Cast Stones, and Other Ni-Chome Tales - 5. V. The Dark Side of the Truth & Light Under a Bushel

V. The Dark Side of the Truth & Light Under a Bushel

 

 

They asked for themselves the advent of a world

of supreme benediction; bound by the spell of

their common fate, they dreamed a dream of a

simple truth; the truth that man loves man could

overthrow the false notion that man's love was

only meant for women.

Hiraoka Kimitake

 

Art is something that rests in the

slender margin between the real

and the imagined.

Chikamatsu Monzaemon

 

"…So, you would rather…" Tetsuya looked up to the bar ceiling, trying to conjure the next few words from the popcorn plaster.

"…Rather go into…" prompted Hideki, shifting the script in his clutch.

Tetsuya looked down and grinned into his buddy's crossed eyes, finishing strongly: "…Go into the Self-Defense Force or sail around the world."

Hideki smiled that his working-boy 'brother' was going to do all right tonight. He just needed a bit of confidence. "Hey – it just seems like a dream, doesn't it? Last week we signed with Japan's biggest talent agent, and now Nicho is on the way to recording the group's first album."

"Are you excited about your surgery?"

Hideki hadn't been thinking about that at all.

"Yeah," Tetsuya added "the talent agent is so generous – to pay for…" he made air-quotes "…your 'corrective eye procedure' out of his own pocket." To the setback look he saw in his brother's face, Tetsuya softened "You do want it? Don't you?"

"Yeah. It's not that. It's just…"

"The way you were born – like being Gay – surgery for one, and not the other."

"Wo – man, too heavy. Look, the agent says I'll look good for all our gigs and album covers, so fine, let's go for it. I know things will be different, look different, but I’ll be the same." Hideki laughed, then enthused: "But, I meant a couple of weeks ago, we were, well you know – working – and then we're discovered as a boy band, and now – you're going to be a movie star! It's all so fast."

"It's just a little film; who's gonna see it, anyway? A couple of eggheads…"

"Are you kidding me? I've got all the faith in the world in Daisuke's vision. This movie is going to every Gay Film Festival in the world: I just know it!"

Tetsuya chuckled with a nervous downward flash. "Way to calm me down."

Hideki grabbed his shoulders. Tetsuya was already in costume: a lightweight salt-and-pepper tweed sport jacket with a thin red tie. He rocked the boy closer to his chest, his exposed muscleman wife beater in slick fluorescent performance fabric contrasting sharply with Tetsuya's 1950's fashion, but his beautifully built biceps and triceps flexed in naked warmth for his pal. "You're gonna be great. The director saw you and cast you because you carry his vision on what Mishima's character is like. Just, just – remember that. Relax, and you'll knock 'em dead. I have faith in you too."

Tetsuya, looking at his own black slacks, savored his boy band brother's reassuring touch, but, if he was honest with himself, something also rankled him about all this praise for Daisuke, the director. Hideki had somehow grown close to the man Tetsuya introduced to him only recently. But, why shouldn't he be happy for him?

Out of the blue, Tetsuya asked: "And, he's buraku?"

Hideki released his grip. It was as if an expletive had been dropped during tea with the emperor.

"Yeah, I…" Hideki stumbled "…he's open about that. But don’t tell me it matters to you?"

"No…" Tetsuya laughed through his nose "…why would it?"

"Good, 'cause, once you come out, don’t we all leave our backgrounds behind?"

"It's just," Tetsuya turned a malice-laden grin on Hideki "everybody knows 75% of yakuza, and chimpira punks are buraku."

"So?"

"So – so, nothing. I guess it's just a fact. I was taught, we were all told, they are impure, dirty you know – never let one get close to you."

"Bullshit, Tet-chan. You're talking about the old superstition, that witchdoctor crap of 'spiritual pollution,' but that was never true – you might as well believe in the tooth fairy as that old-fashioned brand of prejudice. Besides, you never mentioned this before. Is this something on your mind?"

Suddenly both boys needed to shield their eyes; a blinding white light flooded the corner of the bar where they sat.

"Sorry." cried the lighting guy, and darkness retook them.

Now the bustle of the film crew – chatting through headsets, taping cables, checking camera angles and movements to take while rolling – broke into the attention of the formally centered pair.

All of a sudden, it was very exciting. They were making a movie, and the sedate 1970's décor of Ni-chome's Hakone Bar had been altered to a Yurakucho Gay teahouse of the 1950's. The red vinyl booth the boys sat at had a pair of low table lamps with crystal swags, that were set left and right on top of the 'V' shaped sections created by the curving of the banquettes coming together. A more evocative softness had been added to the white shades with red silk kerchiefs languidly draped over them. In other parts of the bar, half a dozen extras, all dressed in period clothes – and all men – stood and chatted. Some wore jackets, some looked like waiters, and one man in a white tuxedo looked to be the host, but the scene itself, the entire action, was to be a simple, yet heartfelt, conversation between Tetsuya's character and a man who had cruised him a public lavatory.

"Well, well." The director clapped his hands. He confidently strode into the center of the cacophonous movement. "Good job everybody!" He looked at his watch. "Thirty minutes to go. I know we'll keep to our schedule – remember, we only have one night to film here, so it has to be perfect." He slapped some backs, and walked with a grinning smile towards his star, and towards Hideki.

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

The Man was lost in his own world. Outside, the summer cicadas of 1954 clung tenaciously to the trees of Hibiya Park, while inside the public men's room, the mosaic blue and while tiles on both the floor and walls looked overtly grimy. The Man was here for a purpose, as were most of the other men who drifted in and out: always alone when entering, usually accompanied in exiting.

