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[luckleus]

Jimmy

This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Shinjuku Ni-Chome is all about sex. People getting it, people trying to get it, and people who can't get it. No wonder the city never sleeps. It’s too busy trying to get laid. Circling the routine three times a week, Jimmy and I indulged in our ritual: seizing the happy hour specials for all-you-can-drink courage juice and relentlessly chugging until the final train whistle blew. Our mission? Well, as I mentioned before, Shinjuku Ni-Chome is all about sex. Including each other or others.

Is hooking up a staple? Or did the loneliness of this country make us desperate for a one night intimacy?

That will be a question for another time. Here, instead, I will tell you about the tale of the last individual I spent a lot of time with before bidding adieu to Japan.

It all started when I met up with my brother’s best buddy from college. He had just bought a car and asked me to accompany him on a test drive. So there we were, cruising through Tokyo in his brand new car. He had been smoking his vape since we met up at the station, and he offered it to me once we were in the car. After countless big puffs, it was then that he told me it was a THC vape, and it was also at that moment that I realized just how high I had become. 

I then asked him to pull over. I have no problem with getting high, even in the realm of nonconsensual highs. My true concern surfaces when I find myself confined within the confines of a car, and its driver navigating the world under the influence. It wasn’t very easy to get him to let me go. It was a little scary to be honest, but hey, I’m alive, and I managed to get out of the car.

Luckily, my colleague Declan was available that night, he even invited me to go out with him and his close friend at Ni-Chome, the gay district. The close friend that he brought was Jimmy, and that was the first time I met him.

Here’s what happens when you’re high: you start to become very relaxed. Even when you're anxious, you're not scared. Nothing can stand in your way. The world suddenly becomes vast, and you suddenly feel like a tiny speck of dust. You start realizing how small you are in this universe, and in the greater scheme of things, nothing you do will matter. 

After Declan left, it was just me and Jimmy. One thing led to another, and another led to more pints of beer, and more pints of beer led to us making out all night. It wasn't just making out, of course. We did everything. All. Night. Long. In public, because we couldn’t be bothered to rent a room. We also did it across the bar where everyone could see us. Because when you see the world for what it is, and how tiny we are in it, nothing matters, right?

Regardless of whether the answer to the question is right or wrong, that's simply how the night felt.

From there, Jimmy and I started hanging out a lot, and we started hanging out even without Declan. Doing the tri-weekly routine I mentioned before. We had become good friends, and when you become good friends with someone, you’d notice things that weren’t there before. Just like everyone else in this world, Jimmy is also flawed. I was flawed too, obviously. There was him with his 'I Can’t Go Out Unless You Pay' flaw, and me with my 'I Need You to Have Fun, So I Will Pay For You' flaw. 

Despite recognizing these flaws, I continued to spend time with him, and our meetings became even more frequent. I covered the costs of his dinners, drinks, hotel rooms, and snacks. I believe that at that moment, especially after breaking up with my fiancé and calling off the engagement, I had no issue with footing the bill for him because it provided me with a sense of being needed without the burden of a romantic relationship. Adding to the intrigue, have I mentioned his age? A striking 39. It's a sensation, having sway over someone so seasoned, dictating our rendezvous, our cuisine, and our libations. When I'm feeling low, he's just a phone call away, ready to whisk me off into the night, for a price tag of perhaps $50. But in those moments, money feels trivial against the promise of his company.

It didn’t end there. I found myself venturing into dates with other mature men, particularly those over 40. It was almost like an addiction. The sex was wonderful. Although there was a small incident where a guy I went on a date with reached an orgasm just maybe after 3 minutes of us making out. Still, I found it cute, and I found myself even cuter for being able to pull that off. 

P.s.: He was smoking hot, like a spitting image of Gerard Butler. Unfortunately for me, he's a professional attorney from Italy and was just visiting Japan for a short while.

Most of the dates were summer flings with men visiting for maybe a week. After summer ended, so did the flings with the tourists. So I went on dates with the locals instead. By locals, I mean foreign people who live in Japan.

