Aunt Regina wants some company for a recital she has tickets to. An up and coming conductor-less band from Japan I’d never heard of is coming to town. They call themselves shintaisei, which means “New Order” in Japanese.
I decide to go with her, being her favorite godson and all.
We reach the theater hall. Boy, it’s packed.
We squeeze our way in—“You look so handsome!” she says to me—and I say she looks nice too, decked up in a velvety dark green dress with the ubertastic paula shell drop earrings I got for her last Christmas.
I flip through the program, bored out of my mind, the collar of my gunmetal-grey shirt feeling stiff under my neck.
“That’s the penis of the choir,” she whispers to me, pointing to the stage.
“Who?” I say. I actually only hear her sentence start on the third word. It wakes up my brain.
“The pianist of the choir.”
Oh. I hear her correctly this time.
The lights dim, as the show is about to begin. I look up to the stage.
Oh my God.
I drop my program, and I quickly bend over to pick it up.
I want to sneak out with him to the parking lot, under the moonlight, rip his boxers off, have them between my teeth.
He is immaculate, dressed in a white suit, holy-white, of all colors. The lights on stage throw a halo around his chestnut-brown hair, random, sexilicious strands resting upon his eyebrows.
He’s standing directly beneath the center spotlight, like he is the star of the show—he knows he is. He knows, and I know.
But he knows not that I know.
Lean meat and a polished body, bones hardly showing, hardly a drop of fat on him. Cheekbones and a jaw line like they’d been chiseled by a master artisan’s hands. He moves so lightly across the stage, and I think of the Greek messenger god, Hermes, with the swift wings on his heels.
I start to sweat. This cannot be happening. I am not twisted.
But there goes my gaze, right to his crotch. His spotless white pants are tailored—when he lifts his arms to stretch his shoulders/triceps/upper back—the bottom of the doublet vest top parts, and anyone with eyes and who wasn’t cold-blooded would notice the conspicuous bulge right there.
He scans the audience coolly—he can scoff at us mere mortals. I look at the program, look at his picture on the page that contains a brief bio on him. He is 21 years young, born a year before me. He looks better in real life. The picture of him is a professional shot, but he seems pale and washed out. There is a glow in his untanned skin that is best viewed with the naked eye, not via a camera lens and artificial lighting.
“Does he even eat?” my aunt says, nudging me. Her voice seems to float from a faraway distance, somewhere behind the stage, even though she is seated right next to me. “He looks like he’s disappearing!”
Not to me, no. I am more and more aware of his existence with each pump of my heart.
I try to distract myself: I notice a TV hostess is seated in the front row with her music director boyfriend—the people behind me are trying to keep their voices down as they gossip about somebody I don’t know who “can’t concentrate, and can’t do anything except think of him non-stop,”—a girl in a bubblegum pink silk-chiffon spaghetti-strip dress thing takes her seat two rows in front of me. Someone from my university comes in to join a couple of friends in a nearby aisle.
But how can they compare?
They don’t have T.H.—T.H., as if I already know him—they don’t have Toshiyuki Hayashi’s grace, polish, cultural poise, nor the arty glamour that he embodies. Such qualities, when forced, turn the subject into a frigid caricature, someone who’s not really himself. But not Toshiyuki. He is the real thing.
When he starts to play, I am lost in his hands. His white, slim, youngish, lively hands, running up and down the black and ivory keys of the grand piano, fluid as running water, soothing as running water, inviting as running water. I hear no music, no actual sound coming from the instruments on stage, not even the vocal harmonizing of the people in the choir. All I see is T.H. I am his hands, which are one with the piano. All else on the planet is obliterated.
He outshines everyone—reaching right into me, into places I’m afraid to go myself.
“That was so nice, wasn’t it?”
My aunt is standing and clapping her hands. I follow and do the same, as if in a trance. The hour-long performance is over before I can even navigate the mental and hormonal kaleidoscopes within me.
“I thought the last song was so good. The pianist really exposed its beauty. Years of piano practice have given him long, strong fingers.”
“Hmm? Oh, yes...yes.”
My aunt is still saying something to me, but as I walk out, I feel like I am moving in a dream world. I am coming to terms with myself that I am already in the final remnants of the dream—I just happened to have had a momentary crush, on a guy, no doubt, a guy I would have a less than ten percent chance of ever seeing again. It sounds bleak, but I am just being practical.
