Cast Stones, and Other Ni-Chome Tales - 7. VII. Wheat from the Chaff, A Conversation

VII. Wheat from the Chaff,

A Conversation

As a general rule,

a man's face says more,

and more interesting things,

than his mouth. For in it

is a compilation of all that his mouth

will ever say – it is the monogram –

of his thoughts and aspirations.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The sweetest apple blushes at the end of the bough –

the very end of the branch which gatherers missed –

nay, not missed, but could not grasp.

Sappho

What was it about his friend? He was perhaps ten years older than Neal, tall and lanky, with suspicion, and a certain brand of world-weary cynicism that would wrinkle about his eyelids when smiling and frowning alike. "You know – it's funny." Neal told him.

"What is?" Richard saw his companion's glimmer. Skepticism rose. He pulled back, hoping distance – either emotional or physical – would help discern if his companion twinkled in humor or sincerity.

"You were the first person I met in Tokyo, and yet – " Neal fingered his glass, knowing he was being examined, "– Why is it that we hardly know each other?" As his glance wavered over the older man's leather jacket, short-cropped and fair hair, Neal made no doubt about his wanting a truthful reply.

Richard pinched his cigarette in the tray, beginning a series of defensive stopgaps. He did 'hardly know' Neal, so why was this man breaking the taboo of never digging deeper than the extemporaneous? This young Yank - not as tall as he, and by no means as suave - had something in his twenty-four years that seemed much longer lived. Richard surveyed the people sharing their huge table. It was not uncommon for Japanese bars or restaurants to have tables that measured five by ten feet, able to accommodate five or six small groups. Richard half scoffed to himself, he didn't believe in all that 'old soul' crap. He glanced without curiosity at the strangers gathered around them, knowing his companion was not much better a friend than anyone else he saw.

"Why?" Richard's head snapped, glasses glinting brilliant a moment through the smoky bar air. "Well, we really never had reason to get to know each other, did we?" His tone was so sarcastic, he started at how sincere it made him sound, but he had to go on. "It's really quite simple, isn't it? You have this mysterious boyfriend who never comes out to play – He doesn’t, so neither do you."

Neal smiled in spite of himself just to hear Richard's Australian brogue crack. He felt guilty; regrouped himself.

Richard regulated his tone, using the picking up and double tap of his cigarette as time to do this. "If we are only bar-buddies, who's to say we should have ever been better 'friends?'" Richard felt safe in the tone of his voice, and had a sudden pang of relief as a joke opened itself up. "Does it bother you that we haven't become better acquainted?" He bit the 'better' to plunge into Neal like a poke in the ribs.

And Neal did laugh – for a moment – but then his eyes again rested on his friend with the same openness. It was hard for him to be vulnerable, but he revealed his concern slowly. "See, my question is – why shouldn't we have become better acquainted? Become, real friends?"

Richard stopped smoking. The lit end of the cigarette wavered forgotten under the chin of the man. Its smoke rose in a column, and then broke into mild torrents that seemed like incense to Richard; Neal's radiantly innocent question stood in the background, like an altar being blessed.

Richard crushed out the cigarette. He never felt more unattractive in his life. There was something so foreboding in the very handsomeness of Neal, that it frightened him. Not in his looks alone, those were probably middling, but that modest endowment coupled with a marked lack of bullshit was hard to contend with. Richard felt something like anger take over. He ended all attempts at levity. He was determined to give Neal the punishment he deserved: the truth. "Don't you think the question had better be: Why should we have become friends? Bar-acquaintances seldom do take the plunge – not without sex, that is. The fact is, you frequent the same jolly establishments I do – the same bars foreigners in Tokyo do – and we have the same aesthetic taste in boys. That supplies us with conversation in the proper setting." Richard finished with an artless flourish; a shift of the head. What did Neal want from him? What were those lion-like eyes seeing when he looked at Richard? Lion-like, that's what Richard thought they best resembled. The intensity of a cat whose strength seems capable of both caprice and ruthless savagery, but which in either mode never loses any of its delight in mirth. No matter how cruel they might appear, those eyes always remained remarkably beautiful.

