‘Zo, did you find your boyfriend zee uzzer night?’
There are some things you’d think would be obvious to anyone. Such as:
Which means that, as a hostess, you should be the consummate, unattached young woman. From your castle in the sky, you will never render services of the sexual kind, but neither will you be expressly out of reach. ‘Available but unobtainable’, that’s the hostess motto, and the clear distinction that distinguishes you from an escort or a prostitute. To maintain this delicate pretence it is permissible to lie, play dumb, naive or innocent, but under no circumstances should you ever be less than 100 per cent single. At least within earshot of customers, which is what Colette, the new Swiss-German hostess, had failed to realise. I thought about saying as much, but instead I just looked to Jodie.
Whenever there is explaining to do, Jodie is the one to do it. Almost a permanent hostess, Jodie had come from England numerous times to work in Roppongi, currently lived with a Japanese boyfriend (who had nothing to do with hostess clubs), and was full of loads of wonderful, detached and perverse insights — the girl did like to watch porn while eating her breakfast cereal — that somehow helped us all cope with the inexplicable.
‘This is just a game,’ she explained. ‘They know it, and you’d be best to know it too. They know we’re not single and not in love with them. They’d shit their pants if they thought we actually wanted to marry them. They’d be horrified. They want to pretend. These are men who have no social lives, no intimacy with their wives. They are paying to create an illusion, and we are here to humour them.’
‘Yes, but may-bee zey are serious, you don’t think?’
‘There are the odd ones who come in here looking for wives, and I can tell you, it’s pretty hilarious. They really believe that one of these girls would consider it, and that every word coming out of her mouth isn’t total bullshit. I mean, okay, maybe they’re not complete whackos, because it does happen. Look at the Russians. It could be worse for them, right? They don’t want to go back to Russia. But for us it’s just a job, and all it takes is one stupid girl to fuck it up by actually sleeping with a customer because she thinks she falls in love with him, or whatever. Then they think they have a shot because it happened to one guy once in a million bloody years.
‘But it’s all bullshit. None of this really exists. They know what happens when we all leave. We go home and fuck our boyfriends, and they go home to their wives and families for two seconds before they have to get up and go to work again. That’s just the way it is. See it for what it is and don’t get caught up. Get smashed every night and you’ll have a blast.’
I had one problem. It’s awfully hard to see something for what it is when you couldn’t even understand what it was in the first place. Colette, the Swiss-German, said it best: ‘Wow. Zat is pretty fucked up.’ But no, apparently that wasn’t fucked up. That was only the beginning, the structure of the thing. What was fucked up was this:
‘This total whack job of a guy, right? I’m not going to tell you his name, but he’s really strange looking. He comes every couple of months. He’s really, really smart, but he’s got this thing about everyone making up rumours and lies about him. One of my friends went on this trip to the States with him. He paid for it and gave her money just to go along, with separate rooms and everything. They stopped over in Hawaii because she wanted to go scuba diving, but then you know what he did? He came into her room with his dick out, jerking off, but that’s not the worst of it. All he had on was a scuba mask, and fucking flippers! She rang hotel security, and when they came he tried to say that she was beating him up, but they just laughed at him. I mean the guy is standing there butt naked in a scuba mask! So my friend flew back to Tokyo, and he kept calling me to find out if she came back. I said she flew back home, but then he came back here and found her still working here. He got her fired from the club and tried to get her deported. He is such a bastard.’
‘Isn’t zat dangerous?’ Colette asked, gobsmacked. I thought it was hilarious.
‘Nah, he’s just a freak. I wouldn’t say he’s dangerous. Hostessing isn’t dangerous. Dangerous is working at a gas station in some shitty part of town where the last dude got shot. Just don’t be stupid and use your judgement, because otherwise yeah, you could get into trouble. But how is that different from anything else? I mean, you don’t have to go anywhere with them, and working at the club is nothing to be concerned about. It’s not normal, but the worst it gets is the odd weirdo. And anyway, it makes things more interesting. I mean really, what do you think is normal, wasting your life away in an office for minimum wage? I’ll take the weirdos any day.’
‘I really love you, baby, but I dislike them. Really, all of the-em!’ Taizo hiccupped as his hand swept despairingly over the room. His tall frame slouched into the low sofa as he glared across at a hyperactive sexagenarian wreaking havoc on an Elvis Presley classic and bouncing up and down like a gleeful schoolboy.
‘Oh no! I dislike him. He should not sing. No! No! No!’ Taizo pointed a stern finger at Elvis and crossed his arms triumphantly. Taizo had been regressing since he first sat down, and I’d been mixing more water into his whisky as the night wore on. Every one of his colleagues was in a pleasant mood. But not Taizo. He let out a sigh of frustration and I offered him a golden Hershey’s Kiss. He swallowed it before I could point out that the little white strip was still hanging on.
‘Mmmm, good!’ Taizo beamed at me. ‘I love your short hair, your white forehead. Your big eyes. I love the ... em ... you.’ He threw his hands up.
‘Did you have a bad day, Taizo? Why are you so glum?’
‘Because of now is such bad situation. My company is having so big project, so many problem. Next week is the having of the big meeting where every boss will come, and that is bad, bad sitch-ew-ation,’ he hiccupped. ‘I want to sing: 1234-04.’ He knew the karaoke-program code for ‘Only You’ off by heart.