The Man was twenty-years old, still a boy himself really, but the realities of the pressures that befall any Japanese man entering legal majority at this age fell upon his shoulders with special weight. That is why he was here, to forget. To forget his upcoming marriage, arranged and neatly tied up for him by the professional matchmaker and the unwanted intercession of the two meddlesome families involved. As a developing adolescent, he knew that he had no attraction for the female of the species, while his classmates, and the athletes he'd watch on the soccer field, told his budding sense of self that he should pursue bachelor ways.

As a grown man, he was darkly alluring, perhaps because of his conflicted nature, and whenever he ventured into this place, Japan's oldest Western-style cursing spot, or visited one of the many indigenous assignation grounds – usually in the precincts of shrines dedicate to the Samurai god of archery and manly love, Hachiman – he was not long in waiting for positive responses.

But this evening, as his handsome features lingered past several men whom he did not even let himself acknowledge, he was lost.

The humidity made his underarms sweat lightly into the crystal white armpits of his polo shirt. He could faintly smell the residue of bleach rise from the fibers, and it made him feel slightly refreshed, for the public restroom was dirty. Grime crawled up the tile walls and a nicotine-yellow pall caked the ceiling overhead. Around his neck loosely hung a knitted green tie. He had loosened it the moment he was on the train, for this afternoon had been torture. As he sat for uncomfortable hours on his heels, and bobbed his head when appropriate, the matchmaker had gone over every contractual obligation and gently requested that the girl and he acknowledge each point. Next to him, his parents beamed, and every time he glanced, it was all he could do not to scream a blood-curdling "NO" at them and walk out. That was why he was here tonight. A break, a reaffirming of what was natural to him; as it was born into him at birth.

For some men come here, or go to its kindred places, to excite and extradite their lusts – like a man reaching a hard-fought for spot on his back to scratch – and others come here to meet, and for, if at least a little while, to forget what drove them to this resort from the world outside these grotty walls.

An athlete himself, he drew much attention as he stood and leaned the back half of a shoulder blade against a wall near the door. He preferred this spot for practical reasons. One, he could see any nosy blue-uniformed patrolman the instant he entered the door, and two, he had a clear profile view of the urinals and the sly glances of men, with heads cocked towards his vicinity, showing off their assets. If a policeman appeared, he could quickly turn and busy himself at the sink. If anything else he saw interested him, he could gesture with his head towards the door, kick himself off the wall, and leave - or if the room was empty – he would walk to a stall and wait for the invited to join him. The danger of it, or at least the perceived thrill obtained from thinking about the jeopardy to his future he was putting himself in should he ever be brought up on loitering charges, usually accomplished the work of getting him hard and ready for the encounter itself. This evening though, he was unable to keep himself in the moment, and his libido was pushed to hinterland insignificance. Yes, tonight his mind wondered back to his problems like a pigeon to the soft familiarity of its home roost.

He remembered a recent altercation. The screaming, his parents threatening everything that mattered to him: withdrawing him from university, and cutting him off. "Why?" he demanded to know. "You won’t take care of your family obligations!" his mother growled. Later his father quietly advised: "Marry, boy. Make a home, make a couple of babies – then what you do, discreetly, is none of anyone's business, and that especially applies to your wife." As the Man blinked towards his inscrutable and emotionally blank wall of a pater, he had the nausea sink into his gut that he and this older man were alike; somehow one miserable generation stood before his youth and recommended the unhealthy propagation of the very misery that had crushed his progenitor's soul. But, his father had continued with serious warning: "Be discrete boy. Do nothing that lets you or your family lose face. Scandal, boy, ends in only two ways – social death for the innocents, or honorable self-murder by you to right your wrong." Although not inclined to hurt himself, maybe this advice was the reason he had to come here tonight. Maybe that was the very impulse that led him here – a well-placed disgrace could enact vengeance on those who willfully sought his destruction, and could also save him from a lifetime of miserable 'honor.'

His young mind had already set up the options, as if bowling pins – but one by one – joining the army, running away to sea on a commercial vessel – they were knocked down. Now, confound by too many options, the inevitable loomed larger and larger and his distaste cut a sharper and sharper bile in the back of his throat.

After the confrontation by his parents, the omiai was hired, and had found a girl. She and her dowry had been vetted by his folks and uncles and aunts with greedy precision, and found to be more than agreeable. Today's meeting was the final one, and though he had met her for only the second time, they were affianced, and the matchmaker expected her substantial fee to be reckoned by the end of the day, which it was. Thinking of the pretty girl sitting across from him this afternoon, so close yet growing more distant as the seconds ticked, made his gut wrench and fall to a position lower than his knees.

The Man's unseeing eyes suddenly snapped him out of his languor. At the urinal, a young man in slick serge trousers and a stylish light-colored sports jacket was eying him with tender interest. The well-built kid was a few years younger than the Man, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, and his jacket barely hid the chest and arms of a pole-vaulter or gymnast.

The shy smile the Boy offered him slipped off the Man's face and down the front of his pleated chinos.

The Man kicked himself off the wall and made a pretence of washing his hands. He glanced up at the Boy in the mirror above the sink, and a barely perceptible wink caused the Boy, in the act of scanning the Man's backside, to blush violently and look away.

The Man shut off the tap, and as he extracted his handkerchief from his rear pocket, he rotated to face the young man and athlete. The Boy's hair was slicked back slightly at the sides, but a long front section flopped most attractively to just above his eyes. His face was compact, generally round but squared off into muscular jaws that will, in a few years, make the man this boy grows into a formidable beauty. For now, his boyish bashfulness contrasted with the natural maturity of body that moved with gracile ease below his spotless clothes.

The Boy cracked a faint smirk, and glanced to a stall.

The Man watched the Boy's head wader towards it, and as he pocketed his now moist handkerchief, his eyes trailed the young man's wordless quarry.

The Boy zipped himself, and walked to the stall.

For the Man, a stride or two, and they will be together; contact in one or two fractions of a minute. He followed the Boy, but the queasiness in his midsection weighed down his steps.

