Part I
I.
It can begin anywhere. Soren comes up to me on the Keihin-Tohoku line home from work on a Thursday evening and at first I don't know who he is. All I notice is a figure in my peripheral vision standing up out of one of the traincar seats, approaching me, and in clear unaccented American English saying, "Ritchie? Ritchie, is that you?" Surprised by this unexpected greeting, I look over and realize that I do recognize the person. His name is…Soren. Right. Soren Soutern. Three weeks ago, he had put an advertisement on Tokyo Craigslist, offering to trade a box of English-language books for a packet of non-Japanese cigarettes. It's not easy for expats to get paperbacks and moreover, the whole ad had been funny, reading 'deliver me a pack of non-Japanese cigarettes and you have an entire cardboard box of recent books.' With all these earnest 'English lessons for 2500 yen' or 'Japanese girl seeks English language partner for foreign exchange' entries crowding up the listserv, the slightly sarcastic, seemingly ironic ad had to be investigated. Moreover, I had had, by chance, a whole carton of duty-free Sobranies lying around the apartment that I had picked up last visit stateside and never found anyone to gift to. So I called up the listed phone number, noted the unexpected address, and went later that day with the cigarettes and a tacky American-flag lighter added in purely as a bonus, and returned home that evening with a good-sized box of both cheap paperbacks and some quality college lit titles all in decent condition, definitely a good deal.
That day I had answered the advertisement, I had also found myself unexpectedly recognizing the other person. You see, when Soren opened the door to his Roppongi Hills apartment, the individual, perhaps in my mind's eye some spoiled university student living with his parents, maybe even a Japanese (they take on unusual English names sometimes; they think it's cool) is actually on the contrary a tallish, good-looking twenty-something foreigner, sandy-haired and trim, who I had definitely seen before in the Tokyo foreigner scene. Soren and I had actually not talked before. But he had a way of standing out from the crowd: wearing his always completely fashionable clothes, he was invariably seen with this unbelievably beautiful and tall Japanese girl, a gazelle-like figure who looked like she had stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine and carried herself knowing it. Soren and I had nodded to each other a few times at social events, the 'foreigner nod' you give to other foreigners when living abroad, but had never really spoken. It was part of the "rules of cool," of course; you knew dozens of people you never deigned to even exchange names with.
If Soren does not come up to me on the train now, three weeks after our trade of books for cigarettes, perhaps we are destined never to enter each other's lives. We will go our separate ways in the city of Tokyo, population twenty million, attend a handful of parties or get-togethers in common, perpetually recognize each other solely by appearance, and then move on to whatever it is we will do in the years to come. But Soren does come up to me, he does make that approach despite it being a minor violation of the rules of cool, and I do not call him out on it. Rather, I greet him friendily and ask how the cigarettes are working out.
"Fine, fine. But actually Ritchie, I'm kinda looking for something else."
"Uh, sure, what do you need?"
"Do you know where I can score some drugs?"
At this response, I feel like groaning aloud. This is exactly how quickly the twenty-four-year old gets to the point, and my first reaction is to wonder if I give off some sort of drug-vibe--if I don't in some strange way communicate without being aware of it, "hey, I'm clearly a lowlife drug dealer. Come up to me if you want to score." But that's absurd. I know for a fact that to all outside appearances I am the utterly conventional-looking twenty-one year old Tokyo foreigner expat that I am in truth. And if anything, I look a hundred times more conventional than your average expat because I try to avoid the strange Tokyo street fashions that some expats seem to adopt after living here for some time--usually only with indifferent success. At twenty-two, I'm rather indifferently conventional, a sort of Mugi and occasional Uniqlo-shopper, casually fashionable without being too perfectly in the now. Yet truth be told: I'm also sort of oddly wide-ranging in my choice of acquaintances. I've been in Japan for fourteen months now, and through a willingness to know all sorts of random people you encounter in the foreign scene, I can, unfortunately, actually get Soren what he wants. I'm not a drug dealer. I'm really not. But it's true, forty minutes later, I'm at Roppongi Hills climbing up the stairs to the main plaza with two pills of ecstasy—MDMA—hidden in an orange pill container in my messenger bag and a flicker of a smirk on my face. I'm smirking because it's Japan, because I am, well, officially, supplying drugs, and because the place is just ridiculous.
