Cast Stones, and Other Ni-Chome Tales - 3. III. Treasure House

III. Treasure House

 

A wise man always throws himself

on the side of his assailants.

It is more his interest than theirs

to find his weak point.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Shinjuku's Ni-chome – or Second District – is not what it seems. A slight tilt of the head, a mere cock of perspective, and the cold outward view changes to a deep, abiding, inward one.

In the daylight hours, the neighborhood looks and acts like any urban set of streets in Japan, and at ground level, it belongs totally to the traditional Edomae people who have always lived here – those proud to say their ancestors founded this city 400 years ago when it was but a boom town in a marshy backwater. Yes, at street level, Ni-chome belongs to the corner florist and his wife; to the mom and pop grocery; to the venerable archery range that can boast a longer history than the modern nation can, and to the many other mundane have-seens of Any-where-ville Japan. But in the daylight too, a mere cock of the head, up any one of the many narrow structures, and you will see a strip of backlit signs. These begin at the second floor, stick out over the sidewalks, and climb like vines up the height of the buildings. One floor, one bar, one slender marquee for each level with names like: Boys Boys Boys, Pecker's Club, Rose Lounge. For indeed this is the heart of Tokyo's Gay Village, its Boys Town, its LGBT center, known far and wide as the place to come.

But like an eye hit by a kaleidoscope lens, the image one sees of Ni-chome moves and refracts only a continuous breaking of reflected light. At night the marquee signs come on, the citizens retreat indoors behind their shuttered storefronts and watch TV, while the Second District denizens take over. They walk its sidewalks, streets, and ride the elevators up to its bars. A slight tilt; a slight bringing closer or pushing away, and the image will alter to suit the unseen, yet strongly felt, light source. What leads anyone to places like Ni-chome is such a force, and it beats as strongly – if not more strongly – in a Gay person's heart as in any other, though it is often, nonetheless, unknown.

Naka-dori cuts through the neighborhood like the central street its name means. Off of it, smaller streets and byways lead to ever more intimate destinations. The farther back you go, the more private matters will be intruded upon, for here the working boys stand, wait, and then negotiate. They lead clients to formal or informal settings; to the client's choice of love hotels, or just to out-of-the-way nooks, staircases and so forth. These boys stand in doorways, or hang loosely at the back of sidewalks, looking fully occupied at doing nothing; always on the clock, but even they have their days off, even they have their own places to hang out and unwind. For in Japan, 'the Center of Gay Life' is just a matrix of words, applied or shrugged off, because it is only a label. So too the concepts of public and private, and labels of all kind in Japan are surrounded by a nebulous aura, no matter how pat or vague they try to seem. People with titles, their professions, and their towns and districts too, are all burdened with 'image,' as if centuries of marketing campaigns have made everything well known, yet obscured all it touched. So too is a spot within Ni-chome that is famous for the initiated, but secret for most – it is a nondescript Shinto shrine.

Not on a main drag, not on a secondary street, but off to even a byway's margin, this shrine looks like the shop fronts of Ni-chome's ground floor – like one of the countless ordinary shrines in Japan, but it is not. The small building on stilts looks unloved, neglected, but its very adoration gives it a haphazard feel. For climbing over every reachable inch of this little structure is a moss-like growth of white paper. Small strips of it – neatly folded into ropes and then tied with loving care – cling in multitudes like cherry blossoms, and offer the hard and weirdly angular architecture a soft and fuzzy glow. Though obscurely out in the public, a tilt of the head, a cock of the heart, and the significance of the ordinary shrine is revealed in the refracted light of love too. Known, it touches; unknown, it repels.

But back on the main streets, as night falls, the marquees come on, and change the chances of missing the area's uniqueness. At night it finds a different point of view, finds a time from which, if flattery fails, the vantage at least won’t confront the users with the complete truth. Here couples walk on the borrowed streets, friends and lovers too, mature and young, businessmen on the prowl, and runaway kids looking to survive. In all of them is the desire, actuated or repressed, to see themselves as Gay, and when better – when the impulse is itself mature – they can see themselves as more than just Gay.

For on the minds of Japan's youth, its young men and women, Ni-chome exerts a powerful pull and retraction. In this land, there has never has been a 'problem' with the existence of people who know who they are, but for a son or a daughter to refuse family obligations simply because of it, is a problem. So many teenage runaways drift to Shinjuku rather than face a loveless entanglement, and try their fate to find love and freedom. So Ni-chome is escape; time melds and becomes irrelevant – whether 400 years ago, or 400 years from now – to here, and to that undistinguished margin of land and its holy shrine, they have and will always come. And even so, the bookbinder's thread of rules will keep people, jobs, communities, and even Ni-chome together; rules to themselves, known and unknown, to enable a higher order.

            

˚˚˚˚˚

 

He heard that sound again; Yoshi's head hitting the pavement. He felt that cruel laughter well up in him once more, saw the sneer on his own face at the absurdity of a human head sounding just like a watermelon thumped. It was funny. He laughed now as then, and immediately, now as then, was disgusted with himself. The image repeated; somewhere in his mind the rewind button had been pushed, and he watched it again with greedy abhorrence.

'I can't get enough,' he mused, remembering that when he was a child his energy had been high enough to keep his mother in a consistently bad mood, or at least she blamed it, both verbally and considerately, on Susuke. She would yell, after one too many interruptions, or after doing what was forewarned against: "When will you ever learn when enough is enough?" anger spilling over her lips in the form of mist.

He saw Yoshi go down again. He had hit him; the young man falling in a graceful arc to the sidewalk resembled more flight than anything else, and it remained very clear to Susuke. So too the sound of air released from the boy's lungs the moment his skull crashed against the concrete, and had made that ridiculously burlesque thud. What did he care? He asked for it, and Yoshi should have been expecting it. He had told the boy of the danger, of how he had ended former affairs. Susuke had had many lovers, most sex ending in misery and shelter-seeking, and yet somehow Yoshi had been different. Never feigning affection, the young man was wise on how to please his lover, so Susuke's standard contempt only half blossomed. He was not above a calculated blow to end a budding glint of affection, and this is exactly what he used to put things right the very hour Yoshi spoke of love and emotions. What did he care? Yoshi had been hit; had fallen – he let it play again, saw the look coming up from the pavement. The young man loved him, and that pathetic look didn’t flee as it should have with the blow, but confronted him with a crystalline honesty he had always denied ever existed.

He laughed, nervously knowing it was not a laugh at all, and that one day, someone might confront him with the truth of it. But he didn't care. He had learned his mother's perennially cruel lesson, and 'enough' for his lovers had a descending threshold of tolerability. Hadn't he saved them, saved both Yoshi and himself, from the greater pain?

Like a sleepwalker who knows he's asleep all the time he walks, Susuke quietly became aware that the images in his head dreamt while his feet continued to tread the pavement of a byway off of Naka-dori. There was nothing strong enough from the outside to push Yoshi's thought out of his head, until he was standing in veiled proximity to the cool-acting hustler.

