I’d heard that the Bettina was the most radical, the one that turned away anyone who’s straight.
I’d found it on the Internet and went to check out the place during summer vacation. I had a pretty good idea before I went what the bar would be like, but I just wanted to find out what sort of people went there. I guess I wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one who was like me.
The place was what I expected, a tiny, cheap bar that could seat barely ten people. The owner was a middle-aged woman who looked like a sushi chef—white shirt with the collar turned up, short neatly combed coarse hair with a sprinkling of gray. Most of the customers were disagreeable career hags on the lookout for young girls to snag. There were a couple of people like me who were curiously, nervously looking around. We all sported short haircuts, T-shirts, shorts, day packs, and sneakers—girls dressed just like your typical high school boy. They were junior and senior high school girls who had also found the bar on the Internet and had come to check it out during their summer break. The bar was well aware that summer vacation meant more junior and senior high school girls coming by, and they were nice enough to allow them to hang out till morning, like it was a onetime summer experience for them, for the price of a can of beer.
I got to know two girls there. One, named Boku-chan, had come to Tokyo from Kochi and was planning to stay as long as she could. The other, named Dahmer, was from Saitama, where she was a top student in an elite high school. All of us went by our pseudonyms, so it took a while before I learned their real names and where they came from.
Boku-chan was trying her best to become a guy. She was a dummy who thought that as long as she acted rough and squared her shoulders she’d look like a guy. Her dream was to make a living as a transvestite in the infamous Kabuki-cho district. She made it was obvious she was looking for a rich older woman. But really, age didn’t matter—she’d have taken an elderly woman, someone middle-aged, or even a young hooker. Boku-chan had the simple fixed idea that, since she liked women, she wanted to become a nice man; and that in order to become one, she needed to act manly. Which to her meant frowning as you held your cigarette between thumb and forefinger, putting your arm around a girl’s shoulder and lifting her chin with your finger, speaking in a deep, threatening voice, adopting all the poses and actions of hunky actors in movies. She was tall, had studied karate, and was muscular, so she had the mannerisms down, but somehow when she did it, it all came off as a joke. On top of that, she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box. Dahmer and I talked once about how if she actually did become a transvestite she’d run out of topics to talk about and customers would find her boring.
Boku-chan didn’t have any money, so she slept on the street or hung out at Dahmer’s, spending most nights during summer vacation in the 2-chome district before she went home to Tosa Yamada in Kochi. My dad wouldn’t allow her to stay in our house but that never seemed to bother her. Even now I get e-mails from her sometimes. Her e-mails are full of happy-go-lucky stuff like, I just bought a purple suit in the shopping district. They had only a double-breasted one so I bought that, but I think single-breasted looks better on me.
Dahmer, on the other hand, was a more complicated character, like me. She took her nickname from the serial killer in America. She was interested in cruel murders and dead bodies—kind of a death obsession. Since my mother died in the fall of my last year in junior high, I hate that kind of thing. I told Dahmer how I felt once, that people who are afraid of death and are the farthest from it are the most obsessed by it. She just shrugged. I think Dahmer felt the same kind of alienation from me that Toshi did when I told her about helping Worm. That was the only time we talked about death, and I never mentioned my mom again. I’ve packed away the pain so deep inside me that I can’t even draw it out myself, and my body just continues to function like nothing had ever happened.
Dahmer’s parents had gotten divorced and, like me, she was an only child. It was just her mom and her now, and her mom, she said, did all kinds of jobs and wasn’t home very much. That person—that’s how she referred to her mother. That person’s fairly good-looking, she’d say. That person’s a slacker. That person’s got her own life to live. There was something similar about my mother’s death and the way Dahmer referred to her mother. With both there’s a sense of distance from the reality we live in. Like they’re people who live in some far-off other country. No matter whether they’re dead or alive.
Dahmer was in love with her female math teacher in high school. The woman was twenty-six, a graduate of a scientific university, a smart aleck who made fun of anyone who was less than a mathematical genius. Dahmer liked the woman’s arrogance. She was always saying she wanted to be better than that woman, so she wouldn’t be made fun of, otherwise she’d die. Once, when her grades fell below the class average, she got drunk and felt so humiliated she slashed her wrist with a knife. I saw it once, that thin scar on her arm. She was always lugging around a math textbook, but with Boku-chan hanging out at her place, she moaned and groaned about not being able to get much studying done. She loaned Boku-chan money, even let her borrow her T-shirts and shorts. If Boku-chan was too much for her, I figured she should just kick her out, but Dahmer was the type who couldn’t say no. An idiot like Boku-chan was too much for her, but Dahmer had a weak point: she was also impressed by someone this dumb, knowing she couldn’t act like that. Maybe this was the same sort of weakness that made her say that if people made fun of her, she’d die. I don’t know.