Then I see him outside, hanging around with two of the choir members. He looks at me, sees me, tilts his head up slightly, as if checking me out down the tip of his fine, straight nose—I turn aside, not knowing where to look, the blood rushing to my head and groin. My hands fumble in my pockets, as lucid wet dreams scream in my head and spin me around.
My knees want to hit the floor, so that I can be before him, and blow his head, as he runs those lithe, long pianist fingers through my hair and pulls my head in—closer, closer, closer—I wish that he could read my mind, because for the life of me, I am ceasing to function—
“Hi,” he says.
Oh me, oh my, oh—
“Hey,” I say back.
I cannot breathe—
“Great, uhm...performance,” I say. I shift uneasily on my feet.
What else might he have to demonstrate?
Aunt Regina has spotted a friend of hers and has gone over to chat with the person.
While I love my aunt, God forbid she interrupts.
This is quality time I’m spending with someone who has an unshakeable hold on me. I am the wayward moth being drawn in by the burning flame.
I sense a powerful current between us—like we’re both rocking the same boat. But I’m not sure if it is just my imagination.
I want to run away because I am petrified out of my wits. But I force myself to be brave and stand tough, even though my legs feel like they’re being reduced to gelatin.
Toshiyuki’s eyes shift to the side.
I want to jump him, violate him,
strip him off his holy white décor
“Come with me.”
I’m thinking of a different sort of “come—”
He walks fast. I wonder what he wants to show me. I want to drug him and take him home with me. I’m feeling drunk even though I haven’t had a drink in ages, and I struggle not to stagger.
We step behind a door, some backstage area, where there’s nothing but blackness.
And as I casually look to the wall for a light switch, he grabs my neck, and his mouth is sucking on my throat. My eyes are on his shoulder, hiding from the already hidden darkness, and one hand smoothly caresses my neck. His other hand is stroking my crotch that’s hard as a solid steel baton, and ready to go like a bullet.
I press myself against him—two skinny dude bodies, evenly matched, from the feel of skin to toned muscle and interlocking hands/legs. Two hearts beating louder, the faint scents of us mixing: his, a spicy citrus fragrance with a hint of cinnamon that makes me swoon, and a musky-sweaty, natural “I’m-turned-on” scent coming from me.
Then there’s an approaching chorus of inane chattering voices, coming from the corridor.
He kisses me, sucks on my lips, while I suck on his kiss, and I think about us sucking each other’s dicks. I think to myself: Right heights, 69, yowza—but nothing comes out of my mouth.
Then Toshiyuki mutters, “If you’re ever in Japan, I’ll receive you very, very well.”
He hands me a name card, and writes something on it:
Hotel Bijou, #38C, Tel: (111) 411-2120
“Or you can see me earlier.”
He hits me again with one of his kisses, then disappears, leaving me to melt away by myself.
I drift out and see him signing autographs at a booth they’ve set up outside the concert hall. I will wait downstairs for him ‘till he’s done.
I get a message on my cell: (10.31pm) Mitch, where are you? I wandered off – met a friend :)
I text message my aunt that I’ve met an old school friend as well (“it was totally unexpected!”). She wishes me good night, and thanks me for having accompanied her (“my pleasure”).
The twenty minutes I spend waiting are equivalent to sinking to the bottom of an ocean, tens of thousands of miles deep. Finally I see Toshiyuki—and he sees me too, his suave, sexy-beast eyes unfazed. We jabber about my country, his country, the make, model, and year of a Cadillac that just whizzes past us, as we go to his hotel, a 5-minute walk away.
A posh, experienced porter greets him by name, smiles at me with a polite nod and slight bow. I do the same and feel like a clown.
Elevator taking a gazillion years to reach storey 9
Feet shuffling in mine almost tripping over themselves
Door closing, locking
Hands on each others’ belt buckles
Tongues already seeking the other out
I feel his hand around my sex
“I want you, Erokakkoii!”
“Yes, I want you too—what did you just call me?”
“Ah, that is Japanese for ‘sexy, in a cool way’...”
And yes-yes-oh-god-yes his boxers are in between my teeth
His cock is on the tip of my tongue
As I stroke my own self
And then I hear the real music coming from him
And I’m going to add to the concerto
Here’s to a new order in my life
It’s more fun in the dark
It’s all hands, tongues and amplified sensation
We’re gonna sweat our brains out
Two gentlemen
Please excuse us
It’s our show
Lights out.
Originally published May 2009