for Akemi

At first no one paid attention when Ed announced his plan to rescue Princess Masako. Only ten minutes were left of Beer Blast; we were all intent on refills. Clutching our plastic cups, we pushed forward in line. “Someone has to rescue Masako,” Ed said. “She’ll die.”
Ed’s shiny round head gleamed a delicate purple in the light of the bar; his glasses magnified his eyes. “Somebody has to--” he insisted. “Somebody should--”

I fear Ed is now being perceived as a dangerous revolutionary. But, even after years here in Japan, Ed is still just an English teacher with a 5½ tatami apartment and ten days off a year. Our harmless Ed: slightly pudgy, near-sighted, with one bad knee. Ed, who’s only average in the shorts, or maybe only very slightly less.

* * *

Seven men in a corner at the bar, Saturday night in Shinjuku ni-chome. As usual, as usual. We held our corner—we’d grabbed two chairs—and even at not quite nine the bar was already filling up. Seven friends: six foreigners, one Japanese. None of us troublemakers. No previous records, as far as I know. I hope the authorities will keep this in mind.

We held out our cups to the bartender. Ed got almost no response at all at first, if I remember right. Like when someone says they’re off to Guam, the blandest destination in the world. You’re off to Guam, huh? Nice.

Ed couldn’t get to us, nobody listened, but he kept at it, the way a fly raps against a window, and you can’t tell that fly, “These windows are sealed, you’re thirty-six stories up.” No, the fly sees the sky and wants out.

* * *

We’d heard of course about the miseries of Masako, Japan’s crown princess. A Harvard graduate, trained diplomat, she gave up her career to marry Prince Naruhito, to stand before the photographers in a seven-layer kimono.

The Imperial Household Agency stepped in then with its ten thousand prohibitions and one non-negotiable demand: a son. Year after year, Princess Masako attended her quota of ribbon-cutting ceremonies but the central requirement had not been met. Subjected to relentless pressure and an unending barrage of fertility treatments, she had become depressed and was now rarely seen in public.

“You ever talk to Japanese people about her? Every person I talk to says the same thing. They all say, it’s terrible, it’s awful, it’s inhuman what’s been done to her. And then, every one of them, they shake their heads and say that nothing, nothing, nothing can be done.”

* * *

Hal said. “Ed—do you mind? I’m in love.”

Ice-white Hal with his slapped baby cheeks and aristocratic cheekbones. Stunning the first time you see him. Later it wears off: he’s one of those people whose personality cancels his good looks.

Hal has the most elegant hands, the nails French manicured: he held his plastic cup of beer by the rim, as if to renounce all connection to it.

“You’re always in love,” Ed complained.

“This time for real. With Takashi.”

“You’re back together!”

“No! Definitely not. Totally different Takashi.”

Then Ed had a question. “Why--when we say, Someone’s got to do something—why does it always mean someone else?

* * *

Seven gay guys—that’s a lot to keep track of. The authorities, presumably, will take notes. To use against us. Others should memorize the following, so as to comprehend the plot:

Drank too much: all.

Slept together: all. (Not that we admitted it, or even necessarily remembered.)

Battled ennui, wished our dicks were bigger, planned to do serious charity work in the developing world once things had settled down on the personal level: all.

Overspent on footwear, moisturizer, and monthly fees to Internet porn sites where we intermittently found photos of guys we’d done or even, distressingly, ourselves: all of us.

Please keep this in mind. Being queer is even weirder than Mormonism. I mean, in terms of strange beliefs and bizarre requirements. Even in terms of weird underpants. The tribe of washboard abs. It’s true we don’t have magic glasses (what about the mirrored shades?) but we do have magic creams and magic gels and many, many magic pills.

* * *

This was Saturday night in Shinjuku ni-chome. Do you know ni-chome? Say no. Say “Shinjuku ni-chome” to a nice Tokyo lady and she will twitter because ni-chome is a naughty place, a not-nice place, where men go to have sex with men, which in Japan is considered a highly embarrassing hobby.

