“How about basic free speech?”
There's an anonymous cat-call from somewhere in the back.
"Friends, let's not argue principles but examine feelings and look for solutions. If a person can write something online, that doesn't mean they should."
“That's exactly the problem Liam! There are people who would never say something face to face, but they're putting it on the bulletin board because they can get away with it.”
I find myself agreeing. More voices erupt.
"How about the Death List Shan wrote? People are genuinely concerned about their safety!"
Soren smirks. Finally average individuals are realizing that he is not the one who is being accused of any crime. Liam shrugs. "I do not know anything about this. What is strange is that everybody seems to know somebody who knows somebody who's heard of it, but nobody's ever actually personally seen or heard anything like that from out of him themselves. In any case, just like Melanie, if you need to talk to somebody in private, you can come talk to me, and I hope we can all come together as a community and not panic out on everybody all the time. Especially if you're just arrived, I am sorry if you feel like you are entering a vortex, things are not usually like this." Liam sitting down near me and looking flustered, comments, "Man, people don't know the half of things."
"Certain people are using the situation for their own ends," whispers one of the other CIRs.
"There was a time, you know, when you had to have a master's in Japanese or something to be able to work here, you had more of a stake, it wasn't just party as hard as I can for two years and get out."
"Some people think it was a little strange for a girl to just have her panties flying around in the sunshine on a first floor balcony and then get mad when they disappear. Has anybody actually seen this prowler of hers?"
“What are you trying to say? That she’s to blame for the sex crime?! For being a victim of a crazed sex maniac?”
"After the Blair thing, you know, we must err on the side of safety. I don't want to see that happen on my time here. I would feel responsible."
"You're a misogynist! You hate women! You don't understand what..."
The meeting goes on in its plodding, bureaucratic way, although the real conflict, the one between Soren and Redd is on everyone's mind. We all maintain this polite fiction that recycling separation, residency registration, and embassy notifications are what we all assembled to learn about. But finally the meeting ends, and Liam announces that there will people going to the local restaurant to have dinner and drinks for anyone who wishes, and lo and behold, both Redd and Soren in their separate groups join this general procession, though with definite distance between them. The evening air, hot and muggy, is just another one of those crazy prolonged heat wave nights that we still don't know the end of, but the walk to the restaurant is not far, and here we begin to eat and drink, noticing, of course, when Soren walks by and finally sits down next to Soren to launch the face-to-face confrontation so delayed and inevitable.
“Hi Redd. How are you doing?”
“Hi Soren, how professional of you to come out tonight.”
“Well I certainly wouldn't miss the chance to hear your opinions said to my face for once...”
Soren's wit does not desert him. For two hours they argue, matching each other drink for drink, and some stay and some go, but the hours on the clock pass by into the small hours of the morning. Redd is beginning to get confused. Julian swims in and out, insulting Soren and then walking off, too chicken to sit down and hear a retort. Finally, at three a.m., and a reliable witness reports there might be a gleam in his eye, Soren goes off to buy beers for everybody at the table, except Redd, and this is entirely calculated; this is just one final calculated gesture of somebody who is definitely very drunk directed at somebody he has already left in a smoking heap that night; and finally, Redd erupts, he's totally lost control, he swings his arms wildly and knocks Soren's stein of beer over, spilling liquid all over.
"See, I told you! I told you everyone! That guy is a psycho!" yells Soren. And his victory is complete; Redd, as a result of this wild arm-swinging, is now going to be characterized as a beer-stein throwing, truly violent psycho drunkard alcoholic. Redd is screaming and out of control, and his face is completely red, and Julian's girlfriend Melanie finally intervenes; she comes over to soothe him and take him off, and it's just Soren's gang left; his friends from finance; neutral parties, Soren has finally won on the field of actual battle, his victory known to all. I am pleased. Sipping down my free beer, I reflect on the justice of things; the fact that little sniveling Internet twerps really don't have it in the end.
“Freakin' homosexuals,” mutters Soren, swaying and drunk beyond belief. This is the last I see him, going off, barely able to walk, his friend of eighteen months or so, but a person with whom he will not again associate, as all our destinies are to come, looking back at me with blurry unfocused eyes one last and final time in a bar in late night Tokyo. Actually the night ends with Soren in disgrace as well, blind drunk, being taken to the local lock-up by the police and apparently some ill-considered digs against homosexuals added to the list of Soren's offenses by square Redd allies, even if Redd's claim to moral authority is destroyed that night. Redd's position always rested on that he was a professional and a teacher and mature, and with everyone now knowing that he is a violent beer-stein thrower, he is eventually to be hounded out of Japan, but somebody in Julian's crowd leaps to the forefront of the anti-Soren brigade, claiming to be "traumatized" by things said at an even in which he wasn't even present and then proceeds to start a blog dedicated exclusively to Soren, post after post, sighting after sighting, and this is really curious, this is really something special, this is strangely obsessive in its own way. And so finally Soren does retreat again from the scene, this time for good, this time even from online defense, and all the weirdoes and people with strange little psychological tics can run free, enjoying their brief little heydey in the sun, the victory dance of the losers and geeks and weirdoes over the fallen god, believing themselves equals because they are the only ones who remain.
