The White Peril 白禍

Damn. Atsushi's sick. In Japan, they use the same word colloquially for what we'd call a cold and for what we'd call the flu, so when someone says 風邪をひく (kaze wo hiku: "catch cold"), you don't know how serious it actually is until you find out more about the symptoms. Last night on the phone, he said he had a 風邪--which was a warning sign right there. Atsushi always downplays his ailments, in typical Japanese fashion, so he refers to a regular cold as 風邪気味 (kaze-gimi: "a bit of a cold") rather than 風邪 ("a [full-fledged] cold"), even if he's pretty stuffed-up and lethargic. In any case, he caught it from his immediate boss, who is apparently in the hospital with an IV drip, so we are not talking about a hot-water-and-lemon-and-brandy-and-try-to-avoid-going-outdoors cold this time around. I hope Atsushi doesn't get quite that sick, but it's the end of the year and they've been working him to death. His resistance is obviously down, and tomorrow he's going to be flying in and then joining the crush on the train to get to his parents' place in his hometown for New Year's Eve. Great for picking up more germs.

So we've laid in plenty of fluids and electrolytes. I've also made sure we're not out of...what's it called, that iodine gargle stuff? People who live in Japan will know what I mean--it's really great when you have a sore throat. And thanks to that nice Paul Smith, I am now the owner of three more pairs of insolently sexy boxers than I was on waking this morning. If Atsushi's going to have to spend most of the break in bed anyway....

Joel at Far Outliers--gentleman, scholar, and (as I learned a few months ago) great drinking buddy--has put up his thousandth post. He provides links to several of his posts that have been most accessed by readers. Congratulations to him on his second blogging anniversary.

Exactly one year ago today, I posted this:




Fat lot of good that did, huh? So I figure, as we go from the Year of the Cock to the Year of the Dog--stop that sniggering, you bitches in the back!--I may as well solicit resolutions from even more people this year. If the elements are going to dash your dreams, make 'em work at it, I say.

In 2006, I would like liberals to decide whether they believe in protecting (1) assertive individuality, even when it has sharp edges and raises uncomfortable questions or (2) the right of the government to adjudicate every potentially offensive manifestation of religious beliefs, sexuality, and even dietary choices. I don't really care which one they pick--though I'm hoping they go with (1), of course. They just need to knock it off with the cynical, opportunistic toggling back and forth between the two, depending on which tack happens to suit the finger-wagging point they're making at a given moment.

In 2006, I would like conservatives to decide whether they believe America's material prosperity and staggering array of consumer products are (1) evidence that our way of life is the best in the world or (2) evidence that we've lost our spirituality and are hung up on the trivial at the expense of the transcendent. I don't really care which one they pick--though I'm hoping they go with (1), of course. They just need to knock it off with the cynical, opportunistic toggling back and forth between the two, depending on which tack happens to suit the finger-wagging point they're making at a given moment.

In 2006, I would like everyone to forgo the opportunity to be an asshole sometimes. Say, every third opportunity to be an asshole. Yes, I know--your opponents don't make or respond to arguments, they just parrot the same empty talking points over and over and they ignore counterarguments and they suck and you're not going to put up with it anymore and you're willing to be a nice person but they force you to play offense all the time. I know, I know, I KNOW. I know because you've told us that about a million times. What I don't know is what you think you're accomplishing by adding one more uncharitable jerk to the din. Fearlessly offensive, gusty expressions of free thought can be a bracing corrective to namby-pambiness in the public discourse--within reason. When they become the public discourse, we're in trouble. If you want people to be respectful, rational, and fair-minded, you might want to get the ball rolling by setting them an example.

Best to everyone in the new year.

It's almost time for the New Year vacation. That means Atsushi and I will be entertaining--we're two of the party-throwers among our friends. It also means it's time for the yearly Great Gay Veuve Clicquot Exchange. (My theory is that there are actually only five bottles of Champagne Veuve Clicquot in existence in any given year, and they get passed back and forth in a sort of Chinese fire drill as host gifts at fag parties from mid-December to the first week of January. No one ever seems to open them.) Maybe I'll make stew or something. The weather's been unseasonably cold in Japan as in the States, so we're ready for the sort of warming food you normally don't need until the approach of February.

