by Ryu Murakami
“We bump into each other a lot here, don’t we? Can I interest you in a cup of coffee somewhere?”
I casually come out with this line that I couldn’t have said in a million years a few months earlier. The woman wore kind of heavy makeup. She said she was rather busy that day, could we make it another time? And two days later we were sitting together in the coffee shop at the Washington Hotel.
“You really like books, don’t you?” she said.
I’m thinking, if someone had asked me that a few months ago I would have burst out laughing, but instead of laughing I just said, I do, yes.
“I do too, more than anything, almost... Would you mind my asking what business you’re in?”
I told her I was unemployed, but that I used to drive trucks.
“No! You certainly don’t look the part.”
I drove semis for sixteen years. If I don’t look the part, what part do I look?
“I thought you might be a writer or something.”
Well, I’ll tell you, that threw me for a loop.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I imagined you might be a poet who just lives life as it comes. Or a journalist. Something like that.”
It threw me for a loop, but I can’t say it hurt my feelings any. In fact, I couldn’t help smiling. And I couldn’t wait to tell my daughter.
“A poet?” she said. “How cool can you get? Why don’t you really try writing something?”
“Get out of here,” I told her, but in fact I’d already bought a copy of How to Write Poetry at the bookstore on the way home. It turned out I couldn’t write poems after all. But I did have another sort of talent I didn’t know about yet.
Two or three times a month my daughter went to stay at her mother’s place. That’s where she was on the day I ran into the woman at the bookstore again, and over coffee we decided to have dinner together. She took me to this candles and wine and frog legs type of place in Roppongi. They seemed to know her there. I had all these dishes I’d never seen before, pretending it was the sort of stuff I ate every day, and I got drunk. Then the woman made me an offer.
Later it turned out she wasn’t a woman. But somehow that didn’t bother me, which even now strikes me as kind of strange. I don’t think it was just because I was drunk. Maybe it’s got something to do with not having had that many women in my time. At any rate, the fact that this classy lady didn’t have any soft mounds on her chest, that instead there was a rig between her legs just like mine, seemed perfectly natural to me, and we rolled around and got all tangled up in bed.
“Would you like to come to my club sometime?” the lady-man asked me as we were leaving the hotel. “I think they’d love you there.”
I seemed to remember somebody else saying something like that before.
This was about four months ago.
I got more and more confused about myself. At first, when the company went under, I’d get a twinge if I saw a semi rolling down the street, but that didn’t happen any more. I kept on hanging out around West Shinjuku. I ran into the “lady” a few times, but we never went to bed again. I wondered if that was like a rule they had or something.
One day I bought a book of poems by Verlaine and was sitting on a bench in Chuo Park reading it. Besides me, there were young couples, bums, old people taking a walk, mothers and babies, dogs and pigeons. There were some joggers too, on the path around the edge of the park. One young guy in sauna pants stared at me as he ran by. He stared at me again the second time around, and the third time too. Then finally he came over, still dripping with sweat, and said, “Remember me?” It was the host from the gay bar, Tomato-chan.
“I’ll be damned. Don’t tell me you really took up boxing.”
“I did.”
“With the gym I told you about?”
“I started with them, but now I train at a different place.”
“So it wasn’t much good?”
“Itabashi’s just a bit too far away for me. I live here in Shinjuku.”
“Oh.”
“You look different somehow. Of course, the lighting’s so dim in the club... It’s been over a year too, hasn’t it?”
“I lost my job.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“No, no reason to be. But listen, Tomato-chan—sorry—what should I call you?”
“Tomato-chan’s fine. I’m still working at the club.”
“What I was going to say is, do you really think so, what you just said? That I look different?”
“Well, I mean, I don’t really know you that well.”
“You see, a few weeks ago I, uh, I went to bed with this lady who had a lot of makeup on, and—”
“She was a man?”
“Uh-huh.”
He laughed gaily. “And? It’s still bothering you?”
“No, it’s not like that, it’s, how should I put it...”
“Oh. So you were okay with it. Did you take it up the bum?”
“I don’t think there was any of that, but—”
“Rubbing? Sucking?”
I nodded, and Tomato-chan said, “God, what a conversation to be having in the middle of the day.” He sat down on the bench beside me. “And?”
“Well, that’s all, but then she, he, said... um...”
“What?”
“That I’d make a good gay.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. I said the same thing, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but, look. I was always a macho type of guy. I mean, I told you, right, I was a boxer in high school and everything? How’s it going, by the way? You have any fights yet?”
“Six so far. After dropping down to featherweight I won three in a row. Until then I was getting my ass kicked.”
“Battling the scales, are you? It must be tough having to keep your weight down nowadays, with all the good food around. I mean, Tokyo’s not exactly Ethiopia, right?”
“It’s hard at the club. I just drink water and pretend I’m getting high.”
