Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:50:32 +0200 From: A.K. <andrej@andrejkoymasky.com> Subject: A Proud Furosha 4/8 (beginnings) ---------------------------- A PROUD FUROSHA By Andrej Koymasky 2010 Written on July 1, 2002 Translated by the Author English text kindly revised by ----------------------------- USUAL DISCLAIMER "A PROUD FUROSHA" is a gay story, with some parts containing graphic scenes of sex between males. So, if in your land, religion, family, opinion and so on this is not good for you, it will be better not to read this story. But if you really want, or because YOU don't care, or because you think you really want to read it, please be my welcomed guest. ----------------------------- Chapter 4 - Defence of the territory I decided it was easier to survive in the most central areas of Tokyo, where there are thousands of shops, restaurants, bars, commercial centres, department stores In the first floor underground of the department stores usually they sell food. Often on the counters there are small tasting samples of their specialities, with toothpicks to take them and taste them, to decide if one wants to buy that product or not. Thus, each time I passed near a department store, I just went downstairs and toured, and tasted two or three morsel on each counter, careless of the black glances that the shop assistants threw me. A couple of times the floor manager came who, seizing my arm, with words formally correct but cutting like butcher's knives, and with a tone not allowing contestations, accompanied me outside ordering me to never show there again. But when you are hungry, there are no black glances, no more or less veiled menaces and anything else that can deter you to try, in one way or another, to eat. I was becoming increasingly less shy, growingly cheekier. The boy of a good family, cultivated and refined, polite and gentle, was at that point dead, buried and forgotten for ages. Yes, Kenzaemon Kusakabe was dead and in his place was come to the world Ken Kinoshita. I threw my personal ID papers in a thrash bin - what use could they have, at that point? That one was no longer me, he was another person who lived, or to better say had lived, in another world. Or rather on another planet. Who was Kenzaemon Kusakabe? I didn't know him. I had nothing in common with him Kenzaemon Kusakabe, what an important and empty name. A student of the Todai, the most prestigious university of all Japan. Ha! Ken Kinoshita, whose ideograms mean "under the tree" yes, was a more appropriate name. Almost to affirm this concept, I sat under a tree in the Park of Shinjuku. It was a hot day, an unbearable heat. A dog came near me and sniffed between my legs "Hey, faggot-dog!" I said to him chasing him away, "What do you want from a dog-faggot?" The dog went away looking at me and wagging its tail. Who knows if dog meat is tasty? I heard that in Korea and in China they eat it But I would not even have the needed guts to cook it, therefore "You have been lucky, dog." I murmured. I was dirty and probably I was stinky. What would I have paid for a good bath, for a change of clean clothes but I had nothing to give in exchange for that not even my arse, in these conditions. At evening, walking along the Yasukuni street, I noticed a waiter from the nearby MacDonald emptying a box in a trash bin and I had the impression there were some hamburgers amongst the things that were falling inside it. As soon as the waiter went back to the shop, I walked hurriedly to the bin, opened its lid and started to rummage into it - yes, there was food and not a little! I was gathering it when something hit violently on my back. I turned with a jolt. In front of me there was a little man, shorter than me a good ten centimetres, dressed in an indescribable way with clothes that hanged on him without a shape and of an indefinable colour, so dirty they were. He had a sparse beard about a hands-length, thick bushy eyebrows and hair down to his belt, plaited, or to better say tangled up, on his back, making almost a greyish felt smeared with dirty. His skin was grey like all the rest, of a dark gray almost like that of the asphalt, and was all wrinkled. The age of the man was indefinable like all the rest. His lips were tense and thin, chapped; his nose small and jutting out and his eyes two bleary slits, but sharp and wicked like those of an animal ready to kill. "Go away!" he said with a low and menacing voice. "No, I'm hungry." I answered. He had in his hands a walking stick. He hit me with that on my side, on a thigh with unsuspected vigour, "Away from here!" he repeated. "I'm hungry, I want to eat." "This bin belongs to me, as all that is inside it." the little man snarled and hit me again, this time on a arm, before I could move aside. "It doesn't belong to you, grandpa, it belongs to MacDonald!" I answered belligerently, feeling the blood rise to my head. "It's mine! Only I can take things from there. Go away!" he said and he again lowered his stick on me. With my free hand, while with the other I was clinching a hamburger partly eaten by who knows who, I tried to intercept the stick to take it away from the man's hands. But that old man was incredibly fast, nimble and