by Cynthia Dane
This is the fate of a romance author. The lives of our characters are always way more exciting than our own. That’s why everything seems so fantastic. They’re all personal fantasies to some extent. We take our sexual frustrations and channel them into stories that may or may not make us money. Because if I’m going to be crying for some random dude to fuck me, I better be getting some money to compensate me!
Still, I couldn’t get my hopes up. I knew how this worked. I fancied a hot guy, he entertained me for a few minutes… and then said hot guy realized how hot he was and knew he could get someone hotter than me if he put a little effort into it. Unfortunately for me, even though I think I look pretty damn good, I don’t fall under a lot of conventionally attractive banners and people love making sure I know that.
So far, the only real prospect who had contacted me was Hadrian. All my messages to other men were met with silence, and the only two others to contact me first were Mr. Neckbeard and Mr. Japanese Fetishist. I was on a real roll.
But I guess any good attention was, well, good attention. I counted my blessings as I went about my day and tried to not let the fact that everywhere I went I was surrounded by canoodling couples make me feel worse.
Then I came home. My neighbor? Was on a fucking tear.
I honestly never saw his girlfriend, but I imagined a woman who walked bowlegged because her pussy had been pounded to death. Actually, she probably didn’t walk at all. I don’t think my neighbor ever gave her the chance to get out of his bed for the past week, let alone actually leave the building.
Must have been nice!
It was the perfect storm of being horny and having the fact that other people have hot, ridiculous sex shoved into my face. If the universe were a person, it was that asshole prep kid at your high school who wears the latest designer wear and always had the latest gaming systems at his disposal. “Sup, Cyndi? You want this? Well, you can’t have it! Hahaha! I’ma tie you up – totally not kinky though, of course – and make you watch me play the latest game you really want for yourself!”
The universe is a fucking shitheel.
I forced myself to listen to them have one thundering orgasm after another, my body on the verge of a revolt if I didn’t get some of my own soon. They weren’t necessarily turning me on. What was turning me on – and making me so damn mad – was knowing I couldn’t get it as easily as these fools could. That I had gone so long without. That the only people who messaged me on a fucking dating app in a city of over eight million people were two weirdos and a guy who was never gonna ask me out even though he kept responding to my messages.
Fuck my feminine wiles! Fuck playing even a two-minute game of hard to get! I was going to hit the universe upside the head and get what I fucking wanted!
Some damn hot sex!
“Hey, what are you doing tomorrow?” I messaged Hadrian.
“Tomorrow I have day off.”
Fucking. Score.
“Me too. I am taking tomorrow off from work.” Hint, hint, Mr. Handsome.
No response.
No fucking response!
Today, I imagine him sitting in his room (whatever it looked like,) staring at my message and trying to figure out what I was going for. Now I know that English was his fourth, fifth language, and the way I talked to him may have been too much for him to wrap his head around. Basically, I had broken the fucker.
“Do you want to meet up for coffee or something?”
There.
I had done it.
I had ditched the feminine wiles and pumped that dude full of aggressive American woman. Asked him out. Made my intentions clear. Dude, I only had a week and a half before my period was due, and two days after that I was heading back to America. I had no time to waste!
Naturally, Hadrian didn’t get back to me right away. Because that would have been helpful, yeah?
It’s usual for the person who asked the other out to feel that moment of crippling anxiety. In real life, you get your answer right away. Either they say yes or no, or they run away – giving you their answer, I guess. Online, though? It’s so easy to get ghosted. There’s nobody forcing you to reply to someone asking you out. Hell, I had effectively ghosted those other two guys, right? They were gross and totally deserved it, but I still left them hanging high and dry!
It was possible he hadn’t seen my message yet. Maybe he tried to interpret it. Maybe he tried to figure out how to tell me no. (Then why were you talking to me, bro?)
“Ok ye s lets met.”
The man was not great with English, but I didn’t give a fuck. I had a date. That thumping bed next door could kiss my fucking ass.
Chapter 4
Surprisingly, I knew exactly what I wanted to wear. I had only brought half a suitcase of clothes with me, and the amount I had amassed since raiding Harajuku and Ikebukuro were miniscule. And when you bring so few clothes with you, the world damn well knows that you’ve brought the best of the best of your nice but comfy outfits.
Dark jeans, plain black V-neck T-shirt that showed enough cleavage to advertise my great rack, and a dark gray cardigan that was way cuter than that description makes it sound. Trust me, once I had my hair under control, I was bangin’. Hadrian better think so too.
I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to admit that, unless it turned out I was being catfished or Hadrian gave me some serious creeper vibes, I was going to fuck him. We could go straight to a love hotel room and I’d be cool with that. I wanted sex. The guy being a decent date beforehand? Fuck it, that was a bonus. And I was down for a good date if I knew I would probably get laid later.
That said, I’m also a woman who is a die-hard realist. I know how lots of (particularly young, and Hadrian was a couple years younger than me according to his profile) men operate. I wasn’t going to assume he was packing his own condoms around. Seriously. How sad is that? I ain’t trusting no man to bring a fucking condom to a date where sex is silently understood to be on the table.
