A View Through Smoke - a remix of original work by littlealex
Nobody smoked in LA. Crossing campus in the morning nothing but white teeth and slung water bottles, flaxen hair and skin bronzed under California sunshine, there was not a cigarette in sight. Conversations he heard often included English words such as hydration and workout. That was a first and false impression. Like werewolves emerging with the rising moon, Jin was amazed that the daytime healthy bodies became the after-hours health abusers. Americans, he decided, were nothing if not contradictory.
Contradictions abounded in his own life and situation so he shrugged it off as a learning. After all, that was the exact reason why he’d come all the way from Tokyo. Despite his vow to ‘show them all’ and the long hours of class and the literal piles of homework, his English progressed slowly. His initial enthusiasm got buried under the work and he gladly accepted when invited to his first American Soil party. He answered his bilingual friend with a loud, English “Hell yeah!”
Once there however, he felt like a hobbled race horse. He’d never been this Jin before, or if he had it had been very far back, before Johnnie’s. He was not adored, not even recognized, not mobbed by fans squealing or awed into silence. No one knew Akanishi Jin in LA. At the party only his bilingual buddy knew him, or maybe that one Asian chick who had been looking at him every now and again. Seeing that she may have been his only audience, he grinned. When she finally approached she said something to him in unaccented English. His friend confirmed through translation that she did indeed know who he was, but also that she thought he’d be taller.
His eyebrows shot up and his shoulders hunched down and he decided then to join the other, possibly rejected, males in their territorial pack on the patio. They were all smoking furiously. Someone offered him a stick and he was soon puffing away with the rest, relaxing a little with the cool neck of a glass beer bottle in his other hand. He caught snippets of conversations laced with female names and creative terminology for female anatomy, terms never used in his English classes. If he’d known the phrase he might have called it bonding. A couple of the guys took him under the wing and coached his pronunciation and hailed his attempts with “Yeah, Bro. Now you’ve got it!” They rapped their knuckles together, swigged their beers and smoked their cigarettes and he felt like he’d found brethren eight thousand miles from home. It was an innocent obsession and after all, who even cared what he did? He was on his own now.
The English lessons built one atop the other, like a pyramid balancing on point. The parties and distractions multiplied in much the same way. Some weeks later he found himself standing on some balcony at some party somewhere. A door burst open and a burst of music and laughter erupted out of it then just as unceremoniously ended when the door closed again with a swish. A girl, long hair almost to the hem of her short skirt, had come onto the balcony.
He pretended not to see and continued to smoke and gaze moodily out across a parking lot and a view halfway up a couple of grey barked palms. He sensed her sizing him up, felt her mounting her courage. Then she closed the ten foot distance between them.
“Konichi wa,” he heard and his mood buoyed before he recalled that lots of people knew at least that much Japanese.
“Good evening,” he said and she flashed her bleached-tooth grin, bronzed skin, flaxen haired, and through his buzz he thought ‘I’m in love.’ But then she happily rattled off in a minute a conversation that would have taken him half an hour to translate.
“Wait, wait,” he was forced to confess. “English, just…just a little,” he said sheepishly. Surprisingly, she grinned again and said “Cigarette?” and he offered her one. Then he offered her a light.
“You’re cute,” she said and he blushed a little since her tone was understandable in any language.
A pack of cigarettes could break the ice. Even people who didn’t normally smoke would take one at a party after a drink or two and their defenses slipped a little. There was a ritual to offering or accepting. The smoking was some kind of connection, almost a camaraderie, and he decided that the payoff was worth the risk, so much for so few dollars. It became a habit that somehow made the learning of the language come easier. Words used within the smoking culture became easier for him to remember; 'lighter', 'pack', 'burn', progressed to 'bottle', 'babe', 'make out' and 'good time'.
Between the party highs and the long hours of solitary studiousness, there were the lulls, the bleak and lonely moments when he remembered he was far from friends and the unnamed masses of adoring supporters. On one of those lonely guy evenings he succumbed and dialed up a remembrance of home. The first call went to voice mail. But the next found a living soul, namely Nakamaru. He was tickled to have received the call and they talked like friends until Jin gave himself away.
“Are you alright?” Yuichi inquired.
“Well, it’s hectic and exciting but yeah, I admit I’m a little homesick…”
“No, I mean your health. You breathing sounds, I don’t know, …funny. Oh wait, you’re smoking, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” he answered cautiously.
“Well, you’d better lose that before Johnny finds out.”