I have my own weaknesses, and Dahmer and I share the same sense of despair, since we’d like to live a cool life but can’t as long as we’re burdened down with all these problems. I can’t let on to my dad that I’m a lesbian, I can’t seem to manage relations with people in high school, and I’m sure I’ll never be able to do so. These are burdens I’ll carry around the rest of my life. I get so scared thinking about the future it drives me crazy. Still, I just want my friends at school to think I’m a slightly mannish type of girl, nothing more, and I never, ever want the girls I’m friends with, Toshi, Kirarin, or Terauchi, to know that I’m a lesbian. Because of my issues, my life’s pretty complicated and I feel constrained, like I have to keep a tight lid on who I really am.
I was happy to meet Dahmer, because I think she understood all that. I think she was the same way. On days when she didn’t e-mail, I felt really down. Like lovers, we tried to tell each other what was going on every day. At the end of last year, though, I suddenly couldn’t get in touch with her anymore. When I called her mother, she said, “That person’s gone off to study in Canada. I’m sure once she settles in she’ll e-mail you.” Her voice was strangely high-pitched and cheerful. I thought it was funny that they both referred to each other the same way, but there was something odd about her mother’s cheerfulness. I was wondering whether Dahmer had actually failed her math teacher by not getting her grades up and if she had died. I didn’t ask anything more. And that was the last I heard of her.
The incident I keep mentioning took place at night, three days before the end of summer vacation. The same sort of muggy night as tonight.
Boku-chan had announced she was going home to Kochi, so the three of us had a going-away party at Bettina. We had a few drinks but the party just didn’t get going. We hardly said a word and avoided looking at one another. “This looks more like a funeral than a going-away party,” the owner of the bar joked.
Boku-chan wound up spending a total of twenty-five days basically wandering around Tokyo. She hated getting all smelly sleeping on the streets, so the last half of her stay she slept over at Dahmer’s, which made their relationship go from bad to worse. The reason being that Boku-chan was a slovenly “guy”—and she was also an impolite country hick. She’d sleep past noon, eat whatever she could find in Dahmer’s fridge, leave the room a mess, and borrow Dahmer’s clothes without asking. When she took a shower, she’d just leave it running forever and forget to put away the shampoo and soap. Dahmer typically did the cleaning and wash
ing for her mom, as well as shopping for dinner, and she hit the roof. I think also, like me, she felt vaguely irritated and sad knowing that when this summer vacation was over, so was her childhood. We sat at the counter, sipping our beer and listening to Tracy Chapman singing “Fast Car.” The owner liked the song but I thought it sucked.
“Man—this isn’t what I expected when I said I’m going home,” Boku-chan finally complained, but Dahmer and I kept quiet. We had long since gotten sick of this idiot.
“Next time I come I’m not getting in touch with you guys.”
“Fine by me,” Dahmer said, and glanced at her watch. “Almost time for the last train. I’m out of here.”
Surprised, I looked up. Dahmer usually stayed out all night and took the first morning train home, but on this last night together she was acting cold. She whipped out her purse and paid. Her hair hung down on her forehead, but through it, her eyes were gloomy and grown-up-looking. Boku-chan shot Dahmer a quick glance and said, all smart-alecky, “Hey, Dahmer—guess you want to go back to being a straight-arrow high school student? No big deal, huh?”
“You got that right,” Dahmer said lightly, and looked at me. “You want to, too, right?” Yep, I do, my look told her. And that was my honest intention. If I could be a self-respecting high school student again, then yes, that’s what I wanted to be. But I knew that none of us could ever be an ordinary serious student again. Because we were girls who liked other girls. Boku-chan sat there, silent, toying with a box of Salem Lights.
“Well, Boku-chan. See ya. It was fun.” Dahmer beamed at her and waved good-bye. Her slim white arm was girlish, and I watched it sadly.
“How cold can you get,” Boku-chan grumbled, and, pushing off from the counter with both hands like some old guy, stood up. “I’m going out to drink by myself. Just can’t take it otherwise.”
I didn’t feel like chasing after either of them, so I just sat at the counter. The owner stood there, unconcerned, a cigarette dangling from her lips as she scanned the jacket of a bossa nova CD. I waited until the trains weren’t running anymore and left. This is the last time, I thought. I planned to walk all the way home from Shinjuku to my house, which was in Soshigaya in Setagaya-ku. I decided this would be the last time during summer vacation I’d come home at dawn and make my dad go ballistic. I still felt sorry for my old man for losing his wife, and I was trying my best to live up to his expectations. I felt relieved to have a made a friend like Dahmer, but having spent time with a trashy girl like Boku-chan made me disappointed in the whole 2-chome scene. As I left the bar I felt I’d moved on in life, and then I felt both lonely and a bit proud of myself. I walked down the stairs and was heading down an alley when this huge woman abruptly stepped out from the shadows.
“Hey, you! C’mere.”
It was a man’s deep voice with a Kansai accent. He had on a black camisole and a formfitting tight white skirt. He had on ridiculously high silver mule sandals, and this made his whole body lean forward. His panty line was visible on his skirt. He had an oversize squarish butt, and a jet-black head of hair that was obviously a wig. Only his nails were gorgeous, painted with a green design. Overall he was a shabby, cheap transvestite. If you wonder why I remember all these details so clearly it’s because the guy grabbed me by the sleeve of my T-shirt and wouldn’t let me go, so I had time to take it all in.