So, being the responsible adult that I was, I left a couple hours early to hit up one of the many pharmacies and convenience stores in my neighborhood to buy some fucking condoms. Just in case, you know.
Here’s a tip: Japan does not make it easy to find condoms.
I don’t know why, other than it’s some great government conspiracy to get the birth rate they’re always harping about up, but Japan has been notoriously dumb when it comes to contraception. You couldn’t even get the pill until a couple of decades ago, and of course that was for “married women.” Young people often confess to never using condoms or any other kind of barrier method. Before you ask, yes, everyone is getting pregnant left and right, although sometimes you never find out about it. All I’ll say is that certain things that are considered hugely political here in America they don’t even bat an eyelash at in Japan.
I go out of my way to explain this so you’ll understand why I call this the Great Condom Hunt 2k16.
Imagine me, some nobody foreigner, popping into no fewer than three so-called pharmacies and four convenience stores looking for a simple box of condoms. This was all within a one mile radius, mind you. Oh, I thought it would be the simplest thing in the world, even if I didn’t find them right away. How hard could they really be to find? I even got on my phone and looked it up online, making sure I knew what they were called and what section you often found them in. Because, as you can probably figure out by now, many other foreigners before me had been as perplexed while on the hunt for Japanese prophylactics. Entire webpages were constructed with the intent of instructing and helping dumbasses like me get safely laid.
Problem: pharmacies are fucking bullshit.
What do you other Westerners think of when you hear the term “pharmacy?” Oh, let me guess! Walgreens. CVS. Rite-Aid. Your local mom and pop pharmacy. You know, those places that double as locations to get your prescriptions filled while picking up OTC meds, other health supplies, and maybe some snacks and even home goods depending on the size of the pla
ce. Bonus! Aisles and aisles of makeup! American pharmacies are notorious for cheap makeup gear that will help you get by in a pinch.
Japan is similar. Except not at all.
From the moment you step into most kusuri-ya, which literally translates to “medicine store,” you’ll notice there is makeup everywhere. Hair care, skin care, everything you could possibly do to alter your body into being more beautiful is available beneath bright lights and chirping J-pop music. Walk two more aisles and you’ll find everything you need to take care of your baby while brushing your teeth. Cheap snacks? Yup. They got that.
You know what a lot of so-called pharmacies in Japan are missing? Medicine.
You cannot get prescriptions filled in Japanese pharmacies. Those are filled in other, much smaller clinics that fill prescriptions and sell you nothing else. Fine. That’s how the system is set up in a foreign country? Fine. So give me the OTC stuff, Japan! That includes your “family planning” materials!
Good luck finding vitamins. Good luck finding cold medicine. (That shit is so highly regulated you’re gonna have to suffer.) Good luck finding some fucking condoms!
I majored in Japanese. A quick vocab search in my electronic dictionary gave me the one word missing from my brain that would help me ask the closest person where the fuck they kept the gomu. (Fun fact: they’re called rubbers in Japanese too!) Except these pharmacies were so makeup centric that everyone working there was over sixty-five and female. And not the kind, grandmotherly types, either. The kind that would probably balk the moment a foreign woman asked where the hell the condoms were.
I made the executive decision that these places didn’t have what I wanted. I’d have to try the convenience stores.
God.
The convenience stores.
Japan is famous for them, isn’t it? You can’t hear a tale about Japan without hearing all about the ubiquitous conbini. I am here to confirm that yes, even out in the sticks where I have lived, you will find a convenience store on every street corner. Sometimes the same company will have stores across the street from each other. Why? Because Japan takes the word convenience to extreme. When I lived in Japan as an honest-to-God resident with bills to pay, I paid them all at the convenience store. While picking up my lunches (that they so nicely cooked up for me) and snacks for the rest of eternity. Did I mention I could also pay my American bills from the local Circle K, too?
As it turns out, you can buy anything at the convenience stores, even the tiny ones! Except condoms. You can’t buy condoms.
Don’t give me that look. I don’t care if you could go down to your local 7/11 and point to the small selection of Trojans while waving your arms in my direction. Didn’t we go over that the pharmacies didn’t carry them either?
By this point, I was already running late for my date. Because heaven forbid Hadrian would want to meet in my neighborhood. Nope. Dude wanted to meet six subway stops away in the Oji neighborhood, which I had been to about once in my life.
I reached peak frustration. I didn’t want to show up to a fuck date without my own condoms. If nothing else, I thought it might be nice for the poor guy to have a selection for his dick. Plus, it was the principle of the thing. So even though I was sick and tired of walking up and down steep, crowded hills to pop into fruitless endeavors, I decided to try one last time.
7/11, if you failed me…
The neighborhood 7/11 was the largest convenience store around. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, other than they had ample seating for those who wanted to eat the lunches they bought there. Yet I held a sliver of hope that this store right next to the train station I needed to hurry to would have at least one pack of condoms.
My friends.
My friends.
