The Fourth Thing

POV of Sotce’s travels with Sean in Japan

Sotce is generally known for creating a religion (the sotce method) and a type of prolific poetic image (sotce core). She lives in NYC and has just finished her first novel.

He came to meet me at the airport around nine. He rushed to me in a frenzy, because I had been sending him distressed messages all night.

I had taken the cheapest route I could find: Indonesia to Malaysia, Malaysia to Japan, with a six-hour layover in between. I had only bought the ticket four days before, because until then Sean and I were uncertain about what we were doing. We could hardly ever make up our minds together.

By the second flight my body had turned on me. I got my period immediately after eating beef. The man next to me had one of those haircuts that was only long in the back. His breath smelled so strongly of tonsil stones that I felt sick even when he exhaled through his nose. He faced me for the entire flight and talked about crypto. I swear. And every time the plane shifted, my internal liquids sloshed.

I kept texting Sean things like “help” and “I’m gonna die.” So when I landed, he was shaken. That was a thing about us: I would unload, he would absorb. He would unload, and I would absorb. And nobody would feel better.

There were maybe three things that Sean cared about, and he cared about them with intensity. I was more balanced. I cared moderately about eight or twelve things. And I was always able to let them down. For example, I ate a tomato sandwich every day for a year. I lived for them. And then one day I just woke up and I couldn’t eat them anymore.

Sean’s three things were books, writing books, and cigarettes/coffee. One of the three had to be in rotation at all times or else things would spin out. I generally loved this about him: he was unyielding about what he wanted. He didn’t dilute it or soften it. He only ever wanted to write, or to inform his writing. And he loved it with clear eyes.

I didn’t really understand why I was in the picture. Since my existence contradicted his access to his things. So I wondered if Japan would show me a fourth thing.

He was nervous about the bnb. I couldn’t figure out why. He led us through a neighborhood of crisp-looking buildings. There was a spire dominating the skyline. It was like the Freedom Tower or the Eiffel Tower except it was a radio station that was connected to a sprawling mall. All the shops and restaurants we passed promised a view of it, as if it was not towering in the sky.

I slept for four hours. When I woke, Sean gave me a teriyaki chicken sandwich and he had washed the outfit I wore on the plane at the laundromat. He was always all or nothing. And when it was all the question hovered to me, of when it wouldn’t be. We walked through a park, then a shrine of blooming jasmine. For dinner we had cold noodles that we dipped in flavored broth. Sean ate his noodles in about one bite, then got really confused about ordering more. I gave him mine, which was fine. I am hardly ever hungry.

The next morning I wanted us to rise together and have a day, like how people do. I mapped to a restaurant that was Victorian English woman themed: dark wood paneling, old fashioned clocks, waitresses wearing bonnets. The only food on the menu was toast and pancakes that were remarkably fluffy and dry. They tasted like sponges with butter on top. The coffee was good though, served in teacups.

Gluten makes me stupid, and I swear I am allergic to maple syrup. But since we were in love, laughing about this meal was the whole point of it. Any discomfort was a way to know each other better.

There were small instances where we were off. Sean would walk fast and ahead, usually focused on one of his things, while I lingered over flowers and window displays. I wanted to follow him, and I also wanted him to wait for me, or to see my lingering as something vital. He hated wasting time. I hated rushing. In Japan there are lots of rules. Lines to stand in, arrows to follow, a whole choreography of order. There was a cartoon of a tiger winking and shaking his finger with the message “violations will be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law.” We laughed about it.

I forget what happened the rest of that day, but I was happy I was there with him, because it automatically meant closeness. Sharing a journey, determining its parameters, having only the amount of time that we had. The sun was bright and the late spring vibes were tense and erotic. He knew Japan well, and was showing himself to me in his knowing of it. He was happy to map and lead and fix my sweater. And he was happy to show himself. There were normally a lot of questions I couldn’t ask him.

The only one of my things which was disabling me was that I had put 12k into a retreat I had decided to host at the last minute. I had never hosted a retreat before, nor been on one, and I was convinced nobody was going to sign up. I kept sending the applicants weird half-emails hinting at it. I needed fourteen random girls to commit to traveling to a remote forest in Finland to do vague activities with me. And time was running out.

That night Sean took a call with his agent out on the street. I couldn’t hear his words but I felt his courage through the window. He came back with snacks from the konbini, a cream puff and pretty cans of beer, and I finally sent a proper email to the applicant pool. It sold out in twenty minutes. We watched a show together in bed, which we had never done before. I tried to memorize what it felt like to lie with him, and do nothing together.

The next morning I felt flushed with fortune from the sell out and I wanted to shop. We hadn’t properly been to Shibuya yet and I wanted to look at dolls and books and clothes.

The trains were quiet and clean. He wrote on his phone about his secret past while I watched his reflection in the subway window.

Sean’s adjacent wish was to get a haircut and then write in a bar, which gave me two hours. I asked my followers where to go and cut in and out of their recommendations. It was a hot rain, and things were either not fitting, or so distressed as to be sad to purchase. I avoided designer bags and the psychic warfare at the Onitsuka Tiger store. I ended up in a four-story resale shop. Floors descended in quality and price until the first floor was pretty much throwaway stuff, metallic skirts with the elastic blown out. I settled on the second floor and bought Dior denim and two tops. Thrilling.

When I went to meet him he was hungry. We ducked into a tall building and pressed every button on the elevator. Each floor opened onto a different restaurant. It felt like that children’s book, where an animal visits every apartment in his building and has dinner with all the different families. We settled on the fourth floor and ordered a pancake with fish flakes, salad, eel, and ume soju that you smash the pickled plums into with a plastic stick. You could smoke inside. Sean loves eel and smoking. I love ume. He loves that I love ume. And I love that he loves that I love ume. But I do not love that he loves eel or smoking necessarily, I feel neutral about it. We went home in the dark rain.

The next day for breakfast we went to a garage-like place that served eggs, toast, and coffee, which was just fine. Sean did stuff on his laptop and I worked on my phone.

When it seemed like he was finishing, I told him I wanted to look at old books in Jimbocho. We went to three shops. The whole time I knew that he wanted to be outside, smoking or writing. In the last shop we went into, all of the books were photos of the same girl. Some were styled like porn but in most of them she just looked pretty. Posed in school clothes, a nurse’s outfit, a party dress, laughing by the water fountain with her friends.

“What do they like about this one?” I asked him, pointing to the water fountain.

“Maybe they like when she’s happy,” Sean said.

I remember that night. Sean wanted to go out with me and do something special. I stalled for way long, fucking around on the computer. Not because I had some north star to follow but because I felt that I needed to toil at something to satisfy patrons and viewership. Like suffering is the security. I have not been fighting the good fight. I got lucky with internet money when I was twenty and have been trying to prove I am worthy of it ever since.

Sean waited patiently while I found something to say. By the time I was done, it was ten p.m. We found the only place still open near our bnb. There was horse meat on the menu. He ordered everything I pointed to, like we were celebrating.

There aren’t many people who really know Sean. But I do. He wanted to keep an umbrella over my head like we were kids inside a cartoon. But the walls kept breaking down, around both of us.

Love in Tokyo felt like the weather. I held onto the moments where we were the only two people in the world. It rained and rained there. I loved the rain. I did not mind his smoking. I did not mind the authority of the books. I only ever wanted him to mind me. Maybe more than he was able. Maybe I was the one who was insatiable.

Nobody really says it, but boys are sensitive too. They are like flowers.