial, he had to deny his love for Benjamin, and why shouldn't he be able to love him in the sight of his friends, if they really were his friends. But he trotted away grudgingly; one last hug, one last lingering kiss at the door of Benjamin's apartment was all of their weekend together.

Still, what was the company of his comrades worth when he could glean in a single heartfelt embrace more than hours of loveless laughter with his buddies, so he left them early; left them bewildered on that Sunday morning to rush back to Boston, and to the hearkening lips of Benjamin. He arrived at noon, knew he would still be sleeping, so let himself in through the kitchen door, and crept in to find Benjamin curled in his sheets in the midday sun like one of the misty Seraphim he knew the boy kept inside of him. Nathan paused a moment to decide what to do, then thought it might be best to join him. He quietly kicked off he shoes, undid his trousers and tore off t-shirt and socks. Still and breathless, he glided over the bed and down onto the pillow next to Benjamin. And there, in a moment so sweet, in the reality of a time that had haunted him every moment with his straight friends, he started to cry. These were not happy tears, not the sad resourceless tears of a man brought to that state by powerlessness, but he cried like strong women do; tears of consolidation and rage. For there, on the pillow, on the sheets, on the sweet skin of Benjamin himself, was the palpable and odious smell of another man. The man Ben had taken home Saturday night.

A stranger leaned close to Nathan, he was sitting next to him on the left-facing corner of the bar.

"Reputation," he said, a thick Australian drawl lengthening every brassy vowel like a snare drum.

Nathan, startled out of the past, abruptly turned formally to the man he hadn't noticed before. The Australian's gold-rimed glasses flashed a moment with reflected color and movement from one of the monitors. Nevertheless, Nathan half smiled as he asked: "I beg your pardon?"

With intrigue dripping off his words, the man repeated: "Reputation, my boy – he definitely does not have a good one."

The Bostonian eyed him with curiosity. The man was maybe thirty-five, slender with wiry facial muscles and a Puckish glint that relayed him to be an old hand at many things in life. His short hair was wavy and fair and perhaps close-cropped to hide its growing sparsity. Behind his glasses that were lively with reflected scenes of the outside world, his eyes were tired-looking and only enlivened with occasional flashes of pessimistic joy; an 'I've seen it all before' look of the nature of a self-fulfilled prophesy. But in the stranger's smile, something intangible lurked; a something pausing to probe, to search for a menu of reactions that made the person on the other end of the grin a little wary.

Nathan asked, "Who doesn't have a good reputation?"

"The guy you were looking at." The stranger's dancing glasses followed through with his thought.

Nathan followed to where he was led, just in time to see a boy jerk his sight away from them.

Across the dull, rising air of the bar, a Japanese young man sat with nervous elbows propped on the counter. He wore in vivid red the expensive designer polo shirt favored by the wealthy on their days off. The collar was broad and rakishly at full attention. The young man was not a looker, perhaps nineteen or twenty, but that shirt accentuated an upper body built through honest labor. His large nipples rubbed against the interior fabric and made them even more prominent. His hands too were large, and Nathan imagined them rough and callused. His knuckles had that swollen mechanic's look, while his forearms were taught and smooth, and hairlessly drifted up into impressive biceps. There was the look of a naturally strong and kind constitution about the boy, and Nathan could easily imagine others found him unaccountably attractive – striking with that archaic, or primal manliness that was much vaunted by 1950's beefcake peddlers.

The boy in red was thin of cheek, but they were rosy. He had almond eyes that seemed unable to move in motions of up and down. His mouth looked too large for his face, and his lips were peach-like and overly fleshy; as if coarse velvet brushing against them would be enough to aggravate bloodshed. His nose also suffered from too much meat around the nostrils, and his hair was short and styled up into a boyish crew cut. But, around his shoulders – as if pressing on them – was a weight that slumped him. Nathan could imagine he saw a carriage more crushed in a prolonged despair than simply bad posture.

Nathan turned to the man by his side. "How did you know I was looking at him, when I didn't even realize it?"

The Australian tried to look innocent, or perhaps just naïve, but his appearance unintentionally revealed his inability to be innocent again, and his laid-bare-to-view designs on Nathan.

The stranger assessed the bemused scowl on Nathan's face and in it read his own face's betrayal. He stood and grabbed his beer bottle and went for the stool next to Nathan.

Nathan now saw in him in greater detail. He wore a garish Hawaiian shirt what was baggy and too unbuttoned. Out the top of it sprouted graying and curly chest hair. His arms were likewise covered in a fair and curvy fuzz.

The man tried to cover his blunder by reasserting his original topic. "Well, be careful of that one; he's 'all-you-can-eat,' if you know what I mean."

Nathan made a confused headshake.

"He's what we'd call back home a 'fantail,' you know; you could say he's had more pricks than a dartboard; more arse than a public loo, etc."

Nathan inhaled sharply, a lopsided grin spreading.

The stranger leaned in for greater confidentiality. "He likes to jump on the bones of every new guy who sits at this here bar, the ones who haven't heard to steer clear of him first." The stranger's tone grew deep and brooding. "He hooks about fifty percent, so be careful. If he buzzes around you, wave him off with a heavy hand." The warning over, his voice slipped seamlessly into a brighter tone. "And, you are new, aren’t you?"

"Yeah," Nathan felt awkward admitting it. "My second time to BB's, or out in Japan for that matter."

The Australian seemed positively nostalgic. "I can't even remember being that new to Ni-chome."

