Hair Nudes

DAVID LAZARUS

I remember reading somewhere how half of all Japanese lack this like enzyme in their bodies. I suppose I got it from the health and science page, although I can’t believe we were actually running something interesting in the paper. But this enzyme, what it did was help the body process alcohol, and because most Japanese don’t have it, that’s why their faces turn red when they drink, and why they’re always dropping from heart attacks, and why they become absolutely spud-eyed from just a whiskey or two. You’d think they wouldn’t drink so much, seeing as how, scientifically, they can’t hold their liquor. But they drink like fish. All of them. I mean sometimes I think everyone here is a drunk, which wouldn’t be so bad if they were nice, cool, Humphrey Bogart–style drunks. But Japanese, they go out, get totally pickled, and then come straight to my subway line so they can puke all over the platform just before I’m on my way home. I mean like every night. It makes me sick.

So I was standing with Shin, my boyfriend, at this kiosk at Tokyo Station. It was about eight o’clock in the morning, and Shin was picking out a couple of foul-looking bento boxes for our breakfast. Then he told the woman at the counter to add a couple of those little sakes to the meal, the “one cup” kind that you always see ratty homeless guys clutching in train stations.

“What are you doing?”

Shin didn’t seem to understand what I was asking. He laid his money on the counter.

“I don’t want any sake,” I said.

“Okay,” he replied. “I’ll have it.”

“But it’s still morning.”

He gave me a puzzled look, like how he looks whenever I betray my amazing ignorance about “his” culture. Shin doesn’t even like to discuss this kind of thing. He thinks, because I’m living in Japan, I should be this like huge expert on everything Japanese. I’ve been here a couple of years and I can still barely speak the language. For Shin, this is like a major tragedy, this incredible disappointment. We had a big fight after I stopped taking lessons. Shin acted like it was personal. He wanted to know how I could do this to him, when I’d been wondering just the reverse, sitting there in class trying to remember the “stroke order” of thousands of these impossible little kanji. I mean, right. If I wanted to learn a million Chinese characters, I’d have moved to Beijing.

Shin handed me the plastic bag with our bentos and the sakes, and he picked up the suitcase we’d packed with our stuff. We were going down to Kobe for a few days, to see his family. He’d wanted to go for New Year’s, but I absolutely refused to go anywhere during the holiday. Like I really wanted to set foot on a bullet train when every day there were stories in the paper about how the Shinkansen were at two-hundred-percent capacity. It was bad enough commuting forty-five minutes to the office every morning. The last thing I wanted was to have my atoms smashed for four or five hours.

I followed Shin through the station. He’d been weird since we got up, and when I asked what was the matter, he just shook his head and said nothing was wrong. But Shin’s a really terrible liar, which I guess is nice, seeing as how he’s a reporter and all. So I was tempted to say that if he was freaked about introducing me to his family, why were we going down there? I mean, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to playing the humble gaijin for three days. But I didn’t say anything. He’d just keep insisting that everything was fine, so what was the point?

We went up to the platform and right onto the train. As usual, Shin had timed our movements down to the second, which you can do in a place as anal as Japan, if you want. So just as we settled into our seats a little Minnie Mouse voice was announcing that we were about to get underway. Then it was repeated in English in this very proper British accent. That’s another reason I stopped taking language lessons. Everything you need to know is repeated in English anyway.

We pulled out of the station and Shin wasted no time popping the top on his sake. My tongue curled.

“It’s not even eight-thirty,” I said.

Shin ignored me, like I was peeing all over his culture again. And I suppose I was, considering how I could hear beer cans and sake bottles being opened all around us. What is it about the Japanese that travel and getting shit-faced always go hand in hand?

We stared out the window for a bit watching the buildings go by. Both of us were looking for the newspaper office, which isn’t far from the tracks. It slid past and I tried to think who from the features section was working this weekend. We get most of our pages done in advance, but someone has to be around just to make sure that the paste-up guys don’t suddenly decide to rearrange all the paragraphs, or that a caption hasn’t fallen off. It’s not so bad working weekends. You can kick your feet up, or go over to the news section and chat with whichever reporters are on.