skilled, he avoided my hand and violently hit down with it on my shoulder. "Go away, or I'll take you to pieces!" he snarled again and set on me three blows in a fast succession and even though I tried to avoid them, he hit the target with all three of them. I stepped back and thought to change my tactics, "Inside there is enough for both of us take all you want to eat, then let me to take something." I said, trying to assume a reasonable tone. "This bin is mine! Away from here! You will not take even a toothpick from it. It's mine! Mine!" he said piercing me with his eyes grey like all the rest of him. "But I'm hungry!" I protested. "AWAY!" he screamed and handling his walking stick as if it was a samurai sword, attacked me with a hail of skilled and well-aimed blows that I was absolutely unable to avoid. Only retreat saved me from his fury. He didn't run after me, he remained on guard of his precious bin, waving his stick again towards me when I turned back to look at him. I still had in my left hand what remained of an almost intact hamburger that I held so tightly that the ketchup sauce dripped out and had now an absurdly twisted shape. While I was walking away I started to eat it and at the end I also licked my hand clean of its seasoning. I was aching in all the points where the old man's stick had pitilessly hit me. That is almost all over my body. There were still several passers-by. I decided to look for another thrash bin near another fast-food shop. But as soon as I tried to get near one of them, a menacing shadow appeared in its defence, another tramp; remembering the beating I just got, I made off without even trying to approach it, without even trying to bargain for a food morsel. I had learned my lesson. I then thought to go and find a gate, an entrance hall, any place where I could lie down. I saw a big empty cardboard box outside a closed shop of household electric appliances and I took it to use it as a shelter for the night. I finally found a shop whose closed rolling shutter was back from the building faade. The shop's lights were switched off and the street lights left that narrow recess in shadow; I settled the cardboard box and laid inside it, curling so that only my feet were out of it. I was about to fall asleep, when a bang resounded against it. I went out to understand what had happened - a man with a trolley with two wheels, the kind that housewives use to do their shopping, full of piled up indefinable things, was looking at me, frowning. He should be in his forties, he was thin as a rake, a little taller than me and his clothes were dirty like mine, but were still keeping their shape; he had on his feet shoes of two different kind and colours. "This is my place, I sleep here. Go away!" he ordered me with a low but determined voice. " Your name isn't written on it." I protested, tiredly. He took out of a pocket a jack-knife, "If you want I can write it, but on your belly!" he said with a flat voice. I stood up, took my big box and left him the place. "But where can I go?" I asked him. "That's none of my business. I'm not an estate agent." he answered starting to prepare his sleeping place for the night, without looking at me. I walked. All the possible sheltered places seemed already taken. In front of a closed gate of an outpatients clinic, on the wide inner step, were sitting two men, two tramps, who were talking between them in a low voice, smoking a cigarette. One of them had an opened can of sake near him. At their back, two sleeping places were ready. I stopped to look at them, and they too looked at me. "So, then?" one of them asked me in an aggressive tone. I crouched down in front of them, but not too close, remaining on the pavement. "I I don't know where to go to sleep it seems that all the decent place are taken" I started, in a low voice. "Ha, interesting!" the other said, in an ironic tone. "Can't you tell me where I can go?" I insisted. "Walk. Sooner or later you will find a vacant place." the first one in a practical and logical tone. "They are increasingly younger." the second one said to the first one, carefully studying me, with a suspicious expression. "And they don't have a backbone. Can't you tell me where I can go?" he said mimicking in a mocking way my voice and my tone. "No they have no balls, these boys of nowadays." The first one agreed stretching out a hand to take the sake tin. He drank a sip from it, noisily, then passed it to his comrade. That one also drank a sip and put the tin on the ground. They were no longer looking at me, they ignored me. They drew a puff from their cigarettes and slowly exhaled the smoke. I stood up and went away. I took the side streets, wandering aimlessly. At a certain point I saw a four story building, the classical house of mini-flats relatively cheap for single clerks or just-married couples. A small metal gate closed the passage leading to the ground floor flats and to the external staircase leading to the upper floors. All the windows were dark. I tried to open the small gate that yielded with a light creaking. I walked into the passage trying not to make any noise. I placed my big cardboard box under the staircase ramp and silently slipped inside it. I was falling