“Whatya want?” I asked.
“You’re kind of obnoxious, aren’t ya?”
He smacked me next to my ear with a clenched fist, and my left ear went deaf. I started to fall to the ground but the transvestite held on tightly to my T-shirt and wouldn’t let me fall as he continued to pound me.
“What’re ya thinking, coming to a man’s part of town like this? You’re a woman, pretending to be some cool-looking guy, but you’re the type who gives us a bad name. If you want a woman, leave it up to a man. You’re an idiot. Just plain dumb. So it’s okay for a guy to rough you up, don’t ya think?”
The transvestite roughly grabbed my breast. No guy had ever touched me there before and it was a total shock.
“You got a pair like this yet you try to act like a guy. What a jerk! Bet you wish you had a cock, huh? You’re worse than our crap. So go ’head and try some.”
He pushed me onto a pile of garbage. My nose was bleeding, so I couldn’t smell anything. The owner of Bettina heard the commotion and ran out to help me. I was bleeding a lot, but not really hurt, and she thought she couldn’t just leave me, since I was just a high school student, so she put me in a taxi. I was conscious but covered in dirt and blood as I stumbled into my house. My face was swollen for a while and I didn’t go to school the first week of the second semester. When he saw me all beaten up, my father was dumbfounded, and was scared I’d been raped. He asked if somebody had done something to me. As I listened to his worried footsteps pacing around the house, I lay on the floor and laughed. It was something much worse than rape, Dad, what happened to your daughter. You have no idea.
I’ve never told anybody about this. I couldn’t tell Toshi or Kirarin, or even Terauchi. Not even Boku-chan or Dahmer. I don’t know why. I never set foot in the 2-chome district again. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of the place itself, but I was afraid of the creatures who masqueraded as people. And I became afraid of myself for stirring up such hatred in others. I knew I liked girls and couldn’t figure out who I was, yet that transvestite, grabbing my breasts, made me realize I’m also a woman. That summer I totally lost my confidence. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t such a shock when Dahmer suddenly disappeared.
* * *
It was exactly eleven when I got home. Dad was waiting outside for me, looking unhappy. He had on a loose-fitting green T-shirt, chino shorts, and Nike sandals, and was smoking. My old man is a freelance photographer. When Mom was still alive he was hardly ever at home, always out “on location,” or so he said. But after she died he announced that he would work at his Tokyo studio. He didn’t go out drinking so much, and never came home later than eleven. His income went down, which he complained about. To me this was a pain. I just wanted him to leave me alone, but ever since I got beat up he couldn’t tell the difference between keeping an eye on me and standing guard.
“Hey, where’s your bike?”
“I lent it to Toshi.”
“How come?’
“Hers got stolen. It’s just for the summer, so she can go to her cram school.”
I slipped past him and went inside. Our Maltese, Teddy, ran over and started jumping on my legs. Teddy, my mom’s dog, is our family treasure. I picked him up and started to go upstairs. I didn’t see Grandpa and Grandma. They must have gone to sleep a long time before. Or maybe they were holding their breath, monitoring the conversation between me and Dad. Since they’re my mom’s parents they don’t really care much about Dad. Their hopes and sympathies are all directed at me. Which is a royal pain, too, and kind of disgusting. Every night I said a little prayer that they might die soon.
“Toshi’s the one who lives next door to the boy who killed his mother, right? You know him, don’t you?”
Dad was obviously curious. He was the kind of guy who followed the news closely and picked up on things. I hated that, too.
“Nah, I don’t know him.”
“What do you mean, ‘Nah, I don’t know him’? That’s how you should talk to your father? I really don’t like the way young people talk these days.”
“Sorry…”
I knew that if this went on too long, Dad would blow a fuse, so I meekly apologized. I also wanted to talk to Worm while he was taking a break.
Resignedly, Dad said, “Go to bed soon.”
“Um.”
I went upstairs, put Teddy down, went into my room, and locked the door. I listened and heard Dad go into his bedroom. I lay down on my bed and took out my cell phone. Worm picked up after one ring.
“Hello. It’s me.”
Worm breathed a sigh of relief.
“Are you still at the conven
ience store?”
“No, I stood out too much. I’m lying in the parking lot out in back. I can see tons of stars.”
“Are you tired?”
“Um,” he said, sounding like a child.
“Text messaging’s pretty convenient, isn’t it?”
Worm had never had a cell phone up till now.
“Yeah, it sure is,” he agreed, and stopped. “But this one’s an old model and you can only send a hundred and twenty-eight letters at a time.”
“Yeah, guess so.”
Which is why the phone was cheap. I was a little annoyed, though Worm didn’t seem to pick up on this.
“It’s okay, you’re the only one I’m gonna text.”
“But you talked to Kirarin, too, didn’t ya?”
“Who’s that?”
“One of my pals. She’s totally hot.”
“Really,” Worm said, not terribly interested.
“Going to Tachikawa and back in one day made me worn out. Good exercise, though.”
I’d gone out to Tachikawa to meet up with Worm, then pedaled all the way over to Suginami to Toshi’s, an incredible distance.