V.
There's no one moment when I become the sole survivor and heir to a kingdom. No official transfer ceremony, no coronation, no specific event marks my accession to a position precarious yet refined, a strange and unintended outcome to the collision of massive forces in the night, great battleships that have unleashed titanic broadsides against each other, leaving the smoke and dust slowly clearing to reveal only the tiniest of tugboats, the smallest of steamers, still mightily chugging onward as its larger counterparts have sprung great leaks and are settling slowly into the fathomless sea. Rather, there is simply this one Saturday morning when my phone starts ringing—and doesn't stop—a succession of people who not only want to know the latest happenings, but are also looking to plan and undertake new get-togethers and social occasions of their own. I have become the mediator and communicator of plans; the fount of life and activity, the alpha dog of Tokyo if by fate and not design.
"So yeah, we can crash at Mayumi's parents' place, and Jon will be packing some tents just in case everything falls through. If worst comes to worst, there is a sort of time-share place that will let us have rooms for 150, you know 1.5 mahn, that'll be fine."
Buzz on the telephone; Tucker's question.
"Yeah, no problem. Just as long as you have a grill and keep it away from trees or whatever."
Confirmatory and conclusatory buzz.
"Great, thanks, good stuff. See you in a bit."
It is the third weekend of October, the final gasp of that crazy summer that never ends. It is still warm enough to go to the beach, it is still hot enough indeed that a trip to Kamakura, two hours south of Tokyo, a half-thought out excursion that becomes the immediate It event from anyone who hears about it; and at 10am that morning, it seems the phone won't stop buzzing from last minute additions, not Jon, a somewhat awkward software engineer who was planning on cel
ebrating his birthday with a beach picnic with Japanese colleagues; not Tucker, the new Soren faithful who now falls into my orbit; not Maggie, who just wants updates on Shan—which at that moment I presently lack. Not until forty minutes later am I able to rise out of bed out of bed to prepare breakfast and pack the cooler full of ice in my Ueno apartment, but I am already being to sense the social lay of things, the lie of the land.
"So I'm trying to go up to Iwaki last month, but I think we miss the right stop--turns out there's another foreigner on the train with me, little blonde girl who I end up talking to, name of Charis. Just arrived here in Japan, third week, finishing orientation in Tokyo before her group gets assigned to wherever. But she'll be living in Kanagawa."
By the time we get on the highway to Kamakura, Tucker is explaining to me his prior weekend as we both wear sunglasses and stare out into the well-trafficked, but not jammed up roadway. The windows are down and the fresh air is breezing in.
"And so she'll be coming out today?"
"Yeah. She and her whole group I think."
"Cool, cool, good stuff."
We enter a tunnel with the highway noise-reflecting walls suddenly giving way to a first view of the sea, and the effect is of leaving behind Japan and coming into a tropical paradise. The sun almost seems to leap up in intensity, and the building architecture seems suddenly changed, resorty and universally terraced, subtropical foilage pushing up against the street itself. The dazzling light on the sea is not quite eclipsed by the almost pure white of the sand. Simultaneously: "Ahhh!"
It takes about twenty minutes for us to find the surfer girl, Mayumi's, place, a little beach-style house tucked away two blocks inland from Enoshima. She's in, already dressed in her wetsuit for surfing, and we greet her and her friends cheerily before making our way to the water to stake out a spot. Crowds from all over begin to pile in, and it isn't long before Tokyo acquaintances start showing up, in couples or small groups, our knot of towels on the warm sand spreading out now to thirty or forty meters, and everyone a hive of activity, slopping on greasy sunscreen, passing out beers, catching up with people you haven't seen in weeks.
"Hello... hello... hello..." Brad has lost half a centimeter of thumb in an accident with a papercutter; Satoko has just returned from north Japan. An ultralight buzzes in the Indian summer air, the pilot easing out against a stiff shore breeze and then circling back inland. But without much ado, we jump out into the water to swim and play, and then back to the sand to bake in the hot sun. Only after lunch, a quick raid of coolers packed in trunks and the local convenience store, do the new NOVA teachers arrive, at first from a distance, a group of more foreigners who by their cupped hands and beeline for us, are merely clearly people from our group.
"Oh wait, Ritchie, this is the group I was telling you about. Just arrived in country, working for NOVA, and going through orientation together."
Tucker goes out to greet the new arrivals, about six in number, three guys and three girls, one of whom is the small blonde Charis. We introduce ourselves.