"What's that?"

The man laughed. "That, my American friend, is where you are – this section of Shinjuku is called Ni-chome – or as the locals sometimes like to call it, the Boys Town of Tokyo. And with characters like that, they may be right." He head-gestured to the young man in red. "If anyone needs to be in reform school, it's him. Anyway..." He continued in a lighter vein. "You are a Yank, aren’t ya?"

"Yes, from Boston."

"Well I can assure you, it's a lot different over here. I'm afraid here you'll soon learn our little Ni-chome community is a bit too cozy for us round-eyes – because, first we only have a handful of clubs and bars that welcome us in, and second, we all know each other, and think we have a right to know everybody else's business. So the moral of the lesson is, Reputation here is almost ludicrously – no, rather – Victorianly important.

Nathan only grinned; he thought he was having his leg pulled.

The stranger frowned. He leaned his head tilted towards the American, and propped his elbows on the bar. "Japanese boys," he described with undue solemnity. "Look down on Westerns' tendencies to bed-hop. They do not want to 'Hook-up,' but sleep with someone they think they already have made a strong effort with, and then be exclusive to him and try to make it work."

"How is it different?" puzzled Nathan. "Only, we might take the testing of the physical compatibility early on – test the chemistry out…"

"Not them. They're stuck in a time warp. Think 1950's high school: a lot of dating, some hand-holding, some necking, and then a big scary decision – to sleep together, or not. But don't get me wrong, some of them are just as easy as we seem to them, and the closet-cases have more cursing grounds than there are total clubs in Ni-chome."

"I was going to say – I seemed to see a lot of young men hanging around in doorways, who look like they're working, if you know what I mean." Nathan shook his head.

"Well, they are. But those boys are providing a service to repressed and drunken businessmen who'll catch the last train to wife, and grandma, and a stable of kids. They're not who I'm talking about. I mean the kind who come into the bars and look for friends or lovers. And they spread the word quicker than fire if they think one of us Gaijin is sleeping around too much, which causes all the other boys to stay away from that individual. As for the others local fellows in Boys Town who are interested in us, like that guy in red, they just seem to target Westerns just because they think they can go from guy to guy with no strings. The regular boys hate them."

"Really? It sounds so stratified."

Willie laughed: "You'll learn! And it is."

"But seriously, why do we care what they think? If the approach you describe is what they want for themselves, why do you think we have to adopt it?"

"Because, my boy..." He readjusted himself on his stool, his glasses flashing color from the monitor behind Nathan. "Well, let me say it this way – in Japan there's a saying: 'The floorboard that sticks up, gets hammered down.' In other words, conform, or get beaten into submission." He laughed again, but now there sounded no amusement in it.

"Well you don’t have to worry about me, with that guy." Nathan parodied the earlier flip tone of the Australian: "First, Japanese guys in general don’t interest me; and second, he certainly doesn't."

"How long have you been here?"

"Three weeks, but I don’t think time will help me find these so-called 'men' sexy. I mean, I can look around and see some of these boys are just simply beautiful – like the serving crew at a banquette on Mount Olympus – a lost race of gods, but even they aren’t sexy, or should I say, inviting in the 'that' way."

"Not your type?"

"Not at all."

"Well, after three weeks, I guess not." The man's lit cigarette was waved in front of Nathan like a stick of incense. "You still have all those American visions of musclemen, and all those blonde catalog boys floating around in your head – but believe me – little by little you'll acquire a taste for these 'so-called' men."

"Excuse me?" Nathan raised an eyebrow. "Acquire a taste?"

"Oh, I don’t mean anything suggestive, I mean that time adjusts the appetite. When you've got only a diet of looking at Japanese men for a while, a natural appreciation builds. It was the same with me. At first I thought 'Not them,' but as time passed, I came to know them to be, as you said, a lost race of gods, endowed with the kind of beauty you can only appreciate in a shudder and a sigh to be alive, and a blessing to have eyes with which to see."

Nathan's attention drifted away, thinking reverentially that there had been no hint of a joke in the stranger's voice while he praised these men; there was a sincerity like admiration, but also unmistakably, desire too. His sight passed over the crowd onto a young man who was one of the handsomer local numbers; but his beauty moved Nathan the way a comet would, or a starry night. He was stunning, amazing, but where was the desire to become a part of that beauty? It wasn't there. Then, in the continuation of the same movement, he saw a tall moptop redhead standing under one of the monitors, and his heart nearly left him in an attempt to be part of what he saw there. This young man was about Nathan's age and had classically defined features: a straight nose that left his forehead in the best of 'Greek' fashion, alabaster skin, and high cheekbones. His lips were thin and of the type that that seemed to flicker between decisive cruelty, and an easygoing gentleness, with nary a thought. 'What is the difference?' he wondered. 'Why is the boy I think beautiful, not desirable exactly because of it, while that redhead – inferior in his loveliness – is driving me into a stupor?'

Nathan felt the pain of his solitude. He took it out and examined it impartially. It wasn't horniness; he knew that if it even had a role in his depression, it was a small one. No, it was belonging that eluded his senses, of feeling an affinity for this place of its people. Although half of the bar's clientele were foreigners, he didn't really sense he belonged with them, or that their acceptance had value to him. No, it was the locals, the ones he felt the least attraction to that he wanted to be attracted to the most; he wanted their acknowledgment, wanted it to heal the wound Nathan had opened in himself against Benjamin. He wanted to belong to these people, and his lack of accord within himself left him in limbo; not one of any.