Neal showed a half-moon smile. "You sound as if Gays never meet in any other setting than a 'gay' one." His glance was suddenly caught by a pair of young Japanese men sitting catty corner from Neal and Richard. One of them was wearing a form-hugging black t-shirt, the already short sleeves rolled up to collar a pair of stunning upper arms. These he had set on the table in naked splendor, and from shirt slit down to elbows, they bent back up in the air to near his face – to support large hands and gracefully powerful fingers. Developed just right, the arms he put on proud display were a perfect-looking balance of muscle and form seemingly built more from candid labor than gym-wrought conceit.

Neal was distracted, he hardly heard Richard ask him: "Why did you do that last week?" Neal turned to his companion; his head still full of the boy's arms. "Do what?"

"Give me both your phone number, and a story to read. Definitely not what one would expect from an acquaintance – especially not from a bar-acquaintance. That setting demands show and loses its head when more is introduced into its system. Think, say heroin, into the bloodstream." Richard acknowledged to himself in quiet awe that since the time he had started to be straightforward with Neal, he had gradually lessened his fear of being out of control around him.

Neal focused. "Like I said at the time, and just a few minutes ago, we've known each other a number of years, but we only run into each other about once every three months – but, when we do, we pick up the threads of our old conversation more or less where they were dropped. That's more friendly than just acquaintanceship. Anyway, we're not in that kind of setting tonight. What do you think we'll talk about?" Neal's eyes gestured to the pair of Japanese boys.

"In a straight bar? Where both sexes, and both species of human life – meaning Japanese and Non – congregate in a tizzy of Hetero-Sexual signals, both missed and pounced upon?"

Neal grinned a lopsided streak of pleasure. "I knew I liked you for a reason…Yeah, what you said – something like that. But – What do you think we'll find to talk about..?" Neal pointed with his whole head to the boy with the outstanding arms.

"Boys, you mean?"

"Boys, Etc., I mean."

"You want to talk about your story." Richard fished a neatly stapled, but utterly warped set of pages out of his backpack. It lay curled on the table between them like a dissection specimen. "Thank you for letting me read it. Hardly the thing I'd except from a bar 'friend.'"

"Don't make it sound, so…"

"Sound, so, what?"

"So serious. You're Australian, one of the characters is Australian, I hoped you could clear up any glaring Americanisms."

"There's the story, with an occasional suggestion in the margin." More punishment from Richard: "That's all you wanted, right?"

"Aren’t you going to tell me what you thought of the story?"

"Are you asking?"

"That bad?"

Richard drew in a long breath, like an inverted sigh. He exhaled: "Good or bad; like or dislike; are any of these really important? But I'll try to give an opinion to the point. I thought the characters were fairly well developed, the dialogue slightly unnatural and stilted, the pacing good, the ending very good; but the drama itself – I would have to say was – bubbly. Frothy, really."

"Bubbly?"

"Soapy."

"Soap-operatic?"

Richard nodded, his glasses looked to Neal like those a clown would wear when making a child the butt of a joke. Richard continued: "Could have seen it on the Tele. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean…"

Neal cut him off: "Doesn't mean it's not shit?"

"I was going to say 'Able to find a market,' but I suppose, 'It's not shit' will be almost saying the same thing."

"Wait a minute, you mean in Australia, they'd play a same-sex romance – like the kind between Nathan and Benjamin – on TV?" Neal screeched a slightly incredulous tone.

"Yes – after ten o'clock I suppose, but yes."

"Not in America, not on broadcast TV. There, any Queer content – even two guys holding hands, comes with a big warning label – 'Sexual Situations'…" he scoffed "…codeword for '3-dollar bills' fully clothed and out of bed together."

Richard laughed "Well, in Australia, you can also say 'cunt' and 'fuck' on the air, so two guys locking lips is no big deal."

"Wasn't there anything you liked about Cast Stones?"

"There was a lot I liked about it, and a question or two to ask. I don't understand why the main character was so obsessed with the redhead. What was it he saw in that asshole that so blinded the way he treated the other two guys who so obviously liked him in the same passionate way he liked the moptop?"