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

Daisuke settled next to Hideki, and a warm hand went out to slap Tetsuya's chest: "All ready?"

"Yeah." Tetsuya felt like a charge went from man's hand. He shrank from it, then relaxed again as the director pulled away.

"Good. It might be trying on you tonight, but hang in there. We'll only do as many takes as needed to get the chemistry between your character and the Man feeling right. And, Tetsuya…" the director's soft tone forced the naturally shy boy to swallow and hold his gaze. "…The feeling between your Boy character and this man who has cruised him is all-important. The words they say to each other are a kind of mask. It's only near the end, when they both allow themselves to dream, that they drop all the bullshit. You know what I mean, right?"

Tetsuya nodded, he did know exactly what Daisuke meant.

The director was Gay. But he was also buraku, as outsiders called them, or mura-no-mono to the insiders, which literally meant 'one of the community.' As a generally upbeat person, he took his double minority status as a blessing, but one given in the form of a challenge. Community members were racially as pure as any Japanese person could be, but centuries ago, a caste was created of people to do the dirty work for the lordly few. These people were rounded up and forced to live in ramshackle squalor outside the town limits.

Daisuke grew up in the old neighborhood around Minami-Senju Station in Tokyo. This area used to be known as Sanya, but when he was a kid, the name disappeared from all the maps, street signs, et al. Why? – because the businesses buying up all the local property found the name too off-putting to investors. It would be like an ad campaign against the Roman Ghetto, occupied for two thousand years by Jewish people, to suddenly rename it 'happyland village,' or something equally irreverent. Where he grew up everybody knew he was buraku, because everybody he knew was one too. He 'escaped' to college in Aomori, in the far north of the main island of Japan. There no one thinks about the outcasts of the South, because as this frontier was settled in the 19^th century, buraku were not ghettoized.

Instead, he met Gays and straights alike who were interested in his passion – the arts. Heavily involved with theatrics, his love of storytelling via visual means blossomed. So did his first love – a shy boy of the company who loved to let loose on stage. One day running his lines, somehow this shy boy's thigh came to a permanent rest against his, then the-anything-but shy boy let his hand fall on Daisuke's upper thigh and lazily drift north. His pinkie rode the stiff crease that naturally forms when a man sits in blue jeans, and lingered there as he rehearsed his lines. The director forgot about the script he was holding completely, and stared frankly at the boy who was deep in concentration on the emotions of his part.

Missing his cue, the boy glanced over with a puzzled lilt to his mouth, and Daisuke responded by drawing that pettish pair of lips to his own.

Ten years later, now that boy is a man in Aomori – married to a woman, and miserable father to three. Daisuke visited this loveless home once, but had to leave early. As he and the former love of his life sat side-by-side on the sofa, the man devolved from the boy looked to be on the verge of tears; a riotous erection pressed flat against his thigh by his lose-fitting chinos.

Daisuke made his excesses, and as he stood, alone, on a desolate train platform, a single tear fell and struck the top of his hand. He wondered if the erection was a statement of love, or a plain burning desire to be free. Was it in anyway for and because of Daisuke, and the love they had built for each other, or was it just a last chance calling for rescue? Whichever it was, there was nothing he could do. The boy had decided to cover the light of himself, to diminish it to the point of extinction, and it made Daisuke sick to his stomach for him.

During this time of grieving, mourning the loss of one he cared about as closely as himself, he could only picture the boy time and time again being pulled into the pit of lovelessness like one of Michelangelo's sinners into the abysses near the altar of the Sistine Chapel. And as he brooded on how the boy had let himself be sunk by 'family obligations,' he first encountered Mishima's short story, The Dark Side of the Truth, and it helped him. It was at that moment he first envisioned it on film; first saw it as a project to help Gay men in Japan stop living the lie of sham marriages – legal enmeshments designed to only ensure generations of unhappiness. Furthermore, through the story, he felt he was able to unravel the tightly wound ball that was Mishima as a person, and as an artist. And this was the key Daisuke needed to be his own artist.

After school, he moved back to Tokyo, and found work with a media production company. He began to court investors for his film, and he always had to walk a tightrope – revealing Mishima, yes, but holding back that the project centered on one of that Gay writer's 'gay' works. But, it didn't much matter. The director's passionate exposition of the author's story and intent caught people up into the project with enthusiasm. Daisuke sighed a bit of relief too, because now he was basically 'out,' and his coworkers began to slip in innocent questions about Ni-chome, the script details, and about the guys he dated. What he was not 'out' about was his status as another minority, one that, if he did not tell people, stayed just as hidden through assumption as his affectional orientation. And that bothered him both as a person, and as an artist. His next film project would be about discrimination against buraku, and that would be another coming out for most of his colleagues – potentially one that they will not be so cool about. To compensate, he made it a point to tell everyone he met in Ni-chome, figuring – mostly correct – that the rainbow flag that accepts all as equals under the banner of being out and proud will accept his background as something like all of theirs, a something of pain that was left in the dust of the past. 'What matters is to be free, here and now.' he thought.

Sitting in their booth, the three perceived a change in the atmosphere around them. For one thing, like the sounds of the forest dimming at the silent advance of a storm, the bustle of the crew stilled to a murmur. A certain self-contained centeredness, like the mini heart of a black hole, moved among them.

Susuke stood at the booth's edge. The director tried to smile, but that frivolity was squashed under the weight of what he saw. Susuke had just finished with wardrobe and makeup and he still had two white napkins tucked between his neck and collar. He was beautiful. This man's beauty was crushing, and Daisuke inadvertently shivered a little to envision how it would dominate the movie screen. He rose and patted his star on the elbow. Susuke's costume was not like Tetsuya – he wore a spotless polo shirt that hugged every inch of the young man's chest and shoulder's, and accented strongly placed and proportional nipples. This shirt's collar was up, and artfully draped around it was a knitted necktie, tied but lose – a two-inch wide affair, green, and straight-sided from its square cut bottom to the knot hovering several inches below his chin.