Of course, Atsushi and I already set a precedent for food randomness over the weekend. Usually, I make dinner on Christmas Eve; last year, I even roused myself to start preparing a week ahead of time and made sauerbraten and dumplings. This year, my flight landed on the 22nd, and Atsushi arrived on the 23rd (the banks were closed for the emperor's birthday). Between jet lag and general tiredness, I didn't make a single dinner while he was here. Christmas Eve we went to a tempura restaurant. Atsushi chose it because I love vegetable tempura and because Western-style restaurants tend to be packed on Christmas Eve. Tempura isn't quite as traditional as, say, goose, but...uh, you know...tempura was brought to Japan by the Portuguese. And Portugal's a Catholic country. So you can find a Christmas connection in there somewhere, especially if you're on your third glass of wine.

Hope everyone else enjoyed Christmas (or just the weekend).

Added at 22:30: This guy (via Gay News) obviously moves in very different circles from me. A Ten Commandments of cocktail parties that doesn't start talking about the drinks until Commandment #9? Whatever. I also like these:

Commandment #4:
[...] And don't forget the bathroom! Scented candles, an elegant bottle of hand soap, extra toilet paper, and a basket of high-quality napkins or paper towels make guests feel pampered.

I'm sorry, honey, if you're hanging out with the sort of people who can made to feel pampered by a pile of paper towels dumped in a basket, you need to find new friends. (My Crabtree & Evelyn guest towels, embroidered in saucy botanical patterns and housed next to the brushed-metal soap dispenser, are a big joke among our buddies.)

As for scented candles, this guy has dispatched them handily so I don't have to. I will only add that having tall, fat candles lit in an enclosed space in which tipsy people are unattended and desperately fumbling with their clothes is not the brightest idea.

Commandment #7:
Keep 'em moving! The entire point of a cocktail party is to mingle. To encourage that behavior, set up your bar and your buffet table on opposite ends of the room (or in different rooms altogether). That way you don't end up with traffic jams and a huge cluster of people in one spot. Also, sitting down is a no-no! To keep the energy up and the party moving, only provide half as many seats as you have guests. Besides, we all look thinner and more elongated when we stand.

In my experience, people who don't want to stand will not stand. If you've removed every stick of furniture from the room except the drinks table, they will stretch themselves out on your floor. They will close the lid of your garbage can and perch on it. If they know where the bedroom is and you've locked it, they will find your utility drawer, get a screwdriver, jimmy the lock, and sprawl on the bed.

And this David Lawrence character has also forgotten in their entirety two indispensable party ingredients: salt and club soda. Someone will inevitably spill red wine. If you're lucky, it'll be a few drops on one of your patterned throw pillows. If you're not lucky, as one of our friends wasn't a few years ago, it'll be a full glass that gets knocked over the edge of a table by someone who's getting a little over-enthusiastic about hitting on one of the other guests. (Three guesses what color the carpet was.)

I've toyed for years with the idea of getting a Japanese driver's license and maybe a junky car. For some reason, I've never gotten around to it. Part of it is that I can get everywhere on foot, by cab, or by train without really feeling inconvenienced; and part of it is that I think Atsushi likes doing the driving because it means I'm letting him do something for me. So we have a claim on a parking space in our building (probably worth more per square meter than our apartment) that's empty while he has the Toyota in Kyushu.

The result is that my need to be at the controls of a motor vehicle gets saved up for eleven months of the year and only has an outlet while I'm home. Luckily for me, eastern PA has a lot of variety in the driving, so I get a good workout here. Within fifteen minutes of my parents' house--have I mentioned that they not only have giant creche out front but also one of those fan-inflated light-up snowmen just outside my bedroom window?--you can go from back roads to a tractor-trailer-heavy interstate to downtown. But the most fun to be had is around Philadelphia.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, four of the interstates through metro Philadelphia are 76 (the Schuylkill Expressway), 276 (the Pennsylvania Turnpike), 476 (the Northeast Extension of the Turnpike, which runs up by my hometown), and 676 (the Vine Street Expressway in Philly and then through to New Jersey). I assume that the number assignments were patriotic in origin, but figuring out which is which must drive non-locals insane.