The seven of us, the defendants, were all avid hobbyists. We had okay-can’t-complain lives we were in a hurry to forget.

* * *

It’s impossible to remember now, how it all fit together. I was very drunk, remember, even by my drunken standards. Certainly it would be better to get the seven of us together, try to get a story everyone would agree on. Things would go better for us. With the authorities.

As it is, I’m here in detention at Immigration, solo, with just a plastic pitcher of water and a toilet in the corner. No company besides the happy anime man pasted to the wall, reminding us all to fill out our visa renewal requests in a timely fashion. The happy anime man is helping me practice my testimony for the authorities.

* * *

At not-quite nine, the bar was already crowded. It's just a tiny place. Intimate bars with seats for only a dozen: this is cozy Tokyo, as seen in brochures. Of course the folks back at home can’t imagine that, come Saturday night, there’ll be 175 people crammed into that space.

Hal said, “Ed, honey, princess, what’s wrong with you tonight?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Ed said, but did not look convinced.

We all thought Ed should do better—and were unsurprised he hadn’t. Even after he started going to the gym, even though he was only 35, he seemed like a grandmotherly sort of guy, the kind who’d bring sweets to work every Friday and never hold it against anyone when they got promoted and he didn’t.

* * *

“Try to find a Japanese under fifty who can even name the Emperor,” Hal said. “People don’t care. More than that. People are aggressively disinterested.”

“Why can they just let her go?”

“Sweetheart. You’re talking about the Imperial Household Agency. They haven’t let go of anyone in a thousand years.”

* * *

Rescue #1

Here’s what would happen:

A David and Goliath situation. 1000 guards in uniform. Only seven of us.

But we are canny and fate is on our side. Japan hasn’t had a war in sixty years—folks are bound to be out of practice. And anyway, this is Japan, where nothing whatsoever can be done without, first, a three-and-a-half hour meeting.

We creep along the halls, crouch on the edge of doors. The Stormtroopers march past without seeing us. The Princess waits in a tower, to which she has cunningly attached a zipline. Holding the edge of her kimono, we zip to safety as the bullets fly past us and the guards run right straight into each other.

* * *

Poor Ed. The rest of us had gotten better jobs, but Ed still taught eight lessons a day beside a roaring train station to dissatisfied housewives who’d figured out by now that he was never going to sleep with them. And anyway, he wasn’t nearly as good-looking as the men in the advertisements for English school, who gazed rapturously at you from the wall of the train and promised to take your English to all new levels.

It wasn’t as if any of us were particularly talented or skilled. Certainly we weren’t hard-working. White-middle class B grade: for export only. Still, after a few years, we’d secured the pleasant, cozy jobs that Tokyo awards to obedient foreigners. Six hours a day, no supervision, rent subsidies, months of vacation. We did not lack for comfort.

“I’ll buy you a shot,” Hal said. Meaning, I’ll buy you liquor if you’ll quit the princess talk.

Ed drank the liquor but didn’t stop. He asked, “You ever read that sci-fi story about the heavenly city where everyone’s happiness depends on one child being locked up in the dark?”

“She lives in a palace, Ed.” Barry corrected, not unkindly.

“And I wouldn’t say I’m perfectly happy,” Hal added.

* * *

Hal kept looking around the bar, like any minute his real friends would arrive--from Manhattan or Milan, trailing designer labels and good taste, their conversation and handshakes dry and crisp, nothing embarrassing about them.

Hal had his disappointments. The plan was: first a model, then a star--but white faces were the not the rarity they once were in Tokyo. Of course he got some jobs, enough to get by, he even showed up on one of those little TVs on the Yamanote Line in a beer ad. As the butler. Naturally. Still, he hadn’t gotten anything remotely as good as what he hoped God had put him on Earth for. After all, he spoke 4 languages and an Ivy-League diploma. He had the table manners of a diplomat and the face of a cookie tin angel. His dick was big and uncut and moreover it was a really pretty dick. Hal was shocked, frankly, that he had to work or suffer at all. Here he was with the rest of us. How humiliating.

