by Guy Willard
Vanilla
Guy Willard
* * * Clam Press * * *
1
It was a hot sultry Sunday in July. The rainy season had just ended, and summer had begun in earnest, turning Tokyo into a dank, miserable hothouse. Fumio, in his second-floor apartment in Koenji, had stayed home all day reading manga, trying to cool off by lying in the shade of the drawn curtains. But his window faced south, and the heat inside his room had become unbearable.
Impatiently he got up and stepped over to the tiny veranda to take in the futon he’d hung out to air in the sun. The only view from there was of the building next door which towered over the tiny two-story apartment house he lived in. It was so close that he couldn’t even see the sky.
Leaning out, he peered down at the street below. Feverish ripples shimmered over the asphalt without the slightest breeze to cool them. The city appeared deserted. In this kind of heat, no one left their air-conditioned homes unless they absolutely had to.
The residents in the building opposite had their air conditioner on full, and it was blowing warm moist air straight into Fumio’s room. A trickle of sweat slid down his back. His tiny, six-mat room had only the barest necessities, and naturally this didn’t include an air conditioner. Still, he’d saved up enough money from his part-time job to buy a stereo, a television set, and a video-cassette player—all secondhand, of course—which took up most of the space in the room. In addition, there was a refrigerator in the kitchen and a two-burner gas range on which he cooked his meals. The toilet was to the left of the front door.
After putting away his futon in the closet, he whisked the curtains shut, keeping the window open for any breeze which might come. The sound of a television set came wafting up from downstairs. He pulled off his T-shirt and wiped his chest with it, then lay down on the tatami in only his shorts.
He thought of the research paper he still had to write for his economics class, and of the pampered rich children he tutored on weekday evenings. Sometimes his loneliness and boredom became so overwhelming that he longed for the easy-going slow pace of life back in his hometown in Yamagata.
Suddenly the whole apartment building began to shudder with a hollow thunder. Someone was coming up the outside stairs. Fumio listened carefully as the steps—a pair of them—walked past his front door and halted just before the apartment next door. It was his neighbor, Tatsuya, bringing a girl back to his room again. Stealthily Fumio drew closer to the wall, his heart beginning to quicken.
Unlike Fumio, Tatsuya was an attractive, outgoing extrovert who seemed to have no trouble picking up girls. In fact, he seemed to bring back a different girl to his room almost every weekend. Fumio knew this, because each of the girls produced a distinctive sound when making love: some whimpered softly through the whole act, others moaned in seemingly complaining tones, and still others actually began sobbing as their pleasure intensified. There’d been one girl who’d cried out as if she were being beaten with a stick.
Fumio had unwittingly become a connoisseur of these amatory soundtracks. In fact, he’d grown to depend upon them for his own pleasure—the sordid pleasure of a listening addict. The wall between the two rooms was so thin that he really couldn’t help but overhear what was going on next door. Furthermore, since Tatsuya’s bed was located right next to the wall, the plywood-thin wooden barrier even acted as a sound board, amplifying each little sigh and moan. Fumio had sometimes been wakened from a sound sleep by Tatsuya’s vigorous lovemaking.
Despite the pleasure he got out of listening in, however, he sometimes felt that his own sexual frustrations were only being intensified by it, to the point where it had almost usurped the focus of his desires. He was already twenty-one years old, and still a virgin. If he didn’t do something about it soon, he might end up behind bars as a sex offender.
Earlier today while Tatsuya was still out, Fumio had taken down the framed picture he normally kept hanging on the wall and drilled a tiny hole there. Tatsuya’s bed was just below this spot, so he didn’t have much hope of being able to see anything, but when he put his eye to the hole, he’d discovered to his surprise that a large mirror atop a dresser at the opposite wall gave him a partial view of the bed. After replacing the picture, he’d been waiting patiently all day for his neighbor to return.
For a long time the couple next door continued to talk in low voices, with an occasional laugh from Tatsuya. The television was turned on, adding a background of intermittent studio laughter. The girl seemed to be occupied in the kitchen, for the sound of running water could be heard from there. Perhaps she was preparing dinner. Fumio lay back to wait.
As the sky outside grew dark, he switched on his light. He wondered what went through a girl’s mind when she accepted an invitation to a boy’s room. Obviously she knew it would probably lead to sex, but did she allow herself the pleasure of anticipation, or did she pretend to herself that her visit was completely innocent?
Suddenly he became aware that the only sound coming from next door was the television. Stealthily he turned off his room light and got to his feet, lifting the picture off its nail. He put his eye to the hole. The curtains in the neighboring room had also been drawn, and the television’s blue flicker created an eerie underwater effect. Reflected in the mirror were two pairs of naked legs atop the bed, one pair muscular and hairy, the other smooth and white. As Fumio watched, the girl’s legs seemed to be doing a strange dance, one knee coming up very slowly until it couldn’t rise any higher, then descending again with the same somnolent motion.