And that, of course, is before they actually start driving on them. Today, I hit the Schuylkill Expressway at the perfect time to experience all its electrifying glory: it was crowded enough that you were hemmed in on all sides but empty enough that it was possible for everyone to do 70. The sun was low enough to get in your eyes at inopportune moments. Also, the Schuylkill is one of those roads with on and off ramps on both left and right, so quite a few people find it necessary to cross three lanes of traffic at some point along the way from A to B. You just have to settle in and treat it like a real-life video game.

I smiled a little as I shot past the University City exit. When I was in college and coming back from a few days home in Emmaus, my father and I would slow to get off there, and at that point my muscles would unclench and I'd think, I'm back--thank God! This was when I was still getting up at 7:30 to go to church every Saturday, so I meant that last part literally. It was also when Philadelphia seemed blissfully far away from the Lehigh Valley, though compared to Tokyo, of course, it's right there. I think I might still have been entertaining the idea of becoming a writer then, before I realized that I'm perfectly content to play out my imagination inside my own little mental world and am much better, in the external sense, at explicating other people's original writings than contriving my own.

Things have changed for my college friends, too, which is why today I was headed not for Center City but for Haddonfield, NJ, where two of them--married, with two little girls--moved from Rittenhouse Square when their family started growing. We ate Old El Paso tacos and seedless grapes and ice cream. The girls are clearly going to be brainy like their parents, and in years past, I've brought them age-appropriate books and read them aloud. You know, Make Way for Ducklings and stuff. But some four- or five-year-olds suddenly pull way ahead of their age group in terms of reading level, so I figured I'd overshoot widely this time around and give them one Hardy Boys and one Nancy Drew mystery. That way, if they get bored with children's books in a few years' time, Mom and Dad have something longer and a little more complicated to read to them.

It would have been nice to have time to see more people, but I'm feeling ready to go back to New York tomorrow and then Tokyo on Wednesday. Long ago in college, before I came out, I was afraid that a decade down the line all my friends would have settled into happiness and I'd still be terminally pissy and resentful without having figured out what I was resenting. That's over, fortunately. I can enjoy spending time with my parents and visit my hometown without its feeling like a noose tightening around me. I can visit my friends and feel the familiar feeling of being back in the group kick in. But I'll be pleasurably relieved to turn the key in the lock when I get home to Tokyo and start planning what to make for breakfast when Atsushi's flight comes in the next morning.

I

Didn't Dannon's low-cal brand of yogurt use to be called Light 'n Lively? The stuff my mother brought home from the supermarket the other day was labeled Light 'n Fit--which is okay, I guess, but it was kind of disappointing because, while I have no trouble staying fit, I could've used the energy.


II

I'm having serious trouble not running out and buying all the cordless power tools you can now get. We have a spare room in the apartment that would be fine for a workshop...except for the noise. I'd like to be able to build a bookcase or two, but it's not worth being the Noisy Foreigner on the Third Floor Who Now That I Think of It Has Kind of a Strange Relationship with That Nice Mr. Yoneda He Rooms With.


III

Asian flavors and things are everywhere now. General Foods International Coffees had some kind of Chai Latte concoction; I almost fainted. Fruit-flavored things all come in mango, too, in addition to the de rigueur peach and apple and strawberry.


IV

Martha Stewart is totally our gift to the ages. Three thousand years from now, anthropologists will be examining her television show and commercial appearances as artifacts and writing theses like "This goddess united the cult of domesticity with the cult of the questing hero; her final sanctification came after she had weathered the archetypal passage from downfall to redemption." I was flipping through the channels and landed on her Martha show just as it was starting. The opening theme was--does this woman's brass go all the way down, or what?--the Swing Out Sister version of "Am I the Same Girl?" I almost died. When one of her ads came on, and she smiled that wide-cheeked, generous Polish smile and fixed us with her flinty death-ray eyes and bellowed, "Christmas is about giving [your credit card to the salesgirl when you're buying Martha Stewart Living cookie sheets]!" I smirked inwardly and thought, Islamofascism doesn't stand a chance.


V

Can we get a pool together and maybe pay off everyone involved in the CSI series--all the way from Las Vegas to, like, Pigeon Forge, or wherever the latest incarnation is set--to make it GO AWAY? Or at least to hire some scriptwriters who occasionally know how to resist the obvious cliché one-liner? Just once in a while? You know, so that you could happen upon a rerun from a few years ago and expect Katherine to say, "Why did the SUV cross the road?" without Grissom's doing that fake-contemplative look and answering, "To get to the other side"? It'd be nice to be able to keep my Orange-Mango Light 'n Fit down, yeah?