"My name's Willy," the man said.

"Oh yeah – we haven't met, have we? I'm Nathan."

Willy and Nathan shook hands.

"Welcome to the neighborhood." Willy smiled.

"Thanks."

"Have you been to Whitman's yet?" His Aussie tones became smooth and low.

"What’s that. Another bar?"

"You could say that, but not a bar like this is. It feels a whole lot different. Whitman's is on the second floor with windows all the way round. It feels open. Maybe we can go over there a little later." He glanced at his watch "Usually the crowd doesn't start heading over there till after ten, so we've got a little time."

Nathan spoke a cool, slightly reserved "Maybe." And Willy recognized the others apprehension as a sure sign he has fresh from the West with all his cautions, and concerns still up around him as fortifications. Willy saw that Nathan was not one of the honest-natured Japanese he usually dealt with, and it saddened him.

The American leaned in to Willy, and for the first time spoke to him as if to a friend and confidant. "Do you see that guy standing under the monitor?"

Willy searched for and found him. "That Bluey fella? I mean, the red-haired guy? That tall one?"

Nathan peered into Willy's countenance openly, because laughter was ringing in his voice.

"Yes."

Knowing it would thrill his companion, Willy drew out coyly, "You mean, David?"

"Do you know him!"

From behind the protection of his glasses, Willy scanned the face suddenly brought to life before him. And as Nathan sat next to him, smiling so openly at the outlook that he could introduce a moptop redhead to him, Willy thought Nathan to be unaccountably handsome. The young man he eyed was about twenty-three with long and straight brunette hair moussed in an easy combed-back sling. Nathan's lips were full, and a wickedly placed cupid's bow was tense and drawn-back before releasing his heart-piercing grins, or smirks, or sometimes as now, a genuine smile. There was a tenderness to the way Nathan searched those to whom he spoke; an approach that was free of projection, and lacked caution until warranted. And Willy was lost in that – an honesty like an unspoken compliment – 'I'll do you no evil, if you do me none.' Although the smile was for someone distant, someone other than himself, Willy took pleasure in that prospect nonetheless. He saw himself in Nathan a few years back; young, impetuous, maybe even a bit shortsighted and quick-tempered. And probably also in this lad was that trait of need; that thumb-sucking approval from others, and what was that except being open to receive love? Yes, Willy acknowledged that he longed to join with Nathan inside of his head; longed for one view that showed two equanimities, but for now, he had to deal with his immediate and palpably strong attraction to the face leaning close to him in hopeful expectation.

Willy chirped, "Well of course, my boy!" His language was light to hide that his heart was not. "We all know each other. The question is, do you want to know him?"

The Australian watched Nathan's eyes dart over him with anxious intensity, and again he was startled, because in them was an honesty he though he hadn't seen in an adult; a piercingly light blue, large like the sky, and alive in the way they trusted him. Recently Willy had been feeling old, but at thirty-six he was again, almost to amazement, swooning under a crush, and it felt sadly sweet.

Nathan grinned, saying slowly, sincerely, "I'd love it if you could introduce me to him." Willy was suddenly forced to remember the existence of the Bluey, and was struck dead by the irony of a smile not at all for him, but for what he could do. Nathan was so close, and he wanted him to cast a glance back with just a sliver of the passion he projected through the murky air onto the distant, unknowable David.

On that fateful Sunday afternoon, while the sun streamed over the still sleeping Benjamin, Nathan began to tremble with desperation and anger. He had paused there, crouching on the rumpled bed. In his nostrils, there could be no mistake about Ben's wickedness, for the sweetly sick redolence admitted evidence as surely as a bloody knife at a murder site. Benjamin had betrayed him. Nathan thought through his rage that Benjamin had only used him, and he suspected that worst of all possibilities, that Benjamin had never loved him. But what could he do? Thrash a confession out of the placidly slumbering boy; pound a wide-eyed, sober fit of shame at seeing his love again, or what? What could he do?

He knelt perfectly still on the bed, motionlessly poised like a saint before the discovery that an idol of Christ is no more the soul of what Christ said than a pang of guilt is the substance of a sin. Nathan was confronted with palsy of the sort he had known before coming out to himself; a fear that kept him unable to trust, least of all, admit his own emotions. Kneeling there, he knew his love for Benjamin was almost his love for his ability to believe in himself, but could he do what he thought he wanted; could he confront his power to love and not come out a loser as sure as he now had love to lose? He was deadly calm, caught in not knowing which he wanted more; Benjamin's contrition – a shame-faced apology – or peace; for him to go on sleeping, innocently, like he had never faltered against the only thing Nathan could offer him, his love.

Nathan sat alone again. Willy had left him to his own thoughts by saying he was first heading to the 'little boys' room, then – on his way back – he was going to pull David to their corner of the bar.

Nathan watched David, that wondrous man, stand under the cycloptic screen and hoped again for friendship. He unconsciously goaded himself into a little smile of titillation, turning his head just slightly when a red shadow of a form descended into Willy's seat. He turned his dumb grin on the figure, and there was the boy, the infamously talked about young man of 'ill-repute.' And he was smiling right back at Nathan.

The Bostonian's mouth dropped in the corners, there being more embarrassment in his first reaction than anything else, but that quickly dove into dread. This boy couldn't stay. What if David should see, then Nathan wouldn't stand a chance. This red polo shirt guy would rub his reputation off on Nathan as happily as a bear marks a tree in his territory.