This boy, no more than twenty, stood dead ahead of him; leg cocked and bent sharply at the knee, pushed against a wall to support him. His white jeans looked unnaturally clean even in the yellow dim cast from the streetlight. Perhaps, Susuke considered, that was part of his professional 'presentation;' a light that assumed 'clean' as paramount.

Susuke slowed his approach to lengthen his contemplation of the object he wanted. The way he stood, the way he had his head turned away from Susuke's advance, the hand resting with well-studied ease in the crease rising up from his crotch to accentuate the all-important projection laying beneath; all of these exited Susuke. The very tangible apathy the boy exuded, like a tart taste on the lips, sent a cold shiver from the top of his head that dipped straight into his nether regions.

The first walk-by, Susuke approached ready to impress the hustler with his own much more experience-weighted laissez-faire. With technique that showed more polish than practice, he 'felt' his target's position off to his immediate left, and with movement that lessened to a barely moving state, he tilted his head forward – craning it like he wanted to look at his shoes – but with the same fluidity as a bow, he turned his sight to the magical left.

The hustler watched the look pass. There was no expression for Susuke to react against. This stunned Susuke. A dull amazement followed him down the street, and he didn't even bother with the obligatory 'look back,' because he knew the kid wasn't looking in his direction anymore. He was stunned. He knew he was good-looking, he knew he was young enough for a street kid to be impressed by the act of being cruised by him. He walked on, getting more and more lost in the nothingness of what he had seen in the boy.

Like a sleepwalker who knows he's asleep all the time he walks, Susuke quietly became aware that the image in his head dreamt while his feet continued to stride – but across his good-looking face, a diabolical smirk crept, telling that he'd be back to get what he wanted.

 

'What a God dammed Sleaze!' thought Frank. 'Just to brush me off like that the minute the check was paid. As if I'd believe his lame: "Oh, you go on to Whitman's without me. I'll meet you there later." What a load of crock.' Frank knew good and well that he had been dismissed, and that by the very person he thought he had been on a date with.

He walked along Naka-dori, his mind flashing with Susuke's hard-featured, rough looks: the way it sneered at Frank's jokes, the way that upper lip – too thin to begin with – would smoothly slip into a negligible line when the sleaze smiled. Frank examined the image, and wanted to hold it in contemptuous regard for the person it embodied, a twenty-five-year old brat, but instead he saw the cruel beauty of a creature that lived in splendid isolation of what he meant to others, and of what feelings he arose in others. He thought that Susuke was somehow like a sleek beast, that for all of its ferocity and ill temper, one could not help but swoon under the lovely inhesion of its evil.

'I could tell all through dinner that he didn't want to be with me. What kind of friend is that?' His thoughts turned decisive: 'I've had it with that, that…' he couldn't think of a properly hateful adjective. He was angry, and projected on top of Susuke's thin smile the thought of his eyes closing down to slits as the rest of him laughed in scorn. 'Cold.' Frank thought, asking 'Just how do those eyes see the God-dammed world? Does he spend his whole life just sneering at it, taking whatever he can derive pleasure out of and discarding the rest?' A loathsome thought then suddenly hit Frank. Was he jealous – was this scorn of Frank's because he felt something for the sleaze? He had to put that on a slow simmer, he believed he hated him, but if so, what was Frank's problem with the way Susuke led his life? He drowned the implications with in simple notion, easily put into words: 'God damn him, always acting so fucking cool, as if the whole world was his peon.'

During dinner, the idea of going to Whitman's had seemed so nice, a good way to continue what was for Frank a perfect date. He asked Susuke, and the handsome Japanese young man didn't hesitate to agree, he even smiled warmly at the suggestion. How soon the brush-off came, and Frank's 'perfect' date was seen as not even a date at all for his companion. Now the notion of going to the 'nice' bar made his stomach churn; the horror of the scene there – couples, cursing, shy Japanese boys – the oppression of being there alone made him sick at the idea. So he walked, Naka-dori providing the path through the heart of Japan's Gay 'world,' and with each and every step his anger grew; anger at the sleaze, fury at the closed nature of this 'world,' and contempt at himself for not knowing what to do about it all.

A convenience store loomed on his right. As he walked past he looked to see that, like most every store of its kind in the country, it had a rack of magazines pushing its back against the inside of the front window. And like almost every other store too, there were young men, two or three, standing with magazines in hand who not only browsed over a disinterested page here or there, but young men who stood in these bright stores to become entranced in article after article. This phenomenon seemed to be limited to the male of the species though, as young ladies appeared to buy periodicals to take home, and Frank always wondered what the mystique was in standing in front of a 7-Eleven rack and reading an entire car magazine.

Once past the store, his hopeless expectations of the boredom of the bars were tinted with a shade of curiosity, and that turned him around. The rack compelled him.

The door slid slowly open, and the clerk, in paper hat and an equally paper-looking uniform, sat behind the candy bars and chewing gum looking like the patron saint of tedium.

Frank's good Baptist upbringing wouldn't let him use the facilities without buying something. He slapped a pack of gum down on the counter, feeling funny to make the clerk jump to the attention he did all for the reaping of a measly ¥100. Frank smiled at the straight boy. The clerk looked taken aback as Frank knew he would. He slapped his hundred yen coin down, took the gum in hand, and stunned the boy even further by telling him in flawless Japanese: "Relax, you'll live longer."

He walked to the rack savoring a certain malicious delight in how easy it was to break the social fabric all around him. The boy didn’t know what to do when Frank smiled at him, simply because customers never smiled at him – not in friendly greeting, not as a come-on, nothing, never – and frank knew that. But his real delight came in seeing the kid's expression leveled at Frank's down-home advice spun smoothly into Japanese; Frank also knew that Japanese never thought Western faces able to use their native tongue.

It was a slow night and the others had drifted away, leaving a solitary youth with head bowed over a telephone-directory-thick comic book. Frank looked over the selection, picked one, and as he was lifting it up noticed that over the top of the rack he had a perfect view of the sidewalk he had just forsaken.

He began to turn magazine pages, with each leaf getting more deeply lost in a little pool of thought. Susuke again came back. 'So, he's good-looking? But he's always so hard to read. I shouldn't let myself feel anything for him; nothing for a guy who feels nothing for me. They're all so hard to read, all Japanese men are so goddamned stoic all the time. They keep so much in, locked away like booty in their heads. I swear to God – and I have to from now on – no more Japanese. I just couldn't stand another…'

He turned the page without ever having looked at it. 'They won't let me in. I could live my whole life here, know nothing but Japan, know only Japanese culture, speak only Japanese, but God damn it, I can never be Japanese – they would never let me into the Holy of Holies of their emotional warehouses. So, no more.' His peripheral vision caught him shaking his head in the reflection of the front window.

Thought processes, in their own suspended assumptions, are usually quicker than the dull reckonings of the emotions, so now with all the miserable failings of the night already passed, and all the promise of unhappiness for the evening yet ahead of him, he felt truly depressed.

He stopped turning the pages he'd never bothered to look at, because he had made up his mind to end the evening humanely – yes, compassionately, with regards to himself. He stared out the window and sighed, but maybe it was too late for humane, because there was a person there, on the sidewalk, profile to the windowpane. The magazine sailed in its original course and went back to its slot. The stranger turned.