That was something I liked doing with Shin, working weekends together. He was always more relaxed in the newsroom, more in his element. He’d come over to features and sit beside me and watch CNN, never failing to shake his head over whatever proof was being offered about the degenerate state of American society. If a Japanese person got shot or robbed in L.A., which seemed to happen at least once a week, Shin would complain that American “morals” and “ethics” had disappeared. He takes it really seriously, like we’re really letting Japan down. Like I’m sorry.

The train picked up speed as we got out of Tokyo and began zipping through Yokohama. Shin took out a magazine. It was one of those weekly “news” magazines, although from what I could tell, news was never that much of a priority. The fact that they ran color photos of naked women was one indication. It used to be that Japanese magazines weren’t allowed to show pubic hair. They could show just about anything else, like S&M or schoolgirls in their underwear, but pubic hair apparently was too much for local sensibilities. Then the police changed the law, and suddenly a bunch of art books appeared with sulky, pouty nude models, pubic hair and all. Next the weekly magazines started featuring pubic hair in their photos, all in the name or “art” and “free speech.” They called them “hair nudes.” Real arty.

I watched out of the corner of my eye as Shin flipped through the pages of his magazine. He went right past the hair nudes, which I knew he was doing for my benefit and which I appreciated. Shin can be pretty considerate, I’ll give him that. He’d check them out later, of course, when I was in the bathroom or something, but it was nice of him to at least pretend he wasn’t interested.

We’d gone through it before anyway. I’d started in on how Japanese men are all sexist scum, which they are, and how it’s offensive in the extreme to be sitting on the subway beside some middle-aged lecher who’s staring at nude photos of young girls in come-and-get-me poses. Like that’s not offensive? Could you imagine someone in America taking out a Playboy on a train and drooling over the pictures, right there in public?

Shin tells me I’ve got it all wrong. He says Japan has different cultural values, and I have no right to judge society by my “Western, Judeo-Christian value system.” Oh sure, like it’s a cultural thing to treat women like sex muffins, like this goes back to the Edo period or whatever so it must be okay.

Maybe I do have it wrong. I don’t know. It’s getting so every little thing is driving me nuts. I used to think Japan was so fascinating, so Asian. Now all I ever feel is frustrated. I read somewhere that this is natural, that all foreigners go through this endless love-hate thing with the country. Lately, I think I’ve been stuck in the hate part.

I’d brought a book to read, and I held it in my lap, but I wasn’t in the mood. This trip to Kobe, I wanted to tell Shin about the thoughts I’d been having, how I was thinking more and more about moving back to the States. We’d talked about it before, sort of, how maybe we could move together back to New York and he could go to journalism school and I could find some kind of magazine work. My roommate Leigh-Ann had already returned home to Seattle, and I hadn’t found anyone to replace her. (It was nice, I had to admit, having the whole apartment to myself, although I could hardly afford it.) I’d asked Shin how he thought about living together, but he said it was too early to discuss this. I suppose fear of commitment is a cultural thing too.

It wasn’t until we were all the way to Osaka that Shin suddenly felt like talking.

“You’ll like my parents,” he said, although he’d already told me this at least a dozen times before.

“I’m sure,” I replied.

“They’re really looking forward to meeting you.”

“Me too.”

Shin’s dad was a manager or something at some little company that made headlights for Toyota or Nissan or one of those guys. He was getting near retirement age, and apparently the big issue at Shin’s home was what Dad would do after giving his entire adult life to his company. I didn’t see what the big deal was. Now he could play golf or pachinko or whatever it was that he liked to do. But Shin seemed to think that all this free time was going to be real traumatic. He also worried that there could be friction between his parents. His mom had grown used to having the house to herself. Apparently she wasn’t exactly thrilled by the thought of having her husband underfoot all day.

We got off the Shinkansen at the next stop and transferred to another line that took us into central Kobe. Shin’s family’s place was then about a fifteen-minute walk from the station, which I didn’t really mind but which seemed to be a bit much for Shin. He kept passing the suitcase from hand to hand and giving me dark looks, like he was going to start in again on how I wouldn’t need my hair dryer, like it was even up to him what I would and wouldn’t want on a trip. Shin’s kind of a control freak, but that’s okay because so am I. We cancel each other out, I figure.

His folks’ home was on a narrow street in a residential neighborhood. Lots of little toy houses with those great blue-tile roofs, which I think would look so beautiful on a real house, like in Vermont or somewhere like that.

“Well, here we are,” Shin announced.