"I don't understand…" Neal's thoughts were unconsciously drawn over to the boys catty corner to them. They were growing intent about getting the attention of the pair of females sitting on Richard 's left.

Neal focused on Richard's question. "That's like asking why Romeo was so hung up on Juliet, and not Mercutio. Clearly Romeo was drawn to one, despite how much love poor Mercutio felt for him. That's part of what makes the boys' interaction so moving." Neal's gaze returned to the scene at the other end of the table.

Richard, distracted by Neal's distraction, followed Neal's eyes to the source. There he saw the bicep-boy lean ever so slightly sideways to make first contact with the girl sitting next to him. His arms were fully resplendent on the table plane, and even from the full width of the long table, Richard could feel the blustering suave of the boy trying to impress a positive feeling, of any kind, into the female heart.

"I mean," said Richard "why was he attracted to David to begin with? That guy from word-one was just a shallow twit."

"Well then, let me ask you a question. Why did the older guy talk to the main character?"

Richard shrugged his shoulders. "He wanted to talk…"

"Want. He wanted. This is the feeling that led the main character to act the way he did."

"Sounds simple enough," Richard deflected the issue "but do you think real life people should be led around by the nose-ring of passion. Maybe it's all right for fiction…"

"Desire – what we want – is often the most tangible thing we have; realer than, for example, what we might say."

"I don't follow."

"When we speak, we often play the Devil's advocate, at first, just for the fun of it. But many times simply saying the notion out loud makes us want to fight to keep that position alive and viable. We start out in fun, then trick ourselves into struggling for the survival of what we don't believe in – the act of defense raises an emotion in us to always fight for our ideas. Thus, what we've started off in jest has become real to us because of the feeling we've generated for it, not as most people assume, that the principle has generated a reaction in us. It's like trying to separate the wheat from the chaff – we throw the idea up in the air, and the heaviest part falls to the floor."

Richard half laughed: "Like I said – 'dialogue slightly unnatural and stilted…' but, seriously, how does that carry over to boys?"

On the word 'boys,' both instinctively followed the train of thought to the nearest and best sampling. The bicep-boy had made his less-than-subtle way into the company of the two girls between himself and Richard. His companion, a boy of the same 'just come twenty' age, had a less elegant body than his buddy, but better looks. His features were softer, more secretive than the other. This young man struck up a conversation with a pair of foreigners at the same end of their table. He would rather have gotten the second girl for himself, but she was too far away for him to look natural approaching her across his buddy, so he let his friend get them interested first. In the meantime, the fine-featured boy had been too intrigued by the foreigners. One of them was a rather burly guy in his mid-twenties, with close-cropped hair, and a worn and grungy white baseball cap. The other was a lanky youth prone to grinning, and topped with disheveled blond hair. These two had been downing beers and tossing blunt plastic darts at a specially designed bull's-eye.

Neal and Richard saw the young man's fine features, on his otherwise stoic face, melt into a streak of a smile when the blond waif offered him the darts. The burly one spoke Japanese, another reason for the boy's handsome features to show what he felt.

Richard glanced at his companion to see if he was watching the same scene unfold. He saw that Neal was smiling slightly to himself, a little lost-looking. Richard scanned Neal's eyes, at the way they glowed in the nevertheless dim bar light. He examined the curl of his dark lashes, the slight draw upwards of his grinning upper lip. Richard forced himself to look down at his glass. His hands reached across the curled story to lay themselves on his pack of cigarettes. "What were you saying?" he said, almost feeling nauseous in simultaneous euphoria and emotional drainage. Neal seemed not to have heard him. He fetched a cigarette to his lips. Another skim of Neal's face made Richard give up lighting the tobacco. He was taken by how beautiful he found Neal to be – inside and out – and he was stymied by how much he wanted Neal to look at him in manner the same. He didn't want to punish him, or himself, anymore.

"Did you see that?" Suddenly Neal returned to Richard 's company. He offered Richard a delighted grin. "The way that boy reacted when the blond handed him the darts?"

Richard couldn't help but smile: "I saw."