His polo shirt was tucked into a cinched waist held by a thin brown leather belt. The skirts of his buff chinos flared slightly so that when his character put his hands in his pockets, the slimness of his waist and broadness of shoulders, would be further enhanced. Below his pant cuffs were a pair of chocolate wingtips – perfect 1950's sportswear.

"Sit down." The director said, motioning to Tetsuya's side. "Let's clear up any lingering questions."

The three young men passed glances around: none of them felt like impugning the artistic impulse of the director.

Hideki laughed. "Well, I'm not part of the movie, but…"

"Yeah, go ahead." Daisuke encouraged him.

Hideki screwed up his features, and puzzled: "But, The Dark Side of the Truth, that's a pretty strange title, for such a simple story – what do you think it means?"

The director smiled at the lovely scowl before him. He blinked in an honestly-felt growing affection for this muscle-clad and cross-eyed lad. He explained: "We all have our dark side. The question is whether we embrace it and make it a costume that we show the world…"

Susuke auditably gulped, eyes drifted onto him a moment, making him wonder if they knew he had done that with himself. But in a moment, the conversation continued without insinuating the theme applied to Susuke's inner and former ways.

The director went on: "…and sometimes, that projected image is challenged to the point where a choice is made. Go on as 'normal,' or change – evolve into something more honest."

Susuke ventured: "I always considered Mishima an angry writer. Why do you think he came off that way? Was it an act?"

"Not an act, exactly, but the real persona that he showed the world was a combination of longing and contempt. I think his hatred was an inner rage at society's pressures for him to be enmeshed in the life of a woman he could never care about. This forced marriage turned frustration at society into an outward expression of contempt at it, and the hypocrisy 'it' forced him into; one he had to live everyday of his life. His longing to be free of the guilt of leading a dishonest life – not because he was Gay, but because he was Gay and married to a woman – manifested into a general hatred both outwardly and internally. Mishima's only tether to the truth was beauty; the beauty he saw around him, and the beauty that could flow from his pen into our minds – minds like his – minds free to love, as he could not."

Susuke got it: "So, it's us that his combination of desire and hate is aimed at?"

"Yes. He only showed that dark side to us, because that's all he could see of himself. But it was true, because it was tied to his genuine emotional/ affectional response to beauty."

"Beauty equals truth..?" Tetsuya chuckled.

"Yeah. Beauty equals truth." Hideki said straight into Daisuke's eyes.

For the director, it all seemed so quick, even though this project had been simmering for most of ten years, meeting Tetsuya had moved it to quicksilver density, and burst the vial that had held the project contained. With Susuke and Tetsuya together, it had to be made now – while everything was right – there would be no second chance to work his vision to consummation with his 'perfect' cast. And how this chance encounter brought him to this point, was a story in its own right.

The director, on his way to his favorite Ni-chome mama bar, casually cruised the byway where Tetsuya was working. He made casual contact, hands in pockets, and walking quickly, but instantly he could tell the kid in half a school uniform was flattered. As Daisuke walked on, that disheveled and innocent look – that sexually mature, and yet approachable suave – was exactly what he needed in his Boy for the Mishima story. He had no qualms about marching right back to the young hustler, dropping all pretence and saying he'd pay for an hour of his time – time to talk that is – if that was all right. Tetsuya, knowing his stuff, agreed, as long as this 'talk' happened in a public place. So they went to Starbucks, and the director convinced him to be in his film. Fingering the legit-looking business card Daisuke had given him – the boy thinking it was still a come-on – Tetsuya gave him his phone number anyway. When next they met up, Tetsuya brought some of his gang and extended family with him. Hideki and Daisuke immediately hit it off, and their cow eyes soon gave way to rather more frank looks that were fixed with deep swallowings. But when Masa and his boyfriend, the dark and profoundly brooding Susuke joined their coffee cache, the director had his Man, and Mishima himself would have stayed his self-appointed execution just to have met this dark-side beauty, for around him swirled a dense and invisible antimatter intangible. It was this that Susuke darkly radiated as naturally as the shimmering aura others brightly glowed.

Now, there was no delaying the project. He e-mailed the scripts, the two agreed, saying it might be 'fun,' and Daisuke got his desired location secured for the bar scene. Shooting would happen over the course of a night, and hopefully no re-shoots would be needed later.

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

The Man quickly latched the stall door behind him. He turned and pushed the Boy against the wall. He groped the young man's crotch, and through the slickness of the athlete's trousers, felt the Boy's straining reply to the Man's roughness. Usually this darkness, this willful abstraction of physical contact to a set of acts – pushing, pinning, forcing and restraining – caused an instant springing of his own member to full attention. To his horror, he could foretell the next few moments. They played out like a flickering strip of film slowing down and then being melted by the burning glow of the projector's lamp – the lad would reach, a probing and gentle set of fingers would land somewhere in the folds of his trouser pleats, below the belt, above the crotch, and then explore until they found his stiff member pressed tightly against his thigh, aching for release by those same fingers working the zipper. But, the Boy would in a few terrible seconds find only a flaccid, and unmoved example of the Boy's waste of time.

This had never happened before. The whole point of his being here was caught up in that moment of contact, right? One without the other was ludicrous.

To buy time, the Man forced his hands onto the Boy's shoulders, holding back his arms to the wall, and he pressed his mouth tightly to that of his cruising partner. The Boy responded with increasingly heavy breaths, and the Man's lower section against the lad told him better than anything else how excited his touch was driving the kid. But it made no difference. His partner's growing passion only seemed to humiliate his lack of a physical rejoinder into deeper and deeper recesses.