A boy, truly a boy frank knew, perhaps eighteen or nineteen – though only a few years younger than Frank's twenty-three – stood there beautiful beyond his looks for simply being so blessed with his youth. 'No more.'

Frank was going home, the night was over. The boy turned away, drawing his lit cigarette to his lips, returning his gaze to the nothing particular it had been looking at before.

Thinking processes are sometimes slower that emotional ones, and as the kid turned back with a charming kink in his upper lip for Frank, Frank's hand, like a zombie's coerced to ever reach for a worthless existence, went back for a comic book. In his mind a refrain droned through the dull pulse of unaware emotion that begged: 'No more.'

 

He saw the figure approach, then he looked down. A clock in him counted down the rest of the customer's advance; the second time around, the hustler knew the deal would be made right then and there.

He waited until he felt the scammer was well passed, the feeling being nothing but senses heightened to catch every change around him: the whisper of air, the rustle in his ear, the perception of the stranger's eyes upon him, and it was time. Cigarette loosely hinged on lower lip for effect, his downcast gaze slowly pivoted with his head. Timing was everything, and the working boy trusted the natural metronome of experience beating within him. Everything was important; any delay, any overshot, and the all-pivotal look back would be wasted. His sight first caught the scammer's backside. A tick of the tempo keeper and that look casually slipped up his target's figure, dead into the others stare. The hustler wanted to smile, but he couldn't; smile in the perfection of his timing, in fact laugh at the scammer for not knowing whom he had just tried to impress. His inner clock, and 'sense' of perception, had done exactly what they were trained to do – give the sought after all the power over the seeker.

That accomplished, the young man made sure his mark saw the deliberate emptiness of his expression, then, and only then did he slowly turn his gaze away. He was good at that, at putting on nothing as a disguise. He found out early enough how vital it was to his procedure, how necessary it was to attract the attention of his patrons. In the mind's eye of his senses something odd happened. The target was supposed to turn around and come back, but he did not. The hustler looked again. The man scamming him was continuing down the street.

He shrugged his shoulders, glad that he could hide his feelings. The man who had passed was very good-looking, and the compliment of his cruising would have not long ago sent his heart aflutter.

Alone again he laughed a little, a grinding low-register chuckle in self-praise that moved into the irony of thinking that perhaps the man hadn't known he was a prostitute. The grind in his throat came to a halt, somehow the thought wasn't as funny as it had been. Somehow the irony hardened into the more practical; the tangible image of who he was, and of what had just happened. The beauty of the scammer's image again floated past him – the coolness of the man, the turn of his head, the eyes confidentially holding contact with his. The working boy was both flattered and intrinsically deprived of its pleasure, because the adulation of one unaware of what they see is by its nature pitiful. Then he remembered the emptiness he had shown the scammer, glad for it, lest somehow in his face flattery let slip a piece of the buried misery of him.

He took a sharp intake of air, and the picture in his head was washed out.

He felt someone approaching from his left perimeter. He instantly had his professional composure return in full force, the workings of his mind shut off as he brought his cigarette to his mouth. Again he waited, again his inner tempo took over, and he was working.

The first thing that hit his senses was the smell of booze, and he tried not thinking about the good-looking man who should have been there. Next he saw the potbellied, balding businessman: red-faced and so drunk that alcohol steamed from his blotchy skin to stink the air, like he had just come from a rubdown.

The hustler had all the power. He just had to lean back and watch the scene unfurl itself out into its familiar conclusion.

Then man walked unsteadily down the avenue, his dull navy-blue suit added to his shadow-like lumber. At first he was oblivious to the working boy, but then he squinted into the nether light, stopped a moment while still a good dozen feet away, and grew suddenly enamored of the kid looking at him. He became debonair, at least to himself, and stumbled onwards to the waiting young man.

The hustler was joined, and offered a wordless cigarette. He held up his already lit butt for his swain to notice, and the man's eyes grew instantly sad, as if that action had signaled the end of unsuccessful negotiations. But the hustler dropped his butt and made a slight pantomime of stamping it out so the would-be suitor could try again. And the moment the proffered cigarette was between his lips, the dark was shattered by the man's lighter, while the customer's pudgy red face danced behind the flame like a ghoul. The spark in the businessman's eye was almost as dreadful as the half-sneer on his mouth. The kid bent his head towards the fire, and in it moved the image of the scammer, the good-looking scammer in his memory. The darkness extinguished the flame, only the end of the hustler's cigarette glowed in the ghastly glint from his patron's leer.

"How much?" There was no repression of the wobbling man's lust.

The working boy had all the power. He had only to set a reasonable price, even if on the exuberant side, and this pot-bellied carbuncle of a man – his breath as soused as his blood – would lead him away. This is where he needed to do nothing but coldly appraise the buyer of the merchandise to find the price he would pay, but now, when he needed most to use his well-honed skill of showing no emotions, of letting no thought intrude on business, he began to think of men like the one before him. All of them, he thought, were the same. They all wanted to kiss and cuddle before the act for which they paid – and which they dispatch will all the deliberation of a hand scratching an itch – but then afterwards, their attitudes turn noxious. After, when the kisses dried up suddenly, and the cuddling ended in abrupt, icy, and narrow-eyed glares at him, what is it they were thinking? 'Shame,' he thought 'shame on their impulses to sneak behind the backs of their wives and teenage sons. No. These red-faced uncles have accusations in their eyes, demanding to know why I seduced them. "You nasty boy," they say "you cocksucker, you slut!" Hate is what they have for me – for themselves.' And then, at those times, the professional nothingness of the hustler is the most important thing he owns.

The bright crimson face waited before his sight, behind it quietly floated the beautiful phantom of the scammer's first and second pass. He had the power, just a reasonable price, a quarter of an hour, but what moved within him kept him from moving without.

"A hundred thousand Yen."

"Whaaat?" the businessman's glinting eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. "That's a joke?"

"A hundred thousand Yen." The working boy said flatly.

"Hey…" the man tilted to the side, but stumbled back erect. "I know your kind." An explanatory finger wagged in an off kilter arc below the young man's stationary chin. "Yes, I know what you are. A snot-nose, cum-hungry whore from Yamagata thinking you can pick and choose your Tokyo lovers, but no, you're coming with me."

He took the hustler's wrist. His mouth coming close, bloody eyes wide open on the kid. "What? You don’t like me? Huh, don’t like this face, don’t want to think about kissing it? Huh!" His grip tightened like a slipknot.

The man kissed the boy; his open mouth all over the young man's lower lip. He stopped when the expected submittal didn't come.

The hustler concentrated on the force that bound his wrist. The red eyes looking at him seemed a little frightened, but still tried to lead him away, so the professional smiled, the repulsive wetness around his mouth caking as it instantly dried. The man stumbled to a stop, and the boy was sick at heart, but the professional in control began to croon sweetly to the red and odious face before him. "Wait a minute, what's the rush? Come back here." He covertly freed his hand and arm as the man stupidly dropped his own by his sides. "Kiss me again."

The man let out a low snort, a release of frustration and lust like a savory belch. As he came closer he felt the sweet touch of hands on his shoulders.