In other words, Hal was another uppity queer, as can be found in every gay bar in the world. 100% un-dangerous--as long as you didn’t steal his G&T or give him crabs. I can honestly say, then, that he was not himself, a few hours later , his Hugo Boss button-down unbuttoned to the navel, as he demanded freedom for Masako and cursed the guards, their genitals, IQ and ancestry. Only part of this diatribe was in Japanese of course. But I think the guards still pretty much caught the drift.

* * *

Ed pleaded. “Barry--you understand.”

Barry breaks up with his boyfriends so compassionately it takes the poor boys months to realize they’ve been dumped. He’s the only one of us who has entirely given up going to the gym. He has a belly now and seems a much happier person.

“Couldn’t we all just pitch in and get her a business-class ticket on Lufthansa?” said Barry, who is compassionate but not brave.

“I’ve got tons of bonus miles on Continental.” Martin piped up. He’s always looking to improve his karma in ways that don’t involve a lot of effort. “She’ll be granted asylum in Scandinavia. She can start over. She’s got ‘princess’ on her resume--that’s something.”

“Better than being a department store Santa,” added Barry, who does just that every holiday season. Makes a killing.

* * *

Barry talks to his mother every Sunday night at 5:45. His Mom is 87. I have no idea how many toes she’s lost to diabetes. The doctors don’t know why she’s around at all but Barry figures it’s because she had to wait for his father to die so she could do twenty years of damage repair.

Every Sunday his mother calls, all the way from Calgary, to tell Barry she loves him very, very, very much, just the way he is.

She’d love him even more, I think, if she’d seen him last night. Hell, even his father would have to be impressed. Standing at the gate of the Imperial Compound, tears streamed down Barry’s face as he shouted, “Princess Masako! Princess Masako!” and stretched out his hands to the air as if the princess might at any moment appear at the top of the wall, and jump.

Imprisoning Barry long-term would kill his mother; I hope the authorities will take this into consideration.

* * *

Ed kept interrupting the conversation, the conversation which is the same conversation we have every time we are together.

On Saturday night in Shinjuku ni-chome, conversation comes in two standard forms. The first can be summarized as “Even at the advanced age of 34 I will have you know that my penis is still as hard as a steel bar.”

Not for the first time, Alan had announced, “Honestly, I had no idea I could still come four times in one night.” Alan considers himself a dignified professor of sex and seeks only to enlighten the young.

Sometime last night he sighed and said, “Honestly, I’d like to have sex with an adult for a change. Lately it’s all been smooth twenty years olds and one guy last week, he was only 19 and he looked—ohmigod. I said, ‘Boy, before I take you home you’re gonna show me some I.D.”

* * *

The same conversation we always have--because our average age is 34 and that is very old.

I am older—just by a few years—so I know this is not actually tragic. They’ll get younger. At 46 they’ll be all right again. The tide goes out and the tide goes in. But now they are 34 and positively superannuated.

You have to have a nice apartment, you have to have huge pectorals, hair up top and seven inches—reported as nine. You have to have washboard abs and teeth skim milk white, baby’s teeth. You need a white collar job and forty dollar underpants and exquisite table manners. Then there are more challenging requirements, such as eternal youth. I admit I sometimes wish I was part of a subculture with a little more wiggle room, for example, militant Islam.

* * *

Princess Masako was young too, when she became old. 35, 37, 39, all the pressure on her to have a baby, and she did, a girl and a girl is, by definition, not good enough. To allow an empress would be to change the rules. And the rules, as ever, are worth infinitely more than any person’s life. Queers understand that. We should conform. We ought to be grateful just to be ignored.

And, as for Masako, does she really have a right to complain? It’s something to be a princess, after all. Isn’t she lucky? Hasn’t she done well? A princess.