Despite his restraint, the young man's hand landed on the Man's chinos, and now his predictions of the scene to follow developed. He could see the way the Boy's face would first grow round with astonishment as he felt nothing in his lover's creases that pertained to the act of love. Then he will push the Man back, his upper lip will curl in distain, and a peeling laugh will ring out in the Man's face; his boyish shrill reverberating yet as he pushed past the Man and out of the stall.

Despite his usual dark charm, which excited himself as finitely as any of his assignation partners, he was flat and vulnerable to the ridicule of the whole world through the narrow harangs of a single boy. He had failed to excite himself in the 'danger' of the encounter, and now, there was no safe place for him to be, either within or outside of his own dark mind.

As foreseen, the Boy's hand reached the spot below which this man's ignominy laid, but then the Boy did something utterly unexpected: his youthful hand reached up and touched the Man on the side of his head. The lad's moist palm lingered there a moment, then he kissed the Man's cheek in tender commiseration.

Stunned, and still half pinning him against the wall, all tension left the Man, and contracted like a deflating balloon – letting the Boy glide back to rest all his weigh on his own two feet. The Man sank farther than before – his knees weakening – for under the Boy's warm touch, the darkness within him began to melt like snow stroked by sunlight.

He blinked as a waking baby might. The Man really hadn’t 'looked' at the lad until now – he had been an abstraction, a means to fulfill the desires he was told to only relegate to the status of lusts. But now, what was it he was seeing, if not a real person?

This was someone real; someone who had just offered him a genuine bit of encouragement. It made him sick. A true bit of affection permutated seemingly out of the very grime on the walls mixed with the dust of his former lust, and someone had breathed life into it. Yes, the boy had with his gentle breath, his kiss, and his touch. It was as unexpected as anything could be.

The Man backed off the Boy, and whished down to the stymied bit of coal he had relegated to the status of his soul that the Boy would scowl at his impotence. Instead, the bright and guileless face before him, smiled.

Instantly, all the stench and disgust of their setting slammed the Man's senses. He took the Boy's hand, dragged him out of the stall, over the piss-soaked tile floor before the urinals and out into the night air before the restroom. The Boy did not resist, but by the time they got to the stone and bronze-capped lighting fixture forming the entrance to the park – near the corner of the restroom – the Boy thought he should.

The moment the street light hit his face, he halted. The Boy didn't care to be dragged out of the park, and potentially into the busy street.

The Man stopped and swung the kid and athlete to face him.

"I…I know a place," he said with quiet desperation "where we can talk."

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

Daisuke paced the floor in front of the cameras. The set was hot – the actors in place, the lights, just right. In the director's chest his palpitations began to steady; this was going to happen.

He moved to a position behind the central camera, and signaled with a nod of his head to the camera assistant.

The young man crouched before the actors' booth holding up his clapperboard. "The Dark Side of the Truth, Teahouse Scene – take one." The scene board clacked, and he scurried out of the shot.

A moment later, the director called out:

"Action!"

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

Near Hibiya Park was an entertainment district. Yurakucho nightlife was mostly 'under the tracks;' for the large brick vaults built to carry the weight of the train lines going to, and departing from Tokyo Station just to the north, created ideal rathskeller conditions – secluded, out-of-the-way nooks, that for the most, and certainly for a certain kind of clientele – kept prying eyes far away.

Ruby's was an ordinary-looking establishment, which if anything, was on the plain side. The sign on the door said it was a 'teahouse,' but after 6:00 P.M., the teapots were clanked out of sight, and beer and highball glasses were pulled furtively one-by-one from below the counter and filled as ordered. During the day, when dim sunlight managed to make it to the farthest corners of the vaulting, ladies with petulant brats chatted and snacked on teacakes and crustless sandwiches. But by dusk they would be gone, replaced seemingly by a large crew of handsome waiters. At this odd moment of transition, a sensitive observer could witness a sexual shift. First the arrival of the pack of waiters, two or three times as many as the day swing, and then the exit of every last bit of female customer, climaxed by the steady influx of men. In pairs or trios, the young came in the latest sportswear, and were immediately 'served' by the servers as if old pals. Then, older men, usually alone, and always overdressed, drifted in and the waiters acted with reserve and suggestive winks as they seated them with various groups of their raucous 'pals.' Then the transition was complete, and the laughter began to flow as smoothly as the beer and cocktails.

Yes, Ruby's the teahouse during the day, was at night an exclusive club of sorts, one where any party of wandering females were told the rathskeller crowd they saw was a private function, and that they would have to leave at once.

"Right this way!" The owner greeted the Man with professional warmth.

The Boy, standing right at his side – the front door still swinging closed – scanned the interior of this 'teahouse,' and thought that his companion must be a regular.

As the white tuxedo-clad host led the way to a private table for two in the back, the Boy's eyes scaled the heights of the environment, drinking in color and texture; his ears in-taking the balanced sounds of merrymaking and solicitude; of joy and lovers' plight.

A wide barrel vault of exposed bricks formed the ceiling, and suspended like rows of sparkling chains, small-scale crystal chandeliers dropped from the masonry herringbone to hover above each table. All the waiters were young men a year or two older than the Boy, and all were dressed as twins – black slacks, white shirts and bow ties, and long blue and white striped aprons, cinched narrow at the youthfully trim waists. As he passed, all made eye-contact with him, several winked, and one he thought particularly 'cute,' turned to follow the path his backside took through the crowd of tables, the Boy glancing just in time to catch him in the act.

Seated at their table, the Boy heard the Man order two Old Fashions, and watched the white tux move away to the bar. His sight coalesced to see the front windows were all covered by thick black curtains of the type he remembered as a boy in the war.

"Well," he told the Man with all-out boyish enthusiasm "so this place does exist! I heard about it from a couple of…others – but this is the first time I've been taken here."

