Up All Night: A True (Enough) Story Read online

  Yet nothing can save you from yourself once you actually do have a few minutes of peace in your mind. In your room. In your bed.

  So I couldn’t sleep thanks to the anxiety my wonderful neighbor gave me. I also couldn’t sleep because my body was about to burst if I didn’t get some soon. Basically, my existence was consumed with sex, and it wasn’t pretty.

  For some reason, Starbucks is so much more expensive in Japan than it is in America. Fun fact: I never stepped into a Starbucks until I lived in Japan years ago. Another fun fact: most of my novels are written in a Starbucks near you. So even though a Grande English Breakfast tea costs a dollar more in Japan than it does in America, and a chocolate chip scone likewise costs my non-existent first born, my work brain associates Starbucks with getting shit done.

  Picture me, at this upscale Starbucks in the Iidabashi neighborhood, where traditional Edo meets modern Tokyo, sitting at a crowded counter with barely enough room for my netbook and my tray of goodies. On one side of me is a geologist studying charts and graphs on his computer that looks like it’s stuck in 2005. On the other side of is a young, fashionable student more interested in her makeup than the biology materials in her textbook. I chugged that English Breakfast with gusto, because I was so fucking tired that the words did not appear in my word processor.

  “Bring your boyfriend over and fuck him really loud.”

  I opened up Facebook and read the latest comments on my debacle of a post. “Suppose they’re not French enough to invite you for a ménage, huh?”

  A part of me wanted to go home and rest, but I knew that there was no rest as long as my neighbor’s libido remained unsated. Like mine.

  That dude needed to be put into his place. I needed to get laid. Surely, there was some way I could make these two things happen. Perhaps simultaneously.

  ***

  I had reached a new low.

  Never before had a dating app graced my phone. Never before had I connected my Facebook (my work Facebook! What the fuck was I thinking? God! It said CYNDI under a picture of me. What was I? Some international stripper?) to an app used to get honeys. Male honeys. Male honeys that had either lived in Japan for so long that they were jaded fucks, or were passing through and on a hunt for Japanese pussy to satisfy their life-long fetishes. (So, you know, neither gave a fuck about me.)

  I can’t believe I’m doing this, I thought as I sprawled across my bed and hastily created a profile. I kept telling myself that this was a game, a lark, something I never had to go through with if I felt uncomfortable later on. Yes, yes, placate myself with promises that I could ghost any dude, or that I could nuke this app from orbit once I came to my senses.

  Although, if you’ve ever been as hard up for a date as I was, you know that there is no coming to one’s senses until it’s too late.

  I took a few cute selfies and uploaded them. I explained in my profile that I was only in town for a couple more weeks, so I wasn’t looking for anything serious outside of a few dates. (Guys were into that, right? You always heard from women on dating sites that guys wanted to hook up. Well, I wanted to hook up! That should land me lots of hot dudes, right? Good looking ones? Decent looking ones? Ones I could sleep with while the lights were off?) The only thing I said about myself was that my name wasn’t actually Cyndi in real life, regardless of what my profile forced me to say. I had a feeling most guys wouldn’t care. If anything, they probably felt sorry for me because my name was Cyndi.

  I popped open a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts before activating my profile. If I were the drinking type, I would’ve had a beer or a glass of wine to lubricate this bullshit.

  Right away the app prompted me to start swiping right or left on the faces of men from all over the world.

  It’s dirty business choosing who you date in this fashion. It feels even less nice when you realize that men are doing the same thing to you. Some guy was sitting on the Tokyo Metro swiping through pictures of women while his dick twitched and thirsted for some pussy. He lingered on my photo and either shrugged before swiping right, or immediately swiped left because he thought I was ugly. (Or because I wasn’t Japanese. Extra nice.)

  I had to be mercenary. I wasn’t going to settle. If I sank to this low, then I needed to be as critical – or not as critical – as the men judging me based off one photo.