This is how it is supposed to work. Little girls should want princes. Little boys should want kingdoms—and princesses. Princes and princesses should be happy together. Aren’t they lucky?

* * *

Rescue #2

Here’s what would happen, in fact:

As we struggled manfully with the guards, Masako appears at the top of the wall. “Guards! Unhand the foreigners! Unhand them this instant!”

She brandishes a red cell phone. “See this? Guards! See this? Right now, Larry King is on the line and the studio audience is all ears. If you do not release us at once, I will tell him everything. Yes, everything. Even that! That too!”

The guards draw back at once, like vampires before a silver cross.

* * *

The seven of us were utterly and entirely law-abiding—prior to Saturday night. I hope the authorities will keep this in mind. Even our vices await their appointed times and occasions. We’re conformists, which is why we’ve done well in Japan. We’re queer, hello, we were all hauled into detention wearing the same expensive black leather shoes. Even if our hair is slightly different, we all go to the same salon. Not that the police should pursue this connection as some sort of lead. John Paul is entirely harmless, just don’t ask his age.

* * *

Ed, please understand, was not the heroic type. He wasn’t even particularly civic-minded. I’d heard him bitch about having to sort out the recycling. Like, does there need to be a totally different process just for milk cartons?

Maybe he just looked around the bar that night and figured he had no chance of getting laid. Or maybe he’d gotten fed up and wanted out. Even regular men do outrageous things sometimes, they flail and fight, if they find they have been caught in a trap. If they find they are caught in a trap and admit it.

* * *

The bar was so crowded now it was a wonder we could get our drinks to our mouths. The seven of us stood almost on each other’s feet, almost in each other’s arms. Men jostled and shoved past, trying to get to the toilet in back and even though Barry laughed and said, “This is the most action I’ve gotten in months”, mostly it was no fun.

Ed admitted work was not going well. Ed is not exactly at the bottom of the ladder. He’s one enervating half-step up. Associate trainer: he helps the new arrivals. The role earns him extra responsibilities, universal suspicion and about fifty bucks extra a month.

One of the new guys said Ed grabbed his ass. I admit to me that doesn’t seem a very serious offense. But then, my body’s pretty much in the public domain. I don’t have any parts that are, strictly speaking, private.

Respectable people, of course, are cordoned off, their privacies protected by velvet rope. Caught trespassing, Ed’s faces a full “review”—acrobats, dance numbers, flame-throwers, meetings at the local, district and central offices. He might lose his job. Certainly he’ll be stripped of his half-step up. I know how these things go. Basically, Ed had six weeks of good, solid humiliation to look forward to.

* * *

Ed swore he didn’t do it. “Too skinny for me.” Ed gave the guy a bad evaluation: this was just revenge.

“I could care less anyway,” Ed said. “Worse comes to worse, I lose my precious link to the lonely and depressed wives of Tokyo. You know, today one woman started crying right in the middle of class. She couldn’t find her pencil case. Her Louis Vuitton pencil case—that Tokyo phenomenon. She’s fumbling in her bag, I just want to hit the button, start the listening exercise, but this lady starts crying and all she’ll say is, ‘It is not a pencil case. It is not the pencil case.’

Please. Like I’m going to miss that.”

* * *

Alan was a voice of reason. Anything can happen once. Alan said, ”Keep drinking, Ed. You abduct a princess there is no way immigration’s going to renew your visa.” This from Alan who really did believe in being a rebel, really, within bounds. Alan was part of our spiritual power, the way we tallied it when we were in the taxi.

Alan and Martin had spiritual power, Barry had a big bass voice, Hal had washboard abs, Hiroyuki’s a diplomat. Barry has a big bass voice and Ed has a heart. No special gift was assigned to me, I’m used to that.

I’d like to remind the authorities that none of us had any weapons. We weren’t even the sort who’d even throw a punch. I hope the authorities will keep this in mind.

