Tune in Tokio

A fresh harvest of silent tears burst from my exhausted eyes. I began to make embarrassing noises when I inhaled.

Jimmy let my tears run their course, deciding at this point that silence was probably golden.

“Your burger’s getting cold.”

A few oceans of tears and mucus later, hunger finally gripped me and I downed the thing in three bites. As I chomped, he sat staring at me, his gaze a mixture of love, irritation, and acid reflux.

When Jimmy and I got together, we had both pretty much given up on finding a guy to spend our lives with who wasn’t a complete disappointment. We’d both been around the block several times. Jimmy came out when he was fourteen and was promptly sent off to a mental institution by his loving, hysterical mother who makes Piper Laurie from Carrie look like Barbara Billingsley; he then developed into a serial monogamist, having one unfulfilling long-term relationship after another. And me? I’d been around the block more in the sexual sense. (Is it considered a one-night stand if they kick you out of their bed before daybreak?) By the time our paths crossed, we pretty much immediately realized we were two potential peas in a pod: we shared a mutual love for Purple Rain-era Prince, tuna noodle casserole, Gore Vidal’s bitchy smugness, and Pedro Almodovar’s use of primary colors and trannies.

Even better, we hated many of the same things (giant poodles and local gay bars being the first two among many). When I was able to convince Jimmy that Siouxsie Sioux could wipe the floor with Grace Jones if the two were ever to come to blows, our relationship was taken to the next level. I had a feeling it was true love when Jimmy, describing Alanis Morrissette as she performed on Letterman, uttered under his breath one of the finest and most apt similes I’d ever heard: “Plain as homemade soap.” And I knew I’d found the man I’d spend the rest of my life with when he smacked me in the face with his dick one morning-not as an overture for sex but just to say “good morning” as he was leaving the bedroom to make coffee.

Always a man of very few words and an effortlessly agitated artistic temperament, Jimmy, when he does speak, tends to create the wrong impression when he meets new people. He just doesn’t try that hard to make people like him. Not because he’s an asshole; he just doesn’t think about it. He once told my friend Dani that her quiche was “delicious, almost as good as mine.” He complimented a friend’s band one time by saying they “sounded so much better than the last time I saw you guys.” And when he first started coming to family dinners at my parents’ house, he would sit quietly and respectfully through dinner and then as soon as he was finished, he’d get up, wash his plate, put it in the dishwasher, and then plop himself on the living room sofa with my parents’ Parade magazine before anyone realized he’d left the table.

“They have lots of good drugs-you know, medicines-for depression now,” an aunt visiting from California who came to one of these dinners once said. She was convinced Jimmy was clinically depressed. But she’d never had the opportunity to see how his face lit up when talking about Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown or Law of Desire. She’d not witnessed him singing along to Prince’s “Pussy Control” in our living room. She didn’t know that sometimes he laughs and says the word “turd” in his sleep. He’s not depressed. He’s just artistic.

But I have to admit I’m worried. I’ve been away for a year, and while Jimmy’s getting on with life at home, I’m living a completely separate life from him now, and it’s a life I’m really enjoying. Worse still, I’m smitten. Yes, I’ve been seeing someone behind his back, and though I think he knows, I’m dreading the talk we’re going to have to have about this third wheel. My new lover is complicated, schizophrenic, unwieldy, fast, and furious. In short, I’m in love with a crazy bitch named Tokyo. And she takes a back seat to nobody.

Over the past year during out periodic phone calls I’ve tried my best to convince Jimmy of my baby’s otherworldly charms.

“I saw a bunch of young girls dressed up as Victorian England-era prostitutes in Harajuku today!” I’d say.

“Interesting,” he’d reply after a long pause, during which he’s sucking in a massive bonghit.

“Oh my God, I got groped by a gross old man in a rush-hour train in Shinjuku!” I’d beam.

“Uh-huh,” he’d reply after drinking down a couple spoonfuls of NyQuil.

“Vitamin drinks in tiny cans are really popular here! I just drank three and chased them with vodka and then ate a big sushi!” I’d rave.

“Yeah, can you send me some money?” he’d respond. “I need paintbrushes.”

Tokyo is a hard sell for Jimmy. At least on the phone. He’s jealous of her. To him she’s nothing more than a home-wrecker. A harlot, a vixen, a temptress in a foreign land with her restless arms all over his boyfriend. He knows that every day I’m walking her streets, slurping her noodles, shoving my big feet into her tiny bathroom slippers, pushing myself onto her trains, sliding in and out and in and out and in and out of her underground tunnels. And yes, I am doing all of that. But when I get Jimmy over here, he’ll do it too. And he’ll love it. He’ll fall for her just like I have.

Oh yes, it will be an epic, sexy, disgusting menage a trois. Two charming men. One hot city.

I sit breathlessly at the arrivals gate at Narita Airport. After waiting for a while for him to deplane, I decide to go get some coffee from a nearby kiosk. After paying, I turn around, take a sip, and burn my lip, for down the ramp comes Jimmy, his shiny head sweating and shining like a beacon, his face a desperate shade of gray, his huge tote bag slipping slowly off his shoulder. He weaves in and out of the people in his way, and once he reaches the arrivals lobby, I rush up to greet him as he passes me by and walks out the automatic doors and into the fresh air, the first he’s felt on his face in probably about seventeen hours.

“Jimmy!” I yelp as the doors open for me to exit. He finishes lighting his cigarette and looks at me with an exhausted smile. I give him a hug. He sure is clammy.

“Sorry. I really needed one.”

“That’s fine. How was your flight?”

He looks at me as if to say, “How do you think it was?” and then he takes a very long drag on his cigarette.

I start pinching his cheeks and lightly slapping them because that’s one thing I do to show my affection. He rolls his eyes, exhales a bunch of smoke, smiles, and squeezes my butt, which is what he does to show his affection.

He finishes his cigarette, puts it out, and in full view of all the other desperate smokers standing outside with us, we engage in a proper public display of affection. (No tongue. We’re not animals.)

“I’m really happy to see you,” he says.

“It’s great to see you too. I’ve missed you so mu-wait, did you bring me my Cajun chicken biscuit?” I ask.

“I brought two,” he nods, his eyes brightening.

I grab and squeeze his hand. “I’ve missed you so much!”

We get on the train from Narita heading into the city. Since Narita is a town well outside the city limits of Tokyo proper, it’s a long ride and gives us a chance to catch up and for Jimmy to see some of the Japanese countryside. As we chat, I can see that Jimmy’s head is spinning as he gazes out the window at the landscape gliding past us.

“Them’s artistic wheels be turnin’,” I say to myself in my best North Carolina drawl as he sits quietly, his eyes passionately drinking in the view.

After a few minutes of silence, I ask him what he thinks of what he sees. He appears to have recovered somewhat from the twilight zone of the trans-Pacific flight and could very well be prepared to offer some solid criticism.

“Well,” he begins, “the airport was, honestly, kind of plain. I was disappointed. Light yellow walls accented with blonde wood panels? Beige carpet? I expected better from Japan. And the place was way too well lit.”

“Hmm. I suppose you make a good point,” I chime in. “Although I didn’t notice any of the stuff you just mentioned. The walls were yellow? Please continue.”

“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” he continues.

“Really? So have you!”

“Drugs and loneliness. But that shirt is way too tight. I’m surprised you can breathe in that thing.”

“Jimmy, it’s the biggest T-shirt I’ve been able to find here.”

“You should have told me. I could have brought some. Anyway, you should probably throw that shirt away before you come home. It’ll scare the cat.”

“How is Stella?”

“She’s been talking a whole bunch of shit about you.”