Soren's building, Roppongi Hills, you see, only just then finished, is the talk of all Tokyo. Built by the "visionary" Minoru Mori, the miniature "city within a city" Cosmopolitan Living Concept was this fantastically gigantic 'megaproject' that destroyed several entire neighborhoods to put in multi-billion dollar pod-shaped 'arcologies' of luxury housing, a hotel, entertainment facilities, and offices. From your sixteen thousand U.S. dollar a month apartment, you can take a number of escalators and moving sidewalks to your Merrill Lynch finance job, stop briefly at the organic fourth-floor supermarket, and then be sped up twenty stories to your private health club overlooking some of the most stunning vantage points of Tokyo, all without ever having to expose yourself to all the pollution, street crime, and assorted other highly risky dangers of Japan's capital. So this is why I had earlier thought that the young man at the other end of the phone line had to be somebody living with his parents. What twenty-something could afford such a place? But as it is, Soren's father, a New York City commercial real estate and securities tycoon, purchased the apartment in the Towers straight out for use by his son and probably to recycle some cash whose origins weren't entirely clear. It's a sort of a ridiculously great sort of pad for a young guy to have, and though I'm not from a desperately poor background, I'm without being obvious about it, all eyes. Technically I should be intimidated. Technically, I should be so awed by the sheer amount of power that Soren's wealth implies that I should quake in my New Balance sneakers and run back to my downscale Ueno pad. But with the blase confidence inspired by the sort of division-less equality of expat life, I walk into Soren's apartment and plop down on his black leather couch where he had served me orange juice three weeks prior. I lean my head back to feel the full blast of the apartment's air-conditioning that I remembered as quite effective.
"So you got the stuff?" Soren asks, nervously.
"Yeah, dude. Got it all." I spill out the contents of the medicine vial onto his palm. He looks at the pills suspiciously.
"Where'd you get 'em from? How do you know that guy?"
"Relax. Friend of a friend named Big-T, he just mixed them in with some prescription pills last trip back from New York City."
"And how long has your friend known Big-T?"
"Only like two years, but he knows somebody who knew T from back home since elementary school. They're totally legit."
The answer seems to satisfy Soren. Looking almost plaintive, he gulps down a pill of E with a glass of ice water.
"Wow, in the middle of the day?" I say. "Oh my god. I thought you were going to use them at some party or something."
"Been too long, man--I really needed to score, it's just been that kind of week. What do I owe you?"
"Nothing, dude. I don't actually want to become a drug dealer—they're all yours on the house."
"Cool… thanks. I mean really."
We sit around his place waiting for the Ecstasy to kick in, and leaning back, I take in the interior decoration. There's this curious temporary feel about the decor, as if Soren's not quite psychologically deciding to settle in: lots of white space on the walls where art prints or posters should go, entire sections of wall-space completely empty. Pop Chinese kitsch—a little Chairman Mao figurine, a poster of revolutionary Chinese farm workers complete with inscrutable slogan—doesn't really fill up the place, but I do catch sight of the SubZero refrigerator, the Bang & Olufsen touch-pad stereo—I knew these things from magazine ads; it's my first time seeing the actual items.
"So, just curious man," I say, "you said when we swapped for the paperbacks that you recognized me. Was this true? You really know who I am? What do you know about me?"
"Yeah, dude, sure. I definitely seen you around the place Ritchie. You're like…well, one of the hipsters always hanging out, into some or another artistic b.s."
I laugh. "Really? I thought I was rather boring actually."
"No, dude man. Wasn't there some hot little blonde number hanging around you all the time? She your girlfriend?"