* * *

Alan had a guru in Kyoto who dictated where he could go on vacation. This guru had a thing for exotic adventure travel. Argentina, Antarctica, Africa—must be good for the soul. And, no matter how rustic or remote the place, Alan always came back with the most beautiful stories of the extraordinary and profound men who’d fucked him there.

* * *

Alan was even more drunk than the rest of us. The authorities should keep this in mind. If we’d succeeded, Alan would have woken up the next morning and said, “Does anyone have an aspirin? Hey--what’s Princess Masako doing here?”

* * *

Being extremely drunk, Alan claimed, was actually part of his spiritual process. “There’s no judgment,” he said and in his opinion this was an extremely good thing. He thought alcohol made him more honest, more real, and he told us so every time we saw him, like an honest-to-god tape recorder.

The luxury Tokyo affords to privileged foreigners: the chance to lie to yourself without interruption until you are dead.

* * *

Chanting mantras at the palace wall beside him was Martin. Martin is even more spiritual than Alan: he only has one boyfriend—a rising J-pop star who looks thirteen but really isn’t—and also he has star charts on his Palm Pilot and a portable negative ion machine he wears on a little cord around his neck like he has emphysema, but spiritually.

Martin has the eyes of a mythological wish-granting fish and a forehead so immense it seems a spiritual credential all of its own, a forehead preternaturally serene and smooth from twenty years of meditation and, every four months, Botox.

Sweet spiritual Martin. If you even so much as look at him crossly he says, “I know! I was a skeptic too!”

* * *

Martin is a Spiritual Trainer: he helps people make the transition to wearing amethyst and eating beans. He is free to devote himself entirely to this, his vocation, because his actual job requires virtually no mental power. He corrects emails all day in a little room, a little room where he’s sat for fifteen years,

“Have you seen anyone yet?“ I asked him.

“Oh, I see people,” he corrected me. “I stole the sign to the men’s room once. Guys rushed in all day, their zippers down, looking for a place to pee. I see plenty of people. I just don’t know who anyone is.”

* * *

The authorities may wonder, understandably, how they got their hands on such a bunch of freaks. Are all the foreigners in Tokyo so bizarre?

As a rule, yes.

Explanatory Note: The foreign inhabitants of Tokyo tend to develop outrageous quirks, compulsions and addictions, which certainly would have gotten them fired from the Seven-Eleven back home but here are pursued in tandem with respectable well-paid full time work.

Why?

We’ve slipped, somehow, into a perilous lull. There are PhDs who discover their job requires them only to press ‘Play’ and press ‘Pause’. There are business people, just learning the ropes, who discover their job consists entirely of reading the newspaper, and being white.

Certainly it is comfortable. Ominously comfortable. Like a plush upholstered room that is just a little over-warm. And the windows don’t open. For security reasons. Especially for us queers, life in Tokyo pretty much floats along. Work is easy. All you just have to is dress nicely and never tell the truth.

* * *

Needless to say, I myself ought to have known better. I have a Masters degree, in Liberal Studies, from a private university. I am a lecturer here—or least until last night I was--teaching, part-time, at five universities.

I ought to have been reasonable. But I was very drunk, as I have said. I did not plan to live my life this way, you know, forcing English conversation on people who do not want to talk.

The Transcendentalists are what I really love, the Transcendentalists plus Emily. This passion seems quaint and harmless in New England. But somehow Tokyo acts as a catalyst, and Thoreau means something different, more difficult and dangerous, when you’re shoved into the Circle Line at rush hour: somebody’s briefcase is up your ass, you’re trying not to crush the dwarf granny in front of you, one arm is pinned--you may never get it back—and with the other you’re clutching, two inches from your nose, a paperback Walden: We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us.

Presumably after this episode the Imperial Household Agency will see to it that all 19th century American literature is quietly banned, exempting only precious Mr. James Fenimore Cooper.

* * *

About Princes Masako: I admit it’s sometimes hard to sympathize with someone whose apartment is ten thousand times the size of mine. But then, I can pretty much do whatever I want: dress up like a school girl and watch violent pornography, as long as the trash goes out in the right bag on the right day.