The warning flew over his head, a leaden bird that had little to do with California sunshine and freedom. He hardly thought about the habit in LA except to be thankful for it. He could relax and enjoy instant brotherhood with fellow smokers. He could measure periods of time by cigarettes. If he studied through six leisurely smoked cigarettes he would have studied well. It became a trait defining his LA period. He practiced in front of the mirror, tightening all his muscles and letting smoke drift out from between languid parted lips. He watched the smoke curl through heavy lidded eyes. He practiced a tilt of the head and a haughty evaluating look as though rating his observer. He tried it out at a party and received a husky, ‘like what you see, Baby?’ From there he could casually flip the spent butt and crush it slowly under a boot heel or sneaker toe, depending on what he’d worn and head toward his thoroughly charmed victim or he could begin with any number of English openers he’d learned. Even speaking became easier because of the cigarettes.
Months later, Jin brought his English slang and his nicotine kick back to Tokyo. After the terrific welcome and the jubilant reunions the dust settled and the fond and misty eyes grew as critical as ever. The usual stresses and frustrations came again. Jin missed his cues. He flubbed his lines. He lost his footing and messed his timing. The guys tried not to say things like, ‘oh here we go again’ and the managers tried not to let the prodigal see their eyes roll. Each time, Jin in his fury or his shame wanted to retreat to the roof and sooth his ego. This was not a new habit, but the nicotine was.
On the last occasion he’d gathered his tussled feathers close, and stalked up the narrow stairway. He closed his eyes, enjoying the first pull on the filter. It brought him back to California. His free hand itched to feel a sweat chilled bottle of beer between its fingers. He’d tested the social waters in California and they’d been warm despite that first barrier of the language. There had been pressure but it had been somehow hazy, less intense and harried than Japan. While musing on these memories that the others could not share, he was startled by a voice.
“You smoke now?” Infuriatingly, the first person to actually see him breaking the rules was Kazuya.
“Eh…,” he tried drawing out his surprise so he’d have a little time to think. But what was there to think about he asked himself? It was a straightforward question with an obvious answer. “Um,” he decided on a course, “My personal habits aren’t really your concern.” He was trying to convince himself of that even as he moved the glowing end of the cigarette out of the other man’s line of sight.
“I see.”
Kazuya looked out over the rooftop, his hands in his pockets. He slouched forward just a tad and extended one leg. “Pretty nice view from here,” he noted.
“Yeah,” Jin agreed but then grumblingly admitted he would have to address the unspoken things circling around like planes at an air show.
“Bosses wouldn’t like it.”
“No,” Jin admitted, suddenly wishing he didn’t feel so self-conscious. It felt strange to take a drag in front of Kamenashi but his nerves were worse just knowing that he was being watched. “They don’t have to find out,” he added somewhat hopefully.
Kamenashi smiled.
“You can’t keep a secret. You’ll end up telling them yourself.”
“I won’t,” he snapped back then felt like a kid for doing it. Somehow it made them both laugh.
“Maybe I should just tell them and save you from worrying that you’ll slip up,” Kazuya offered. Jin sighed and looked out over the rooftops that seemed to stretch forever. California freedom seemed so far away all of a sudden. Yet there was something about this game that he remembered playing with Kazuya from months ago; the daring, the darting, the something that wasn’t quite revealed. Somehow Kazuya knew things about him, knew things he was about to say, or things he was thinking, or sometimes, uncannily, what he was feeling. “Maybe you should just tell me something,” Kazuya went on.
“What’s that?” Jin asked as he brought the cigarette back to his lips. Then he remembered the practicing, the look that seemed intensified when seen through the thin blue veil of vaporous heat. He leveled Kazuya with that glance and thought he saw a tremor, just a flicker in the confidence.
“Tell me why you started.”
What? He thought. The posturing quickly ended. The question disarmed him. Damn you, Kazuya, he thought. Hinting, half-said somethings, innuendo and suggestions. Why wasn’t he playing fair? And the ‘what?’ that he’d thought came falling out of his mouth unceremoniously like an eavesdropper falling through a doorway.
“What? Tell you why I started smoking?” Jin knew the question wasn’t about the first cigarette taken at the first party but about keeping it up. “I…,” he had to think. And his mind’s eye played dozens of videos of all of them together, and playing, jostling, pushing, pulling, holding on to, bumping, laughing, he realized that he was a very physical person. And in a land full of strangers he’d had no outlet for his nature, none of his true friends.
“I was lonely. You can’t touch strangers. I needed something to do with my hands,” he said and once the dam was breached then there was no going back. Jin hadn’t known a flood was back there but it came pouring past his defenses. “They helped me to feel like I fit in somewhere. They helped me to relax enough to actually try speaking English. I was afraid to look like a fool but the cigarettes, well, they maybe distracted my mind enough to loosen up and maybe, not miss everybody so much.” Jin sniffed and blinked, not even sure why he felt so emotional.
He cleared his throat and threw the rest of the cigarette onto the roof surface. He toed it out and when he looked up Kazuya was looking back at him and into him. He took a careful step nearer to Jin.
“It really is a beautiful view from here.”
A warm shiver washed down his spine and he felt his mouth blossoming into a smile. It was good to be home.
.