them or set things on fire, but only the clumsy ones. I really want Jimmy to search around, find what he wants, and proceed to the checkout. I just need this guy to relax and leave us alone.
“He says,” I begin, addressing the gentleman assisting us in a conspiratorial tone, “that you are really handsome.”
It turns out that if you ever want a pushy male shop assistant who strikes you as a little bit repressed to back off and leave you in peace, all you really need to do is tell him your boyfriend finds him physically attractive. No sooner do I say this than his face turns bright red and he launches into a series of short, nervous bows as he backs away and heads for the safety of the cashier’s counter.
“Jimmy, just pick out what you like and let’s get it,” I say. “I’ve just sent a poor guy into a tailspin of homosexual panic.”
“Oh shit,” Jimmy sighs. “Did you at least ask him how much these are per sheet?”
Jimmy’s full-to-bursting bag shivers and shakes on the floor of the train from Ueno Station to Narita Airport. He flips through a copy of
“You’re dreaming,” I say.
“No,” he replies, sure of himself. “Predicting the future.”
When we get to Narita, we walk slowly to the security checkpoint, trying our best to slow down the time and delay the inevitable goodbyes. In spite of himself, Jimmy has fallen for Tokyo, in his way. I don’t know if it was when we ate takoyaki octopus balls while walking through the smut district of Kabukicho, when we’d been photographed by excitable out-of-town junior high school students at the Edo-Tokyo Museum as if we were Brad and Angelina, or when we basked in the afterglow of a good, long karaoke session during which we’d taken on Chaka Kahn and Sheila E; but at some point, Jimmy began to look at the city as less of a threat and more as a great dream from which he would soon wake up.
“This place is insane,” he said once as we passed a man walking his monkey in Yoyogi Park. “I see why you like it. It kind of suits you.”
When we get to the security gate, we hug, and both of us tear up.
“Come home,” he says.
“I will.”
He lets go, grabs his bag, and scuttles off to explain to passport control that, yes, he looks like a terrorist child molester in his passport picture, but no, he is neither of these things and nobody can prove anything. Just before he’s out of sight, he turns to me and mouths the words “flower petals” one last time. He slides through security and is on his way home.
I slump in my seat on the train from Narita with a heavy heart. I’m headed back into Tokyo’s arms and feeling more conflicted than ever. My days with her are numbered now, I know. I’ve got to make our time together count. I’ve got to make her show me the things she’s been holding back.
“I really need to see a Japanese lesbian,” I say to her when we are together again and I’m once again riding her Yamanote train westward. “You’ve never shown me one, and I think it’s about time. I’m not afraid. I feel ready.”
She ignores me, and as the train rolls on toward Shinjuku I look at the teenage girl sitting across from me with an electro-shock hairstyle she has obviously achieved with the assistance of a hot iron and a fork. She’s a rebellious little thing, probably worrying her parents sick with her bad attitude, her mismatched socks, and her imprecisely applied lipstick and eyeliner. As she manically texts someone on her cell phone, I notice she’s carrying a fashionable tote bag embossed with a generic black stick figure standing next to a tree, like the figures in those traffic signs designating a crosswalk. Under the picture it reads, “It is forbidding to urinate here.”
That’ll do for now, I guess.
14
Jimmy’s visit changed me. Yes, after coming to the realization that, for the sake of my relationship, my days here are numbered, I saw that I’ve become too comfortable, too relaxed in my daily life. I’ve decided I need to branch out, that I haven’t tested these polluted Tokyo waters enough. I came here to make things happen for myself, after all. Great big things that will pay large emotional dividends. More and more I’m feeling the need to spread my wings, to escape from the daily grind of teaching the same lessons at the same school week after week, day after day, hour after hour. I want to fly, to explore, to see what else is out there for me in that vast Tokyo jungle. To follow its trail, capture it, clasp it to my breast, and proclaim triumphantly, “I know now what God wants for me!” Also, I want more money.
Lucky for me, the opportunities are boundless for an enterprising young(ish) English instructor in Tokyo, especially if you know the right people. I’ve just gotten a job teaching English to corporate clients because I know the friend of a friend of the ex-boyfriend of a former associate of a guy named Mr. Takeda who has been put in charge of setting up and developing an English program for the employees of a famous Japanese maker of electronics, and the first thing he needs is a teacher. This friend of mine, Keiko, who knows the friend of the ex- boyfriend of the former associate of Mr. Takeda, told her friend to tell the ex-boyfriend of the former associate of Mr. Takeda that I was a very good teacher, very friendly, extremely competent, and that I speak a little Japanese. Mr. Takeda liked what he heard, so he told his former associate to tell the ex-boyfriend of the friend of Keiko to tell Keiko’s friend to tell Keiko to tell me that Mr. Takeda would be getting in touch with me to set up a meeting. I’m in a network!
Mr. Takeda and I meet in Ginza one afternoon and go to a swanky Chinese restaurant where everything on the menu is more than I would typically pay for a pair of shoes. We discuss some of the broad ideas he has about the class. They include twice-weekly sessions with a specially designed English program involving both grammar instruction and real-world role plays like how to order a beer in an American bar. I will be responsible for choosing the text and planning the classes. Then he brings up the question of remuneration. Now, God knows I’m not a hard-nosed negotiator, and I usually have a really hard time answering this type of question. But I surprise myself with my forthrightness. Greed is the mother of motivation, and I am the big fat pig suckling at her enormous breast.
“Six thousand yen an hour plus travel is my usual fee,” I say, as if I am in demand all across the city as one of the best English conversation teachers the great country of America has produced in years and am doing him a favor by even lunching with him in this dump. I steel myself for his reaction, expecting him to spit his half-chewed wanton back into his bowl.
“OK, I just have to checking some numbers at office, for seeing if that is OK for with our budget.” As usual, I have probably undersold myself.
We leave the restaurant and take a taxi to his office, where we discuss the specifics of my contract. He does some number crunching and figures out that my fee fits within the budget, so I have the job. We will have two classes a week, both beginner level, and each class will have about nine students. Mr. Takeda writes all of this information on the dry-erase board, numbering each point so as to maintain a semblance of order in this unknown territory into which he is stepping.
“Oooo-kaaaay. Twooooooo begiiiiiiin-ah claaaasses. Niiiiiine stuuuuuudents to eeeeeach. Eh?” He stops writing and looks at me quizzically. “‘Nine students to each?’ Correct?”
I smile and, with humanitarian gravitas, correct him. “Nine students
“Oh, OK,” he says, making the correction. Then he starts making different lists, enumerating things I need to do, things he needs to do, things he needs to get his secretary to do, and things he will ask the students to do, all