“It’s okay to do that?”
“I’ve known a lot of the customers for years. They don’t usually mind.”
“Anyway... What was I saying?”
“That you were always macho.”
“Right. I mean, I wasn’t violent or anything, but I got into fights once in a while and even spent a little time in jail, and, well, I was a trucker, right?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“What?”
“Trucker, whatever. So what?”
“So what?”
“Yeah,” he said.
And it sort of hit me like: yeah, what’s that got to do with anything?
“But, so, okay, what is it about me that would make a good gay guy?”
“Your face.”
I have to admit it made me smile when he said that. Without thinking, I sort of glanced around to see if there was a mirror anywhere. Tomato-chan started saying how my face is oval-shaped and my eyes are big and my eyelids aren’t puffy like a lot of people’s and I’ve got a nice nose, lots of things like that, and I wondered how come nobody ever told me this before.
We went to his apartment, and that’s where I put on makeup for the first time.
“You’d look even better if we plucked your eyebrows.”
“I can’t do that, I’ve got a daughter.”
When we were finished I looked in the mirror and got quite a surprise. I was really pretty.
I became a gay host at Tomato-chan’s club. I kept my accessories and dresses and things at his place and in my locker at the club, and told my daughter I was a night watchman at an office building. The club opens at seven o’clock but doesn’t get busy till after eleven, so I can have dinner with her before leaving for work. I come home at three or four, scrub myself hard in the bathtub to get rid of the smell of makeup and eve
rything, then go to bed. She’s happy with this routine too—says she gets a lot more studying done now. And I have Saturdays and Sundays off, so I still get to spend plenty of time with her.
“You sure are a lot more cheerful since you started working again, Daddy.”
“You think so?”
I didn’t feel the least bit guilty.
“But being a night watchman—isn’t it scary?”
“Scary?”
“You know, burglars and things.”
“Everything’s done by electronics these days. All we have to do is watch the computers and the video screens.”
“How futuristic. So you don’t carry a gun?”
“You know better than that.”
“Don’t you get bored?”
“One of the guys I work with is really interesting. He’s a pro boxer.”
“Is he young?”
“Eighteen.”
“Introduce me to him,” she said.
So one Sunday I took her to Shinjuku to meet Tomato-chan. We went to a movie together, then had dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Tomato-chan did a good job of covering my story. I felt I was beginning to understand what happiness is about. It isn’t about guzzling ten or twenty energy drinks a day, barreling down the highway for hours at a time, turning over your paycheck to your wife without even opening the envelope, and trying to force your family to respect you. Happiness is based on secrets and lies.
Once I’d discovered my gay side, I felt like I finally understood what my wife had been talking about.
Most of the customers at the club are wealthy, and perfect gentlemen. Sometimes we even get celebrities. I don’t try to talk like a woman, the way the younger hosts do. I just wear makeup and a wig and usually a dress and size eleven high heels, and I chat with the customers in my normal voice. When I screw up I just apologize, and all is forgiven. It’s a gentle little world, filled with people who understand that arrogance is only for fools.
“You certainly don’t look forty.”
“No?”
“Even your hands are still nice.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“Tell us about trucking again.”
I talk about the time I ran the entire length of the Tohoku Expressway with the accelerator held down with a rock, or the time I picked up two Filipina girls hitchhiking, or the time I ran out of gas on the Meishin Highway in a snowstorm. Having been a trucker for sixteen years, I’ve got loads of stories. Sometimes hostesses from Ginza and even models and actresses come in and say things to me like, “Dammit, you’re prettier than I am!”
Every day I pluck out three hairs from my eyebrows. They’re starting to get a nice arch.
It was raining the night the man came to our club. He was the coach of a rugby team at some not-very-famous college, and he was like I used to be, Mr. Macho. He started shouting at Tomato-chan.
“Whaddaya mean you’d rather not? My whiskey’s not good enough for you?”
The manager came out from behind the bar in this beautiful kimono he has, like something a Kabuki star might wear, and said, “You’ll have to excuse Tomato, he’s a boxer and he’s trying to lose weight,” but the coach wasn’t having it.
“Since when do faggots box?”
He had his shirt unbuttoned, showing off a gold chain and chest hair, and the expression on his face was nasty and stupid and vicious. He smashed Tomato-chan’s glass, and then he threw his own whiskey and water in his face. Maybe he’d had a difficult day or something, but that was no excuse for being so full of himself, and I wasn’t going to look the other way. If Tomato-chan had wanted to, he could have decked the guy in ten seconds. But Tomato-chan is humble and respectful toward everyone. This coach was just the opposite: barbaric, overbearing, and violent, the lowest of the low. I couldn’t forgive someone like this, someone who had things all wrong, for trying to turn our gentle world into a battlefield.