Not so Ms. Masako. It is a tribute to her—and also a shame—that she has failed to find a hobby sufficiently harmless. She ought to imitate her father-in-law, the Emperor. He has his precious goby, harmless little fish, and a sweet second career distinguishing between 200 virtually indistinguishable species. Smart man. With his journals and his magnifying glass, he escapes with his fish somewhere the Imperial Household Agency can’t follow. They even let him out, now and then, to attend conferences in Sweden.

Whereas Masako wrote her thesis on international trade, which is not a suitable hobby for a princess.

* * *

Traditional culture, so excellent for brushstroke, flower arrangement and archery, among which a woman is a brocaded bit of furniture.

The Imperial Household Agency admitted Princess Masako was depressed. ‘Adjustment disorder’ was the official reason, even after she’d lived a decade in the palace.

Think of how infinitely less stupid people would be, if a houseplant were concerned. How easy to admit: it doesn’t grow well in this corner. Put it back in the sun. But Princess Masako is not a houseplant. There are rules. Exceptions cannot be made.

Go ahead, you can tell me the truth, Princess Masako. When you can’t sleep at night do you find yourself floating through death’s smooth black city? Or is just the more common feeling—like you’ve already died but are now somehow still walking around?

When you can’t sleep, Princess Masako, we’ll sit up with you. All seven of us--Hal, Barry, Alan, Martin, Ed, Hiroyuki, and I—we’ll take turns and tell you stories about all the dumb things we’ve done. 1001 Nights, in queer rotation. And we’ll refer to despair very lightly, as if to someone we all know.

* * *

Rescue #3

Here’s what would actually happen:

As we make a commotion at the front gate, Masako slips out a side entrance. She is disguised as a Moslem, a black scarf covers her head, her eyes are shaded with kohl.

She leans forward and whispers to the taxi driver. “I’d like to pay in advance, sir. Now please: to the airport.”

* * *

As I’ve mentioned, our first topic of conversation is our penises, so extraordinarily large and spectacularly rigid. The second topic of conversation—for which we are always gathering evidence, searching the horizon for threats, digging in, turning all things to our purposes—the conversation which echoes its million variations all day and all night wherever foreigners gather in Tokyo is: aren’t we doing well?

Aren’t we doing well? (Traditionally this is said while holding a glass of chardonnay. Yes, even at 7:45 am. Aren’t we doing well?) Our rock bottom wage is forty dollars an hour, the health insurance includes dental. There are weekends in Hong Kong, vacations in Thailand. Aren’t we doing well? Think of the food. Think of the table service. And the trains run on time. Aren’t we doing well?

We compete with each other night after night, for how much we receive and how little we do.

“I’m taking a cruise of the Antarctic,” Alan says. “But I’m doing Peru and Chile on the way.”

Hal says, “The voice-over job I got—wasabi pretzels, absolutely horrific—56,000 yen. I was in and out in under an hour.”

Was this really how we’d spend our lives? Like a village of refugees squeezed into an elevator, every one of us insisting, “Now I’ve really got it made!”

* * *

We were so close together now there was no telling whose hand, whose foot, was whose. Add liquor to this equation—I hope the authorities will be lenient. I could have groped myself, for all I knew, and still been flattered.

We stood on each other’s feet and shouted over the music. The room filled up with smoke. Aren’t we doing well? And Ed keeps saying, “Someone’s got to rescue Princess Masako.” Hal wants him to shut up, Barry’s sympathetic. Maybe he’s not interested in rescuing princesses but he thinks that maybe Ed has had an eensy-teensy psychotic break. Alan is scoping the bar like he’s ready for some really spiritual (i.e. blind drunk) sex. I am reminding myself of the treasure of friendship—in other words I want to be kissed so much it aches. Martin was presumably taking comfort in his past and future lives: he’s seen them all and they are all, without exception, more fun than this one.