asleep when the noise of a toilet flushing woke me up. I peeped out of the box - there was a light on at the small window of a toilet, just in front of the box where I was. The light went off. But soon after the nearby window's light went on. I saw the head of a young woman. For a moment our eyes met and the woman seemed amazed. She brought a hand to her mouth, as if she saw a ghost. She looked at me again, then disappeared. I asked myself what I could do. I went out of the box, went near the window, and looked inside. The woman, wearing a nightgown, was bending over a table telephone and was rapidly talking. I could hear her shrill voice. I clearly heard one word, "tramp". She turned and saw me, threw a short scream and in a louder voice said, "Come soon, I'm scared!" I understood she called the 110, the police. I abandoned my box under the staircase and ran away, hoping that the police station was not too near. I ran, and ran. Then I told myself that if by chance I crossed a policeman and he saw me run, he would have chased after me. Therefore I composed myself to walk slowly, as if I were just going back home At the first crossroad I turned, and again at the following one and went on walking, my hands in my pockets, hoping to have a "normal" enough aspect, besides my crumpled and dirty clothes. I passed my fingers through my hair, hoping it wasn't too ruffled. I turned one more time. The street was narrow and almost dark. All of a sudden I saw two shadows leaning against the wall of a house. I stopped to look. If I went on I would have to pass really close to them. I leaned against a wall and looked again, asking myself what I should do. One of the two shadows was leaning with his shoulders against the wall, and the other was in front of him, really close. I could hear them whisper something, but couldn't single out their words the only thing I was sure, is that they both were men's voices, young voices. Also their silhouette against the light was too flat in front to think that one of them could be a girl. They were too close to be just two friends chatting, and two friends never stay so close in front of each other. In fact the one who was leaning against the wall, after a short time, moved his head towards the other and they kissed. A long kiss their bodies adhered to each other they hugged, tightly if I saw them now for the first time, it would seem they were just one person I felt a sharp sensation of envy They evidently didn't have a place to go possibly not even the money to pay for a room in a love-hotel Yes they had to be very young, possibly two high school students. I remained there looking at them They went on kissing and stayed glued to each other. I decided to go towards them, parted from the wall and resumed walking. All of a sudden they heard me, parted almost violently and turned to look at me. Drawing nearer I read worry in their eyes. I smiled and when I was close to them, now well parted and both turned towards me, I stopped. "Don't worry I too would like having a boyfriend Can you give me some change? I am hungry and I don't know where to go to sleep" I said in a low voice. They looked at me still somewhat tense, but less worried. One of them asked me, "How old are you?" "Possibly three years more than you" I said. "How did it happen that you are in that state?" the other one asked me. None of us three was smiling, but there was no animosity, no fear, no mistrust in their eyes, in their voices. "Exactly because my father discovered I like men and as I refused to marry. Mainly because I refused to marry." "So he cut you off" the first one said. The one who formerly was leaning against the wall was so beautiful as to make you ache just looking at him, so much that you couldn't help but desire him. The other boy was not bad at all, but had more common features. "Yes. And I am broke, and can't find a job, and don't know where to go to sleep, and I'm hungry" I said in a lower and lower tone. "I don't have any money with me Do you have some, Yoshio?" the beautiful one asked to the other. "Me neither, I spent the last of it for the movies, you know that" "Yes, you are right. But wait" the other said. "What do you have in mind, Minoru?" "I'll go into my home and see if I can find something" the boy answered. "Careful not to wake up your folk" said Yoshio in a low voice, while the boy was slipping past a low gate just a few paces away. "What's your name?" the one called Yoshio then asked me. "Ken" "But don't you have friends?" "None of them wanted to give me a hand not even the boyfriend I had, when he came to know I had been thrown out of home." "What a nice boyfriend!" Yoshio said knitting his forehead. Then asked me, "Why did you refuse to marry?" "Because I am gay" I answered somewhat astounded by that question. "Minoru and I are also and we love each other But I don't know if we will dare to go against our families So we are planning to go abroad possibly to Australia" "How long have you been together?" I asked him. "For three years we are classmates." "And you don't have a place to go to" "To make love? When his folk are not home, at his place" "Your Minoru is really beautiful" I said, then I thought it was not so kind implying that