"Nah, she's just a friend. We were sitting next to each other on the same plane when we came over, and then we kept running into each other, so we keep in touch. But you know, I don't think we feel the slightest bit of any sort of chemistry with each other." I ask him in turn about his apparent girlfriend—the unbelievable modelesque "gazelle" girl that some of us have been talking over endlessly--but Soren smiles sheepishly.
"Actually Ayako and I are not really boyfriend-girlfriend either. She's still moping over some ex of hers, won't let me sleep with her."
"Oh my god," I say, "You realize you just disappointed the entire male gaijin population of Tokyo? Everyone thinks that girl is unbelievable."
"Yeah, she's something isn't she?"
"She's like this girl out of like some mists and samurai novel—not your typical tiny little J-cutie, all fluff, but somebody like…Tale of Genji, samurai and cherry blossoms or something. Ancient Japan. 'Cuz she's tall."
"Yeah well, she's just letting me sleep in bed with her, not a move further."
"That's it?"
"Yeah, Ritchie. I like, try to touch her when we're in bed, but she just moves away."
"That's really sad," I say laughing. "You share a bed with a girl night after night, but you don't actually get any play."
We sit there silently for a moment, thoughtful, and the afternoon atmosphere seems filled with a sense of foreboding. The immensity of the city sprawl hundreds of meters below the floor-to-ceiling windows is silent and unyielding, and for a moment one might almost characterize it as strangely oppressive. The sun is appreciably low in the sky and one can begin to see the blinking patterns of light that mark buildings on commercial drives as the changeover from daytime to evening begins. Then, the silence is suddenly interrupted by the shrill ring of the telephone, which Soren, sitting near to, reaches over and picks up. It's friends of his; they want to go for a ride. Soren sounds almost sheepish as he answers a series of rapid-fire questions, something to do with a BMW Z3 wrapped around a telephone pole, or actually just punched against a highway barrier, "no engine damage, dude, no engine damage--just sheet metal!" that's all, really. There's some mutual agreement being hammered out, and then he puts down the phone.
"Uh, Ritchie, you free tonight?"
"Yeah, what's up?"
"People hanging out. Let's go!" So we hustle, and take the elevator down and walk over to Roppongi-dori, where there's a white Infiniti SUV backing up traffic. Five minutes later, we're taking the onramp to the elevated expressways that shoot between the skyscrapers. I realize I recognize the driver, Takashi, too, a young Japanese dude who seems to know all the foreigners, everywhere, all the time. I say hello and he smiles back and everyone's already talking excitedly to each other. "Like we should totally share life stories and all because that's all we really have, each other," says somebody's dizzy chick. I put on sunglasses; I grin.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, it's because cars are rare, because the trains run so regularly and everything is so convenient that getting to drive around the city is an experience of itself. It's exactly that part of Tokyo near the river engineering works, where suddenly there's just sky on the break of evening that makes you feel that you've made the right decision and this is where you ought to be, the center of the universe, the cutting edge of the cutting edge. Paris? NYC? Those places are so last year! On a day of clouds or rain, Tokyo washes aclean, and everywhere, in everything large and small, the palpable influence of the foreign aesthetic, the Japan feel, infiltrates everything, so that there's art and potential in all things, a brief glance from a girl on the sidewalk, the seemingly flimsy architecture. You're at once in an ancient, ancient foreign country and this new plastic fantastically new metropolis, the center of so much action and desire. That evening, we end up in Aoyama.
"You know the bassist for Quality of Light?"
"Yeah. We went to college together. He's a good guy."
"No way, that's way cool."
Soren knows a hole-in-the-wall bar on a side street, someplace you'd only ever find out about if somebody took you there. We enter the place, and for the first few moments are just staring around at things: the entire interior is molded in white 60s plastic, with corresponding day-glo fixtures and a colorful, retro circle motif, lime and orange, repeated on the bar stools, wall decorations, and lights. Cibo Matto is blaring from wall-mounted speakers. "Man, this place is melting," somebody says, and we're laughing at something, though we don't know what. The hostess comes over and seats us at a booth.
"So, Takashi," I say, finding myself next to him, "what's been going on in your world?"