* * *

Somehow Martin had managed to get his Palm Pilot out of his bag. He admitted he had to grope several of us and had elbowed someone else in the balls. No one was offended though—it was difficult to know whose parts were whose. Martin wanted to know our exact moments of birth, because you can do a star chart with just the birth date but of course but it’s not so precise.

Alan, now drunk enough for sex, swiveled his head back and forth like one of those smudged glass display cases used in diners to display the pie. With every turn his goatee brushed against my neck.

Hal was tense, trying, unsuccessfully, to keep himself back, to keep track of what was him and what was us. Trying to make sure nothing touched. (Of course, all of us had had sex with Hal—approximately once a month, with no warning whatsoever, Hal acted like a human being. But he never admitted it later.)

Ed’s bald head and glasses gleamed a delicate purple. Ed loves us. He loves Princess Masako too. I’m not saying that’s sensible, or even appropriate. At time of stress or when the seasons change or when he hasn’t slept in days, love breaks out—exactly like a cold sore.

* * *

We were very drunk. I can’t emphasize this enough. In Japan you’re supposed to be excused for anything you do while intoxicated. This is the only reason Japanese people don’t actually, physically, explode. Admittedly, it is unlikely that this amnesty extends as far as attempting to liberate members of the imperial family.

* * *

The authorities won’t accept that we were just drunk, over-crowded, and fed up. The authorities will want some more substantial reason. Such as terrorism: a reason that satisfies everyone and is considered sufficient, nowadays, to explain anything. Homosexuals with a sinister agenda! Those who aren’t executed will go to sleep happy.

Americans will require, in addition, something more psychological: an alcoholic mother, a bulimic sister. “I never recovered, frankly, from my feelings of helplessness around the death of Princess Diana. And John-john’s plane crash didn’t help any either.” Shoved into Tokyo, robbed of motion besides halting half-steps, there comes a time when you’re willing to do anything, just to swing your arms.

* * *

The music at that bar is always the fashionable, inscrutable type. I have no idea what the problem was last night. Over and over I kept hearing, “Your disco! Your disco! Your disco NEEDS YOU!”

You know how it is, you get drunk and think you can do things you really can’t. Like pick up well-muscled heterosexuals or explain relativity. Like drive. That night we’d somehow all shown up early at Beer Blast. Someone must have been really clever about refills, so that by nine we were drunk, by ten we were smashed, by eleven we were divinely inspired. And by midnight, well, we pretty much figured we’d have no problem, rescuing Princess Masako.

* * *

Hiroyuki did his best to explain otherwise. I ought to explain about Hiroyuki, the only Japanese among the seven defendants. Hiroyuki has a respectable job and a respectable family and really deserves to be entirely cleared. He told us, several times, that mounting a direct assault on the gates of the Imperial Palace was a bad idea. Not that he was rude about it or looked down on us. He just thought this was not the way to reform Japan. He just came along in the taxi to keep us from getting killed. He should not be punished. Things would have gone worse, I’m sure, without Hiroyuki.

Hiroyuki held onto Ed’s arm. “Now is relax time,” he said. “In a three hours you back to home on the train.” Hiroyuki is still very young. His English is excellent and his French is very good. (Have I mentioned he’s well-hung?)

See, it only proves we’re crazy, that one of us hadn’t already settled down with Hiroyuki.

* * *

Rescue #4

Here, of course, was what would really happen:

As we battled with the guards and defeat seemed certain, Masako would spring up from behind a wall in a black leather body suit with red accents--and a machine gun. Just like Patty Hearst, post- Angelina Jolie.

No. No gun. She’d knock out the guard with a well-aimed kick. All these years everyone imagined she just practiced kung fu for her health!

“C’mon boys. Let’s hit it!”

