Dating Disaster

Wednesday couldn’t come fast enough. I had been waiting a week for dinner, over which time we had traded about 30 text messages. She was the perfect combination of lively, stylish, Japanese, proficient in English, and just a year younger.

Not yet hungry for dinner, we decided to get a drink first. The Hub, a British-style pub chain offered us a barrel to stand over in the middle of the smoking section. Hardly the right atmosphere. The next place sounded more promising. The only thing I could read on the sign for the fifth floor restaurant was “private dining,” written in English.

We checked our shoes at the door, walked past a waterfall, and then on top of a dry rock garden encased in glass. She did all of the ordering from our private booth.

My cell phone buzzed with a text message, but I didn’t budge. When hers buzzed, she looked. We chatted over beer while shelling wet peanuts (wet seems to be the custom here). She buzzed again, and typed back. Korean style pancakes arrived. She buzzed. Tuna and scallion maki rolls arrived. She excused herself. Fried cartilage came. I nibbled and waited.

When she returned, I remarked on the cartilage’s crunchiness as being kori-kori. She smiled and asked if I liked it, but didn’t hear my response. She was buzzing.

“Your friend?” I asked, forcing a smile.

“Yes,” she said while fiddling with her phone.

Perhaps something bad had happened. It had, but for me. In one of the busiest parts of a city home to of 32 million, somehow her Japanese ex of two years had spotted us together. He was mad, and letting her know about it. They had recently split, but not for much longer.

“You miss him?”

She took a sip, buzzed, and rose up clutching her phone. I stared at my beer. It was half empty. I have trouble finding my friends at a designated time and place, so how could this be? I’ve had chance encounters here before, but doesn’t this sort of thing only happen on TV dramas? A week’s worth of anticipation had evaporated within an hour. Just as I was about to reach for my wallet and leave ¥2000 ($17) on the table, she returned. We silently headed to get our shoes.

She removed my Pumas from the locker and arranged them on the floor. She turned to pay the bill – in its entirety.

“Gomen-ne,” she apologized.

I stood by the elevator waiting for her to get her shoes, also Puma.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” she said flatly. “Gomen-ne.”

I slammed the down arrow button. Outside, neon lights everywhere added to my shock. Cars, signs, vending machines. Everything was lit up and swirling in my mind. People rushed by from all directions. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Sitting on the sidewalk with a beer sounded good. Then I could roll into traffic.

Instead I walked home and had a second chance encounter. I bumped into Takahiro. His piercing feline eyes always make me feel uneasy. A tank top with the phrase “I’m not gay, but my boyfriend is” clung to his muscular chest. His shiny face reflected the neon lights. He has a plastic look, but is too young for cosmetic surgery. Jess once said that he was 24, but he looked older, perhaps because he had been playing the scene for too long.

Takahiro was pacing on the corner. Diego hadn’t arrived, and couldn’t be reached by phone. Diego had Taka’s esctacy and his money. I told him something bad had just happened to me.

“Ohhh, what’s wrong? Did you get AIDS?” he shrugged as if popping advil would do the trick. Takahiro has a great way of putting problems into perspective. After I told him of my heartbreak, he shared his dating news: yesterday afternoon he spent 12 hours banging the brains out of some German guy.

“But yesteday was Tuesday! Didn’t you have work?”

“It was my day off. I needed it. I was so tired from the weekend.”

He then gratuitiously recounted his clubbing-esctacy-meth-afterparty-sex-filled weekend. He flipped open his phone to show his conquests of chisled white men who could have walked out of a Calvin Klein ad. They were just from the weekend.

Was this supposed to be making me feel better? We ducked into the nearest bar for a beer and waited for Diego. Once the goods arrived, Takahiro dumped me. I walked the long way home.

* * *

“Go Tell It on the Mountain” is a gospel song. That Jesus Christ was born doesn’t have anything to do with my situation, but the title is fitting for how I coped the following day. Find out next week.