The hustler whispered: "You like me, don’t you?"

"Ohhhh…"

"Show me."

"Ohhhh." The man came close for the kiss, and felt the rush of the working boy's steel-boned knee dig deeply into his tenderest spot, right below the potbelly.

As the man doubled over in agony, the hustler's hand deftly slid in and out of the man's breast pocket. Wallet in hand, the boy ran.

A shrill "Hey!" followed the retreating footsteps. Hunched over with one hand on his groin, and one in his jacket pocket, the drunk man sobered instantly. "You're not going to get away." And doubled as he was, he started to stumble, then run after the thief.

The kid saw the pursuit. He increased his speed as he rounded the corner. His head turned behind him at the ugly man, his body collided with someone; becoming a tangle of arms, legs, and bumping heads. In the moment it took the wind to be knocked out of the working boy, he had regained his wits, and while his body was still falling to the pavement, his eyes found the flash of the wallet as it sailed through the dull marquee light. Sitting square on the roadway, the momentum of the fall still coursing downwards through the rest of his torso, he turned angrily on what had been in his way. And in a fraction of a thought, his anger metamorphosed into the desire to laugh.

The scammer looked dumbly at the hustler from where he stood, his hand painfully rubbing the spot on his forehead where their skulls had bumped together.

There was no time. The thief scrambled like a lizard for the billfold, and stumbled to his feet with "Run!" on his lips. He grabbed the hand of Susuke, who did as he was told, and ran.

In a moment, into the middle of Naka-dori, the emptied wallet was thrown for it owner to fetch like a dog his meatless bone.

 

Onto the delicately erected framework of 'no more,' Frank had to place the heavy burden of the past.

He wanted to glance up again, to see if that eighteen or nineteen-year-old was still 'interested,' but he didn't; felt that he couldn't, and that made him small, embarrassed.

The past, yes, from there he could resurrect the reasons for putting the manga comic down and going home, to end the night as he had originally hoped, compassionately. He dredged up Hosokawa-kun, an affair that had gestated in Whitman's ever feeling-inducive atmosphere, but that was aborted curtly with the boy's announcement that that he had found someone 'more exciting.' Frank smarted as if the hurt was fresher than the year and half separating that night from this. The 'more exciting' guy had been a strapping gym blond from London – in contrast to Frank's all-around brunette demurity – and Hosokawa-kun seemed bedeviled by him for all of a month until the blond unwittingly slept with the biggest mouth in Whitman's.

Frank had handled the rejection well at the time, saying to himself, 'He's just young.' But Frank was truly hurt now. Looking at the blank pages beneath him, he sadly became aware of how big a hurt it had been. He had truly opened up to Hosokawa, he had let every thought and feeling flow into what they had talked about; he had loved him.

But the boy seen from the distance of time appeared to have liked Frank more than loved him; seemed to have enjoyed being together casually, rather than experience their closeness as real affection.

On the framework of 'no more' he hung Hosokawa-kun up for example, and next to him put the heartbreaking events of the Tatsuhika affair. Tatsuhika – always known to his Western friends as Tots – was a shy young man of twenty when Frank first saw him and felt his heart lurch. They talked that first night in BB's – or the Basement Bar – and took a shine to each other. But Frank had little hope in drawing this lively-souled, but quiet-acting boy into an attraction towards him. But when Frank told Tots he had to catch his one o'clock train, the shy boy announced he did too.

On the way to Shinjuku station Tots was very playful. As they walked side-by-side he would 'accidentally' run his shoulder into Frank's upper arm and chest, and then suddenly thrust his hands in his pockets and jump in front of the American. He'd walk backwards a few paces, a growing smirk on his face, then turn and run, causing Frank to chase after him. The hunt only lasted a few moments, and then Tots would walk placidly at Frank's side until he would again bump shoulders, or place his hands on Frank's back for a running boost, and laugh.

On the train platform, as Frank had accompanied him to say goodnight, the twenty-year-old looked so touched by the parting that Frank hugged him – something unseen by men of any age in Japan – and whispered for Tots to come home with him. Tots broke the embrace, and his smiling face looked to Frank to be all willingness.

"Next time." he said.

They saw each other the next day, and the following too, and soon everyday because Tots had moved in.

But this 'domestic' life proved to be a miserable one for Frank. Tots spent his days at college, his evenings at places unknown, and would only drift home about ten o'clock. He always asked if he could use the phone, and then proceeded to talks for an hour or two with his buddies. Frank, although not exactly eavesdropping, could not fail to notice the conversations never mentioned his existence. On the weekends, Tots would go off, with presumably these same friends, and Frank would hardly see him. Their nighttimes alone were just as head-scratching, for the physical contact was as perfunctory as the scant comments Tots ever offered Frank. After a few nights, Frank gave up, secretly hoping the young man might roll over and initiate something of his own volition, but after a few more nights, Frank didn't even think of that at all.

The living arrangements agreed upon had been for one month, and by the second week, Frank's crush was over, or rather it had matured into a genuine caring for the health and well-being of his 'roommate;' for example he made sure Tots always had a warm breakfast to start his long days properly nourished. But as for the spark of nameless longing that had kick-started his affection, it had staved off irrevocably.

He told him he couldn't stay for a second month when Tots made the request. He felt guilty because Tots reacted as if they were breaking up, when Frank hadn't been aware of any romance. He felt guilty because he was the one to 'dump him,' and only when Frank said he still wanted to be friends did the twenty-year-old seem to have any affection for him at all. It confused Frank, it hurt him, but any true chance they had had was long abandoned in Frank's heart; it had to have been so, it would have starved with no emotional sustenance from Tots, or it would have killed his own ability to feel. The choice seemed to be between honesty and freedom, or stifle and grief.

Frank put the comic book down. It was too late to end the evening humanely, but he was going.

Through the window he saw the sidewalk was devoid of the boy, and he was glad, until the boy, magazine in hand and smiling warmly at Frank, was seen standing right by his side.

 

The hustler took a quick glance behind him. Naka-dori had been abandoned for a side street, then a byway, but as no one was pursuing them, they slowed down, walked, and then stopped.

Susuke didn't bother to look at his companion, he was too busy worrying about the pain in his gut from panting. He tried to stop the unsightly gulps of air, but that only made him light-headed. He had lost his composure, and that was serious thing. He bent down, propped his hands on his knees and tried to collect what self-possession he could by controlling his breathing.

Susuke was tense, knowing that the boy, whom he should have been asserting himself over, was just staring at his hunched up figure. He listened hard for the working boy's panting, as if he had no other senses. Blinded by the silence, he had to look.

Slowly his eyes rose the height of a red-orange picket fence to the spooky silhouette of a Shinto shrine. It loomed otherworldly against the luminescence of the steel-gray sky; gable points, like fish bones, stabbed the eerie light in unnatural curves, and the shrine as a whole looked as unsettled as he felt.

The hustler's face lit up in what appeared to be a tiny bolt of lightning from his hand. He was leaning against the fence in complete comfort, and contrary to his audience, wasn't out of breath at all. He was lighting a cigarette.

"How about a smoke?" he asked the waist-level face of his scammer.