"Ahh, not much, Ritchie, same old same old. So many people coming, so many people leaving, my head spinning, you know?"
"Yeah, I understand the feeling exactly. Still, there are a few people who seem to just thrive here, hey?"
"Yeah, I guess a few. But then sometimes I feel when new kids come in, I just getting older."
"Don't worry, dude, you look about twenty years old."
"That's what people say. But Ritchie, I thirty now! So old!"
I chit-chat with one of the girls, the one who wants life stories, but she seems a bit spaced-out, just being like "wow" to everything and not seeming to quite grasp any responses, and then as a group we talk about where the most authentic Mexican food is in the city, though we all agree it's impossible to really get the stuff anywhere in Japan. This is a topic of massive importance to the foreigners of Tokyo, the subject of thousands of conversations and bitter feuds, but tonight Takashi's antsiness does not disappear, and then in what seems all of a sudden but is probably nothing of the sort, he gets a phone call and talks excitedly to whoever it is on the other end, and then has to leave, promises to meet up later that evening, and the girls, including the spacey one, decide they'd like to go for a spin as well, and suddenly all of a sudden it's back to just Soren and me, staring into our drinks as rock music blares. I'm not actually all that close to Takashi, I know him just as the 'foreigner-lover English speaker' but Soren apparently has some kind of prior relationship, and maybe as a side-effect of the Ecstasy, he seems troubled by some sort of social diss, some emotional intensification even if there's no basis in logic. Or maybe Soren actually does take it harder than most; maybe he projects unruffled confidence so habitually it makes him actually much more full of doubt inside.
"Man, I think I'm about to have a breakdown."
"No, bad idea, about what? Just take a deep breath and calm down."
"No, I mean really man. I'm about to go." Suddenly he gets up and stalks off to the bathroom. When he comes back, there's the faint odor of vomit coming from him. "You wouldn't understand. There's some other stuff going on, and it's like I'm never going to get free of it. Anyway...that felt good," he says, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Just the drugs talking."
"Are you okay now?"
"Let me see."
A few minutes pass, and we hang out in the bar thinking our private thoughts. Things seem to settle, but then all over again, Soren feels claustrophobic-the walls are closing in, fast—and much worse this time. He needs to go; he really needs to get out of here. "C'mon Ritchie, help me out here man." We pay the check and leave. I look for a cab. Soren's pupils are dilated.
"It's kind of a waste," I say, after he tells me he wants to take a Prozac to shut down the MDMA. "Don't you know how hard it is to score good stuff?" But then, he is sweating and pale, maybe even green. He disappears again, this time for a convenient alley, and then returns. "Ok, let's get the cab."
This time, one is right there. We hustle the driver; we ride back to Roppongi, and then double-time all the way back up to Soren's twentieth-floor apartment. "Okay, okay," he says, after he sweeps dozens of vials out of the bathroom medicine cabinet, and finally—finally—finally--finds that Prozac, which he dry-swallows, gulping it down. Both of us collapse onto his black leather coach where we had started the evening, but with the view now of the city fully night.
"So you feel better now?"
"A thousand percent," he says, with eyes closed, and shudders. He's subdued, but it's only been a matter of seconds since he swallowed the Prozac, far too early for the SSRI to have had any impact. It's true what they say, I think, it is all in the mind.
"Were we sitting near an overpass, and then I went and took a piss at one point?"
"Right before we got the cab."
"Okay good, I was starting to think I hallucinated that."
For a few hot moments, I feel a flash of hatred. It's one thing if those who have more than you have greater strength of character. But I would never let myself get into this sort of state. As quickly as it comes, though, the feeling passes; I recognize the absurdity of the situation; I'm not going to get caught up in it. It's actually much later before I consider the possibility that the whole breakdown is an internal, drug-induced mind-game on Soren's part, a sort of emotional trick. He's lonely; he wants a male friend. This is his way of establishing grounds for me not to feel inferior in his presence, as so many others did.