"Yes. It's nice." the Man said plainly "After ten, they clear the tables from back here, and roll out a record player so the fellows can dance."

"Really?"

"Yes." he laughed "You like dancing?"

The Boy went slack jaw: "I don't know. I've only ever danced with girls – and that I don't like."

The Man's pinging laugh ricocheted off the vault above the Boy's back shoulder. His hand slapped the Boy's arm. "Well, here’s your chance to find out."

Inside, the young man was incensed that this stranger had just laughed at his honesty, but then again, a flood of unexpected tenderness drowned that immature fit of ill-nature with a flush of heat rising from the thought of the Man's naked arms grasping him on the dance floor. "Yeah…" he stumbled, a helpless smirk cracking his features wide open "…I guess I can."

The beauty and openness of the Boy's smile for him, made the Man question himself again. He hadn't felt queasy since he pulled the lad away from the park, yet, now he wondered why. Nothing in his life had changed, certainly not his problems.

"What kind of young man are you?" The Man's features relaxed; he wanted to know. "You are a sportsman, I can tell that," his hand squeezed a bicep "but, are you a good student; do you like school; do you have – a special someone?"

"A girlfriend, you mean?"

"Well…"

"No. I have nothing against them, but I'd never – " there was a pained look.

"Never, what?"

The Boy's barely visible Adam's apple rose up and down with a gulping sound. "Never, want to hurt one."

The Man had it confirmed; this athlete, this manly angel who was still a boy, was as gentle as he thought him to be. He laughed in hushed admiration as the waiter – the especially 'cute' waiter – set a glass before the Boy with a glancing grin. As the server turned with a second glass, the Man said: "Well then, a special someone, like a boyfriend!" He winked at the waiter, and the Boy blushed.

"No." he said as soon as the 'cute' one was out of hearing range.

"But seriously – you are a high school student I suppose – tell me what it's like in your world, your one ideal day."

The Boy took a sip. The bourbon was strong for him, so he frowned and set it down again. As he fished for the candy-red cherry, he said: "My perfect day? Well – " he popped the maraschino in his mouth and pulled it off the stem. Chewing, he spat the pit into his hand. "Well, most of my day at school is spent only half listening to the lectures – the important part is spent in daydreams." The cherry pit found its way down to the cocktail napkin the waiter had left. "I either look out the window, watch the passing clouds and wish I was out beneath them with my buddies and a soccer ball, or, I'll wish I were far away from everything – like in a movie." The Boy leaned in, and grew adamant; his eyes flashed. "Maybe I'd be an elephant wrangler, thigh-deep in some Indian rain forest; or I'd be a fighter pilot in America, learning how to break the sound barrier in the newest jets; or back in time, a crusader capturing and forcing a handsome Saracen youth to remove my armor, and then – well…" again that mischievous leer that the Man had seen in the restroom spread across the Boy's countenance "…he'd be required to service me until we both collapsed in exhaustion. But, why am I telling you that..?"

"No – go on. I want to know more."

"Well – I'm a decent student, but most of my classroom time, I'm just thinking about track and field, or dreaming about going to the movies –especially science fiction – but, I dream about going with a certain boy. He wants to sit up in the back row, and as we watch, his hand slips into mine, and stays there. I dream that our fingers explore our hands – loosen and tighten – with each thrill from the screen. At some point, the boy will pull me over to him, and our lips will meet in that quiet and unseen darkness. And then in that public place – sort of like this – we can never be more alone; more together. Then, after the lights come up, we'll still be holding hands, and we'll walk out together like that. That's the kind of student I am.." and he laughed half in sorrow, half in joy.

"So, you’re in love with one of your classmates?"

"Me!" he sounded incredulous "No – they're all too young. No, for me, I'd need a boy a few years older; like a big brother, who I know will look after me – love me like that."

The lump in the Man's throat caught him off guard. Was this kid playing with him? But, no, fate or the dark night – one or both – had conspired to match him to this lad, and the Boy to him.

"What about you?" The young man suddenly sounded loud. He sheepishly glanced around, grabbed his ice-cold glass, and caught the eye of the particularly handsome waiter. He toned it down: "What type of boy do you…" he searched for the right-sounding word "…fancy?"

The man had a choice: prop up his usual obfuscations through bluster – say what he effortlessly calculated would impart the most effect for good or ill – or be frank, and think of the truth as an absolute, regardless of its effect. Into the Boy's apert and unaffected eyes, he had to face his choice – stay on the dark side of the truth, where he had lived and operated from the time he first became aware of his own nature, or walk on the side where beauty was leading him.

He said: "You."

At first, the Man thought he had reverted to overt deception, but in an unfaltering moment, he knew it was his heart that had said the word.

The Boy turned beet-red. "So – " he ventured "you do like me. I couldn’t tell, because of, earlier."

The Man was cut to the core: "I…I never had that problem before. Please don't think it had anything to do with you."

As the words left his mouth, the Man doubted them. It seemed possible, maybe entirely reasonable to assume, that it was the Boy's fault. For once in the Man's sexual maturity, he was faced with the prospect that he was 'too' attracted to someone, and his heart's passion was the one guilty of splashing cold water on his libido's fire.

The square jaws of the lad before him set in a kindly regard for the Man's problems, even though the Boy could not know what they were.

"You see," the Man started to explain "I've got a lot on my mind." He sighed and laid his hand and forearm on the table as if laying down a round of cards. "I – I just got engaged today. It's an arranged marriage, and, I pity the girl. I really just – I – feel like shit. I don’t want to do it; not to her, not to me, not to any children we might have.

