by Scott Hunter
He was the first gaijin I’d ever known—an American on a semester abroad in 1985. We became like a double-act in our circle at Kyoto University. The woman was a maru obi colorist paying him for sex. He swore back then that they never had sex, but it wasn’t credible—he had long sinewy arms and sex in his eyes. Ostensibly he was teaching her English. His host family didn’t approve of her. They secretly hung out a few afternoons a week. Coffee shops, touristy places like the Imperial Palace, Philosopher’s Walk, hotel lobbies. She paid him exorbitantly each time. I saw her once. I recall thinking she was hot, for a 40-year-old. He said she took him seriously. Witty conversations with sexual innuendo. He had a knack for languages, was good at Japanese puns, rare for gaijin back then. He entertained all of us in English Speaking Circle. The others didn’t know about the woman. They said he should be on TV—gaijin on game shows was a trend. He taught our group hey-batter-batter chants at a softball outing, and fourteen uses of fuck. Led us in drunken reverie at the Osaka Reggae Fest. Once, my wife Naoko (then my girlfriend) told me she’d noticed how he held my belt loops riding behind me on my motorcycle. She called it overly affectionate. When we hit bumps, he’d wrap his arms around my torso. Like octopus arms tasting me, I said. She laughed, blushing. She had a crush on him, felt left out. To me he just seemed free. Free from our rules, our prescribed ways, our Japanese-ness. I envied that. Wanted it to rub off. Took me years to recognize his restraint was fear.
When Naoko was working or studying, he’d get me to take him to minor tourist sites, the Thousand and One Buddhas, the Moss Temple, etc. Unlike most guys, he didn’t turn everything into a girl-hunting expedition—he respected what I had with Naoko. More than I did back then. Away from the group he was less the jokester. We’d stand in bookstores reading Popeye, he’d ask my opinion of the fashion, the haircuts. We’d wander department stores, get a squirt of Issey Pour Homme before I’d meet up with Naoko and he’d see the maru obi woman.
One night, drinking at the Fire Festival, we talked about our falling apart families. I said he sometimes reminded me of my dead big brother, his watchfulness and mimicry, the freckles across a wide nose bridge. He said it was messed up, his little brother wanting to be just like him, called himself a doomed coward, and weak. But he could throw out a runner stealing second from a catcher’s squat and was getting paid for sex. Or so I thought.
A few years later, April ’93, Naoko and I were traveling around the US on our honeymoon. The last day, we’re sitting with him across an orange Formica table at a New York slice-pizza joint, reminiscing. He laughs and says yes, she paid him, but no, he still swears, they never had sex. “Couldn’t do it with her, you know?” he says, his long fingers gesturing just look at me. He’s totally emaciated. Dark circles under big eyes. Lesions not quite hidden on his neck. He smells vaguely anti-septic. It’s unseasonably hot. I’m sweating wearing a leather jacket I’ve worn every day since I bought it at a Wyoming dude ranch. Naoko and I are leaving that night, and my company’s transferring us to Indonesia. I don’t need the leather jacket, and he’s shivering—at one point his teeth chatter. Naoko and I bear these unspeakably composed smiles, feeling how he wants us to be as we all were, full of promise. He’s obviously sick, but he’s smiling freely, acting interested in us, charming as ever, green eyes seeking.
Naoko and I talked on the plane home about how we’d be laughing at his comments about our photos, completely forgetting how sick he looked, until the hacky coughs and suddenly all we could see was the illness. We were quiet and then I told her I didn’t think he knew how he’d broken her heart that summer. She replied, “Like you did his,” and we cried a little. At the pizzeria, when we were leaving, I gave him the jacket. It dwarfed him. He pulled the collar up, crossed his long arms, pressed the sleeves to his nose, smelling the leather, smelling me.
Scott Hunter’s fiction has appeared in TRIQUARTERLY, FIVE POINTS, HONG KONG REVIEW, BLOOD ORANGE REVIEW, the KYOTO JOURNAL, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and named a semi-finalist for the American Short(er) Fiction Prize. An excerpt from his novel-in-progress won the DeGroot Foundation’s 2023 First Pages Prize. His English translation of Mayumi Maeda’s picture book, KANNON-SAMA, an illustrated origin story of the beloved Buddhist figure Kannon (Avelokitesvara), was published in March 2025 by Shunjusha Publishing. A former Lambda Literary Fellow, he lives in New York City and teaches at the Writers Studio.
Emerge Literary Journal 