he was not as beautiful. But he didn't seem to have caught that implication, smiled and said, "It's really true, isn't it? But above all he is really in love with me and I with him." "But you should have been more careful As I saw you a neighbour could see" I said. Soon Minoru came out, "I think they didn't hear me Here is something to eat and to drink, and a little money I took from my sister's handbag. It's not so much, but" he said giving me a plastic bag from a supermarket. "Thank you." I said taking it and blushed. "About sleeping I really don't know where to tell you to go" Minoru added. "Possibly in the park of the Yasukuni shrine" Yoshio suggested. "If it doesn't start to rain again" Minoru said, "that might be a good idea." "How can I get there?" I then asked. The two boys directed me. "Thank you boys. You have been kinder than all my relatives, friends and acquaintances summed up" I said with a low voice. "If we don't help each other, we gays" the wonderful Minoru answered me with a light smile. "I wish you all the happiness, also for your relationship" I said to them and went away, feeling somewhat relieved. I reached the sanctuary's park and found a bench. I looked inside the plastic bag - there were a five thousand and three one thousand yen notes. Then there was a packet of cookies, a half a litre of milk, a bar of chocolate, two boiled eggs, a pack of sliced cheese for sandwiches, five slices of sandwich bread, an apple, a banana and an orange I smiled, asking myself what explanation the wonderful Minoru could give the morning after for the disappearance of that food and of the money I slowly ate the banana. Dampness was coming up from the ground, and in spite that we were in the hot season, I was feeling cold and trembled. It could possibly be tiredness, possibly the stone of the bench, possibly possibly I was falling ill. I ate some of the cookies, opened the plastic cap of the milk and drank a couple of sips. It was ages since I had eaten so well! So well once a banana, three cookies and half a glass of milk wouldn't have seemed to me such a so a special meal like now. With the money that Minoru stole from his sister I went first of all to the laundrette and, keeping only my underpants on, I washed and dried my clothes. While I was waiting for them to be done, first came in a middle-aged woman who looked at me for a moment, amazed, but then quickly moved her eyes away. She loaded one of the washing machines, put in some coins, started it and went away. Then came a young man, a little older than me. Pretending not to look at me, he didn't move his eyes away from me a single moment. I asked myself if he got a hard-on, but his soft trousers didn't show anything. He too soon left, leaving his clothes to turn in a washing machine. After I dressed back, I went to the public baths and had a good, nice and restoring bath. I should also go to a barbershop, but I didn't want to waste too much money. I managed anyway to shave myself using a disposable razor that somebody left on the small shelf under the mirror and a piece of soap that somebody else left under another mirror. While I was relaxing in the flowing warm water, I lazily looked around, but there was nobody interesting - they were all rather old men. The youths at that time were surely all at their work or school. In Korakuen Park near the Iidabashi station, I found a hidden place, between the back wall of the public toilet and a tall and thick bush, covered by the wide jutting roof of the toilet. There was a faint smell of ammonia and disinfectant, but at least it was covered and well hidden. I took several pieces of cardboard there and settled them so to make a shelter, so at night I could go there and sleep. The big cardboard boxes sheltered me a little from the wind. Moreover, not to wrinkle my clothes too much, when I laid down to sleep, I took them off and carefully folded them, and slept wearing just my underpants - it was still quite hot, therefore It was not a problem. Only the humidity was strong and made me feel increasingly full of aches and pains in spite of my twenty-one years of age. But one evening, while I was sitting on a bench not far from my shelter waiting for night to fall, I saw the gardeners that were pruning and thinning the bushes hiding my precious shelter, and they took away my cardboard boxes, tearing them in pieces Once again I was evicted and had to find another settlement. The money that Minoru gave me was gone and I was again suffering from hunger, moreover I could not wash myself properly any more. I was feeling increasingly weak. I had gathered new cardboard boxes and found a shelter for the night in a short corridor that opened at the bottom of a garden, and at the end of which were the entrances of the big Kinokuniya bookshop. How many time did I in the past go to that bookshop on several floors, to buy my school texts, or just interesting books, or art books to put in my library? Who would have said that it would one day become my night shelter? And all my books, in my room in the house of my father, where did they end up? Well, I didn't really care so much Or rather, I didn't give a shit for it, at that point. But that night the end of the world burst