I thought the mighty and honorable Amaterasu herself had descended from the heavens to illuminate her sunny light upon the tiny-ass pack of condoms sitting on a back shelf.
One. One pack to choose from, for an exorbitant Tokyo price. I stared at them, convinced that I was hallucinating. It was because I hadn’t had dinner yet, right? I was starving, and thus, hallucinating.
Fuck it.
I hadn’t come this far to not buy a pack of condoms. I was a responsible adult woman and absolutely mature about this.
Even though the one guy at the register was old enough to be my father.
Most of us have been there. You’re popping in to buy condoms, lube, a cucumber… and you think ah, fuck, how embarrassing would it be to buy only this? Because then it looks like I’m running out to get laid right away! Nah, man, I’m going through a list of things I have to restock at home. Condoms, you know? Might as well get some lube since it was right there. I also needed to get a toothbrush, some snacks, and a new umbrella for the missus.
Not that night.
This guy was going to deal with a foreigner marching up to the counter and triumphantly slamming a box of condoms down onto the counter. He was going to give me the same level of Japanese professionalism I was damn well accustomed to, and he was gonna like it.
I looked him right in the eye as I approached. I nonchalantly tossed the white box of condoms in front of him and pulled out my wallet. He looked at me. He looked at the box. For a split second, we shared a moment that was nothing short of a struggle for dominance. I wasn’t going down with embarrassment first. He could have those honors if he so chose.
Didn’t he know that we American women were sexually aggressive? Of course we bought condoms and nothing else! Mother fucker, I was about to go get laid because my stupid ass neighbor hadn’t let me sleep in a week! This was happening! Some guy named Hadrian was currently en route to our meeting point – ah, fuck, I better tell him I was running late – and I was gonna blow that dick and fuck that cock!
Now ring up my fucking condoms!
Chapter 5
I emerged from the depths of Oji Station with condoms in my bag and more than a twinge of anxiety in my heart.
This was it. Any moment I would meet Hadrian face to face. I’d hear his voice. I’d see his reaction to me. (Oh, God.) I’d get a feel for how he really felt about me. This was, of course, assuming he’d show up and not run at the sight of me.
(I’ve been on some pretty shitty dates, y’all.)
Was he tall? Was he muscular? Did he smell good, or did he smell like tobacco like half of the country? Would he be nice, or would he be distant? All I knew was that he was from a completely different culture than what I was familiar with. Would he expect me to be more conservative? Did that mean he wanted to take things slow?
See? I was already bringing myself down before he arr…
I recognized him instantly.
A young man with a spring in his step came out of the subway exit, eyes searching his surroundings before he took shelter beneath a streetlight and checked his phone – to tell me that he was there? To ask me where I was? To message some other chick he had on standby?
I should have approached him right away, but I was stunned. Because he was… holy shit.
Hadrian-whatever-his-last-name-was exuded a cool confidence that was anything but off-putting. He stood out of people’s way as they passed by, but had a small smile on his chiseled face that was faintly outlined with a healthy and dark goatee. His black leather jacket matched his black jeans and the T-shirt that so casually said Guy on his day off. He was the kind of man I would have admired from afar and automatically assumed would want nothing to do with me.
Nope. I was on a date with this guy.
I told myself that as I stepped forward and caught his attention. Thank God, he smiled.
“Hadrian?”
“Yes. You must be…” His face blanked. “Uh…”
“M… uh, I mean, Cyndi.” If this guy couldn’t remember my fake name, there was no way he was going to remember my crazy German real name. Besides, maybe it wouldn’t be bad to be Cyndi for a night! “Nice to finally meet you!” Oops. I was lame.
He immediately pointed down the street. “You h
ungry?”
I had never heard an accent like his before. I was pretty familiar with Japanese accents when speaking English, and he shared a lot of the same mannerisms, telling me that most of the English he had learned was here in Japan and filtered through that experience. Even so, Japanese could not have been his native language, which made me only more curious about his story.
Assuming I would ever learn it. This was supposed to be a one-night stand, after all.
“What kind of food?” I asked, vainly attempting to keep up with his brisk steps. The guy knew where we were going, and we were going to get there quickly. But how was I supposed to get a whiff of his cologne if we were going this fast through a cold November night?
“Italian. You like Italian?”
Music to my ears, Hadrian! “I love Italian. It’s my favorite!”
“Really?” We stopped at an intersection. “It is right there. We go?”
“Hell yeah we go.”
The restaurant was practically empty when we arrived. Our young and surly waitress took one look at us and almost rolled her eyes. “Great. Another couple.” I wondered if she was rolling her eyes at him… bringing another girl to her place of work… maybe she had a crush on him? I mean, I had a crush on Hadrian and I was on a date with him.
“You like drink?” He shoved the alcohol menu in front of me. Full disclosure: I’m not a drinker. At all. I never had a sip of alcohol until I was 22 because any outside substance that changes my brain chemistry freaks my shit out. By that time I was more comfortable with imbibing alcohol, but to say I was a lightweight was an understatement. And I hated beer, Japan’s favorite drink.
“Anything but beer is fine,” I said.
“Beer?”