"Hello." The boy's large mouth sang out brightly to the frankly startled-looking Nathan.

"My friend's coming right back," he said without the least bit of courtesy. "You'll have to go."

"Pardon me?" The boy ironically echoed Nathan's first words to Willy as he propped his hairless, but built, arms on the bar. He came closer with lowered head to better understand Nathan; all his abundant and perfectly formed teeth showing in good fellowship.

"The guy…" Nathan grew adamant. "Who was sitting here..."

"My name is Takahiro. What is your name?"

"It's Nathan – but my friend is coming right back."

"How long have you been in Japan?"

Nathan sighed, time was running out. He could feel Willy somewhere out in the dark leading imperfect Beauty to him, and he didn't dare look to see that David might turn around and go back when he saw Nathan chatting with this persona non grata.

"My friend is coming back!" he tried more forcefully.

"Your friend, Willy?"

"Yes, Willy. You know him?" Somehow Nathan was surprised. Willy made it sound like he'd never associate with this young man, but apparently he had.

"Oh yes, I know him."

"Well, I'm sorry." He pointed with unnecessary vehemence. "That's Willy's seat." And then Nathan watched degree-by-degree the dark shade of realization draw itself over Takahiro's vision. It was like watching a dog's tail sink under a beloved master's loveless blow; the boy acknowledging in Nathan's curtness that more than just the seat was unopened to him.

"Oh," Takahiro said. "I see." Then he slowly rose and went to stand silently behind Nathan's stool. In the sad scowl of his eyes, Nathan thought he viewed an 'I thought you were different' challenge that made the Back Bay boy regret he was as shallow as he was. He let himself be moved, sighed deeply, and swallowed down the thought of David. He turned on his seat.

"What was your name, again?"

"My name is Takahiro."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Nathan." He reached out a hand, and the boy shifted his beer glass, giving the offered fingers a limp, wet and cold little shake. A spark of optimism awoke in the young man's look, and Nathan instantly wished he hadn't fanned it.

A moment later Nathan saw Willy pushing through the crowd, while behind him, like an ocean liner in tow, a slightly resistant David let himself be tugged from his corner. Nathan thought the tall redhead looked stately, but somehow uneasy, moving through the waves of dark heads that turned admiring eyes up to David as he glided effortlessly over them.

"Nathan, this is David. David, this is a fellow Yank of yours, Nathan." Willy wore a matchmaker's smile, his hands flew needlessly.

"Hi, good to know ya."

Nathan gurgled under the powerful sway of David's gripping hand. "How's it goin?"

Willy forced the newcomer down. "Why don’t you sit, I'll catch you two later." He excused himself gracefully by pointing to a long un-talked to, though remote, and ill-defined friend.

There was an unsettled silence once David and Nathan were alone. The tension propelled itself along like a friction toy until Nathan ventured, "How long have you been in Japan?" He was too nervous to conjure up more that the usual fare.

"About nine months, and you?"

"A little over two weeks." He shortened the length of his Japan sojourn to sound 'fresher.'

"Two weeks! It that all?"

"Yeah, I'm still trying to get myself orientated. It all looks pretty weird to me still. Even the familiar looks beyond belief – who knew they'd have 7-Eleven's here? But that they'd be full of dried squid snacks, and not a corn chip in sight?!" Nathan heard with horror, as the tone of his words – even the force of his intonation – grew foolisher and foolisher

"You've got like a New England…"

"I'm from Boston."

"Oh then, you've got Mr. Donuts!"

"Yeah, but back home they sell donuts!"

"What, you don’t expect corn soup and steamed Chinese dumplings in Bean Town donut shops?"

Nathan smiled helplessly. He liked this guy.

"Not really. Where are you from?"

"Nowhere special, small town Iowa."

Nathan didn’t know what to say; he had never been to Iowa, and wasn't sure he would not confuse it with Idaho in conversation. Instead he gripped his beer glass and said a non sequitur: "Yeah, and I can't believe this beer costs eight bucks."

David stopped smiling. "But, you didn’t pay eight bucks. You paid eight hundred yen. You better get used to thinking in yen and not dollars. I saw a guy at the airport, who after he had cleared customs, was asking people if they knew why the payphones wouldn't take his quarters." David was bored. "Sometimes we Americans are just as cliché as the rest of the world wants to believe we are, so buck up, and start thinking locally."

'Wow,' Nathan thought. 'This guy is intense. I hope I didn’t piss him off.'

"I…" the Bostonian didn’t know how he was going to finish the sentence; he had nothing to say, but didn't want any unpleasant silences intruding in their 'flow.' He nodded, clearing his throat. "I find it hard to believe there's only a few places in Tokyo that let us foreigners in, Gay Westerns, that is, here in Shinjuku."

David's expression made it clear he was thinking of escape.

Nathan began to stumble over his own thoughts. Nothing came out of him in either a sensible, or even interesting way. Whenever he spoke or listened to David speak, he had to fight back the almost overpowering urge to tell him how beautiful he was to Nathan; tell him the corny, ridiculous notion that Nathan's life was somehow, spiritually enriched just to have seen him, even more to have spoken with him. Nathan frowned and swallowed down a lump. He knew David would never understand, and he also knew only Benjamin would.