I nodded and wondered why we weren’t just going in. What was he waiting for, a big welcome-home ceremony? Shin gave me a long look.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

He went up and rang the bell. The door opened and Shin’s mom and dad appeared. I could see right away that Shin got his looks from his mom. They both had these little noses and great cheekbones. Shin’s dad looked about like any other guy I’d see on the train, with his gray hair glued firmly in place with some kind of goop.

I heard Shin introducing me and I muttered the correct excuse-me-for-being-so-impolite words, which you have to say even when you’re on your best behavior. I even bowed a little and Shin’s mom bowed lower in return. Shin’s dad wanted to shake hands so I shook his hand, and he stared at me with an uncertain expression, like how Shin looks whenever I say something that he isn’t sure is an insult or a joke.

“Nice to meet you,” I answered, and everyone laughed. That, I figured, was the extent of all conversation for the coming three days.

We went inside—they had guest slippers waiting in the hall for Shin and me—and I followed everyone into the living room. It was dominated by a huge TV and stereo setup, and the shelves had trophies that Shin’s dad had won in golf tournaments, and plaques his mom had won playing go, which I knew was like Othello but a lot harder. She was apparently some kind of go champion, and Shin had suggested that perhaps I could learn how to play so she and I would have something to do together. He even bought me a book of go strategies. I left it in Tokyo.

Immediately Shin’s mom was forcing food and drink on us, and I noticed that I was being referred to as “Grace-chan,” which I thought was kind of informal of them. “Chan” is like “san,” except it’s cuter and cuddlier, and mostly people use it when they’re talking to small children and animals. But since they were calling Shin “Shin-chan,” I figured they were just trying to make me feel at home.

The two of us went upstairs to unpack. The only thing that said we were in Shin’s old room was a bookcase full of school textbooks. Other than that, there was no evidence that anyone had ever lived in there. Not like my room back home, which my parents were preserving like some kind of shrine to their Long Lost Daughter.

“So what are we going to do for three days?” I asked.

“Anything we want.”

I already knew this; he’d said as much when I’d asked the same question back in Tokyo. But now that we were here I still didn’t know how we’d fill the time. Probably take long walks. I was hoping Shin would loosen up so we could maybe talk a little about the future.

We went back downstairs, and by this time Shin’s mom had laid the table with a ton of food, most of which I had no problem with. I really sympathized with Shin as we ate. His parents were making a big effort to be friendly to me, and poor Shin was stuck in the middle trying to translate everything. I only made things harder by cracking a few jokes, which are impossible to translate, and watched as Shin struggled to explain at length why what I’d said was funny.

I wondered why Shin’s dad kept giving me these little looks. I mean the gaijin-in-the-house thing was old news. He could give it a rest.

It was a Sunday evening and I wouldn’t have minded going out. Instead we all sat on the sofa and watched TV, mostly those incredibly lame quiz shows where the same old celebrities sit around competing for goodies that they couldn’t possibly want anyway. From time to time Shin’s mom would ask if I was all right. I told her I was fine.

What the hell, I thought. Three days. Two nights. Wouldn’t kill me.

By the next afternoon I was bored out of my mind. I kept waiting for Shin to take some action, to get us out of the house and doing something. But all he wanted was to sit around chatting with his mom. Or rather, sit around listening to his mom chat away, because that woman could talk. It was like this running monologue. Most Japanese, they let others get a word in every now and then, just to maintain a feeling of consensus. Not Shin’s mom. Whatever consensus there was, it was her consensus. Shin and Shin’s dad, who was taking the day off from work, could only nod their heads and make little grunting sounds every so often to show they were awake.

I tried to keep up at first. I sat at the table with the rest of them, and I smiled and did my best to decipher words here and there, so that maybe I could at least understand the gist of the conversation. But after a half-hour or so, I was so mentally exhausted I had to move over to the sofa and lie down.

“Daijobu?” Shin’s mom immediately asked in this tone like I’d coughed up blood.

“Hai,” I answered. I’m fine.

I thought that by my going over to the sofa, Shin would’ve understood that some of us weren’t getting as much attention as we’d like. But he let me just park there and turned his attention back to his mom, who started up again at full throttle.

Finally I turned on the TV and started watching a samurai drama—there’s always a samurai drama on Japanese TV—and I heard Shin’s mom’s voice drop to an almost-whisper and I heard my name tossed around. Then Shin, who hadn’t had enough sense to figure it out himself, came over and asked if I wanted to do anything.