As the words began, Taizo closed his eyes and we swayed along together, back and forth, shoulder to shoulder. ‘Ohw, ohw-whoa, only Chelseee, I love you-ooo-ooo, your face, your forehead, it is so cute! Oh-oh-oh onleeee Chel-seeeeeee ...’
For some reason, it made me inexplicably sad.
The indentations of a perfect top bite severed a fluffy slice of cake suffocating beneath thick icing. Half-detonated popcorn kernels lay saturated in grease, and plumes of cigarette smoke hung stagnant while the ink of prestigious vineyard names bled minutely under the sweat of liquids equalising temperatures via a hundred cubes of ice. Around the crowded table there was only one spot, and Nishi pointed to it. Straight away there was a problem. The rotund man spilling into my space didn’t blink. Or speak. He only stared while I sat uncomfortably under his gaze. Finally Nishi tapped me on the shoulder.
‘Sorry, Chelsea-san, he is no Engrish.’ Nishi seemed to think it was funny enough to laugh silently to himself and transferred me two spots to the right to make conversation with the back of a customer’s head. I waited. And waited. When the man finally turned around, I was shocked.
‘Jimi! I tried to call you yesterday. How are you?’
Jimi was a short, balding multimillionaire who flew his own jet around the world as a hobby. He’d taken Jodie for a joyride in it during her first week as a hostess in Japan. It was an expensive adventure, but so too was dining out with foreign young women. Last Tuesday he’d taken two Israeli girls and me on my first dohan, to the exorbitant Maxim’s de Paris in Ginza, where he’d spent close to $2000 for us to eat like queens.
‘I did not get a phone call from you today,’ Jimi clipped disapprovingly. ‘I had Chinese tonight. Peking duck. These are my friends, very famous chefs from my favourite sushi bar in Azabu-Juban. When I didn’t get your call, I invited them instead. Now I can’t have the same thing two nights in a row. Tomorrow I can eat Italian, or perhaps sushi,’ he specified, which I took to be him indirectly opening an invitation.
‘Jimi, you told me to call you on Sunday, but you didn’t answer. I tried several times, so I thought you’d call me back.’
Jimi looked at me curtly. ‘You have to call me,’ he lectured indignantly ‘I will gladly take out the ladies who call to me, but please, I will never call to them.’
I started to protest but thought better of it. ‘Okay, I understand. I’m sorry. How was the surf on Sunday? Did you end up flying your friend to the beach in your jet?’
‘No, there was some mechanical problems. My plane is still being fixed. I was very busy with other things, so my phone was not contactable. But today I was not busy and my phone was available to receive calls.’ He smiled rigidly, but I ignored his juvenile stabs.
‘So how was the Chinese food? Delicious?’ At Maxim’s last week, Jimi had made plans to take me for Chinese on my birthday to force me to eat Peking duck.
‘Of course. Maybe you would like some cake? It is my friend’s birthday. That is why we went to dinner, and now I am treating them here. Your birthday is what day this week?’
‘Tomorrow.’ Of course Jimi already knew that.
‘Then perhaps we cannot go to dinner. You must want to spend it with your friends.’
‘No, I don’t mind. I’ve never been to a real sushi bar. I’d love to go.’
‘Okay, so where do you want to go tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘Italian?’
‘No, sushi, please.’ I knew not to fail this latest trick question. It was best to allow Jimi to reinstate his upper hand after such a superbly indirect effort to reproach me.
‘Okay. If tomorrow when you wake up you decide you still want to go, you must call to me and I will book. The restaurant is very busy, all the time. Otherwise, not possible.’
‘Okay then, I’ll decide now. Let’s go.’
Satisfied at last, Jimi spoke to one of the ‘famous chefs’. Without responding, the chef carefully positioned his palms on his thighs and performed three deep-seated bows to Jimi. To me he gave a fat thumbs up, and it seemed our reservation was confirmed.
‘Okay, I have booked a table for three,’ Jimi beamed. ‘Please bring along a friend. I never invite only one lady. I do not want to be uncomfortable, do you understand?’
‘Completely.’ But who was I to ask at such short notice?
Abie sucked on her cigarette like a resuscitated patient at oxygen. She’d agreed to come on my birthday dohan with Jimi under one condition: she, under no circumstance, would have to eat meat.
‘So, what else are you doing for your birthday? Is this it? Sushi with an old Japanese guy? You and Matt should come out with us after work. The poor guy. I can’t believe that you two didn’t even go out to dinner. Doesn’t he care?’
‘Nah, we bought ice-cream sandwiches from the convenience store instead. They were cheap, one buck each. Besides, I need the dohan points. You know what I mean.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ Abie complained. ‘But I love your husband.’
I wanted to explain to her that normally I wouldn’t be abandoning Matt in favour of a Japanese millionaire, but what could I say? I didn’t want to blow my cover. She seemed to expect a better answer, but luckily I spotted a taxi bellowing across the intersection towards us at precisely ten to seven, carrying a shiny bald head attached to two frantically waving arms.
‘C’mon, that’s him.’
The door flew open, we hopped in and I was on the way to spend my twenty-first-birthday dinner with an old Japanese millionaire and a vegetarian Israeli to eat a meal that would cost more than I’d make in a week. What a bizarre little world.