How vastly different it felt, encountering mature men beyond Japan's borders versus those within. The latter somehow exuded an aura that was... well, off-putting. Seeing them was just miserable and depressing. Despite their old age, talking with them just felt like I was having a conversation with a teenager. Most of them have been living in Japan for more than 15 years, yet they are not a professional anything like the dreamy Gerard Butler from Italy. They are still hanging out in bars, getting drunk, living paycheck to paycheck, flirting with guys who may have just reached the age of 20, or maybe my age. It was repulsive.

It was in that moment of clarity that I realized every man here resembled Jimmy. It felt as though I had been caught in a cycle of encounters with countless Jimmies.

Could it be that 40 is the new 20 in this country?

I began to wonder, what if I stay in this country for too long and end up like Jimmy? The mere thought of it made me feel sick. Perhaps they were all once like me—young and enjoying life in Tokyo, until one day they woke up at 40 without even noticing it. I then too realized I've been living here for 7 years, yet it doesn't feel long at all. It's like that scene from the Percy Jackson movie where they enter the casino, only to find out that everyone there had been trapped for years without ever realizing it.

I used to justify spending on Jimmy, believing his company outweighed any monetary concerns. But after my rendezvous with many other Jimmies, What was once effortless generosity now raises questions like, “Why can't you, at almost 40, afford your own drinks?”. It struck me then—I was never truly in control. He effortlessly danced on the edge of financial irresponsibility while I footed the bill. Still, it was never his fault; I needed him, and I needed feeling needed. The illusion of being needed finally crumbled, revealing it as mere distraction, never a solution to my problems.

With my new profound knowledge, after all the dancing in the firelight of our mischievous escapades, I decided to dim the flames and seek a different path, leaving behind the intoxicating allure of our naughty adventures. Still, even as our story drew to a close, our relationship remained symbiotic. I introduced him to the world of privilege, while he imparted upon me the profound lesson of life's fleeting nature.

Stay young, Jimmy the Peter Pan.

[luckleus]

Tokyo

I have been playing a lot of Persona 5 Royal these days, picking up where I left off when I played it back in my room in Tokyo. Surprisingly, it brings me much sadness whenever the MC opens the map to choose a destination. It reminds me of how Tokyo was my home for years, how I visited every place and took every single train route listed. Hell, I even got engaged at one of the destinations there. The most painful part, though, is how it reminds me that I'm not there anymore.

“Pure Time, Perceptual Time, Tangible Time, Time free of content and context, this, then, is the kind of Time described by my creature under my sympathetic direction.”

Vladimir Nabokov, Interview with Kurt Hoffman for the Bayerischer Rundfunk in 1971.

The Past is also part of the tissue, part of the present, but it looks somewhat out of focus. The Past is a constant accumulation of images, but our brain is not an ideal organ for constant retrospection and the best we can do is to pick out and try to retain those patches of rainbow light flitting through memory. The act of retention is the act of art, artistic selection, artistic blending, artistic re-combination of actual events. The bad memoirist re-touches his past, and the result is a blue-tinted or pink-shaded photograph taken by a stranger to console sentimental bereavement.

The good memoirist, on the other hand, does his best to preserve the utmost truth of the detail. One of the ways he achieves his intent is to find the right spot on his canvas for placing the right patch of remembered color.

I have to remember that it wasn't all good when I was there. There were more cloudy days than sunny ones. Life was like a movie, but it's not meant to be one. Life shouldn't be dramatic. I was always longing for something, someone, and more specifically, somewhere to belong. Even when I had everything, nothing was ever enough. Constantly chasing for more understanding of whether everything is all there is.

Remembering all the substances I took in an attempt to find out what life is about, the drinks I had to drink to have fun, it wasn’t all good when I was there. I didn’t feel like I was growing in the direction I was destined for. I will forever grieve and cherish the person that I was, but I am not going to retouch my past and its color like a bad memoirist.

I believe I owe some of you an update on how I've been since I moved back to Indonesia. It's been wonderful, despite the vertigo I've been experiencing from the heat. It feels like these past few months have been a rehab session. I am filled with love here. Gently drifting towards my destined shore, I am finally a human again.

Love,

Arya