Susuke, recapturing mouthfuls of air, hardly felt like smoking, but he could not refuse, if only for his 'composure's' sake. He grunted "um," stood and joined him leaning on the vermillion fence.

Susuke had the cigarette from the hustler's pack, then it was between his lips. The young man reached over to light it, and Susuke instinctively cupped his hand around the flame. He touched the proffered hand, looked at the boy in closest proximity yet, and shivered in a small tremor of goose bumps. On the kid's face was nothing, no expression at all, and that was a serious thing; on one who looked upon Susuke was unaffected.

But the face that the scammer saw was a good one: there was something comical about it, a longish balance held sway, with a nose that started out faintly differentiated from the brows, but that ended in a set of handsome curves. It was an honest nose that appeared never to have used to look down on a person, much less snub anyone. There was a certain hidden animation too, a repression-forced humor that was altogether clown-like. This face, with its little black cap of short spiked hair, seemed as if it could burst into genuine laughter at any moment, or at anything, if not for the utter will of he who possessed it.

The boy – twenty perhaps – had the kind of face that made him remember Mishima's comparison of the visage of 'youth' to a sunset; that the maturity of a man brings on the darkening of the hues of his countenance. At eighteen, he said, the boy is all-afire with the energy within him, but by twenty-five the only reaming light is in his eyes, the time that separates them slowly devours innocence with experience. But more than just youthful radiance, Mishima wrote about the Will told on the face of youth and explained that at twenty, more so than before or after, the Will comes to blossom in a kind of ferocity born from the simple necessarily to defeat the looks of the boy with the spirit of a man. Susuke knew this was what he saw. But the hustler's Will was enormous, a spectacularly beautiful thing; and frightening. He felt sucked into it in a way he had never imagined possible, the power of which he thought did not exist outside the world of literature. Susuke saw all the radiance that the venerable author had written of; all the 'youth' that the boy had completely turned off, and was spellbound for the first time in his life. This was the quality his mirror was never able to show him, but one which he had always wanted to see.

Unaccountably he saw Yoshi's sad eyes drift up to him from the pavement after he had stuck him. They had begged for more, attention of any kind, even hate would be food to feed his love, and Susuke had to blink to shake it off.

The hustler's thumb relaxed and it was dark again, almost more so than before. Susuke had seen far more than he wanted. Contact was broken, Susuke removed his hand, reluctantly.

"Where are you from?"

"Tokyo."

"Born here?" the boy asked incredulously.

"Yes."

"You're one of the rare ones. Everyone I meet is from somewhere else."

"And you?"

"I'm from Nagano."

"How long have…"

The hustler cut in curtly: "Long enough."

That brought that line of banter to an abrupt end. The silence then imposed seemed needed by both; nothing frivolous could break it. They stared out ahead of them, cigarettes occasionally going to lips and deep breaths drawing in and slowly releasing smoke into the night around them.

Susuke swallowed hard, he had to know: "What is your name?"

The working boy eyed him briefly with some fleeting hostility, but it ebbed into a simple: "Call me, Masa."

"I'm Susuke."

The two bowed heads at each other, and the night retook them in silence.

                                                        

To the Japanese young man in the convenience store, the Gaijin was sexy as hell. He liked Asian-sized Westerns, though he was sure none of his friends had any inkling of his tastes in these directions. Most of his associates seemed to harbor a hate – or at least a vocal resentment – towards European-looking men, but not him, and besides this was his night off, so none of their opinions mattered to him now.

The guy he had his eyes on was just his height, and perhaps a few pounds heavier, but he fancied that under his clothes he'd find more muscles than he had, and that made him twitter a lecherous grin in spite of his teenage efforts to keep it cool. The man was in his early twenties, definitely under twenty-five, with dark wavy hair, and soulful and thinking eyes that made the boy's heart beat faster.

He was used to going after what he wanted, and as he passed by this shop window tonight, the sight of a Gaijin reading a magazine like a native caught his interest. A closer look rewarded with a growing tightness in the fly of his overalls, and a certain undefined tenderness at the wayward and lost little boy sorrow he could see even from the sidewalk.

He was going to have some fun.

 

Leaning against the shrine fence, Masa viewed his scammer with alert curiosity. It was akin to the intriguing way a small child pokes an unidentified thing on the beach with a stick. For him, his mental stick prodded at something he thought was so out of place, and dangerous in a way to make one both cautious and brave enough to suss out exactly what it could be.

A darkening nag in the back of his head again reasserted that this angularly handsome man had no idea what Masa was, but again the forefront of thought said he must.

The cursing that had brought him past the hustler was no mistake, maybe at first, but the classic second pass said this was no innocent leaning by his side.

But the coldness the other tried to pass off as his usual demeanor meant nothing to Masa. Something real was showing, and perhaps this more than anything else kept him interested. The severely angular face was handsome in the extreme, but with a divot here or there that only enhanced his overall perfection. The shrine at his back reminded him of the folklore about the structure built to house the earthly remains of the first Tokugawa shogun. When the gate to Toshogu was completed in Nikko, a spiritual controversy arose that few anticipated. Said to be the most perfectly sublime piece of architecture in Japan, the naysayers said it invited trouble. Too perfect, and a dangerous melding of the seen and unseen worlds could crash and collapse one another, like matter and antimatter. The solution, one part was dismantled, and the carvers reset to their tasks. And that task? Carve in a divot; carve in a mistake; carve in a bit of humanity so all the known and unknown could comprehend with which they dealt. And thus was Susuke's face; faultless, except for its humanity.

Inside, the hustler wanted to laugh, or at least smile and see the expression of his companion, this hook up, crack too. But that seemed inappropriate – much too familiar, considering what they were about. And he wasn't exactly sure what he was doing.

His mind drifted to the repulsive breath of the drunken man. He had hated him. Somehow that noxious toad embodied all the pent up hatred he had for what he had done sine he was sixteen. But then he figured he'd be in much worse shape if not for Shigeo, and his fellow hustler brothers. They looked after each other, fed one another, and worked together to fulfill their dream for the future. For that Masa was supremely grateful; to have a goal made one day bearable, and a string of them seem like progress. But still, he needed downtime, a day off, which tonight was supposed to be, but there were bills to pay, so just one or two quick dates tonight and he could go off to the club to meet up with them – and yet – here he was, all the money he needed in his pocket, standing next to a stranger who was undeniably strange, and that very otherworldliness was powerfully attractive.

Susuke had longish hair, and the soft wave in it made Masa want to reach out and test its bounce, and if his hand tended to linger there, the other wouldn't mind. 'Yes, a day off,' he thought 'what was it without a touch of tenderness? Without one given; without one returned.'

 

"Interesting, huh?" The boy leaned his upper torso towards Frank. "Do you like Japanese comic?" His English was a little stilted, like he had British marbles in his mouth, but his eyes rolled, and brows flashed up in grinning caprice.

Frank said in Japanese: "So, so. And you?"

The boy ignored Frank's Japanese. "I'll show you what I like." And he turned a page with an unwatched finger. He came uncomfortably close to Frank and showed him a watercolor drawing of a college-age Japanese youth in Speedos. He lay reclining on the edge of an Olympic-sized pool, and an older boy was coming out of the water, between his legs. "Like this?" the boy's eyes were almost next to Frank's.