  Don’t ask me what my type is when it comes to the male half of the species. Do you look like a serial killer? Goodbye. Do you have a beard that looks like it wants to slice me in half? Bye. Does the only picture you provide give me hints that hygiene is secondary to your life? Haha. No.

  Don’t even have a picture of yourself? Nope. Open your profile with “No fatties thanks,” then wow, how do I have this sinking feeling that you think I’m too fat in my size 10 jeans? Do your photos show a woman and children that suspiciously look like they’re related to you?

  (Do I have to go on?)

  I had never done something like that before, yet it was unnerving how quickly I acclimated to judging men based solely on their appearance and whether or not a cursory glance at their short profile made them sound like sociopaths. Honestly, I didn’t care if they were in relationships or not. (As long as they didn’t bring them up, I suppose.) This was about a one night fling, a quick jab at some hot sex, assuming the universe had that much pleasure in store for me.

  Noses squished beneath my thumb. Receding hairlines pressed against my index finger. Goofy smiles and bulging muscles I knew I were never going to touch (because guys that hot don’t settle for girls not as hot as them) flew by so quickly that I couldn’t tell you if I hated them or…

  “Congrats! It’s a match!”

  Wait, who was this guy? Oh, no. Oh no. I had accidentally swiped right on a guy with an actual neckbeard and opened his profile with, “I don’t want a woman who is full of herself and wants me to take care of her. If you’re someone who doesn’t fall for beauty standards, then I would love to go dutch on some coffee with you.”

  How did I even…

  “Hi,” the dude immediately messaged me, “you seem like a smart young woman from your profile. Care to have coffee with me?”

  I had never blocked a man so quickly. Nor had I ever tossed my phone across my bed and buried myself beneath a pile of blankets, but hey, there is a first time for everything, right?

  God, this had clearly been a mistake. After sleeping on it, I decided to completely deactivate the whole thing and go back to my miserable existence as the horniest woman in Tokyo who never got any sleep because everyone else had more sex than her.

  Then I woke up.

  Chapter 3

  “Hi.”

  I rubbed my eyes as I rolled over, seemingly awake. Hard to tell back then since I was going on my fourth day of meh sleep. While my neighbor had toned it down a bit, my brain was still doing that thing where it didn’t want to let me sleep. And once I did, the rest of the household woke up to get ready for work and college classes, and guess what my other wall bordered? The kitchen.

  Two messages from two different men greeted me. The aforementioned salutation, and another one. A much longer one.

  “Hello! I have to say you are a beautiful specimen of the Japanese race…”

  Because nothing said “Good morning, Cyndi!” like being the target of some white guy’s misdirected Asian fetishism. Next.

  Mr. Hi.

  That’s all he said. No introduction, no asking how I was, how I liked Japan… a simple hello, accompanied with a shot of the right side of his face and the name Hadrian. I had never heard of it before.

  His profile wasn’t much help either. A lot of emoticons and the simple declaration that Mr. Mysterious Hadrian was out to enjoy life to the fullest.

  He was cute, I had to give him that.

  Only the one picture gave me anything to go by. Nice bone structure, shadowy dark hair, a hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth, but not one that insinuated he was an ass for the sake of it. I couldn’t pinpoint his ethnicity e
ither from this lack of information. Not that it mattered, but when you’re traveling around a huge international hub like Tokyo, you’ll always be curious.

  I was intrigued enough to say Hello back.

  Nothing. Eh, he sent his initial message hours ago, right after I went to bed. He probably thought I was ignoring him. It was time to get up and go about my day anyway.

  Lunch (remember, I like to sleep late,) shower, get dressed and decide where I wanted to go work for the day. Thoughts of Ikebukuro lingered in my head. It’s one of my favorite neighborhoods in Tokyo, partially because there’s so much amazing shopping, but mostly because there are many late-night cafes for this night owl to write in.

  It also wasn’t too far away by subway. As soon as I sat down on the bench, I opened my phone case and saw an alert from Hadrian.