David's eyes grew narrow; he slouched down on the bar and invited Nathan to bend an ear to his low confidence. "Since you are new..." He darted glances left and right. "I think I should warn you about that guy – that guy in the red shirt standing right behind you – he's a real 'rake,' and he doesn't care who he scrapes up. You be careful of that one, you hear? He'll sleep with anyone that approaches him, or more likely, anyone who lets him gets too near. Watch him, he's a real man-whore."

Abruptly Nathan was knocked out of his inner reflection by hearing hateful things issuing from his idol's mouth. He had almost completely forgotten about the boy in the red polo shirt, and here David was inconceivably talking about Takahiro.

Nathan tried to glance over to this now notorious kid, and inadvertently saw the couple sitting on his right get up and leave. He brought his eyes to the front of him again, perceiving what was going to happen, but lacking the guts to witness it firsthand. Out of the corner of his eye he perceived a red blur descend into the seat right next to him. He didn't dare look, but could see the truth of it in the hateful scowl David aimed beyond Nathan's right shoulder.

"His reputation precedes him." Nathan didn't know what else to reply. Should he say 'thank you,' but no, David's interest wasn't in Nathan's safety, rather his only intention was in slamming the Japanese young man. Nathan saw in Beauty's eyes a cruelty that didn't belong anywhere near a being disseminating a love he couldn't propitiate. If he was able to show hate like this, then only a loathing of the same intensity was his rightful due.

All of this Nathan knew without letting the thought seep into the front of his head. The hope he had in the driver's seat kept him striving forward. For the reality of the moment – either his eyes, that saw beauty before him, or his sub-conscious, that felt only a mean-spirited brat sitting there – would win; but Nathan was, as he had been so often in his life, paralyzed.

He stumbled more, trying to get away from the subject of Takahiro. He asked David a couple of uncomfortably close questions, and then Nathan began to say all the wrong things. With every word he uttered, and with every soundless measure between them, the indifference of David grew thicker like a protecting callus. Nathan didn't know what to do anymore when both sound and silence estranged them, and then suddenly, David was gone. He stood up, excusing it with talk of only being away a few minutes.

"I've just seen some friends I've got to talk to." He mimed Willy's parting words, but as Nathan watched him go, he knew he was not seeing a graceful withdrawal to distant friends, but simply a mad flight away from him.

Nathan was alone again, yet whereas he had been alone with only his thoughts before, now he was left solitary by his own emotions. Beauty had resigned his company, for now that he was gone, Nathan took out and tossed away the notion that David had been anything but his highest expectations. And he was sad; not even worthy of the polite attention of the likes of what David really was. Nathan was alone, but his mind wouldn't leave him in peace.

It was before another that his mind and body knelt on a bright Sunday afternoon. One that haunted him in this place that seemed so ridiculously far away. While Benjamin slept, Nathan was silent, but near a rage. He fought himself any number of times to shake the dark-complected boy awake, but every time lost, so he stayed perfectly still, trapped between wanting a conclusion, and never wanting to force a denouement onto their love.

Benjamin awoke, surprising Nathan who wanted to leap away, or dissolve into the brightness of the light, but he found at that moment he could do nothing but keep still; still as a pilgrim before a shrine at the end of a long, painful journey. He loved Benjamin. Loved him not only because he was handsome, not only because he was kind and generous, but because he had made Nathan love himself, and for that there had been no betrayal. His love was not a 'Thing' to be projected outwards, it was what he wanted to be made of entirely. The night in the club when they met, Benjamin had looked at him; Benjamin had smiled at him, and Nathan had taken a gasp of air as only newborns can – he had lived in his own, his heart beat, and he was alive in more than flesh and thought, he as alive in love. And he could forgive.

When Benjamin awoke, Nathan expected the other would jump up, would collect himself in the frenzy of a harlot, but instead, Benjamin's consciousness rose as if he were a cat on an August afternoon, leisurely and smiling. "What are you doing back so soon?" he asked his visitor with a sleepy, blissful grin, his hand coming up to Nathan's cheek. But Nathan was shocked; had this boy no decency? Where was his shame? How could he be so cavalier still tucked within his bed that reeked of his betrayal? He pushed the offending hand away. And he forgot that he was able to forgive; so short is the life of human reconciliation in the face of common surprise.

Benjamin rolled over completely onto his back and scanned Nathan probingly in the face. "What's wrong?" he asked.

Nathan was silent, his eyes hard, but behind them his mind pleaded for him to take Benjamin's hand and beg for the boy's forgiving grace; plead for the hand to come back to his cheek and console away anything that was still not love in his soul. But Nathan, spineless, again unable to move in any assured way, just stared at him with cold, unseeing eyes.

"What's wrong!" Benjamin sat up in bed. He tried to take his love's hand, but this time Nathan did move. His mind, his rationale shouted at him to be what he wanted to be; a man free of hate, but his heart, still weighed down with the will to have power over others won and lashed out through his senses. He grabbed Benjamin's wrist with a grip calculated to hurt, he grabbed it and held on, while the darker, softer flesh pounded out Nathan's hysterical heartbeat through his own fingers. He started to yell, to shout with an eternally irretractable fury, and then, with words setting like concrete, he sealed his fate. He watched as if he had no control over their form. "You Son of a Bitch, why the Hell I ever got hooked on you – I guess I'm just one of the many saps you take home regularly."

Benjamin, who was no defenseless weakling, threw off the last shackles of sleep, and wrenched his wrist out of Nathan's grip. "What the Fuck are you talking about?"

"OH, don’t play the God-damned innocent. I Know."