"Not bad." The Westerner took one half step to his free side.

"Look at this." The young man apparently knew this periodical by heart, because he flipped three-quarters to the end and began to back-turn pages one by one. He divided his glance between the flashing images and Frank's growing smile, he was obvious excited to show his new friend something.

Frank, usually talkative, especially with a flirting boy next to him, was unaccountably stone-dumb. He simply stared at the boy entranced by his search for just the right picture to show him, and he was charmed by the notion of bumping into a Japanese boy who knew what he liked. In the long instant it took him to search, in turned out for Frank, to be enough of an instant to drink in an hour's worth of insight.

          

"Do you know about this shrine?" The hustler asked, his tone low and calmly serious.

"It's just an old shrine."

"Do you want me to tell you about it."

Susuke looked again at the young man in profile. He again felt the whirlwind of the inexhaustibly beautiful, and suddenly a wild thought flashed in his mind about sadness. Could it be beauty and sorrow – not the ordinary everyday doldrums, but the real immeasurable pain of living – made each other tangible; that this boy was so beautiful because hurt, and not nature, had made him so?

Susuke didn't give a damn about the rickety old shrine. "Tell me about it." he said, surprising even himself with the tone of his voice. It was soft, something quietly craving had shown through. "Go ahead." he added more indifferently.

"Look." The tip of the working boy's cigarette flared as he inhaled a long draught. While he slowly exhaled in deliberate conversation, the lit butt waved over the scene he described. "See all those paper votives tied to the pillars, the supports, even the branches of the trees?"

Susuke followed the waving glow from the young man's cigarette disinterestedly. He saw them, but so what? Such sights were to be seen at every temple and shrine in the land, no matter where or what size.

The boy drank in Susuke's apathy and explained with a growing urgency: "Those are not like the usual fortunes that people buy and leave behind at the temples because they are bad – because they want to forget them – no, these are completely different." Masa stood. He crushed out his butt under his boot heel and strode in front of his student. "Those pieces of paper each contain a prayer written by a man or boy to the god of this place, begging for the return of love from another man or boy." He stopped looking at the shrine and dared Susuke to challenge the sincerity of the stare he turned on him now. "For me, this is the heart of Ni-chome, the reason it is here; the reason it happened here, is this shrine. For hundreds of years, we have come here to hope, to pray, and to believe in some divine naturalization of our pain."

The hustler moved off again. His tone grew louder as he moved to the shrine's gate. There was almost an amused lilt in his voice, as he said: "This is also where the suicide notes are left." He rattled the pickets. "I mean can you imagine? I mean, think about it. Troubled youth traveling far and wide, from our times to the distant past, knowing this shrine, feeling the pull of the divine sympathy, only to leave a dying testimony damning the cruelty of nature that had blamelessly shaped them!"

The kid laughed, as if trying to impersonate the manner of the nature just alluded to.

Susuke shivered in it. In his head the replay button had mysteriously been pushed – but while the hustler stayed in his mind's eye, the horrible sound of Yoshi's concussion played out in his ears. This time, it made him only sick. He recognized a hatred for himself for having hurt the boy as he did. He almost wanted to cry as the sound mingled with the hustler's heartless laugh.

Suddenly he was back before Susuke, this time a hand going over the man's shoulder as Masa leaned in. Their heads were mere inches apart, he asked: "Can you imagine?" This was no rhetorical inquiry – he really wanted to know – and it made Susuke swallow involuntarily. The working boy repeated softly, his head cocking like an inquisitive puppy: "I mean, can you imagine, the stupidly of coming here from every corner of Japan, to die? Here, to the only place where Ni-chome could bless them with the second chance to accept a fact of nature, and live. Whether cruel or not, only this place, only these people could have given them the sustenance to survive, to move on, to thrive." The hustler stood. His voice grew loud again; a challenge to the great unseen: "They were fools to come so far, to get so close to the germ of life, to see there's plenty of manure to replant themselves in – but instead, give up." He whispered: "Fools."

Silence again imposed its higher order, until Susuke, not able to roughen the softness of his questioning, asked: "You didn't come here to give up, did you?"

The kid smiled. The first Susuke had seen, and as Masa leaned in again, the young man's hand went up to stroke the side of Susuke's head. It was all the older man could do not to close his eyes and swoon. But in a moment, Masa had leaned in to whisper in his ear: "I came here to live."

He straightened up, his smile instantly gone. He said: "Let's go for a walk." And Masa took the un-smoked butt from Susuke's right hand and stamped it under toe. He began to stroll down the street.

"Where to?" Susuke asked innocently.

Without turning to whom he spoke, the suave working boy said: "There's a hotel down the street."

Standing erect off the picket fence, Susuke stood frozen. He wondered what had happened to him. He rubbed his forehead quickly, the motion continuing up over his wavy hair where the boy had stroked it. He glanced at the shrine, the spooky silhouette now softened with the paper bows he hadn't seen the first time. He was utterly out of control of the situation, and needed to go deep inside of himself to find out whether he liked it or not.

The hustler stopped. Susuke was drawn to look at his back; the kid hadn't turned around, only stopped. Susuke heard him say: "It’s on the old man." And he saw him pat the rump pocket of his preternaturally white jeans. Masa continued to walk.

The normally cool Susuke erupted in a temblor of goose bumps. As he began to follow, he fed in the sheer thrill of his impotence. He followed like beauty and sorrow were inexorably the same thing, and both walked ahead of him on a Ni-chome street.

 

The boy at Frank's side was wearing a baggy set of overalls the color of overworked potting soil. Beneath that he had a very baggy shirt whose short sleeves sailed up and down his elbows every time he moved. In the boy's personal style, the boy's attitude, the boy's face, Frank's intuition thought that it couldn't 'tell' this kid apart from his many clone prototypes seen all over the city, but Frank's senses were beyond the bind of rationale, and he saw the young man as more curious than standard. His head rode his rather short neck like a basketball, while the sideburns hugging the sides of his cheeks looked like brown Band-Aids, and were probably grown to camouflage the protuberance of his ears. The one thing that Frank could admire was the kid's height, not too lanky, not too short – in fact, the perfect height for Frank who was none too tall himself. The boy was neither good-looking nor bad, memorable nor forgettable on purpose; he rather had the type of carriage and visage that you could pass by and never remember you had encountered. But intuition, with its have-seen smugness, and with its nasty habit of negating what it beholds, could not explain why Frank's heart was beating so hard in his wrists and neck, because it turned out that neither reason nor perception could equal what he thrilled at.

"Here!" the boy held up his magazine and came close to Frank with it. Again, his eyes smiled, this time becoming nearly only slits of a good-humored glimmer. "How about this?" He brought the book in front of Frank, shouldering the potential view of any passerby with his upper back. Frank played along, and glanced down secretively, like he was being shown contraband.

Frank saw another artistically rendered young man, this time in a baseball uniform, laying flat on his back. His trousers were down around his ankles, but his ankles were full in the air hovering above his shoulders. An older boy held these ankles aloft and pummeled the pleasure-ridden lad - beneath the carefully incorporated censor's blot – with an extra-anatomically correct phallus.