out. As I didn't have the possibility to look at the news on the TV, I didn't know that one of the many typhoons that hit Tokyo in that season of the year was getting close to the town. In the dead of the night the Deluge came down! Did you ever see a typhoon? Besides the wind of an incredible violence, that at times doesn't even let you walk, the sheets of rain fall almost horizontally. Thus, in spite of the fact that I had placed myself at the end of that short corridor, all of a sudden pelts of water thicker than a shower reached the bottom of the corridor and reached the boxes inside which I had sheltered myself. So that after a few minutes they collapsed on me, totally soaked, wrapping me like a shroud and gluing themselves to me. The smell of the glue melted by the abundant water was sharp, penetrating and gave me the feeling of being suffocated. I freed myself from that unpleasant blanket of soaked cardboard that tore apart as I moved. I went out of there taking away from me the remains of what had been my shelter. The wind was incredibly strong, along the street were rolling the trash bins that knocked here and there with dull noises, almost covered by the hissing of the wind. Walking with paces as unstable as those of a totally drunk person, I blindly wandered hoping to find some place where to slip inside, where to find a shelter, but everything seemed closed or else invaded by the violent squalls of water. Other furosha, that is tramps like me, were running away here and there, going who knows where, trying they too to find an improbable shelter. At times the rain squalls beat against my face making it impossible to see. The water was whipping me with incredible violence - it was the first time in my life I faced a typhoon out in the open, in the street. Usually the forecasts were transmitted in time enough to shut yourself at home, or in your office, or at school, or even in a shop and not to be outside. But at that time shops and everything was closed. I walked with difficulty, asking myself what to do, where to go, and above all how long that fury of nature would last. When you look at the effects of a typhoon from behind a shut window, you can find them even fascinating but if you have to face them in the open, you just feel lost. I thought that if I managed to reach the Japan Railways Shinjuku station, at least the underpasses would be open and I could find a shelter there. I knew in what direction I had to go, more or less. I passed in front of a closed entrance to the underground. Yes, that direction had to be right, I went on walking, fighting against the wind's fury. A couple of times I had to cling to the grids of a rolling shutter so as not to be knocked down by the wind. I was feeling totally worn out, my body was trembling with such a violence that my teeth chattered and I was not even able to stop that. I thought I could possibly have fever, and even a high one. I was feeling my legs becoming increasingly weak, and understood they would not be able to keep me up for long. Gathering my little strength and all my will power I went on, until amidst the veils of water I recognised the vague shape of the Shinjuku station. I reached one of the entrances to the network of underground passages. Keeping myself upright with the handrail, I went down the stairs, slipping and barely keeping me up, stumbling, until I reached the wide underground corridor with the two rows of close shops on the two sides of it. I indistinctly saw that other tramps took shelter there - some leaning against a wall, some sitting on the floor, others lying on the stone floor, curled in an almost foetal position I went on walking in the corridor, thinking that from one moment to another I would collapse on the floor, hoping I could find a less crowded point, and I asked myself how many we could be under there twenty? Forty? A Hundred? It seemed that all the furosha of Tokyo had gathered there Yes, the kingdom of the luckless, the house of the workless, the refuge of the hopeless I told myself and slid down onto the floor. I tried to crawl towards a wall; I didn't want to remain there in the centre of the wide corridor, but my body didn't seem able to move any more, it didn't answer to the confused orders that my brain was still trying to send it. I saw the neon light on the ceiling wave, dilate, tremble, dance in an annoying way and increasingly fast, I closed my eyes and tried to bring my hands to my face but they stopped at mid way and fell on my chest, my breathing became difficult and I fell into the most absolute darkness. My ears were still capturing noises weird noises that seemed to rumble in a low volume Can a noise rumble at a low volume? Possibly not, but that was what I was feeling in an increasingly low volume, until also the audio stopped working. ----------------------------- CONTINUES IN CHAPTER 5 ----------------------------- In my home page I've put some more of my stories. If someone wants to read them, the URL is http://andrejkoymasky.com If you want to send me feed-back, or desire to help revising my English translations, so that I can put on-line more of my stories in English please e-mail at andrej@andrejkoymasky.com ---------------------------