"I thought I could go to the park tonight, and just forget, but – you see – that's why I couldn't... I like you. I'm being honest to you as well as to myself – I really like you. When you said 'a big brother;' when you seemed to want to dance your first time with me – you can't know what it does to me. It makes me mad. It makes me desperate." He latched onto the Boy's hand. "I don’t want to live a dishonest life – not within myself, or with a person I have zero chance of ever loving."

"I know," said the Boy, and held on harder "that same pressure is coming down the road for me in a couple of years. I can sympathize."

The Man chuckled. "I was even thinking about ways out. Like, join the Army, or sign up for the crew of a cargo ship – I don’t know – run away to Europe, or Argentina – just don’t make a mistake that will hurt others, and which in the meantime will drive every last bit of hope out of me. Can you relate?"

"So, you would rather go into the Self-Defense Force, or sail around the world than cause another pain, just because your family forced you? Yes – I can relate." The Boy laughed. "And, maybe I should join you – but, one thing you have to consider is bigotry – hate out in the big world for Japanese because of the war. And there is much more hate outside of Japan for Gays than in it. In other places, they put us in jail, or mental wards, just because we exist. Here, society doesn't care – we are basically free to do as we want, although there is plenty of name-calling."

"Yeah – but in Japan, they don’t need prison cells for us. Here they don't care, because they know society has the strongest jail of all reserved for us – forced marriages; and instead of bricks and mortar and iron bars, they keep us in check with wives and children and in-laws."

"But," the Boy sighed "still, there is hope for a better time – better for us, here where we live, and where we love one another, right?"

"You think so?"

"Yes – someday. I have to believe it's coming. Yes."

 

˚˚˚˚˚

 

"Cut!" the director called out. He was slightly aggravated, and it showed. Tetsuya seemed distracted; at what Daisuke could not guess.

The lights switched off, the crew stood down, and the extras clotted together in a bored and irritated group.

The director walked up to his stars: " Tetsuya-kun, what is it?"

Tetsuya bristled under the peevish tone.

Daisuke went on: "Do you need a break? Why can’t you concentrate?"

Hideki came up behind Daisuke and draped his forearms on the director's shoulders. In a moment Daisuke and Hideki sat next to Tetsuya in the booth.

"What is it?" Hideki asked quietly.

Out of the blue, the boy scowled into the director's concerned look: "Why do people hate buraku; people like you?"

"Why are you asking that!" Susuke said.

"It's racism, is what it is…" Hideki felt the slight as if to his own person.

The director thought: 'Yeah, but leave it to Asians to invent a brand of racism not based on race.'

"What is 'spiritual pollution,' anyway?" pressed Tetsuya.

"It's bullshit…" mumbled Hideki under his breath.

Daisuke put his hand on Hideki's forearm and squeezed with a warm smile. In Tetsuya's eyes, that contact, that expression, raised rancor out of nowhere.

"It's…" explained the director to Tetsuya "…the outdated superstition that death is contagious. Like in India, the untouchables are untouchable because they're the ones who prepare the deceased for cremation, collect the ashes, and so forth. In primitive minds this means death can bounce off of them like a static charge – Zap – you're next!!" Daisuke shook Hideki's arm and laughed. Hideki pushed him back and joined in the peel of mirth.

But from his side, Tetsuya felt nausea settle in his gut. His leering eyes darted off the place where the director's hand laid, to the joyous faces of the two. He wanted to stand, rip his 'brother' and fellow boy band member from this man's clutches, and spit in the director's face.

The very vehemence of this set of desired actions, frightened him. Why? Why so strong? Was it a hate for Daisuke? A man putting him in his movie, or was it to do with Hideki. Tetsuya settled his attention on the exposed forearms of his fellow Nicho band member, and experienced a tenderness he had never allowed himself to feel before. It was an instinct to shield the other from danger, commingled with a longing to caress.

Maybe he loved Hideki as more than a brother, and it made him angry. He rose, knees bumping the table, and demanded to know: "Why are we doing this crap, anyway?!"

The director was hurt. He glanced to Hideki then rose to face Tetsuya.

"My motivation is to show that male-male love is not a dead-end, like the heterosexual myth makes it out to be. How? Because it builds a monument that example by example eclipsed straight love hundreds of years ago. Straights' very concept of love is a Gay one; when they read the Bard, or Marlow, Saikaku, or Chikamatsu – or see images by Michelangelo, or Leonardo, or Raphael – hear music by Bernstein or Tchaikovsky, they see only Gay love, read only one man's ardor for another, hear that passionate ache in the music, and relate it to their own inferiorly-felt emotion. Encountering the pain of our hearts searching for expression, makes them know they can do better. Why film this story? Because it brings a man to a crisis, and he must decide for himself: put his lit lamp under a bushel basket, or place it on a stand for all to see and be inspired by. I think the Man in the story is Mishima himself; his lamp, his writings."

Tetsuya's nose made a sickened sound of dismissal, and as Daisuke reached out to him, Tetsuya pushed Susuke out of his side of the booth, all the while his anger spilling out as a tirade: "Hands off, you disgusting Buraku, Eta – muckraker – don't touch me!"

The crew and extras stilled themselves in disbelief.

Susuke grabbed Tetsuya's arm, swinging his ear in close before he could push past. He commanded on an intimate level: "How can you do this to a man giving you so much? Look, look at how much loss of face you've caused him with the crew." As he said this, he re-avowed to not walk on his own personal dark side again. "You should apologize, now."

Hideki jumped up and dragged Tetsuya away.

As they watched the two move towards the door, Susuke resettled next to the director. "I'm sorry, there is no excuse. As a Gay person, Tetsuya knows better – he's suffered just as much bigotry as the rest of us, and there's no excuse for him to foist it on another."

Daisuke smiled as enigmatically as any ancient sphinx: "You don't know what I'm thinking, do you?"

"No."

"I'm counting my lucky stars: one for a perfect Boy, petulant and shy and sexy and mature of body, if not of heart; and two, for a perfect Man – awakened."