Benjamin clutched at his sheet, and leapt to his feet on the bed. He looked wildly down on the near raving Nathan. "What do you know?"

"That you fucking had a guy here last night, don't try and deny it – his smell is all over the place."

"What!" Benjamin exploded. "What the..." He jumped heavily on the floor, nearly tripping on his sheet, and began to pace all around him. He stopped, stood an arms-length away from Nathan and had to say it again: "What!"

"I know you slept with someone last night." And as Nathan said this, as he looked into Benjamin's eyes, he knew he was lost; that he was drowning in a scene he didn't want to be in. And like the times in life when our pain of being alive is so great, there seems only one way to survive; Nathan lashed out where he should have laughed out, and when he was no longer paralyzed, irony laughed at him. She always wins when we are unable to laugh at her first, and afterwards, both tears and regrets are too late. It was too late, what could he do?

Takahiro spoke gently to him.

"How long have you been in Japan, Nathan?"

Nathan glanced up at him with eyes that almost cried for the past; cried for it to return, and for its opportunities to forgive him. He blinked, growing angry that he had been taken from Benjamin's thought. "Three weeks," he snorted as if it were any of the other's business.

"Do you like it?" Takahiro showed Nathan a silly smile, and the Bostonian's anger coalesced around it. 'I don't need this,' he thought. 'I don't need this kind of crap, so why don’t you get the hell away from me, you perv.' A hate built from grief arose in him, and he felt it stroke him in soothing relief. 'It's probably your fault anyway that David left. It was you who drove him away, you with your creepy looks. Your fault, not mine. He wanted to stay, he wanted to, but you, you wouldn't let him be comfortable and drove him from me.'

Nathan looked the smilingly apert boy directly in the eyes. Takahiro was open, and Nathan aimed to punish. "Do I like this country? No," he said. "I don’t like this miserable country, with all you chattering, empty-headed people pushing and shoving each other to the grave. And I don’t like you! Get it, I don't like you, I don't want to talk to You, I don’t want to be anywhere near you. Get it?"

Those eyes, full open, shuddered in the force of Nathan's odious blow, and Takahiro nodded in pain and understanding of Nathan's intent. And for the Back Bay boy, the very intensity, the very sincerity of the pain he witnessed ripple across the boy's whole body, made the punisher shudder himself. Nathan felt the shame of a father who has hurt his child with a more careless than cruel word. The boy had looked at him with clarity of heart, but Nathan had shoved bewildering hate into it.

Takahiro stumbled backwards off his stool.

"Wait," Nathan took his arm, and pleaded for understanding. "Why me? There's plenty of guys in this bar. There are so many others, why did you pick me?"

The young man's heart was closed now. He glanced between the hand that gripped him and the face that confronted him without any comfort. Takahiro spoke slowly and without emotion. "Because…"

"Because, I'm new?"

"No – " He gulped awkwardly, removing his arm. "Because, I thought you were not like them."

"Not like them, how?"

Takahiro hesitated a moment, obviously not wanting to say something as odd as: "I thought you could still love."

Suddenly Willy was there. He took Nathan under the arm and pulled him to his feet. He told the still baffled, still reeling Nathan that they should go to Whitman's. And as Nathan resisted, more to go after Takahiro, who had moved off, as though in flight from them, Willy tugged Nathan away; away from Takahiro, away from David, and most sorrowfully, away from Benjamin and his wild sad look of a distant Sunday past.

One last pitiful glance from the portal, and Nathan spied the boy in red, and his dejected eyes, following him out along with his regrets.

      

˚˚˚˚˚

 

An hour in the new bar had settled his nerves. Nathan liked Whitman's much better. It was on the second floor of a building that had equal sides along the intersection of broad streets, which were more used by pedestrians than cars. An arcade of full height windows shouldered each other across the entire bar. These opened full to let the night and street and crowds and the bar be fully integrated. The pride of the place was obvious, and it felt like a breath of fresh air to Nathan's mood. This was what he had been looking for, the antithesis of the basement from which he and Willy and emerged. The windows all stood full open, and voices with laughter wafted up from the pavement like soft vocal frankincense in a church. This was the kind of place that Nathan felt was 'right,' and one he knew quite frankly scared the hell out of an older mindset who preferred the darker pit, and bricks and mortar of secrecy. This bar was unashamed to be what it was, in fact, so unconscious an environment was it, that it seemed almost incidentally Gay. If the other bar had represented all things 'illicit' to Nathan, then Whitman's was the sensible absolution of a groundless guilt, and a place of satisfaction for those who knew they were alive, and who knew they were Gay in each other, and not in the laws of ruefully closeted men.

Willy and Nathan sat close to a satin glass partition that shielded the entry from the main bar floor. They both absentmindedly people-watched out the window in front of them. The moist night pushed itself in with little spurts of wind.

"How did it go with David?" Willy didn't need to ask, but he tried to act disappointed.

"Not well."

"What did you talk about?"

"Nothing much." Nathan stared wide-eyed, but detachedly onto the street scene below.

"Just didn't click, eh?"

"No. I said all the wrong things. I couldn't think when I was actually sitting next to him. You know, I lost control of myself every time I looked into his face." He turned to Willy for sympathy. "Have you ever made a fool, made a complete ass of yourself in front of someone you were trying to be completely honest with?"

Willy was moved by Nathan's voice to comfort him. "We all have."

He thought of Benjamin. "Someone you thought was more than you ever hoped to meet, or be able to find in a lifetime?"

