Ilya Fleet Prayer cuffs, Coco de Mer
THOU SHALT ENTER NAKED.

The sign’s virgin white plastic winks at me in the bar’s low lighting, as it catches the gleam bouncing off a line of bottles scribble-labeled “Mary’s,” “This is Joseph’s,” and “The Joneses.” I stare at the sign, it’s like we’re sharing a joke, like the two couples congregating across from me, at the other leg of the L-shaped bar.

I can barely hear their laughter over the porn playing on the flat rectangle of TV above me, flashing a man and woman doing what god designed them to do, in the pure sunshine of their own ghetto garden of Eden.

Only I’m not sure the president of the universe imagined they’d manage to twist so many limbs at so many right angles like that.

The camera zooms on a heaving rib cage, trailing down… I look away when another alcoholic apple juice appears in front of me. A woman yells across the bar, “We call this a ‘Holy Roller’ down in Florida.”

I cross myself with the cup, and the couples raise their plastic glasses.

KEEP READING »

Azendi “Forbidden Fruit” necklace, $490

“You can smell their desperation like perfume.”

I meet the cabbie’s glance in the review mirror: the cracks in the glass echo the red spidering through the whites of his eyes.

“That is how tourists are to the men and the women here,” he says, smiling. “You are going through rough time? They smell it, and they are ready to comfort you. You’re like a ripe apple dangling from a tree.”

I cackle with him. I’d just been telling him how suspicious I was of Miami’s mindless friendliness, and he had voiced my guess: “Oh, but you can be sure their niceness wants something from you.”

He had picked me up in downtown Miami, where I was looking at a high-rise condo. The rest of the country’s white-picket-fence dream was melting down from the heat of its greed, and its southern most tip was having a fire sale: luxury buildings growing out of Miami’s decrepit business district were priced too temptingly. So I’d gone to see what seemed like a ridiculous deal: what I’d pay for a humble apartment in Los Angeles would buy a thirtieth-story flat here. Part of a glass and steel sculpture stretching to the sky, the condo had offered a bay view that made me feel like god looking down on ant people, along with a 24-hour doorman, and a rooftop sauna.

It’d seemed fitting that Miami would place a hellish heat as close as possible to heaven.

And the apartment had been beautiful, its public places sensually groomed, but I’m not sure yet how Miami wouldn’t be hell compared to LA, which is already a dull purgatory compared to New York. I’m still building my career, and it makes me nervous that Miami’s carpe diem command is more explicit than in the desert beach town I already live in: forget any effort outside of instant pleasure, just chill out.

I relax into the black seat of the taxi, as we bump over the bridge back into touristy South Beach. Out my window are vacation villas, the plaster castles distanced from the cab by a lawn of ocean. My mind gets lost in that ideal island, its palm trees swaying like beckoning hands, its yachts bobbing like heads nodding “Yes.” I watch a couple writhing together on a pier.

“What’s the craziest thing that’s happened to you in a cab?” I ask. “When’s the last time you were in this car and thought, ‘I can’t wait to tell someone about this’?”

KEEP READING »

I can’t remember the last time I was naked with a woman.

Just a shade of a gorgeous girl, she has angled, sleepy slits for eyes, a sleek profile broken by the thin triangle of her nose, by the bubble of her lips, and her breasts are bobbing shadows under the bath’s steaming mineral water.

I try not to watch her, but I like looking: growing up between brothers, never playing team sports, seeing a woman’s living nudity is novel. I make myself look away, only so that the pleasure in soaking up her shape builds interest.

Her form melts into the caved, dim space, like the stone Buddha bathing under a waterfall that grows beyond the grotto ceiling, like the fireplace dancing next to the pool, like the deep red ceiling soaking up the heat. I move towards her, enjoying the solid steam slowing my motion, making my arms and legs drag instead of run, like in a fantastic nightmare.

And then she breaks the quiet to speak to a woman who’s just entered, and the dreamland I’d built is dashed and shattered, like the water as her friend’s thick thighs chop into it. In a splash the Buddha is cheap plaster, the girl’s full face is hardly as enticing as her pretty profile, and we’re all lukewarm-enjoying the hole-in-the-floor Korean spa that I’d discovered on Yelp.com.

KEEP READING »

Coco de Mer Geisha Gag, $165

My back’s flat against a black sheet of stage that’s speared with a pole, and warm air over my bare legs is like a comforter. A couple of two-dollar bills melt into one between my teeth, pillowed by my wet tongue. Lured by that make-out Monopoly money, a topless Japanese girl slithers over me, her skin powdering my nose, her head nuzzling my thighs, pausing. Then her hands massage my breasts as she crawls back, kissing me, biting the fake money into her mouth. She pecks me on the cheek, chirping, “Arigatou!”

“No,” I giggle. “Thank you.�”As vulgar as the world might make watching naked, thin girls strip to buy clothes and food, Japan styles the experience as gracious, as graceful, as losing your virginity on your wedding night.

Only maybe more mildly mannered.

I sit back down at my table, with a hostess. Her eyes are wide, their slant exaggerated with false eyelashes and lips constantly curved up. “She good dancer, yes?” She echoes my declaration from a few minutes before.

I smile. “Hai!” I say, with a short nod. The only Japanese I�ve spoken my two days in Tokyo is “Star-uh-bucks-oh,” “Yes,” and “Thank you.” Excepting my Engrish chant while hunting for soy lattes, this seems to be the most Japanese spoken by the natives, too. With such soft language, what little I’ve seen of the megacity makes it feel feminine, despite city myths of men groping women in crowded elevators, in spite of the aisle of rape porn I stumbled onto in a six-story sex shop.

Tokyo is just too polite to feel fully dirty and urban.

Though the metropolis is dense with thin buildings nodding to the sky, heavy skyscrapers bending under the clouds, and a tower that flatters the Eiffel with its likeness, it’s urbane about its urbanity, completely clean, only littered with bowing trees offering to shade your stroll on the sidewalk.

It’s partly this prettiness that makes exploring Tokyo vibe like virtual reality: everything is blinking and bright and light and seemingly safe, so consequence-free. So I wondered through alleys, sky walks, and sidewalks, finally entering Kabukich, a district that was hardly lit in the red it’s famed for: instead it was flashing yellows and greens and blues, and the whites of Japanese men’s eyes, against the gray of their European business suits.

KEEP READING »