The boy twittered, delighted in his own 'shocking' wit.

"Not bad." smiled Frank, his mouth cucumber-cool, his thoughts profoundly in trouble.

Déjà vu predicted a hindsight outcome to match Hosokawa and Tots. These relationships had started with similar intrigue and infatuation, and with the same apparent honest approaches to life and love; but hadn't he learned from Tots, from Hosokawa-kun, that what they do and what they feel are gulfed by unspannable codes, rules that they as Japanese must follow, lest an accusing conscience blame them of being un-Japanese?

Perhaps this is what kept their feelings bottled up. On the exterior they seemed so free, so much freer than almost any Westerner he had ever known, but inwardly they were nothing but fortified warehouses of everything that was truly real to them; their own emotions.

Was it that for them hurt was such an ordinary experience that they could remain externalized only by way of deception? While in fact nothing seemed to hurt them, everything did. Every little act, curt word, nasty unspoken glance attacked the very center of them to such a degree that they must steel-coat their core for defense, but yet as steel-coated, they were not exactly emotionally stifled.

The boy asked in Japanese: "Which is your country?"

Frank absentmindedly intoned: "America."

"Oh…" the boy said "and your age?"

"Twenty-three." Then Frank swallowed hard "How about you?"

"Eighteen." came a bright and honest-sounding reply.

Frank nodded. "I'm Frank."

The boy stepped back, smiling ear to ear. "Right – names. I'm mA-kO-tO." He drew each syllable out, already forgetting Frank's fluidity in his native language.

Now Frank had a moniker on which to hang his hope: "Makoto – what a nice name."

They stayed in perfect stillness a moment, both grins fading into equal sincerity.

The boy whispered into the bulls-eye of Frank's quiet: "Let's go."

"Where?" Frank was startled.

"Somewhere."

"A bar?"

"No. I know a place where we can get…you know…where we can be, comfortable." Makoto's hand sailed in a slow and glancing arc down the front of Frank's zipper.

And Frank had to decide whether he himself would, or rather should, try once more to open himself up to those soft, painful emotions; whether he could or should keep himself in a treasure house.

Frank, helpless, found suddenly that by judging others, he was made to judge himself.

The American pulled the hand away from his crotch, touching it for a moment, then caressing it for another, longer moment. He said in a cucumber-cool voice: "Right. Let's go."

 

Susuke caught his reflection in the smoky mirror. On the wall at the foot end of the bed, this barely reflected image of his own face disturbed him. His hands went up to rub his forehead, continuing down to smooth out his hair as if that would lighten his mental burden.

He sat on the very edge of the bed, glad the hustler had excused himself out of the room, if only for a minute, it gave Susuke time to collect what he could. His head, palms pushing on his temples, panned the scene he had allowed to unfold, and there was only red. The walls of this love hotel room were covered in a polyester damask the color of an overripe tomato. His pan continued up to the more conventional ceiling which was white, but whose center was a bare lamp surrounded by a bonnet-like shade draped in some great scarlet handkerchief. The room was murky dark.

His eyes went to the mirror again. Again that look greeted his stare – a man like a needlessly poised actor in the wings of the lost world in which he only waited to play his part.

He heard a click to his rear and left, and the bathroom door opened. He heard it, but his unfocused thoughts lingered on the face in the mirror. He heard the hustler rustle in, the door close behind him, and then a click. The red soup light of the room became a bloody milk when Masa turned the switch on a series of table lamps. The lamps made the room even moodier as they gave out their sanguine 20 volts each. Susuke dreaded turning around, but he had to; he knew the kid would look sexy posed at the door of this sex room.

The working boy grinned, and for Susuke's benefit, shifted the weight on his legs so that the bulge in his jeans rolled and settled in the other's eyes. He said half jokingly: "Too gorgeous! Wouldn't you agree?"

Susuke, the audience, quietly but wholeheartedly agreed. He wondered how soon the sex would start. He wondered how soon the sex would be over. And he was dully aware that he'd be happy enough just to sit on the foot end of the bed and look at the young man. And faintly, he was horrified that it would be all right for the hustler too. He demanded to himself that sex was what he wanted, and that the sooner engaged, the sooner he would be free to forget that this ever happened; that these feelings were ever felt.

The next thing Susuke was aware of were the delicate motions of the boy sitting on the bed next to him, and of his ear being softly caressed by the boy's lips.

He spun his gaze around too late to hide his show of panic.

The boy laughed. "No need to look so shocked – or…" his expression lost the single note of feeling it had taken on, and returned to the nothingness it was supposed to show. "Or maybe," he continued softly "you're not into kissing. That's OK."

"I…"

"Relax." Masa's hand touched the top of Susuke's thigh. Susuke considered the warmth of the hand, and oddly, suddenly needed to know: "How old are you?"

"What does it matter. I'm obviously old enough."

"How…"

"Twenty two." he flatly informed with a twinge of annoyance.

Susuke knew it was a lie. "And does your family – "

"What?"

"Know – that – "

"What family?" there was sarcasm dripping from his words "If you want to know about my family, I'll tell you. I came to Tokyo when I was sixteen, lost, stupid, still child enough to think that some boy and I would meet, fall in love beneath the moon and commence a love so pure that blah, blah, blah; but, I honestly came with nothing more than my waywardness and stupidity.

"Oh – and one more thing – my youth. I learned that that was my biggest asset. They didn't care that I was average looking; but that I was young, that set their jellied old juices flowing. I think I only represent all young men to the uncles who pay for my sex. Do you know what I mean?"

Susuke shook his head. It felt like lead.

"The men who want me barely even notice me, why? Because when they're with me, their heads are full of other boys. Some forbidden target for their lusts, like the neighbor's kid weightlifting as the old man spies from across the street, or the new office boy fresh from college with a slender waist and a bubble butt beneath his suit pants. They don’t see me at all. I'm only the paid relief, like a prescription, taken to ease the pain they let turn cankerous within them." The boy laughed.

Susuke stiffened to hear the shrillness, the sham in it. He bristled to hear through it the boy's continuing questions.

"If it were you, do you think it'd be long before you hated yourself?" The he said defiantly: "Well I don’t." And then as readily as an April sky, his mood changed again. His tone was back to the original subject. He listed boys' names.

"Shigeo-san, Tetsuya-kun, Hideki-chan, and Makoto-chan – these are my family, that is what I was talking about. These are my brothers with whom I share my money, my food, and we all pay the rent. With these other working men like me, no one is better, no one is in charge…"

Masa moved his hand closer to Susuke's crotch.

"…The best relations are on terms of equality, don’t you agree?"

Susuke said nothing.

"Do you mind if I touch you?" the boy asked.

Susuke shook his head so slowly that he could hear the tension in it crack. "But, do you think…" Susuke started, each word formed deliberately from the matrix of the moment "…that I was attracted to you because…"

"Was attracted. Is that what you mean?" Masa was playful.

"Don’t."

"Don’t?"

"I wonder if…"

"If I'm attracted to you?" The hustler had to smile.