VI

I love Fig Newtons with a passion that's probably not quite salutary. When you see me, on this site, rhapsodizing about America, I'm not thinking of personal liberty or free speech or our crackerjack soldiers or any of that stuff--it's the Fig Newtons.

I wonder, though, whether food manufacturers could do us all a favor? When labeling one of your brand's epigone versions, could you, like, be more clear about it? Yesterday, every time I grabbed at a food package, it took all my energy to dodge the Splenda/reduced-carb version, the fat-free version, and the low-sodium version. I think it's wonderful that those choices exist. They warm my heart. Really. But if they're only labeled with those penny-sized sunbursts that usually contain safely-ignored messages like "Now with even more buttery flavor!" it's deeply confusing. I don't see why I should have to work that hard for a box of Cheez-Its.


VII

Low-carb spaghetti?!?!


VIII

I only get to observe from afar what the political and social climate is like here most of the time. It's very heartening to see all the "Support our troops" signs and things. Many of them (like the bumper stickers) are obviously well-worn, but a good number are also very clearly well-maintained by their proprietors.


IX

Maybe if I just bought a cordless drill with a few power-screwdriver attachments included, Atsushi wouldn't get upset? I could probably get pre-cut lumber somewhere--DIY stuff is popular in Japan nowadays, and that's the only way I can imagine Japanese people's being able to do it. But then I don't get to have saws. My favorite part of Dad's workshop was always the big, scary sharp tools, though it was probably wise of him not to let me "help" with, say, the table saw when I was, like, five. Maybe I should write Stanley and suggest they develop a range of noiseless saws, the way they have noiseless dishwashers now. Then I could probably fit a circular saw in one of my checked bags. (Nice surprise for the TSA bag searchers and all.)

It's morning in America.

No, I'm serious; I'm actually writing this in PA, so the timestamp will be the same for me as it is for my stateside readers. Yesterday was insane with farewell drinks and flights and things, but I got to JFK around 11 p.m. and arrived at my parents' place at 2-ish, I think. Having convinced their two Siamese cats to concede my superior fabulousness--why that always takes such a long time, I do not know--and thus my right to occupy the room I lend to them during the other 51 weeks of the year, I crashed. Hard.

I don't remember how I got Japanese pages to encode properly on my mother's machine, so until I do (or unless I take my laptop somewhere with WiFi), I don't really have any access to Japanese news, which is a weird feeling. A less-weird feeling is that of being back in my hometown without being seriously disoriented.

I love visiting my parents, who are great people to be around and have a very comfortable house. My hometown...well, I discovered very early along that I'm a city person. I expend a great deal of energy defending the suburbs and car commutes and things because it's the right thing to do--either you believe people should have the liberty to choose how they live, or you don't and you think they should be cajoled, coerced, engineered, and harangued into making your pet trade-offs--so I hope confirmed small-town types won't take offense when I say that being home exhausts me. Most of the time when I come back, I have to use a few days in New York as a buffer between Japan and here, since the City is way less brittly frenetic and stressful than Tokyo but way more dense and kinetic than Emmaus. It's a good way station. This time, of course, I was in the Caribbean in one of those self-contained resorts that give you the spooky sense that you're in a biosphere. Or on board the Nostromo. The Lehigh Valley feels positively megalopolitan by comparison.

So I'll be back after running errands and figuring out how to get JIS encoding here and eating more molasses cake than is probably strictly necessary for one's first day home.

I just heard from Eric that Steven Malcolm Anderson, much-loved proprietor of Up with Beauty and commenter at Classical Values and Dean's World, among other places, died suddenly a few weekends ago. I'm afraid I'm on a short break between meetings and am too shocked to post much now except that I wish him an eternity of pho, lesbians, and good loving from his pantheon of goddesses. RIP, big guy.