"Wasn't it great? There is Eros at work."

"What?"

"Eros, as the Greeks knew it: the glue of friends, and the cause of every active love. Eros is a constructive, affinity-revealing emotion – if it is allowed the truth of being honestly felt and not shut away as a control-robbing abbreviation."

Richard let out a chuckle that was squinted around his cigarette. He was finally able to light it. Exhaling smoke, he felt comfortably on cynical ground: "Who talks about truth and honesty anymore?" Neal ignored the question. Prompting Richard to add: "Give me a break – they're as dead, as…"

"Look over there." Neal's smile was gone. "Do you think those two straight Japanese guys reacted to meeting the women, and meeting those foreign guys, in the same way?"

Richard drew in a glowing and crackling breath, then let the smoke rise from his nostrils unforced. He let Neal go on without input.

"Think about it. If a Western male forms a close friendship with another male, they often end it rather than let it take its natural course. They fear 'queer' feelings, and if they are drawn to a guy they really like, they deal with those feelings first by shunning the guy, then by ending contact all together with their friend. They hinder Eros from running its course for fear of being implicated a 'fag' by the very friend they want to get closer to. I'm not talking about sex – maybe, if they let the bonding happen, they'll find love first, then sex – maybe, maybe not.

"For Western Gays, a similar result is reached though the opposite course. If two guys are even slightly attracted to each other, they jump that acquaintanceship into the realm of a sexual one – again killing the force of Eros to make them close first. In this case, if one guy feels the other enjoyed more than just the sex from the encounter, he breaks it off, or more accurately, let's the relationship drift back to the limbo of 'Yeah, I know him.'"

Richard tapped the curled printout between them. "Look, also, I don’t get the biblical reference. It seems odd; like it's forced onto a 'Japanese story,' or at least onto one purported to be centered on a particular Japanese morality – namely how Japanese boys don’t like to sleep around a lot."

"Well, do you agree that the world of Ni-chome for guys like us is oddly Victorian?"

"I do. I think you hit the nail on the head, but why force a 'Western' view onto that otherwise religious-free set of ethics?"

"Look, it's like this. Much of Japanese thought and principles - moral, ethical, or whatever - is built upon Buddhist tenants." Neal began to singsong "And what are some of the 'rights' of that belief system..?"

Richard stepped in with a slightly vexed: "You mean, right-intentions, right-actions, right-thinking..?"

"Yes – right-thinking, and right-action. These are exactly what Christ's words are about in the New Testament. Do right by your fellow man, and change your thoughts to one of acceptance and love – there is perfect overlap."

"There is?"

Neal laughed: "I know you get it." He blinked down at the table, lost in the past. "When I first came to Japan, I naturally felt disorientated; alone. Remembering my grounding in all those years of Catholic school religion classes helped me see this 'foreign' place as peopled not with outsiders, but with good and bad like all those I had grown up with. And being grounded allowed me to open up fully to my new experiences."

There was movement from the other side of the table; the girls were gathering themselves to leave. The Japanese boys reacted by looking at each other quickly for advice. None was forthcoming. The bicep-boy, still sitting, put his hand on the wrist of the girl he had been talking to. She was now standing, and the scene looked like he was trying to physically restrain her. The young man was blustering at full force; all the masculine attitude and facial features he could muster were at work to pull the girl's phone number from her trapped hand. She resisted, and the other boy joined in the blowing bluster, adding the force of his fine features to persuade the girls to stay, or go with them to another place. The girl's friend put her bag on her shoulder and started to leave. The trapped girl begged her to wait, and her friend said she would, but by the exit. The bicep-boy, knowing time was not on his side, changed his ways instantly and began a desperate cajole. He stroked her hand with his free one and confided, though none too sincerely, that he really liked her. She saw her chance, said something about being here next week, and wrenched her hand free. She made for the door. The bicep-boy, not daring to look at either her or his friend, unaccountability made eye contact with Richard.