Willy chuckled: "You mean, you've got the hots for David that bad?"

"Not David. Believe me, I've lived long enough to have more serious regrets than a guy I saw once, and only once, in some bar. And if by 'the Hots' you mean a desire to be enveloped and eventually become a part of another, and we an inseparable part of all that has soul and existence, then yes, I've had 'the Hots' exactly once in my life." He sneered at Willy for the sake of a sarcastic jab.

Willy on the other end of this ridicule gazed at Nathan's soft hair, at the lovely curve of his youthful upper lip. Although it curled disdain at him, it nonetheless struck no sweeter a chord that the selfsame emotion of Nathan's description. Willy sat there dumbstruck. He wondered when the last time was he felt like holding a boy only for the purpose of comfort, and love it was that brought him back to it, love like Venus felt before her beautiful Adonis, not caring that she was a fool to love the smile that smiled at her in scorn.

Nathan returned his attention out the window, his thoughts speaking to Willy for him as frankly as if to himself: "Why is it that desire creeps up on us only to leave us babbling idiots? It leaves us without any relief, to grow like an infection and eventually cripple every other part of our daily functions. In the end, we can't do anything but worry, and fret, and hope, like that will be enough. But what I want to know is, why isn't the desire to be with another person enough? Why do we need love from them too; shouldn’t our love be enough to nourish us? Why does love make us weaker than we are if we just desire, but have no channel to get it out?"

Willy wanted to hold Nathan so badly. He looked at his profile, and wanted to take the young man in his arms, not in desire as much as in example. "Nathan," he said. "I have my regrets too, and the older you get, the more they seem to matter, but I think I've made enough mistakes to come close to knowing a thing or two about passion, and trust me, mistakes make a man far more than his successes do." Willy saw Nathan turn receptive eyes on him, and from them on Eros seemed to speak through him. "You asked me why it is that desire isn't enough, but if we only had the love we ourselves can generate, then we would have, by the nature of the love, no way to grow strong. If expressed in some form, directly or sublimated, it can increase; if done with power and in a healthy way, it can spring love from whatever it touches – like the Biblical font in the desert – where the staff of the knowledge of love strikes the stones most people have chiseled out as hearts for themselves, from there will well out what it means to be human, what it means to have life, and only from there can we reconnect with what the mystery of love really means."

"And what does it mean?"

"That we have a greater affinity with one another that we realise."

Nathan was puzzled.

"What if," Willy tried reasoning. "Every person realized, and I mean really were able to realize, that every other person has the capacity to love as strongly as they do? If they could feel that all the time, in every face they saw, you tell me that the world wouldn't change – that that ability wouldn't make us equal, make us one."

"Hi guys!" a bright voice rang out behind them. They turned into the half smile of David standing god-like between them. "Mind if I join your window?"

Willy glanced at Nathan, but he seemed despondent. He was in fact still thinking about what Willy had just told him.

"I had to get away from a couple of codgers who were going to gawk the night away at me." David sat between them, he had drifted from table to table, staying only for as long as his boredom was abated. David's knee bounced in unrestrained energy, as he said, "Man, I just hate when these creepy, short Japanese Granddads think that the price of a beer entitles them to come right up to you and stare like I'm an animal at the zoo. David's voice entreated sympathy from Nathan, "You know what I mean?"

Nathan had no sympathy to offer. 'I guess,' he thought. 'A lot of types stare at you – until they know what a jerk you are.'

"Yeah, speaking of that," David continued casually. "I'm sorry I ran out on you earlier, but that Fag sitting next to you just kept staring at me, and I hate that guy. He's such a pillow-biter, it ain't even funny."

Willy chimed in, a bit of concern in his voice for the Bostonian, "So true, you'd better stay away from him. In a weak moment, you never know what could happen."

Nathan blinked at them. It annoyed him that they took such delight in telling and retelling the foibles of another. He was amazed that Willy, who had just seemed so human, had such a bit of callous advice for him. What connection, he wondered, was between these three obviously different types of men, and a notion was planted far back in his head as to what linked Willy and David in a hate for this, as far as Nathan could see, harmless boy.

But it was his own poison of spite, and those horrible, irretrievable words that he had thrown on Benjamin that now found him on the second floor of Whitman's.

His own fury left him the moment Benjamin had fallen to his knees on the floor – his angelic white sheet dropping in slow motion like a parachute to only cover the top of his waist and thighs – and started to sob. And how sad, and utterly helpless, Nathan felt coming down with slack arms next to him; so close, so wanting to reach out, to hold Benjamin, but locked in an impotent sorrow that only allowed him to kneel like a supplicant. He tried to speak, but what comfort could the prosecutor be to the accused? Benjamin mumbled, his garbled sounds desperately trying to be deciphered by Nathan. And then the sound of Nathan's voice frightened him, as if he expected the demon of his heart was yet in control.

He got out "Benjamin…" then all at once he lunged in and embraced him. His arms forced a ring around the young man's chest and sides. His head bent and forced an ear against Benjamin's heart. "I'm sorry. I don’t know how I can say I'm sorry; how I can ever say it enough, but don’t leave me here alone. Don’t take yourself away from me, because I was wrong. I know I was wrong, and I'm so sorry."

Benjamin looked to the ceiling, his tears stopped. Looking down, and then straight ahead again, he spoke coldly, as if to the walls: "You always jump to conclusions – but, who said you were wrong this time." He added, like a challenge, "Can you still forgive..?"