  “How are you?”

  Wow. He actually messaged me back. Is it sad that I wasn’t expecting that at all? Also, I now had to face the fact that I was apparently doing this. For real.

  Nah. I always had the right to ghost him or never agree to anything but a friendly chat…

  “Fine, thanks. How are you?”

  His answer was immediate.

  “Good.”

  My day in Ikebukuro pulled my brain in two directions. When I was stationed in the present, my thoughts were clouded with ongoing story ideas and finding a Christmas present for a friend. When I sat down and looked at my phone, however, I only had thoughts for my mysterious match.

  Hadrian was a handsome man, or at least the one picture of his face led me to believe that. He was also a man of few words, which may have been a good thing for a guy who would probably end up a one-night stand. Oh, right, when was he going to make a move? Because I had been led to believe that this whole app dating thing basically amounted to “I think you’re good looking / I also think you’re good looking / Wanna get coffee and or fuck?”

  I had no hopes for romance. Hell, my main concern wasn’t that he would be nice. It was that any potential date I got out of this thing wouldn’t go down in flames because the guy turned out to be a misogynistic douchewaffle who thought taking me out meant I owed him my pussy.

  I mean, I was ready to go, but I still had safety standards!

  First thing I did when I settled down in a café overlooking Ikebukuro Station was respond again. “What are you doing in Japan?”

  If you’ve never traveled abroad, or at least never to Japan, then you may wonder why I led with that. Well, dear friends, it has nothing to do with any weirdness relating to me and everything to do with being nosy. We ex-pats in Japan, regardless of where we hail from, always wonder why the hell other foreigners are there. To be frank, Hadrian didn’t come across as a guy the local English schools were falling over themselves to hire. There are so few job prospects for foreigners even in Tokyo that it’s always the first thing we ask each other. “Yo, man, how did you get a sweet gig here? Is it even sweet? Tell me your life story because I am so homesick, bro.”

  He didn’t respond right away. In fact, it took him long enough to respond that I was deep in my work by the time I saw the blue light flashing on my phone.

  “I work in restaurant. I live here seven years.”

  The thing that made me curious wasn’t his imperfect English, but the fact that he had been here for seven years already and had nothing to do with teaching. That in itself was fascinating… because where I come from, everyone who works in Japan is staying for maybe one, two years tops and is either an English teacher or a translator for some big corporation.

  “Where are you from?” The Spanish Inquisition had arrived, and it carried the banner “CYNDI.”

  “From Greece. You?”

  Ladies and gentleman, I was talking to some hot Greek gaijin and the man worked in a restaurant. I had to know more. First, he had finally asked me a real question! Already we had transcended the usual conversation limit before a hookup.

  “I’m from America. Just visiting.”

  “Oh nice.”

  Not a damn thing more for a few hours. Great! I had scared him off with my Americanness. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. We American women have a reputation for being sexual deviants with huge, scary tits. Some guys can’t handle that abroad. (Or at home for that matter.)

  I had to get a grip. There was no guarantee that because a guy talked to me he would want to go out with me. At the same time, I was damn new to this. I was used to being the one who asked people out, because for some reason, I was always attracted to those who were either lazy as fuck or couldn’t comprehend being as aggressive as asking someone out on a date. This is probably why I actually hadn’t been on a ton of legitimate dates in my life.

  Still, I didn’t feel comfortable being the aggressive one when I barely knew who this guy was. I know, I know. He didn’t know much about me, either. I know I shouldn’t have bought into sexist ideals that the guy always asks the gal out first. But, here’s a secret. Never, ever in my life has a guy that I am interested in asked me out. If I went out with a guy, I was the one who suggested it first. (Or, you know, we were already hanging out and one thing turned into another…)

  I was determined to make this guy work for it a little bit. I may have been on the prowl for a one-night stand, but I had a few fantasies to fulfill while I was at it. Besides, wasn’t I playing around at this stage?

  Jesus! I needed to calm down!