God, American men are hot. Every time I come home, I spend the first day wondering what the hell possessed me to move abroad. Yes, Atsushi is more than enough reason to stay abroad, but I didn't meet him until I'd been in Japan for four years. Cute young American guys generally get handsomely weathered in middle age; Japanese guys just kind of bloat and get blotchy. (Atsushi won't. He doesn't smoke or drink, and he has me to take care of him. Which is the bigger factor in keeping him vibrant is not for me to judge.)

I got to my old roommate's office without incident. Picked up the keys, came to the apartment, and met the two chihuahuas he bought for his lovely fiancée for her birthday. They huddled in a corner and kind of growled at me for a bit, after which they fell blessedly, if sullenly, quiet. Then, inexplicably, about forty minutes after I arrived, they seemed to look at each other and say, "Oh yeah, that's right--we're supposed to be yappy and annoying dogs." Thus began the querulous top-volume yelping, which continued even after I dumped my jet-lagged body in the bedroom for a nap. They didn't stop until my friends got home hours later. I know this not because they kept me awake--a freight train right down 37th Street couldn't have done that--but because every time I did hazily resurface they were still at it.

Up at 3:30 for my morning flight. Yippee!

This morning's trip in proved yet again my Narita Airport Law: k = (time before Narita Express departure that I get a cab)(amount of traffic). I ended up on the platform a half-hour early, playing my usual game of "how long can I go without reading?" in order to avoid exhausting my books and magazines before the twelve-hour flight even begins. It's a shame Joanne Jacobs's prose is so brisk and readable; I have this feeling I'll be done with her book before we're over Alaska.

One of the MILDLY ANNOYING things about this trip, I discovered when packing last night, is that I had to prepare for two completely different environments. My meeting is in the Caribbean, and our parent company is super-casual. I'll probably be doing most of my business in ripped jeans and a T-shirt--if not, indeed, by the pool in a swimsuit, dripping. Back at home, where it's winter, is where (paradoxically enough) I've been invited to a few dinners I have to dress for. I generally like to travel light. Oh, well. At least this time I didn't leave my entire bag of o-miyage on the floor of my living room the way I did a few years ago. It was fun trying to figure out what to do with fifteen envelopes of green tea when I got back to Tokyo.

Speaking of conserving things, this will be the first time I find out whether my iPod battery is as short-lived as they legendarily are. At least if it lasts four or five hours it'll be fine for the second leg of my trip. I'll be landing at JFK on Tuesday, spending the night in Murray Hill with my old roommate, then taking off for the Dominican Republic at 6:00 the next morning. If you're going to scramble you're bio-clock, don't be doing it halfway, I say.

See everyone later in the week.

It is becoming obvious, is it not, that I'm kind of distracted? Most of it is getting ready to leave on Tuesday for a few weeks in North America. I have my tickets, my traveler's insurance, my renewed visa, and my new reentry permit. I've resolutely held off reading Joanne Jacobs's new book so I can devote myself to it on the flight(s). I've managed to cram in appointments with my dermatologist, dentist, chiropractor, and hair guy. (It's starting to touch my ears--man, that drives me nuts.) Of course, there's extra work at the office, too, because I'm getting ready to go to a meeting.

My apartment is a disaster area. There's no decaying organic matter, mind you. Just clutter. Here we have a last few loads of laundry, there we have a pile of things I can't forget to take along. Atsushi's Christmas present for my parents and brother is out in a prominent place ready for packing. I still have to buy the souvenir green tea I take back for people, though--have to remember that tomorrow.

I don't know why this go-round is turning into such a production--I generally several long-haul flights a year. (My bad back loves me for it, too.) Part of it is the season, probably. Travel arrangements came up just as my visa had to be renewed and our 2006 budget/planning proposals had to be done at work.

Also, this time I'm not traveling with Atsushi, who's very good at protecting me from my own absent-mindedness. He never seems to be ordering me around, or anything, but when he's here, planning just...you know, goes smoothly. My dry-erase board, in addition to not smelling sexy when I bury my face in its hair, doesn't seem to be able to make my sunglasses appear when I'm in danger of leaving them behind.

Anyway, posting may be sketchy for the next few days, though it won't be much lighter than usual while I'm actually at home and in the Caribbean. One pleasant surprise about having the blog is that it's allowed me to communicate, albeit indirectly, with Atsushi in my natural American voice; since we'll be a continent away from each other for half the month, the varied ways to keep in touch will be even more valued than they normally are.