"So you've going to be based in Fukushima?"
"Yeah, know anything?"
"Hear there's good skiing."
“But far from Tokyo.”
“You can bullet-train it in two hours.”
It's strange; there's no reason for her to distinctly remember my name, but after the initial sitdown on the beach while everyone is getting to know each other, exchanging names, details, Charis comes over and sits down next to me, she definitely picks me out among the people already here as the person she wishes to talk to.
"So Ritchie, you've been here two years now?"
"Yeah, thereabouts. How long you staying?"
"Maybe a year or two tops. This country is just the first step, but your hand is still getting held here. I want to go out to China or Thailand next."
“Wow, that's cool.” We continue to talk for the next hour or so, watching people come and go, tossing around a frisbee or forming pair or triples to talk to young Japanese. Through the shade of sunglasses, I perceive the strange familiarity of Charis' posture; a weird ease with each other that cannot be simulated. If I were to make a human being have perfect conversational responses, they would probably be exactly everything Charis says, a display of adventure, femininity, and dazzling good 'cute-girl' looks. She's Texan, Republican, and Christian, but aside from that, or maybe precisely because of that, she’s totally confident, carefree, and distinctly flirtatious, the moment comes when she clearly is making some kind of move, though I smile, and keep my cool. Some of the group decides to make a beer run; we'll tag along, but she'll walk with me, a traffic light will separate us from the others, and we'll let the gang go on ahead and follow just a block behind.
"They have these little love hotels here in Tokyo, right?” comments Charis, looking at an example of garish beach architecture. “For eighty bucks you get a place with groovy 60s furniture and flashing disco lights?"
"I think some are like that. Or you can get a cowboy theme if that's what you want. Bunch right in Shibuya, all clustered on one hill."
"I want to go to a love hotel sometime."
I look back at Charis with wide eyes until she realizes what she said.
"I mean," she says, blushing, "I just want to see what they look like."
High-noon passes into afternoon, and we throw around a frisbee in the surf, we bake in the sun, we talk to pretty Japanese girls with sunbleached hair and dark tans. Jon's group, conservatively attired, almost awkward, yet never ridiculous, sit on their formally laid out beach towels and smile politely at attempts to talk to them; some of us who know him play this little game of pretending we're all here on account of him, and the uptight natives don't react as if anything is out of the ordinary; all you can detect is a sense of distinct Japanese conservatism. A few more people dribble in even as our group dwindles, the sun starts to swing to the other side of the sky, and a beautiful sunset begins, achingly slow into the warm late summer waters.
"So what do you think of the Japanese judicial system?” asks somebody, and the crowd begins to fall into separate knots of conversations, heatedly debating the fairness of the Japanese judicial system, referring in particular to an English backpacker allegedly found with a suitcase full of pills. Erik, who has a law degree, explicates some bizarre peculiarities of the Japanese system and we listen intently. But, as the sun continues its descent, our conversation returns to more simple-minded things.
“Hey, dude, imagine if like the rest of the world disappeared and we all had to be stuck on this beach forever, kill wild pigs and just try to survive. Wouldn't that be awesome?”
I glance over at the surfer dude who brings this up and listen as the conversation unfolds.
Charis: “If the whole world disappeared and we were in a survival situation, I know there are some people I'd have to take out.”
“Whoa, really? Like who?”
Charis smirks. “I don't have anybody in particular in mind. But some people impose themselves on others in a way that's harmless so long as we're all in a functioning society, but in a desperate survival situation, would be a liability none of us could afford.”
“Wow, intense. I figure as long as I got good ganja and good surf, party's on.”
It is the last weekend of a hyper summer. This summer changes our lives, and many people, too many, have been sucked into its maelstrom logic. But yet the seeds of the future are here as well; I remember, actually, now, that little Emma first shows us here, her easy-going irony something really nice and funny. John,Sue, Mack, Michelle, Tanya; if this isn't their first time out, it's one of the earliest, in a sunlit space our paths to cross, carrying with it the promise of future great things. No more crisis! No more mad excursions of the heart! Somewhere unconsciously my hands and Charis meet, as the sun finally sinks into the blaze of water, all eyes seaward.
Off to the side, conversation: “It's not so much the facts, if these even exist, as your attitude towards them. Are expats p
eople who just can't fit in at home, or are they the explorers of the world? Why do we heroize Christopher Columbus, but not want to hear too much about our friend backpacking from Timbuktu to Thailand?”
“I met a girl who said travelers and non-travelers just can't be friends. If you're sitting in an office back home waiting for the next promotion to come in three years, the last thing you want to hear about is your friend climbing Machu Picchu.”
“But the thing is that nobody ever heard of a traveler just ending up at home, a complete wreck and regretting ever taking off. It bothers people that other people don't see the value of trying to become physically rich, when experiences are what count.”
Harajuku Sunday Page 7