When we were at the hotel, our conversation kept going back to the performance—by the time that interpreter girl went up to the mic, everyone had pretty much had it, I doubt anyone was actually listening to her, which kind of sucks—is what I said, and so she was like, yeah, but you know she’s always, I mean she never really pays attention to the vibe, or it’s like whatever the feel is, it has nothing to do with her, it’s basically always that way with her.
We picked the hotel at random, and the room was pretty cheaply put together, but that was fine. At first I thought the wallpaper was old and grimy, and it was only later that I realized it was just pink wallpaper. She let her thick hair down, so the diagonal line of her fringe was gone. Without that she had a different feel, maybe less subdued. I noticed that her eyes angled up at the corners. The conversation trailed off, maybe we weren’t done talking but there was a break, and we nuzzled in close again, started taking little nips and nibbles at each other, getting back into it.
We stayed for four nights, and on the morning of the fifth day we said goodbye. Only once did we venture out into Shibuya. Otherwise we were holed up in the room the entire time. There was a TV, but we never turned it on. We had no idea what was going on in the outside world, not even the weather. In between sessions of sex we talked, like everyone does, about all kinds of things. I can’t remember everything we talked about. We never told each other our names or phone numbers or email addresses. Pretty much nothing about ourselves, none of the usual stuff you’d chat about, like where you work, or how you hate the people you work with—none of that. Instead we talked about when we were little. Why is it that when you’re all spent after sex you want to talk about your childhood, especially when you don’t know anything about the other person? I don’t think either one of us knew whether we were intentionally avoiding talking about ourselves in the present or whether it just happened. But I think some part of us knew that this was the best thing to do. Like maybe your childhood self is your truest self, but that actually isn’t true at all, so stories from your childhood are convenient that way. I’ve used them to get through casual sex encounters with girls before, and I did it this time too.
We talked in bed. The sheets had that impersonal feel that love hotel beds always have, I could feel it on my back, under the palms of my hands. They were brittle with starch to show they’d been washed, and they gave off this disgust, this contempt for the act of human beings fucking. They didn’t try to hide how much they loathed us. They wanted to make sure we knew. So I figured, well, this bed isn’t for sleeping by yourself, there’ll always be another person, so it doesn’t matter all that much if the sheets aren’t like saying welcome, how nice to have you here, and then I felt like my mind was being read, like I was being seen through. But by who? By the hotel staff. And by the sheets themselves. I was sure of it. I moved my hands to her skin, and her skin was warm. We talked about our childhoods. We tried talking about music but it was immediately clear that we didn’t like any of the same stuff so we just let that topic be. Movies and manga were easier. Like I said, we never talked about ourselves, I mean our real selves, and it was almost like we had at some point agreed on that as a rule, which felt like a miracle. I also knew that under no circumstances could I talk about this miracle. It sounds stupid, but I was scared that if I went and said it then something would change. The rule had to be followed at all costs, I mean it felt that way to me, and maybe to her too. And we did, we followed the rule, for the whole time we were together. Even when we weren’t talking about ourselves, there was enough to talk about. Like the performance, we talked a lot about that. We never got tired of talking about that. Whenever we got to something we couldn’t figure out, we would just have sex again. Neither one of us spoke in a hurry, so the conversation had a nice, relaxed pace. As we got used to each other the pace picked up a little, but it stayed easy. It was like that for the whole time, from when we first went to the hotel. Even going to the hotel just kind of happened, same as the boundaries of what we were going to talk about, without either of us outright suggesting it.
We were lying side by side on top of the sheets, which were all twisted up from the last round of sex. I said to her, I’m really bad at English, so I can’t say for sure, but I thought that performance, you know, this might just be me, but I thought that performance was pretty great, you know? and I genuinely meant it. I had the feeling that the experience was going to stay with me for the rest of my life. It could just be the afterglow from sex, but I really wanted to communicate to her how honestly excited I was about the performance.
Although I might have told her that in the taxi on the way to the hotel, or it may have been that we were already talking about it when we first met at SuperDeluxe. The performance was staying with me like the lingering heat on your skin after spending a day at the beach, warmth that you feel into the night. The show was over and the lights were back on. The area around the bar was a little brighter than the rest of the room, and we stood there talking. It only took a couple minutes of conversation to make up our minds. We left the place and went straight to the hotel. I didn’t say much to the five guys I had come with. I just went back to where they were all sitting, grabbed my stuff, must have said something about what I was doing, and that was that. The girl and I caught a taxi as soon as we stepped outside. Sitting in the back seat, holding hands like lovers, we headed to Shibuya.
The performance made it feel like we were in another country, I said to her, and I don’t think it was just because the performers were foreigners. I whispered that to her or something like it, maybe not fully whispering but anyway in a quiet voice, my mouth close to her ear. But I was also completely wasted, so I probably didn’t manage to say any of that in a logical and intelligible way—even when I’m sober I’m not the best at communicating stuff like that—so the best I could do was to try over and over again, tracing the same line of conversation, and even then I doubt I managed to get it quite right. She was skinny, and her fingers and the palm of her hand didn’t have much meat on them. The feel of her fingers laced between mine actually hurt a little, the bony sharpness of them, it was like they existed to give that pain, and that pain felt kind of good. I wiggled my fingers between hers like to appreciate it. We pretended the driver couldn’t see us. He probably knew what was going on, but he was an older guy who was good at acting like nothing was happening in his taxi, and if he did suspect something, he knew better than to make too big of a show ignoring it, since that would just tip us off to the fact that he knew, but anyway even if he did know I really didn’t care. He must have seen us making out in the rear-view mirror. My other hand was up her skirt, not quite in her panties but rubbing the top of her thighs through her stockings as voices kept going back and forth on the taxi radio. And still I couldn’t get away from thinking how at SuperDeluxe, when the audience members went up to the mic, they were speaking in Japanese, but it almost sounded like English, and why did it sound that way? I went back and forth over these thoughts, running my hands over her stockings, imagining the feel of the bare skin underneath. Although, I mean, I couldn’t be too obvious about rubbing her thighs, so a lot of the time I just had my hand on her thigh, resting. Now I wonder what she was thinking after hearing me say what I said about the performance, or if she even heard it at all. When I said what I said, how come she didn’t answer? Did she try to say something, or try to get me to say more, and horniness got in the way? I’ll never be able to ask her now—I doubt I’ll ever see her again. Maybe if the performers were Japanese, even if they said all the exact same things, the whole thing would have felt different. There was a particular atmosphere there, an informal conversation about the war that was about to begin, a conversation that could never have happened in a room full of only Japanese people. I can’t even imagine it. If a group of Japanese people tried to create the same scene, it would feel wrong, like a fake plastered-on smile, and I wouldn’t go anywhere near it.