Being Gay in Tokyo at Christmas.

Being gay in Tokyo isn’t all sipping Ginfizz and dancing to Kylie, you know. If only it was. Some of us are merciless, fickle and shallow, and that isn’t the half of it. Gay culture demands that we assess the attractiveness of every man we encounter and dismiss him the moment he fails to tally with our preferred erotic fantasy. Those are the bare facts. And this is the silly season when we have too much time to examine the firmness of other mens’ buttocks and the sag lines’ our own partners.

Yet this year I sense that perhaps Tokyo’s gay community is maturing. I cheerfully pampered a gay friend this week. For his 32nd birthday, he said (being a Madonna devotee) he wanted a black African baby, not so easy to find at short notice in the great metropolis. After a frantic day harrassing unsuspecting sales clerks and an unmentionable confrontation in Isetan I was directed to a small Harajuku boutique toy shop. The ‘black baby’ was more Mongoloid than African and incomprehensively dressed in north American Indian attire complete with tomahawk, but undeniably life sized, and a quick visit to the Gap furnished a full wardrobe of  baby clothes. I bought some Pampers for realism at the local Familymart where I usually buy my lubricant, quite embarrassing. My friend christened it “Baby David” making the hallway entrance cupboard of his 1LDK apartment in Shibuya into a nursery with fairy lights.

I would be curious if sales of black dolls in Japan enjoyed a boom this Christmas as they are in Europe. It’s almost enough to make me wish I were heterosexual. Then I could stay at home dipping chocolate Pockey into one minute ramen and wearing cheap HG outfits bought from Don Quixote. Bliss, if you could stand it.

Celebrities with distinctive voices can clean up at this time of year. Through happenstance I’ve landed a role as “Santa the bigu man” at a major department store in central Shinjuku whose name shall not be mentioned but begins with T. A nice young boy from Saitama who introduced me to the nice young agent who introduced me to the nice PR man at the store (who almost drowned me with genuine Macha tea whilst explaining the ethical intricacies of the department store corporation vis-à-vis the Christian Festival) eventually telling me, as he stared disappointedly at my general groin area, that he had wanted to give the role to a “fuller” gaijin but none could be found. During the costume fitting I was informed by the nice young dresser that my Santa predecessor in 2005 had had a “Scoobi Smeeru” and had apparently not been gainfully employed in his grotto for the full contract. Having met a few young dressers before, I translated ‘scoobi smeeru’ as ‘scary smell’ and the explanation ‘Glavey’ as ‘groovy’ when he strapped on the extra Santa padding around my buttocks and stepped back in expert admiration. I like my dresser and look forward to many merry seasons associating with him, but only in a professional role, you understand.

Santa is certainly coming to Tokyo this year and what better way to wish each other a gay Christmas than a visit to the Xmas Grotto where you can tell Santa san your innermost desires and hopefully he may visit you in the middle of the night and make them come true.

Post silly season will see the ‘Pig’, my ever loving partner, and myself fly of to sunny Thailand for a weeks recuperation after the trials and tribulations of life at the department store. The new year will bring the next instalment of Gay Tokyo, I look forward to writing you then.

Mark Ito

I like it. I can dance to it. Therefore it’s good (J.Rotten).