“How about a walk,” I suggested.

“Okay. Where do you want to go?”

Sometimes guys are so thick you wonder how they make it past childhood.

“Anywhere is fine,” I said.

“Okay.”

He went back and talked to his mom a bit more, like he was asking permission to go out and play. I went upstairs and got my coat. It was January but winter had been pretty mild so far, not like some years when Japan turns into the world’s biggest meat locker. Or maybe it’s just that none of the houses or apartments have insulation, which of course is cultural, seeing how no one had insulation back in Edo times.

Shin and I said our goodbyes, and Shin’s mom told us to be careful. Yeah, okay, we won’t play in the road. Then we started walking to Shin’s old high school, which he wanted to show me because he said it would help me understand who he is, like I don’t already know.

“So what do you think?” he asked.

“About what?”

“My family.”

“They’re great.”

“Yes?”

“Sure.”

What else was I going to say? Your mom’s a self-centered, motor-mouthed old hen, and I keep catching your dad staring at my chest?

“I’m glad you think so,” Shin said. “I really wanted you to meet them.”

“Well, I’ve met them.”

“Yes.”

Japanese guys have a lot going for them over Americans. They’re sweeter by and large, and usually more thoughtful. They’re nice in bed. But at least Americans don’t feel this need to inflict their families on you. Not once did I have a boyfriend in the States who wanted me to meet his mom and dad. Like I’d show my folks to an outsider? Please.

So we reached Shin’s old school and stood at the fence watching a bunch of boys in their black, military-style uniforms running around with soccer balls. What fun.

“Shall we go back?” Shin asked after a few minutes.

“How about if we walk a little further,” I said. “Maybe we could go visit a temple or something.”

Shin shook his head. “I think we should be heading back. My parents really want to see us.”

“They’re seeing us. But it’s nice to be outside for a bit.”

“I think we should go back.”

“You go back. I want to walk a little more.”

Shin got a pained look on his face, like he didn’t know what to do with me. Then he said, “All right. Can you find your way?”

“I’ll manage.”

He turned and walked off.

I knew I should have been making more of an effort to do the family thing. I mean I could see how important it was to him. But we’d just finally gotten out of the house, and would it have been so bad just to spend an hour together, just the two of us?

I memorized how we had come and continued walking. Kobe seemed nice enough, a little slower than Tokyo, a little less crowded, but the same basic gray buildings everywhere. Eventually I came across a small shrine, one of the ones with the two little fox statues out front, and I sat down on a bench. It’s nice the way Japan has all these little shrines and temples tucked away all over the place. Kind of compensates for the sameness of everything else.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, maybe twenty minutes, maybe a half-hour. Not that long. Then I got up and made my way through the little streets back to Shin’s place. I thought I might get lost, but I didn’t. I’ve got a pretty good sense of direction, and you can always use the convenience stores on every corner as markers.

I rang the bell when I arrived. It took like almost a minute and then Shin’s mom opened the door.

“Konnichiwa,” I said.

She didn’t reply. Just stood aside so I could enter. Now what?

I put on my guest slippers and went back into the living room, where Shin and his dad were sitting quietly at the table looking like someone had just died. Fine. I didn’t want to get into whatever it was they were hashing out. So I turned around and went upstairs. Let Shin do his own thing.

I was just settling onto the futon when Shin appeared in the doorway. Still had that gloom-and-doom look on his face.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

“What?” I said.

“How could you do this?”

“What?”

He stepped into the room and handed me a large book, which naturally I recognized, having one just like it in my apartment.

Visions of Venus.

I glanced at the cover, the coy Japanese model playing peekaboo in a steaming hot spring. Her name, I’d been told, was Suki. It killed me. Suki. How come models never have ugly names?

I set the book down and looked up at Shin. He was staring at me like I was supposed to burst out in tears or something.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well what?”

It was priceless, the bewildered little look on his face.

He practically fell onto the futon beside me and snatched up the book. He flipped through the pages.

“Page eighty-seven,” I said, trying to be helpful.

Shin stared at me a moment and then quickly turned to page eighty-seven. Yup, there I was, perched sweet as can be on my couch with the newspaper. You couldn’t tell from the photo, but it was turned to the health and science page. My own little joke.