Fumio began shivering from excitement. But this excitement, rather than being sexual, was more akin to the thrill of doing something illicit, like shoplifting or burglary. He kept his eye glued to the hole, but could see nothing more than the girl’s smooth legs writhing like snakes around the other pair, her toes—painted scarlet—clenching and unclenching in a spasmodic manner. The gentle creaking of the bed beyond the wall had now settled into a regular rhythm.
Fumio listened carefully as the girl’s attempts at suppressing her voice became more and more strained, until her soft moans had modulated, almost unnoticed, into rhythmic grunts which gradually fluctuated in pitch, steadily increasing in volume until her initial resistance had given way to a surrender all but complete. Finally, as always, the point was reached when any attempts at silence were abandoned.
This one was a whimperer. Fumio felt so dizzy he was afraid he would faint. For about ten minutes there was a strangely forlorn sound which, if he didn’t know any better, might have been the mewing of a lost kitten seeking its mother. But then the kitten’s cries quite suddenly transformed into a girl’s pleading voice, getting louder and louder until it abruptly broke off, followed by several loud knocks against the wall as her knees spasmodically jerked upwards. The bedsprings could be heard creaking loudly as the whimpering was renewed, only to gradually die away, after which there was a long silence, broken only by the sounds from the television.
Fumio’s ears were throbbing. He could hear a muffled conversation beyond the wall interrupted occasionally by the girl’s giggle. And then there was a loud creak as she suddenly got up from the bed and moved in the direction of the toilet. She remained out of view for a long time. Meanwhile, Tatsuya was apparently lying on the bed enjoying a cigarette, for blue smoke was curling up into Fumio’s vision. Then the bed made another loud creak, and Fumio saw that Tatsuya had gotten up with an ashtray in his hand and was walking over to the dresser where he set the ashtray down, stubbing out the cigarette he’d been smoking.
He was completely naked.
With the unselfconscious nature of someone who was all alone, he gazed into the mirror, pushing back his hair with both hands and turning his body slightly to one side. It was obvious he was admiring himself in a way
that only physically attractive people can. Fumio noted how his well-muscled shoulders and broad chest gradually narrowed down to a slim waist and hips. A shallow groove ran down his smoothly tapered back. The whole body was tanned so deeply that the outline of a swimsuit was clearly visible, a phantom bikini tightly hugging a pair of beautiful white buttocks, their actual nudity only serving to enhance the verisimilitude of the illusion.
And then, almost as if Tatsuya was aware of being watched, he slowly flexed his shoulders and back, lightly rubbing his hand over his chest and turning around to admire the view of his own buttocks. As he did so, his penis came into sight, semi-flaccid and hanging down with its glans completely uncovered. Fumio’s heart was pounding so hard that he found it difficult to breathe. He was almost relieved when the girl returned and started dressing. Apparently the two lovers were going outside again, for Tatsuya also began putting on his clothes.
Fumio, afraid his eye might be noticed gleaming in the tiny hole, silently replaced the picture on its nail, then sank shakily down to the floor. His own penis had gone fully erect as he’d watched Tatsuya, and its tip was peeping out from the waistband of his boxer shorts. But to masturbate now would only break the almost mystical blend of frustration and satiation which was making his head swim so delightfully.
He tried to hold off as long as he could, the better to wallow in this strange new sensation. But the mental picture of Tatsuya’s delicious-looking body kept interrupting his thoughts. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. Shoving his boxer shorts down to his knees, he began stroking himself with a rapid up-and-down motion of his wrist, and within moments was ejaculating hard in the darkness. Somehow he managed to stifle his cry of rapture, but the dry pattering sound of his semen landing on the tatami mats was clearly audible. He clamped his other hand over his mouth as his body shuddered again and again and again, long after his dick had been milked dry.
2
At Fumio’s university there was a small, informal network of boys from Yamagata who got together occasionally for drinking parties. One of the things which had brought them together was their shared perception that people in Tokyo looked down on anyone who wasn’t from the city. Fumio, even after living here for almost three years, really only felt relaxed around friends like Harada, Mori, and Kurita with whom he never had to worry about accidentally letting a provincial expression slip out in his speech.
When he arrived at the designated rendezvous point tonight—the plaza outside the east exit of Shinjuku station—he saw that Mori, as usual, had been the first to arrive.
“Hi, what’s up?”
Mori returned the greeting with a shy nod. He was a quiet boy, a little overweight, whose expressionless eyes behind his thick-lensed glasses seemed to hide numerous secrets from the world.
Fumio wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I don’t know about you, but I sure could use a drink tonight.”
“Did you have a hard day?”
Fumio nodded. Like many students attending good universities, he worked part-time as a private tutor for elementary and middle school children. It was the easiest work to be found, and paid quite well—three to four thousand yen an hour. Though he had to commute to the students’ homes, he didn’t mind because all his travel expenses were paid, and besides, these visits had taught him how to get around Tokyo.
“I wonder what’s taking Kurita and Harada so long?”
“Surely they haven’t lost their way? Shinjuku is practically their second home by now.”
“Wait. I think I see them.”
