The White Peril 白禍

If there are any managers of housewares departments reading, may I ask you a favor? When hiring men, please make sure they're queens.

Straight men are great--my very own father is a straight man, and I just love and respect him to pieces--and there are plenty of roles they can fulfill in society that constitute a real contribution. Just not when they're supposed to be selling you vases, endtables, or curtains.

I thought I was going to end up making this guy cry yesterday by asking whether he could measure the depth of a vase for me. You know, I wanted to buy flowers for it on the way home, and I needed to know how long the stems had to be without unpacking it right there at the flower shop. (You can eyeball these things sometimes, but it can be tough to gauge how thick the bottom of something is.) If the flowers are too short, they have to be entirely defoliated and end up looking as if they were being garroted, which isn't a pleasing decorative effect unless you happen to live in a dungeon, and maybe not even then. The more I tried to explain this, the more traumatized he looked. By the time the ordeal was over (the first vase got marred when they tried to scrape off the brand label for me, so they had to bring a second one out of the stockroom--yet more agitated activity for one of these foreigners with their strange requests), I was feeling traumatized myself.

*******

Luckily, one of my friends was back from a week home in Australia, so we went out for a restorative drink and catch-up. Less luckily, just as the vase encounter had blissfully slipped from the memory, I was beset by two guys who had been talking and flirting with my buddy.

It was the usual round of questions: How long have you been here? Where are you from? Oh, and where did you grow up? Oh, where on the East Coast? Pennsylvania? Where in Pennsylvania? Oh. Well, then, where on the Philadelphia end of the state?

At this point, I know I'm in for it. Long draught of vodka. Sigh. "From just outside Allentown."

One beat. Two beats.

Oh! You mean like the Billy Joel song?

Now, that everyone I will ever meet in my entire life will respond to the mention of Allentown with that exact sentence is a harsh reality to which I have long been inured. That everyone seems to think he's the first to think of it also doesn't bother me--we're all less original than we like to imagine we are.

But rarely do two people utter it at the same time.

And then start singing the song at me in stereo.

My buddy, who's seen this conversation and my wearied reaction many times before, stifled an uncharitable chuckle and excused himself to go to the toilet. (Bitch. I'll remember that.) Fortunately for me, another friend, one who actually understands the meaning of loyalty, was on my other side. At the first opportunity, he commandeered my empty glass and waved one of the bar guys over. "Oh, darling--not just the Allentown comment, but impromptu karaoke as well? I saw your fist clenching and unclenching--just be glad it's over now and relax and drink this."

*******

And while I'm mewling, why do delivery services find it necessary to play head games with you? Tokyu Hands originally told me my latest acquisitions could be delivered between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., but that I'd be called with a more exact time this morning. Fine. I get a call at 8:30: "I'll be arriving at your place between 11:00 and 13:00." Okay. At least that's a reasonably narrow range.

At 10:30 I'm getting ready to get in the shower so I can be out, dressed, and maquillage-èd by the time the guy comes. (Just because I want to be able to leave for work right after receiving my delivery, not for the other reason that may occur to the image-conscious gay mind. Japan must be the only country on Earth without hot delivery men and construction workers.) My keitai rings. "Hi! It's XX from Tokyu Hands. I'm at your building in less than five minutes." Granted that being early is better than making you wait around endlessly, I was just lucky I hadn't decided to go out and run some errands under the assumption that it would be okay to be back at my apartment by 10:55 or so. (I've done so before with unpleasant results.)

On the bright side, the apartment is nearing completion.

Just finished using my ice cream maker for the first time; there's no better way to assess how nimble the temperature control is on your burners than by making custard. (Double boilers are for sissies.) Things turned out fine, though even on the lowest setting, we got perilously close to Scramble City. So we've now established that I can contrive all my staple foods without incident here.

I think I accidentally took Atsushi's grater and a few other kitchen-drawer things, too. Will have to give him yet another parcel of items now. We've been meeting pretty regularly; the still-friends thing is working, if still a bit awkwardly. This weekend, I finally had a chance to give him back my key to the apartment, and there was a sense of finality to it that put me a little out of sorts. (Silly, I know, given that we broke up in October and I moved out a month ago.) I've been on a Fleetwood Mac jag since then. Mostly Tusk. Yeah, yeah, yeah--Rumours is the break-up classic, but it doesn't fit. Between Atushi and me, there's neither Lindsey-Stevie hostility nor a John-Christine thing in which one helplessly watches the other's spiral of self-destruction. We're just kind of wary around each other--acutely attentive to boundaries and things. So it's mostly Tusk with Interiors thrown in occasionally.

In other news, the weather has been absolutely gorgeous here. Time to start thinking about houseplants, actually. Hope everyone else is enjoying the slide into late spring.

The apartment is basically assembled now. There was no DIY that would pass muster as such at, say, Casa d'Alger, but I did manage to set up a kitchen in which you can actually cook.

You know how it is when you find an apartment you like--there's always one thing so seriously wrong as to be a possible deal-breaker. Everything about this place was fine except for the kitchen, which has no counter space. I mean none at all. There's not quite a sheer drop from the edge of the cooktop into the sink, but the space between them won't even accommodate a dinner plate. By Tokyo standards, Atsushi's apartment was a cook's dream: task lighting; work space wide enough for your extra-long cutting board, a bowl or two off to the side, and your glass of wine; three burners; and acres of cabinet space. But then, it's a two-bedroom place, the assumption being that it will be occupied by a couple with children and that the lady of the house will not be satisfied with a kitchen she can barely turn around in.

My new apartment was designed for a (heterosexual) single person, so the assumption is that there will be nothing more complicated going on than the warming of a bento from the convenience store. (Okay, fine. That parenthetical was a little unfair. I have gay friends who can't boil water, too. But even they recognize that you need room for fabulous equipment on the countertop.) The only solution was to eat some space from the living room and set up a counter of sorts there. I had an old set of steel shelves kicking around that cleaned up fine, and the manufacturer still makes modular wood tops in the right size. I had a piece of cobalt blue acrylic cut to fit at Tokyu Hands and fastened it on as a serviceable backsplash. It works just fine and looks, frankly, much better than I'd expected. In Tokyo built environments, better than expected often has to be enough.

Still no plans to compromise on the throw pillows, though.

Since it's still (narrowly) Sunday where my own mother is, I think I can scrape by and still not feel late in saying, "Happy Mothers Day, mothers!" She and I just spent a happy half-hour discussing the trials and tribulations of moving into a Tokyo apartment. She reacted with proper Middle-American horror to the information that cold-water kitchen and bathroom sinks were still standard here until a decade or two ago ("Didn't I ever tell you that before in the last ten years, Mom?") and was relieved that my new place is hygiene-enabled.

She was probably slightly worried about the throw pillows--I'm looking for this particular shade of poison-green raw silk, see? Not chartreuse...yellower and a little more intense. Kind of like danger yellow with green highlights...without actually being iridescent. It's one of those things you can see in your head, and it just maddens you when you've gone to every department store and shop you know and no one can give you the poison-green raw silk you want. ERGGGH. The problem has now gone global, with friends in Bangkok, New York, and San Francisco having promised to keep an eye out for me.

Anyway, hope it a was a good weekend for everyone.