Richard, shaken by the nakedness he was shown, longed for just an instant to comfort the boy. Though outwardly different, so different perhaps, still he knew exactly how the young man felt. Richard was privy to the boy's deepest sorrow, to his shame of defeat, and Richard sensed a longing for freedom from the bullshit that had just made it all happen. But, it was only a second. In another second, the burly Non-Japanese guy leaned over the table and said something about her not being that pretty anyway. The bicep-boy smiled at him; a little hurt smile, a little open smile, grateful for the acceptance back into the company of men.

"Did you see that?" Neal asked quietly. "Did you see the truthfulness of the way he smiled at the foreign guy? It was more open, and more truly himself, than anything he showed to the girl. In that one look, he was more honest with himself than in an hour with the person he was trying to impress."

"Why do you think that is?" Richard wanted to hear Neal's voice again; to be lost in it again.

"Japanese males are just like Western males. They have to maintain exactly the same kind of 'manly' front between each other, their peers, but they are utterly free from that same show of bluff when confronted with a foreign guy. If the situation is right, inductive, both cultural fronts can be dropped. A Western guy can suddenly be completely himself to a Japanese male, and so can a Japanese guy; their fear nullified at the same moment their cultural pretenses have to be forgotten to achieve communication. There is the potential of friendship between those two, which suddenly seems to be immense. Like two kids meeting on an empty ball field, one with ball, the other with bat; instant friends through the necessity of sympathy."

Richard watched Neal's lips, his eyes, his face light up in some kind of glow. Through the center of it, that cat-like clarity of mirth, even in the pain of others, shone like a beacon. There was something beautiful about Neal, something so goddamned beautiful, it made Richard sick. Was it the truth, the way he felt, the way Neal prattled; the force of his words, or that he had thoughts so desperately earnest to reach out to anybody who would listen? Damned beautiful. Now, he wanted to confess. A hell-or-high-water feeling to tell Neal the way he had always felt about him, the way he had always wanted to be close to him, but feared the others reaction. Instead, he calmly asked: "The other week, last week, you asked me a rather odd question. Do you remember what it was?" Neal blinked at him, obviously not knowing. "You asked me what I thought of you. Why did you do that?"

A self-conscience smirk crept across Neal's whole body on his stool; he shifted his weight, somehow wound up moving a bit closer to Richard. "I'm sorry to have asked such an unfair question. But, I am always wondering what people think of me. What, if any, emotions I cause in others."

Richard though to himself: 'As if you don't know…' but said: "A bit of insecurity?"

"Maybe. Maybe – but I think I'm fast coming to the point where I don't care of my insecurities show anymore. Yet, still I wonder what face I show to the world. It's like hearing your voice recorded: you thought you knew what you sounded like, but to others, as the recording tells, you sound completely different."

"You didn't seem too pleased to hear me answer: 'I think you're kind of cute,' did you?"

Another shift of Neal on his stool: "As you can now see, I was hoping for something a little more heartfelt. I thought…" Neal's eyes wandered over to the boys again, "I thought I could surprise some lump of truth out of you."

Richard frowned. He was wrong before, now he never felt so unattractive before in his life. He swallowed hard, looking for his pack of smokes. He said frankly: "But, you did. You and your god-damned honesty, so inappropriate in, of all the worst possible settings, a Ni-chome bar, you do well at throwing a person off guard." Richard smiled in spite of himself and followed Neal's attention back to the boys.

"Tell me about the bible thing again."

Neal swallowed down a bit of doubt; he knew his friend could comprehend it if he put it right. "It's coming full circle for me. Before I knew I was Gay – when I was a kid – I took those lessons, the words of Christ, his parables, the way he lived his life, to heart – to try and make myself better – right-thought; right-action. In high school, I knew I was Gay, and suddenly I was excluded from those lessons. By one, those screeching 'christians' who acted nothing like the model life they were supposed to be named after, and two, by me. I thought I'd have to go it alone through the world and make my own way – invent myself from scratch – as lots of Gay people do.

"But after I came here, I saw these teachings still applied to me, no matter how loud the haters say God hates me for the way He made me. As I said, full circle, and I don’t want to hate just because I'm hated through ignorance. You see, hate is the chaff – toss it up, and the wind carries it away. The important stuff – like love – that settles to the threshing room floor where we can gather it up to feed us."