A great weight lifted off of Susuke to hear this pronouncement of faith in his ability to be true to himself. "But I don't know what's gotten into Tetsuya."

"You don't? I do."

Susuke's darkly beautiful features puzzled over the director's words.

Daisuke explained through a grin: "He's in love." And within his mind, the director's first love, with that boy's finger riding the creases of his jeans, Tetsuya with his bile-filled outburst born of the frustration of feeling his budding love under assault by an outsider, and Mishima's perfect Boy with his sweet acceptance of things as they are, but with an active hope to make them better, all merged into one person, and one time.

Hideki practically pushed Tetsuya out the door of the bar, and pinned him against the wall opposite it.

"What is going on with you?!"

Tetsuya's face lost all anxiety. Slowly his hands drifted up to his brother's biceps, which now never seemed as lovely to the boy as when he might be losing them. He caressed his arms.

The tender stroke momentarily startled Hideki, who dropped his grip, and stepped back. But instantly a knowing testament washed all fear away, and he came in, and hugged Tetsuya with all his might. "I know," he said "everything is changing so fast, but we'll always be brothers. There's nothing to worry about."

The boy was shocked. Somehow Hideki misunderstood, and yet, would his response be any different if he hadn't?

Hideki pushed him back, but still held on at arm's length. He stated adamantly through a question: "We're family, right?"

Tetsuya had to nod.

"Then," he continued "just like we're happy that Masa has Susuke and Makoto has Frank, you have to be content that Daisuke and me have a chance to build something that works."

Tetsuya blinked, and felt ashamed: Hideki did understand, and he wasn't angry, so why should Tetsuya feel that way?

Quietly, as softly as ice melts off a warming roadway, Tetsuya was able to relate his jealously and familiar emotions to his Boy character's blank slate – in the story, the Boy reached out to the Man's face in a brotherly feeling of connection, but it was one that did not preclude the option of a closer love from forming.

"Don't you get it?" Hideki released "This is your moment, like he said, a real example of turning love dark, to remorse, to thoughts of vendetta – to hate of the self that only limits and traps us in a prison. Don't go there; be happy for love, or it will never be able to find you. Isn't that true?"

Tetsuya wanted to cry. He felt so embarrassed to have made a scene, to have acted so rashly to the man giving him so much opportunity. He nodded under the weight of his guilt.

Hideki inhaled a profound sigh of relief – relief mainly for Tetsuya. "So, now – let's finish what we've begun. We've got to make you a movie star, right!"

Tetsuya smiled. "Right."

"And," Hideki frowned "I think you owe somebody an apology."

             

˚˚˚˚˚

 

The Man and Boy were walking side by side. The dark and wooded lush of Hibiya Park pressed from their right side. The cicadas droned, but more softly than earlier, while a hundred feet ahead of them loomed the structure that first brought them together. The cool summer air buoyed them and made it seem the hands of the two had been shoved into pants pockets to bolster warmth.

In the Man's mind, he could conjure no excuse to prolong the evening. He agreed to walk the Boy back to this place; though he silently had vowed to never come here again.

"I enjoyed our talk." the Boy said, the tenderness of his voice proving his sentiment.

"I enjoyed our dance."

The Boy was silent.

"Maybe we can go to the movies sometime."

The Boy's reticence looked to be on the verge of tears.

The Man was suddenly angry at the structure looming ahead of them. The thing that had joined them, waited to ultimately separate them. "Why did you want to come back here?" The Man knew why. He wanted to test just how heartbroken he'd be to hear the Boy say it.

The Boy only cracked half a mischievous smile, and shrugged his tweed-clad shoulders.

The Man was surprised. What he felt was something akin to concern. He wanted to march the young man away for his own sake, as well as for the Man's selfish motivations, and down below, the lad's grin reawakened his venial drive. Outwardly, his anger gone, he matched the young man's grin. Inwardly, he felt his member grow solid against his inner thigh.

"I…" the Man faltered, his conventional tone failing "I want you to call me after 10 P.M. – then we can talk."

They neared the pair of fancy lights marking the perimeter of the restroom. The Boy stopped. He turned and patted the hidden piece of paper within the handkerchief pocket of his blazer. "I will." Then he joked: "We have to plan our escape! Which will it be? Sherpas on Everest; fishermen in Alaska; roughnecks in Texas – if you choose one, I will follow, and be there." By the end, all evidence of jest was gone from his tone.

The Man halted his steps, and remained motionless inside and out. It didn’t matter ultimately what he did, but the one thing he could not do solidified into crystal-sharp clarity. And, there was another thing too. It was an innocent one; an absolved form whose pitch-perfect notion rang in his ear as pure as a chanted benison. And both impulses the Man would act upon – he'd not marry that woman, nor any his family would ever pick, for he'd never love any of them – and he'd also not let this Boy go, not just yet.

As the young man grew concerned, and stepped close to the Man's side, he felt his hand be taken up.

The Man slowly sank to his knees before the lad, forever renouncing the dark side of the truth, and all the impotent fury it brought. Now he too could dream of a time to come.

He lifted the front shirttails of the Boy, and kissed the hard abdomen muscles that involuntarily flexed at the approach of his lips. Lingering there, his companion relaxed, and the Boy's hands landed in soft strokes on the top of his head. Below, he savored the feel of the lad's palms, while his own touch gripped and explored the curve of the young man's back. Slowly he roved the yielding flesh of his partner's belly with renewed kisses, as if right beneath the giving flesh was the crucible of their future; as if behind his bussing laid the womb where their love could gestate.

He rose within his boy's slowly tightening embrace, and as his lips drifted over the boy's, he again felt the reassuring hands, but this time on the back of his neck and at the base of his skull - the boy driving home his own kisses onto the man he knew he could love, as he loved himself.

                    

~