  How the fuck could I calm down when 1) I write sexy romance for a living, and so I am constantly reminded of how people get down and dirty 2) My neighbor was always having sex and making me think about sex, whether I liked it or not 3) This was some seriously rough ovulating happening and 4) SOME HOT GUY WAS TALKING TO ME.

  I shut down my work an hour early. My brain was too fried with the sex I wasn’t having.

  And someone wasn’t responding to me. I’d find out why later, but for now, life sucked.

  ***

  “I’m sorry. I work late. It is restaurant.”

  Should I respond right away, or was that too desperate? I waited ten minutes so he wouldn’t think I stared at my phone 24/7 like some loser. I was in Japan, after all. I was supposed to be having a life. (Ha.)

  “No worries. I work late too.”

  “What you do?”

  Oh, boy. My profile said I wrote sexy books for a living, but I suppose that was too intense for someone to read. I wasn’t about to believe guys salivated over women’s profiles the way we completely deconstructed theirs before deciding whether to respond or not.

  “I write stories for a living.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup! It’s fun.”

  “Yes, it’s nice.”

  Okay. Cool. It was two in the morning and I had no plans the next day. Was this guy gonna ask me out or not?

  I was gonna have to get coy, wasn’t I?

  Feminine wiles are something I have in spades, although I don’t use them often. I mostly put them toward my books – I let my female romance characters act out those crazy wiles that I hoard within me. Even so, I know how to fucking use them. Poor Hadrian was about to be my first real life test subject in many years.

  “Do you have plans tomorrow?”

  God, as soon as I sent it, I realized how fucking transparent that kind of question is! Anyone with half a brain would know I geared up to ask him out.

  “I work. Every day I work.”

  Man, was he kidding me!

  “I work every day too. I feel like I always work.” So much for this super sweet and sexy conversation, huh? If this guy worked every damn day and didn’t have time to screw a girl silly, what the heeeelllll was he doing on a dating app? Jacking off while talking to me?

  “Too sad. We should relax.”

  I knew better than to think a “together” was implied there. Live in Japan long enough and you know that “together” is never implied.

  ***

  “Sorry. I fell asleep.”

  I stopped combing my hair as soon as I saw that
message. A new day, a new round of my neighbor’s bed smacking against the wall while he and his girlfriend moaned their whole lives away. Seemed fitting that I would get a message from Hadrian while this was going on at one in the afternoon.

  “It’s okay. You work today?”

  “Yes. I work.”

  “At the restaurant? What do you do?” Creeper Cyndi, that’s me.

  “I do everything. Sometimes bar. Sometimes cook. Always chat with people.”

  No wonder the guy was too tired to talk to me. He did this every day for who knew how many hours? The life of an immigrant isn’t easy anywhere.

  As much as I liked what I knew of Hadrian, I started to lose hope that we would go out. If he had wanted to, he would have asked by now, right? That’s what I thought as I packed up my work things and headed down to yet another café to work on a book that was nothing but billionaires fucking their mistresses. Occasionally Hadrian sent me a message, and I swiped right on a few other hotties, but I already wrote this whole stupid idea off.

  Even though I really, really wanted a… date. Yes. Date.

  Ladies, you know how it is. Your body is screaming at you to do something, and it’s not happy when you respond with a big fat fuck you, we’re going solo yet again. I would like to personally thank Japan for having detachable showerheads in every shower, but many times it’s not enough. Sure, you get off because you know what you like. Sometimes your body is even happy for a few days afterward. Like a man, you jerk off, you move on, life goes on as usual.

  And other times you’re dying for some actual physical interaction.

  Like I said, it had been too long since I last knew what it was like to have a good looking guy fawn over my body and act like I was the hottest encounter they ever had. I wanted kisses. I wanted that look of desire as a man’s eyes traversed my body and imagined what it looked like beneath my clothes. I wanted a man to get hard when he looked at me. I then wanted him to fuck the shit out of me as my body finally got what it was screaming for.