* * *

“To the palace!” Ed told the taxis, and so they took us where the tourists go: to the gate with the view of the bridge and one corner of an outlying building. That’s it, that’s all you see: nothing democratic, nothing shared. You’re not even allowed to sit on the grass within a quarter mile of the gate, though there are many homeless people and, unlike the Imperial Family, they have at least a little of their own pocket money.

In the back seat, Alan and Martin tried to come to agreement on which wrathful goddess to invoke. They squinted first at Martin’s tarot cards, then his Palm Pilot. They were counting on the Divine Mother to appear in a cloud of heavenly radiance and transform the gates of the Imperial Palace into sweet red bean paste. Their first idea was to levitate the whole place, but that, they decided, was impractical.

* * *

We piled out of the taxi and gazed up at the gate of the palace: an iron gate several stories high, covered with a sloping roof. Just before it was a short bridge, blocked at our end by a low aluminum barrier a little more than waist high. We toppled over that bar like a lover and tripped across the bridge to the gate, from both sides of which the guards came now, from their matching guard posts, the white walls and curlicues and green roofs of which would have looked right at home on a militaristic wedding cake.

“Hello! Mistake!” said the guards, or maybe it was Hiroyuki, who was waving his arms, telling us to turn around and trying to making it all look like just an overwrought gang of tourists run amok.

* * *

Personally, I was 100% ready to go home, take a couple Advil and drink a lot of water. Hiroyuki was too. The guards, I bet, would have let us go if we’d just turned around and retreated. Drunks and foreigners both receive a lot of patience in Japan—and we were a whole lot of both.

I think even then we would have been fine but slapped-baby-cheeks Hal started cussing out the guards, insulting their IQ, genitals and ancestry, just as Alan and Martin started in with the mantras. Please don’t ask me where they got the little drum and the finger cymbals. I don’t have a clue.

There we were, madmen on seven separate stages, calling out for Princess Masako, and trying to save ourselves.

Alan pointed into the heavens, from whence the goddess would arrive.

Martin knelt.

Hal cussed.

Hiroyuki apologized as fast as he could.

Barry reached his soft hands into the air and cried out, “Princess Masako! Princess Masako!” as tears poured down his face.

But Princess Masako did not appear.

I stood there, looking around, wishing I could think of something heroic, thinking about what I always think about, that the guards weren’t bad-looking, really, especially the one on the left, who was taller. Only his yelling made him ugly.

We were all surprised, I think, to find the crowd of soldiers surrounding us, so suddenly, as if they’d risen up out of the earth.

The guards hauled us unceremoniously away. We ought to be grateful that no one was injured, except Ed, who’d brought this calamity down on us, when we were just out for a beer.

How did we ever imagine we could rescue Princess Masako? We can’t even rescue ourselves.

At the last moment Ed sprang away and threw himself sideways against the great gate, as if he might break it open with his own ordinary, fleshy shoulder.

* * *

We were standing at the bar, so crowded we could barely hold out our hands. Our hands in which glasses of white wine had now appeared. Seven glasses, still wet from the bar-back, who must have been exhausted so late in the night.

“To Masako!” Ed cried. “To Masako!” I said and meant it as a toast. The next thing I knew I was in a taxi, behind another taxi, on the way to the palace gates.

There was a moment--in between--I remember now. When we’d groped and shoved our way through the crowd and stood, at last, outside. The night was cool. There was even a breeze. I knew I was foolish. I just wanted out.

* * *

I am asking the authorities to exercise moderation and restraint toward us, the seven defendants. They ought to understand how anyone can go a little crazy in such a crowded place. Please spare us prison, which is no place for seven queers wadded up in comfort for so long.

Personally, if released, I am willing to leave this city within 72 hours and never return as long as I live. I will go to the place on my passport where it says I was born. I bear no malice toward the nation or citizens of Japan. I hope the authorities will keep this in mind.

Most especially, I have only the greatest respect for her Imperial Majesty, Masako, Crown Princess of Japan. I hope that, foolish as we seven are, the princess may hear of us and know that we wish her well, that she might even now escape and make her way back to the open air.