Fumio spotted the two friends emerging together from the underground passageway. Kurita, a tall, slender boy with large eyes and a sensitive-looking face, was the most attractive member of the group, while Harada, a chunky sportsman type who’d played catcher for his high school baseball team, was their acknowledged leader and comedian.
“Sorry. Did we keep you waiting? We saw a couple of cute girls along the way, and were thinking of picking them up, but—”
“Sure, sure.”
“Well, shall we go?”
They proceeded to their usual spot, a pub in the Kabuki-cho area called Gauchos, whose chief attraction was that it remained open till two o’clock on weekday nights. When they got there, it was smoke-filled and lively. Most of the customers were students like themselves, and the music was playing very loudly.
The boys all ordered beers to start with. As Fumio took his first drink, he felt an elbow prod him in the ribs.
“Look,” said Harada, nodding toward a group of girls sitting two tables away. “What do you say? After we have a couple of drinks to work up our courage, how about if we go over there and ask them to join us?”
“I don’t know....”
“Wait till we’ve had a few more beers,” said Kurita to Harada. “Then maybe he’ll agree.”
“Right. I only hope none of these other guys get the same idea.” Harada peered around at the neighboring tables crammed with young men boisterously shouting each other down, challenging each other to drinking contests. “Because I would hate for them to snatch a possible treat from under our very noses.”
Kurita laughed. “You sound desperate, Harada.”
“I am. Listen, I’m telling you if I don’t have a woman soon, I might end up doing something I’ll regret.”
“Like what?” Mori peered at Harada with a curious expression.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I get these weird thoughts in my head….”
“Such as—?”
“Listen, you guys,” interrupted Kurita. “If that’s the way you feel, I know just the place for you.”
“What?” They all turned to him.
“As you know, I work part-time as a furniture mover....” He began telling them about how his co-workers had taken him recently to a “fashion health” salon. They all listened excitedly, especially Mori, who kept asking for more details. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Why don’t we all go tonight?” he stammered, looking around at the others for support.
Fumio seconded it, surprising himself by his own enthusiasm. He felt drunk enough to brave it, provided the others went along as well.
“How about it?” he asked them.
Harada laughed. “If you guys are willing, I’m the last person in the world to disappoint you.”
After having a few more beers to ensure that their initial resolve wouldn’t wither away, they let Kurita lead them to the place he’d been to with his co-workers. It was called Petit Doll and was located in the basement of a nearby building. As they reached the bottom of the steps a friendly man greeted them warmly, smiling at each of them in turn.
“Is this the first time for you gentlemen?”
The boys murmured a vague reply but the man quickly put them at their ease, explaining in a business-like way that a short time would cost them ten thousand yen each. Fumio thought it a bit expensive, but refrained from comment.
After the boys had paid up, the man led them along a corridor lined with doors. Each door had a round window in it about shoulder high, some of them covered with a towel from the inside. The man passed by the covered ones but stopped at the first one which wasn’t. He knocked on the door before inviting them to peer inside. One by one the boys stepped up to the window.
On the other side was a small room with a single bed, on which a girl in a bathrobe reclined, reading a magazine. At the sound of the knock she’d looked up, smiling and waving. She was about eighteen or nineteen years old, and very cute. Nothing about her suggested a worker in the sex industry; she could have passed for a normal college girl, a classmate of theirs.
“This is Kaori,” said the man.
“She’s gorgeous,” murmured Harada.
The boys were then led to the next uncovered window where the same thing was repeated. This girl, too, was quite attractive—almost good-looking enough to be a pop idol. After they’d inspected five other girls, the man said, “Take your pick, gentlemen.”
As he stepped inside, she got up from her bed with a look of welcome. “Good evening.”
She seemed quite at ease, not at all self-conscious about the work she was doing. Smiling, she introduced herself with a modest bow and asked him his name.
“Fumio.”
“Are you a student?”
“Yes.”
“We get many students at Petit Doll. Here, let me help you.”
Before he knew it, Fumio was being undressed by her. He stood there passively as she relieved him of all his clothes, neatly folding each item up and placing it atop a small stool. When he was completely naked, she slipped a towel around his middle and said, “Right this way, please.”
To his surprise he was led outside, down the corridor to a large shower room at the far end where five or six girls in bath robes were helping their clients get cleaned up. Fumio tried not to look at all the other naked males as Mariko sat him on a plastic bath seat and soaped him up before rinsing him clean with a hand-held shower. After briskly drying him off, she tied the towel around his middle again and led him back to the room. There, she casually pulled the towel off of him and hung it over the round window, then took off her bathrobe without the slightest hesitation. She was completely naked underneath. Fumio felt nervous at the sight of her nude body.
“Is this your first time?” she said.
Fumio murmured evasively, but she only smiled and had him get on the bed and lie back. With a glance at his face, she ran her hand over his chest and caressed it for a while before sliding her palm downward, past his belly. And then, quite boldly, she began fondling his penis with an intimacy which had hitherto been his own prerogative. Fumio closed his eyes and willed himself to relax. His body felt all tensed up.