It was a pretty good photo, actually. Normally I don’t photograph well. I think I always look fat. But this one, the photographer got the afternoon shadows in this really cool way. I looked nice.

Shin gazed at the photo, then back at me.

“What’s the matter?” he repeated.

“Yeah. It’s a nice photo.”

“You’re naked.”

“Uh-huh.”

Shin frowned, at a loss for further observations.

“Everyone in there is,” I pointed out.

In fact, my picture was one of the tamest. The one that would have pissed me off, if I was Japanese, would have been the blonde they had nestled in the lap of the giant Buddha in Kamakura. Surely that’s some kind of major insult to the religion.

“Naked,” Shin said again.

“Yeah. So?”

“So?”

“So what?”

“You’re . . . ” He struggled for the words. “You’re a hair nude!”

“Not really. It’s just a little. You can barely see it.”

Shin examined the picture more closely. Technically speaking, he was right. I mean there was some hair. But the newspaper mostly covered it up.

He looked at me again and I could see it was time to offer a little assistance.

“It’s no big deal,” I said. “A friend told me about this book they were putting together, a collection of Asian and Western models. She introduced me to one of the photographers. It only took like an hour.”

“But why?”

“Three hundred thousand yen, that’s why.”

And it was the easiest three thousand bucks I’d ever made. Nearly two months’ rent. But I was saving it. For the move home.

I could see Shin’s mind working.

“But this is pornography,” he said. “You told me that this is violence against women.”

“This isn’t porn. It’s an art book. It’s nothing.”

Shin wrestled with that. I reached over and took the book from his hands and closed it. I set it on the floor between us.

“Where did you get it?” I asked.

“It’s my father’s.”

His father’s? That explained a thing or two.

“What, may I ask, is your father doing with a book of naked women?”

Shin stared down at the book like the question hadn’t even occurred to him until now. He shook his head.

“That’s not the point.”

“Why isn’t that the point? Why is it okay for your dad to keep a book like this around the house, but it isn’t okay for me to pose for one of the photos?”

This was almost fun. Poor Shin.

“It’s completely different,” he insisted, although I could tell from his expression that he wasn’t sure why.

Shin was quiet for a moment and then lay on his back and stared up at the white stucco ceiling.

“This screws up everything,” he said.

“How’s that?” I asked, lying down next to him.

“Now how can we get married?”

I had to laugh. “Who said anything about getting married?”

He popped back up into a sitting position.

“Why do you think we’re here?”

“To visit your parents?”

“So they can meet you.”

“And we’ve met.”

“So we can get married!”

“Hang on, kiddo,” I said, sitting up. “Just because I came down here with you to meet your folks, that doesn’t mean we’re engaged or anything.”

“That would come next.”

He was getting way ahead of me.

“Look Shin,” I said. “I’m not ready to get married. Okay?”

“But . . . ” His objection didn’t go anywhere.

“What about what we talked about,” I said. “About moving together to New York?”

“New York?”

“Like we discussed.”

He turned his gaze to the window. The sun was going down. It’d be dark soon.

“I don’t want to go to New York,” he said.

“I do. I think it’s time for me to go home.”

Shin didn’t know what to say to that. I was a little surprised myself by how firm my voice sounded. I hadn’t realized until just that moment that I’d already made up my mind.

“I want to go home,” I said.

Shin was lost. I put my arm around his shoulder but he shrugged it off and stood quickly. He picked up his dad’s book and left the room. I heard his footsteps going down the stairs.

So what was I supposed to do, go after him? Tell him everything would be all right? To be honest, I was more interested in all the plans I’d now have to make.

I stayed up in the bedroom for another half-hour or so, until Shin called me down for dinner. When I got downstairs I thought I’d walked into the Twilight Zone. I mean everyone was acting like nothing was the matter. Shin’s mom performed her usual monologue throughout the meal, and Shin’s dad kept stealing peeks at me. And Shin—he was smiling and laughing at his mom’s little quips, translating for me like I was part of the happy family. Only once did I get a sense of reality. That was when Shin went into the kitchen to get another beer, and I caught his mom gazing in my direction. It was a real Charles Manson kind of look. Then Shin returned and his mom went back into her patter and everything was fine.