Richard nodded in slow self-application and recognition.

Neal smiled within himself to have made that connection.

The Japanese young men were quietly conversing with each other, looking for all the world like they were consoling each on the others grief. Then, there was intense checking of watches. They were getting ready to leave.

Neal turned to Richard. He asked slowly, studying the man's face: "And if I put the same question to you now as last week, knowing more of me, knowing more of what you think of me; what would you answer?"

The bicep-boy stood, looking down on his still-sitting companion, a truly sad expression veiling his face. His friend stood, a puzzled plead and glance over his shoulder; he wanted to stay and be with his new Non-Japanese friends. The better-looking boy gave up. He spun around and jocularly, but still warmly, bade the blond waif and his baseball cap buddy good night. He walked beyond Richard and Neal, to the door and the outside world, but paused and waited for his companion.

Richard could feel Neal's stare on him. He was waiting for Richard to answer. Richard didn't want to meet that gaze; didn't want to smile either. His instinct to deflect everything serious was completely gone. "I don't know what I can tell you. I just might say something" he turned into Neal's eyes "I'd wish I wouldn't have to – something obvious – yet something once said, once put out there, is impossible to take back."

It was the bicep-boy's turn to say goodbye. That look of misery was still on his face, an expression like to say a reluctant farewell to so much chance; a painful goodbye to bountiful opportunity. He grabbed the offered hand of the baseball man, and shook it strongly. To the Non's warm words of 'see you next week,' the bicep-boy helplessly smiled. All the while the silken movements of his bare muscles moved dimly in the eyes Neal and Richard.

"Now, tell me you saw that?" Neal asked.

"You tell me what I saw."

"There is Eros at work. Eros, the limb-loosener, as a great poet once said. Eros that builds friends though feelings of sameness. The bicep-boy is showing more true emotion to that guy right now than he showed to that girl the entire evening."

"Why do you think that is?" Richard wanted to laugh, feeling somehow charmed and giddy just knowing Neal would answer. He glanced at him, somehow understanding that he loved him. He groped mechanically for his cigarette pack. A butt came to his lips, the lighter flicked and he inhaled deeply, needily. The nicotine hit his blood like a comforting shock to his system: the familiar.

"The girl was a sexual challenge for him, a make-out exploit to show his friend, and their friends, that he can subdue a girl's body. But the foreign guy, there was nothing to prove, nothing to gain but real friendship. Look at the way he looks, the way he holds on to his friend's hand, there is something there he didn't even come close to sharing with the female hand he touched earlier."

Slowly the bicep-boy released the others hand and went grudgingly over to the door. A final look, a final 'see you,' and the look was still there, still grieving for so much loss.

"So, what do you think of me?" Neal asked.

Richard said: "Every time I see you, I undergo a little crush, a little want, a little pain, a little feeling of this and that. So I guess I think I'm sad about knowing you, and yet, happy with the little I get to be with you."

Neal grinned a lopsided streak of the pleasure of being touched. "Why so honest?"

Richard unexpectedly and forcibly crushed out his cigarette. The haze of the smoke lifted until he suddenly regarded it as an utterly noisome hindrance. The air cleared. He could see Neal for what he was. Richard didn't feel sick anymore. "Because, I don't care to be dishonest right now. I'll give you what you want, whether you can use or not."

Neal stood; stood next to Richard. He could not have gotten any closer without sitting in Richard's lap. He put his hand on Richard's forearm, shaking it a little. "And, how do you feel?"

"Good. I feel good." And Richard meant it. As straightforwardly as he could imagine it, he knew this was all beyond anything so limited as sex with someone he barely knew, it was something much more intimate. He asked: "Why do you think that is?"

"Honesty; truth. Honesty allowed to become truth."

Richard laughed openly. "But, seriously, who talks of honesty and truth anymore?"

Neal wasn't going to ignore the remark this time. He squeezed Richard's arm all the harder to sustain his attention. His lion eyes smiled, the mirth showing how much he loved the chance to say:

"Friends do."

~