I swished across the room in my polka-dot dress and high heels and barked at him: “You get out of here, right now!” I immediately regretted stooping to his level, but it was too late. He jumped up with his gold chain bouncing against his chest, grabbed his bottle of Chivas Regal, and cracked it over my head. Naturally my head got cracked too.
They took me to the hospital in an ambulance, and it was there that my daughter first saw me dressed up as a gay guy. She came there with my wife. My wife cried. My daughter laughed.
I was in the hospital eight days. They gave me a brain scan and didn’t find anything especially wrong. I was afraid my daughter was going to write me off, but she came back to visit on the fifth day.
“I was so surprised!” she said, putting a bouquet of sweet peas in a glass vase for me.
“I’m sorry I kept it from you.”
“At first I thought maybe you’d had a costume party at the security company or something.”
“Are you staying with your mother now?”
“No. I stayed there the first two days, but—well, I have to go to school and everything.”
“You can do as you like, you know.”
As soon as I said that, my eyes filled with tears.
“Do as I like? Meaning what?”
“Move in with your mother.”
“Why?”
I couldn’t hold it back and started bawling like a baby. She took out a Snoopy handkerchief and dabbed my cheeks.
“I’m not moving in with Mom.”
“Why not?”
“She wants me to, but I’m not going to.”
“How come?”
“Are you a homo, Daddy?”
I shook my head. “It’s just a job.”
“But are you a homo?”
“If I were a homo, how could I have produced you?”
“After Mom left, you suddenly realized it. Something like that?”
“Look, I’m telling you I’m not.”
“It’s okay if you are. But I’d die if my friends found out. Let’s keep telling everybody you work for a security company, okay?”
“Sure.”
She had some sandwiches she’d made for me. We ate them together.
“When I get out of here, you want to go see a baseball game?”
“Pro baseball?”
“Of course.”
“Okay.”
“We went once a long time ago, didn’t we?”
“Let’s invite Mom too.”
“You think she’ll go?”
“I bet she will if it’s a Carp game. Especially if Yamane’s pitching.”
“What did your mother say? About me.”
“She said she didn’t understand you at all.”
“Oh. And you?”
“Me?”
“Do you understand me?”
“Are you kidding?”
“But it’s all right with you?”
“Yeah, it’s all right, I guess.”
The sandwiches were delicious.
The game is at Jingu Stadium, the Swallows versus the Carp. My wife didn’t come after all. Obana is pitching for the Swallows. Takahashi Yoshihiko draws a walk, and my daughter cheers and applauds.
“Isn’t Yoshihiko dreamy?” she says. He takes a big lead, and she shouts, “Run, Takahashi!” Then she looks at me.
“Daddy?”
“What.”
“Are there getting to be more homos these days?”
“How should I know?”
Takahashi steals second base. My daughter is thrilled. She jumps up, yelling and clapping. Then she sits back down and mutters, as if to herself:
“I mean, if there get to be too many homos, I might have a hard time ever finding a husband.”
Each Time I Read
Your Confession
“Each time I read your co
nfession, there’s one thing I just don’t understand: Why didn’t you kill the woman?”
The prosecutor asks me this. It’s always the same, always the same question. I don’t want to answer that question. The bald old court-appointed lawyer has asked it about a thousand times. He says if I can clear that up, my punishment might be lighter. But no one would understand. How could they? I don’t really understand it myself.
“What was your motive for not killing her? That’s a strange way to put it, I know, but... If you could try to explain it again.”
I don’t really dislike this prosecutor. I wonder why. Maybe he reminds me of my uncle. My uncle was the only one who was nice to me. He used to give me rides on the back of his scooter when he was a detergent salesman. That’s one of my happiest memories.
“Well then, let’s start at the beginning one more time, reconfirming the facts, and if you think of any new information, be sure to let us know. Ready?”
My name is XXX Noriyuki. My address is 3–12–5 Kowa-cho, Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture. It’s not an address I feel very attached to. I don’t really like it. I hate it, in fact. Maybe what I was really trying to kill was that address. The address we had when I was in elementary school was different, all words—village, township, district. No numbers. It was way way way way—about a hundred ways—out in the sticks. The Seibu Corporation didn’t start developing out there till I was in third grade.
“You say you hated your mother and father. Why?”
My father was adopted into my mother’s family when he married her. He was a high school graduate, an auto mechanic. Ma was the daughter of a big landowner. She graduated from the pharmacy department of a university in Saitama but was so ugly she was a virgin till she was thirty-four. My father had a police record and even spent eight months in jail for some stupid fight, but he was tall and not bad looking. The reason he married an ugly woman seven years older than him was so he could own a pharmacy. If I’d been born with my mother’s brains and my father’s looks I probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now, but it was the other way around.
I’d like to say this to everyone in Japan: please think carefully before you have any children, especially if you’re ugly or stupid.
“At some point your parents expanded the pharmacy. Is that when you began to hate them?”