Susuke was silent. The working boy's free hand came up to Susuke's chest and exerted a gentle backwards thrust. He whispered in half kisses: "Let me show you." But there was no emotion to be heard.

For Susuke, the sightless fall of head and back onto the bed was like a fall from a building; slowly, ever slowly eyes closing in a surrender and the expectation of a bottom to come like death. He thought he dreamt, but he knew the young man's hands were upon him.

 

Frank clinched his muscles unwontedly. The young man's tongue caused a tightening he had not expected. Through his closed eyes, he suddenly imagined himself rushing up and out of the hotel room, and more importantly, out of the boy's grip.

'Treasure house,' he thought 'to keep all in a treasure house not volatile to fire, pest, rot and theft – what was the last part of the lesson – God! The last part of a Sunday School lesson, with this kid blowing me, am I crazy? What does it mean – they all keep themselves so secretive, so self-removed – don’t they ever let themselves open to emotions?' He saw himself at dinner, he saw himself holding the comic book, the boy's anything but shy little smile as he asked: "Do you like me?" He saw himself rushing out the door, leaving kid, leaving room and memories behind; mostly abandoning the place where he was forced to feel.

 

The pleasure melted in Susuke's head. His closed eyes nevertheless flashed with the sight of the young men pleasuring him: he fought to rid himself of it. He imagined a character from a movie, tried to picture that it was this flat film image that gave him the feeling being felt, but every strain to grasp some fantasy-man made the boy more real. His head began to sink farther and farther into the abyss of the pillow; spinning down in intensity to the moment of ultimate loss. He tensed all the muscles he could. It only seemed to make the moment all the more immediate, and all the more real the boy who threatened to lose for him the very last shred of his self-control.

 

What was the last part, he couldn't remember, but struggled to hold on to the thought like it was the only tether still going to the center of himself; he held on as if letting go would send him into spinning chaos, and not the promised release.

And suddenly he was free, his stress transformed into instant egress. For once in his life Frank knew the marriage of body and mind; his physical letting go also let him remember the elusive second part. He remembered in ecstasy a lesson taught and half forgotten by life's experiences. It told him in an instant what once he knew. 'A man who was very frightened of the world amassed a great treasure which he spent day and night fretting over until he had a large treasure house built that neither rot, pest, nor theft could take what was his. The day his treasure house was finished, he thought to himself: "Now I don't have to worry ever again; I am free." But that very night, lightening struck his treasure house and destroyed all in fire and rain. When the saw this he pleaded with God to know why it had happened, and God told him: "I have done this to make you Free." And suddenly, the man knew his treasure house had been his prison, keeping him from enjoying all but fruitless work; and with the knowing, he was free.'

 

Susuke sat up suddenly frightened. His hands thrust out through the blood-red air in front of him. They slammed against the neck and shoulders of the kid. The blow was enough to send Masa off his knees and back into a noisy crash on the floor, his young head audibly cracking against the mirror.

Susuke watched what he had done; saw the kid being struck, falling, and heard that tragically familiar crack of skull against hard surface. What had he done, he thought. Panic – even as he rose to do it – was the only thing he acknowledged. The rabble of voices in his head had told him he had to do it; the nearer he came to letting the boy release his physical floodgate, the nearer came the breaking of his emotional dike. One meaning the other, he had to prevent the first to avoid the consequence; he had to hit the boy. Susuke watched what he had done, not knowing it would hurt him as much as the one on whom the blow was inflicted. Panic was what he saw in the mirror now – wide-eyed and undeniable fright.

The boy's hand moved in agonized tempo to the back of his head. He rubbed the tenderest spot, expecting to pull it around and find a palm and digits smeared red with blood. There was none. His gaze shifted to Susuke. The working boy was not surprised to see fear on his face, he wouldn't have been surprised to see laughter lingering across that face either; it didn’t matter what the other looked like, what the other felt, the hustler's only concern was to end the scene. He stood up, stumbled on his feet, while his sight spun around the floor looking for his pants, shirt, etc. He dressed wordlessly.

Susuke looked at his reflection in the mirror, he recognized the silence as the boy giving him the easy way out; no explanations, no threats, and even easier, no words at all. Susuke's nakedness confronted itself, and the boy jostled around the room looking like the victim, but how easy it would be to remember this night differently. How easy to concoct a version wherein he was the victim, the helpless thrall of this sick hustler… but how? His nakedness confronted him to be honest for once with the truth, for to once be the advocate of another, to put himself on their side even if it meant opposing the 'self' he thought he loved more than anything else; the thing that he thought he had to love, else it meant the death of him. He had worked so hard at that image, projecting it for so long, and to such an inward depth, that he only now saw through it to the sham it was. What he thought had been steel-cold necessity, he found as wispy as an April sky, and it was melting away. It turned out the fierceness he thought was his heart was only a fearful, malignant, little spot in his mind. He looked at Masa and wanted to be real, he wanted to cauterize the fear that had just made him assault this beautiful boy.

He stood up, instantly aware that his hands trembled. Through his brain the crazy thought ran that they did so from excitement, and incredibly that this excitement was caused by an almost intrinsic happiness: he felt free. He went towards Masa, grabbed the boy who resisted, and as they struggled, Susuke began to say a single sentence over and over again. At first it was no more than a whisper, but with each repeat it rose of its own volition. "Hit me, do something to hurt me." And the moment he realized some slack, the hustler spun around, and sucker punched his second man of the evening.

Susuke doubled over. The boy danced a fury above him. "Are you fuckin' crazy!" He kicked him. "You bastard, you…" the ire rose in his throat and came out as a gall-flavored screech "…you think you've got a right to beat up a whore? Is that what you think you've got a right to do!" He kicked him as hard as he could. And suddenly, with the pain in his bare foot, the rage was transferred. The moment of fury again went into the flat line of his necessary demeanor. He fell to his knees by the side of the grumbling hulk of Susuke. He knelt down in front of the mirror and saw the ghost of a young man looking back at him. To the nothingness he witnessed there, his voice cracked: "Did you come here to die, did you make it this far, overcome so much, to commit suicide, here, now? To die like the idiots at the shrine?" He pleaded sadly, and then began to cry. Not a little tear of self-pity, not a small fit of sadness, but the young man opened a door somewhere, and from it came out years of repented sadness. He sobbed like there was no one else in the world, as if there were no other time in history in which a context for tears could be more appropriate.

Susuke painfully rolled into a sitting position, and took the boy in his arms.

"I know." He said. "I know." He kissed the boy, kissed his half hidden lips up to his eyes, drinking in the salt tears like life's blood.

The boy's voice sobbed: "You are fuckin' crazy…"

After a moment's comforting silence, and reflection into what the newly freed Susuke wanted to do, he said: "We're the same, you and I, both the product of our will, nothing more – but maybe," he lifted the boy's eyes to his " – we can help each other." Susuke kissed Masa's freshly exposed lips.

The boy said: "You don’t know how I always wanted someone to kiss me afterwards."

Susuke looked again into himself, and after the most painful moment in Susuke's life, he whispered to the boy the truth he hoped would make him free:

"So did I."

                  

~