In bed that night, Shin said he didn’t feel like talking. He said we could talk when we got back to Tokyo. I said okay, fine, if that’s how you want it. He could act like such a little boy sometimes.

Neither of us slept well. We both tossed and turned for hours. I pulled back a curtain and stared out the window. There was this really intense orange moon.

I must have finally fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew I was awake and the room was falling all over me.

I’d been in plenty of earthquakes in Tokyo—more than I’d care to count—but nothing like this. I mean the whole room was bouncing. Shin’s old schoolbooks came tumbling off the shelves, the closet doors swung open, the dresser skittered on the floor. I ducked under the futon and it still kept going. Like almost a minute. I heard a cracking sound from somewhere deep in the house.

Then, like always, it let up gradually. Everything slowly came to a halt.

“Jesus,” I said, emerging from the futon.

“Are you all right?” Shin asked.

“I think so. You?”

“Yes.”

He climbed to his feet and looked out the window. It was still dark out. The room looked like a tornado had just swept through.

Then Shin went running downstairs calling for his parents.

I sat up feeling jittery and shaky and totally spooked. I could hear glass breaking.

“Grace,” Shin called.

“What?”

“Come down. Hurry.”

I slid into my jeans and grabbed a sweater. The house still felt like it was moving, like we were floating at sea. I made my way carefully down the stairs. There weren’t any lights. The power must have been knocked out.

Downstairs was a mess. All the trophies and doodads from the shelves had been knocked to the floor, and the big TV had fallen over. But that was nothing compared to what I saw in the kitchen. Or what I didn’t see. The entire kitchen wall had collapsed. You could walk right out to the street.

Shin and his parents were running around throwing things into suitcases. I almost went back upstairs to get my stuff, but then I figured this was no time to be greedy. Not if the house was about to come down. So I grabbed my jacket from the closet and my shoes from the entryway. I put them on and walked right through the living room, violating like a dozen Japanese cultural taboos. I stepped through the hole where the kitchen wall used to be and out into the cool morning air.

Shin’s mom was behind me, wrapped in a blanket. She stared open-mouthed at the remains of her kitchen and then shot me a nasty look like it was all my fault. I mean, what, because of a nude photo?

Shin and Shin’s dad came out a few minutes later carrying a bunch of suitcases. They set them down right there on the road.

I looked up the street. People were slowly spilling out of their homes. It looked like all the houses had been pretty badly damaged. None of them had completely collapsed, at least none yet, but walls were cracked and broken, and windows were smashed.

“Come on,” Shin said to me.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Around. We’ve got to find a phone.”

“What, you want to go cover the story?”

“Of course.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No, come on. This is important.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to wait here for help.”

“But this is a disaster.”

“No shit.”

Shin wasn’t going to waste time arguing. He said something to his folks and went running down the road. His mom flashed another helter-skelter look in my direction and went chasing after him, calling, “Shin-chan! Shin-chan!”

Then it was just me and Shin’s dad. He reached inside the kitchen and handed out a couple of chairs. We set them in the middle of the road.

I could smell smoke. There was a fire burning somewhere.

We sat quietly for a few minutes, just listening to all the activity, the sirens starting up all over the city. It would be light soon.

Shin’s dad was gazing up at the sky. He had a calm, not-quite-all-there expression on his face.

“I’m sorry about your house,” I said.

Shin’s dad got up again and poked through the remains of his kitchen. He returned with a bottle of whiskey, unscrewed the cap and took a swig. He offered it to me. I held it to my lips and took a little sip, then a bigger swallow. I could feel the chill easing inside me.

The smell of smoke was heavier now. You could practically taste it in your nostrils.

Shin’s dad and I sat there for I don’t know how long, passing the bottle back and forth, not saying a word. People walked by with dazed looks on their faces. They couldn’t seem to comprehend what was happening.

What was the problem? This was Japan. It you’re going to live here, you might as well get used to the idea that earthquakes happen. I mean they’ve been hitting the country for like centuries, right?

I took another pull from the bottle, feeling a whole lot better now. I started thinking about how I’d be returning home soon. I’d go to New York, find a job, an apartment. Get serious about my life. My parents would be glad. They’d been asking when I was finally going to settle, stop running away from things. Like that’s even what I do.

The whiskey was nice. It went down smooth. I handed the bottle back to Shin’s dad and stared up at the sky.

Or maybe I’d move to Italy.

[1995]