There was a tense moment where neither moved. Nathan was still locked around Benjamin, and then Benjamin heard from below him a voice no more than a whisper say: "I'm the one."

Nathan let go. He quickly brought his hands up to Benjamin's face and cupped his cheeks in them. He looked at the boy's eyes, as he had many times before in simple gratitude that they were the center of Nathan's soul. Moist, and standing in the corners were salty drops. He tasted them, murmuring: "Even if you slept with someone, it's me who needs to ask for forgiveness. If you fell, it was to want, but I fell to hate, and because of it, betrayed your love. I'm the one that has to say: Forgive me."

Benjamin pulled Nathan's head to his mouth, and they kissed, never more sadly, never more in love; for they had learned the power of absolution through the only means possible: pain.

David was catcalling something out the window. Nathan, abruptly back with them, leaned over to see what was so amusing. There, on the street opposite from their window, stood the red-clad figure of Takahiro. Willy was howling with laughter at whatever David said.

"Looking for some action, honey?" The tall figure of David was half out the window, his moptop disheveled by the breeze. He cruelly taunted the boy with a sweetly disgusting twang in his voice. Willy egged him on while he convulsed in laughter. "I bet there's a ship in tonight – get down to the docks! You'll have plenty to satisfy you down there!" To them this was wit, to Nathan, and his growing ire, this was nothing but a juvenile display of bullying.

Nathan watched their faces contort in sadistic pleasure, and grew to despise them as much as the senseless torment they were enjoying. He looked down on the boy, wondering why he didn’t move, but then Nathan was horrified to realize the boy in red was standing there for him. His hands were thrust into his jean pockets, making his shoulders seemed shrugged, and his arms even more muscular, and he stayed there, the receptor of this abuse, just to be near Nathan; for the boy's eyes drifted up to him in a purity of sorrow that the Bostonian had seen in Benjamin many times. Nathan recalled in them the same sad promise that they would never hurt with intent, because they had been hurt too many times before. Takahiro was only there to be by him, no matter what punishment Nathan himself might hurl down.

Nathan suddenly thought about this morning's call, for he spoke to Ben everyday from Tokyo. He again had urged the young man to come to him; that two strangers in an odd place negate any single feeling of isolation. But Benjamin would have to leave school, and that was not an option.

However it was the thing that Benjamin never asked Nathan to do that most endeared him to the far-away young man; he never asked Nathan to come home, to Boston, to him. Benjamin was strong enough to let the man he loved have his adventure, and to let him decide.

At the airport, Nathan had grown by leaps and bounds. The few friends from high school and college that came with him, stood around and wondered who the fine-looking Latino youth was. But Nathan took Ben's hand, and told them, "Gang, this is Benjamin, and I love him. Please look after him while I'm gone."

Benjamin was never more moved, and Nathan because of it, never more remorseful.

Benjamin was Nathan's first love. He couldn't stand by without him wanting, without needing for them to be standing as one; his arms enwrapping Ben's slender waist, his lips unable to breeze over the folds of his deliciously soft neck without kissing. Nathan could not stand alone ever again. Whether in person or in thought, Benjamin always stood within him.

The sad little farewell party slapped shoulders, and passed hugs around and left Nathan free to bid the last goodbye to Benjamin.

And the friends stood in a tightening circle as the two boys hugged, and kissed, and parted. As their eyes followed Nathan disappearing into the security line and eventually reemerge on the other side, they grouped around Ben, and placed protective hands on his shoulders. For their love of Nathan, they were going to do as bid.

And then the moment revealed why these men hated Takahiro, and reveled it to him with the same clarity as the boy's glance; they despise him because they had used him. They had slept with him, and grown angry at themselves when they saw the boy hadn't wanted their bodies at all; he wanted their love, and it made them furious. They'd taken from Takahiro his affection and thought it would be guilt free, but where the boy's pure staff had stuck their rock solid centers, no love sprang, only the evil contempt that he had tried to give more than what they wanted. They hated him because he could love them, and they could not love themselves.

This time Nathan, knowing the truth, was not going to let himself be paralyzed. He braced against the windowsill, and leaned out yelling, "Takahiro, come up and join me."

"What are you doing!?" Willy's glasses glinted fear.

"He's scum," David cronied.

Nathan forced one contemptuous laugh through his nose.

"You can’t stand here and tell me who the scum is. Let me ask you this: Have you ever slept with him?"

David peered at Willy with a shit-eating grin. "No. Have you?"

Willy shook his head, and both in their denial, practically sang a psalm of admitted guilt.

"Don’t stand here and cast stones at the boy when you're the ones who are shame-ridden. His only fault was reaching out for love; yours, I'm not so sure about."

It was a thought that Nathan had had many times. A simple one: return to Boston. But this time, there was truth in the urging, because he would not rush back in ignorance and full of accusations as on that bright Sunday morning, but instead, he'd be like a penitent; humble and contrite, seeking release for the regrets he carried around like the weight of a self-imposed sin. Benjamin was the only one who could anoint him with the permission to forgive himself, and that was worth fighting for. He was going home.

Nathan called again, "Takahiro! Come up and join me!" But Takahiro – like a little boy – pointed sheepishly at himself for approval; yet he didn’t move, only his eyes flickered from Nathan to the figures at his side.

Nathan scanned Willy, then he looked at David. Finally he leaned back out the window. "You're right!" he said with triumph in his voice, "it's better if I join you."

                            

 

~