In this way, begins Soren's and my friendship, a brief, breathless, high-octane, flighty sort of relationship that fuels itself precisely because so many come and go in that city. That summer I meet Soren, I have already been in Japan for more than an entire year, and probably met upwards of two hundred people, most of whom I end up meeting only once or twice again if ever. Such is the young gaijin expat reality. My Tokyo days, however, date from the beginning of knowing Soren, for it is only through him that the chaos and churn begin to fall into a recognizable pattern, and hence, one that can be exploited. You go to people's parties, but do not throw your own. You ask for favors, but manage to delay recompense. You mooch and prevail, because there is a brand new person to meet just around the corner or landing at Narita, and they are too dazed and confused at the rush of oncoming sensations, they are so young and naive and so easily fooled, all the intensely foreign and new exotic surroundings dazzling their senses, to understand what is happening, and they accept anything and everything as merely part of the experience. So long as you are relentlessly recognized as being in the know, the process is entirely sustainable. In this way Tokyo yields up to me. If my new engagement of the city is actually the one that is truly naïve and trivial, if I accept this external system as my own without proper skepticism, then this is only something inevitable, a completely foreseeable counter-season to the austerity of a working-class childhood and a university life on scholarship. In Japan, with Soren, with his flowing stream of acquaintances and connections, the onrushing flood-tide of people streaming through the city, and finally, yet most certainly not unimportantly, the apartment that becomes the solar center of a constellation of activity for a free-spending crowd of young undisciplined expats, I am reborn into a priest of restlessness and a prophet of those without code.
"Oh don't invite Julian, he's such a weirdo!" Soren is on his cell phone. "What?" A pause. "Oh it's his film that came out?" Pause. "Well I guess he has to be there then."
I sit at the kitchen counter, suppressing a grin and nursing a Fuzzy Navel. After his call ends, Soren comes over.
"Isn't there some way to have a party for somebody but not actually invite them?"
"Yeah, I definitely think so. Especially if it's like a birthday party, then you know, you can like bring out a cake, and instead of the person blowing out the candles, everyone can just do it."
"Say, there's an idea!" Soren considers for a moment. "Seriously though, what else do you know about what's going on? I'd really like to keep a mile away from Julian, he's this guy who's gone all weird from living here too long."
"Well, there's this new guy at work, Brad, and I promised to show him around. He said he knew some people visiting and I can find out what's up."
"He cool?"
"California surfer. Lemme make a call."
"OK."
So, I make the call. We are, however, disappointed. Half-a-dozen text messages and voice calls streaming across the great Kanto plain later, it's clear there's already too much momentum forming for at least starting off with the indie filmmaker's night out that his artsy friends have assembled together. We could try to get something else started in Shibuya maybe, playing on the seeds of an existing trio looking to get more time in J-pop sugarhigh central, but clearly the best choice is to at least start off the evening at Lush, and then we see what happens from there.
"Oh well, at least I can stay in Roppongi tonight,“ says Soren, looking at the bright side of things. "Oh wait, dry cleaning." Soren looks over at his Chairman Mao clock. "Ahhh! It's gonna close. Ritchie, do me a favor?" He's already racing out the door.
"Wha?"
"I gotta go pick up my dry cleaning, so go meet Ayako in front of Almond's? You guys all go over to Lush together, and I'll meet you guys there." Almond's coffeeshop is on the way. Arriving at the intersection, I spot Ayako immediately. As I wrote, she's tall and extraordinarily beautiful, and when she looks and smiles, my knees weaken just for a moment: it's like a sun shining. But I don't betray it. I smile back, and raise my hand in casual greeting.
"Yo, Ayako!"
"Hey Ritchie. My friends coming fifu-teen minutes."
"No problem. So how are things with you?"
"Great. Have we decided what we going to do yet?"
"Well, it looks like there's some filmmaker who just released a film and people want to go to his thing first, but then after that, I think it's pretty open."
"Cool. I like movie!"
Ayako's friends show up almost immediately thereafter. While cute, they don't quite eclipse the shining supernova that is Ayako Ishibashi, J-girl goddess. One might suspect they are almost chosen by Ayako