Splash Damage (Part 2)
How a bad relationship during my decade of living in Japan caused me to revisit the grief I had long avoided.
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The offer of Masa’s company takes me by surprise, but my honesty steps up. “I do.”
From the station, I guide Masa to my empty apartment; Kazuya won’t return for at least three more days. Masa sits beside me on the sofa. His obvious concern and tenderness, coupled with the safety I feel in his presence, prompt a wave of increasingly bitter and, this time, irresistible grief. “This joke of a relationship… I have to end it.” I close my eyes and shiver. Thoughts of my father hover closer.
Masa holds me, and I give in. The tears fall hot, and my rattling chokes give a voice to sorrow. Masa’s grasp tightens, one arm around my shoulders, the other resting on my leg. “Let it out.”
More feelings—anger, now—crash through me. But the grief expands into fear, too. The sobs keep coming, and Masa strokes my hair and rocks me as my throat swells with pain. The fear fades within his arms, and all my emotional closets open. The grief for my long-gone father, the terror that once surrounded my sexuality against the backdrop of HIV/AIDS, my chronic need for sex to avoid loneliness, and yes, the relationship with all of Kazuya’s deceptions… they blur together in a tear-laden release.
Masa’s embrace remains until, at long last, my outburst began to decrescendo. Grief exhausts me, but for once I’m not hiding from it.
Masa’s hand rises to my chin and lifts it, holding my gaze. “Better out than in.”
I chuckle.
“Go take a shower. You’ll feel better, and I’ll make some tea.”
I run the hot water and stand beneath the spray, planning. Kazuya has to go. Potential arguments and scenarios fill my imagination until Masa startles me, tapping at the door. “You OK in there?”
“I’ll be right out.”
Cups of tea sit on the table, along with a pile of onigiri.
I apologize with a quick dip of a bow. “Did you run out for food?”
Masa smiles. “The convenience store down the street was open.”
I reach across the table to squeeze his hand. “Tell me about your family.”
“There’s not much to tell. My father died years ago. And when I came out to my mum, things got a little weird between us. When the offer came to work in Australia, I went.”
“We have a lot in common.” I squeeze his hand again. “My father died more than ten years ago, and my mother took a while to recover from my coming out, too.”
He holds my gaze. “But she made it in the end?”
“She did.” I smile. “I think my decision to move to Japan helped.”
He nods. “It was the same for me. But not having me around also wears on her.”
“Is that why you’re here now?”
He laughs. “Here in your apartment?”
I laugh, too.
“Obon is a big deal for her, and it’s harder for her to clean the house and the graves alone.” He squeezes my hand back.
I switch gears. “It’s late. Do you want to stay the night?”
Masa pauses before agreeing.
That moment of hesitation furrows my brow, but I shake off any negative thoughts, pulling towels from the closet. “Why don’t you take a shower, too? My clothes are too big for you, but one of my T-shirts will make for a nice negligée.” I giggle as I push the couch back to make space for the guest futon. Masa places a hand on my shoulder, and I look up at him. “You’re not going to shower?”
“I will, but I wanted to ask if your bed had room for two.”
I blush, wondering if that question had been the cause of his hesitation. “Can I tell you something?”
He smiles.
“When you first looked at me at the meeting? I very much wanted to sleep with you. But then the tears came.”
His grin falters. “And you don’t want to sleep with me anymore?”
“No, I do! You make me feel safe, protected, and attractive all at once. That’s never happened before.”
He laughs, taking my hand. “I’d better strike while the iron is hot!”
“That’s not the only thing that’s hot!”
The shower renders him even more handsome, his damp hair askew after a rough toweling. My T-shirt floats on his thinner frame, but his smile glows with incandescence as he enters the bedroom.
He reclines beside me, his arms open to draw me in. I accept his embrace, luxuriating in its welcome.
“Can I kiss you?” His voice, low and sweet, caresses my ear.
I nod and open myself to him.
His fingers trace the length of my torso.
I respond with a kiss, informed by a new understanding of intimacy.
“You are beautiful,” he whispers.
I gasp, not at all used to such adulation.
Our kisses intensify our shared passion, and again he whispers, “You are beautiful.”
I believe him now, and when we fall back in each other’s arms, sated, I murmur my thanks.
Masa takes my chin in his hands. “Why are you crying?”
I pause to assess. The tears are not of grief, which still lingers in my mental periphery. To my surprise, I realize that another emotional closet, the one I constructed for joy, has opened. “I’m happy,” I confess.
He laughs and holds me tight once more. “Do you play video games?”
His question surprises me. “Not really. Why?”
“I was thinking about splash damage.”
And now I laugh. “I’m sorry if the tears were too much.”
Masa lifts my face to see his smile. “That’s not what I meant. You can lose points in some games if your bomb goes off too close to your avatar. That’s splash damage. Hurting yourself by accident.”
“You think I’m also responsible for the problems with Kazuya?” I see his logic, but bristle regardless.
“Don’t be angry. I’m not saying it’s your fault. But I wondered, based on everything you told me, whether you wanted the relationship too much. Whether you’re grieving that betrayed expectation.”
I take his hand from my chin and squeeze it. “I think you’re right.”
“I need to tell you something.” Quietly, I turn to face Kazuya, the kettle I filled on a stormy September Saturday weighing down my hands.
He stops by the sliding door dividing the kitchen from the living room. He looks away as the wind rattles the windows behind him.
I set the kettle on the stove, and my words come out in a measured stream. “You have to move out.”
His head droops, his shoulder now leaning against the door frame.
My vocal cords grow taut. “You used me.”
Silence elongates the distance between us until, at last, he speaks. Quiet. Matter-of-fact. “You like being used.”
Fury blooms across my cheeks, but I refuse to respond to his provocation.
Kazuya hasn’t turned to face me, but I know his eyes peer out from behind his bangs. He wants something from me, and his voice grows plaintive. “Just because we don’t have sex doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
I take a deep breath. “You’ve told me that before.” The silence of my pause extends. “But I wanted a complete relationship. Both love and sex.”
He shrugs.
“You just wanted a roommate.” Another pause. “What does it even mean when you tell me you love me?” A deep breath. “Because I don’t love you.”
Kazuya turns. Behind his bangs, his eyes shine with a baleful light. “I have something to tell you, but I don’t know how.”
I step to the kitchen table, content to say nothing.
His shoulders slump once more. His eyes lower. Hesitation catches in his throat until the words tumble out. “I took an HIV test last week. I’m positive.”
Suddenly dizzy, I grab the back of the chair.
It has all been for nothing.
My escape from the United States, from the pandemic, where 95% of the more than 50,000 people infected had died before 1988, the year I moved to Japan, had even begun.
Japan, where case counts were far lower: fewer than 100 by the end of 1987.
But here AIDS is, four years on.
Right in front of me.
In the bed beside me.
All of my fear and panic, embodied in my desperate need for a relationship.
Kazuya goes on, a trepidatious note now in his voice. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
I pull the chair out from the table and sit, feeling the sweat dot at my temples.
“You’ve never fucked me, and I never fucked you. You can’t be positive.”
I stare at him.
His posture.
His gaze.
His voice.
When Kazuya and I began, his dependence on me triggered protective urges. But now I see the truth: He wants me to feel sorry for him. He always has. My grief begins to swell, but instead of chasing it away, I ask it to wait.
My anger hasn’t faded—another deep breath. “I’m not changing my mind.”
He turns and enters the living room, closing the door behind him. The sofa cushions yield as he sits. The phone clicks as he raises it from the receiver. His voice barely registers above a rustle.
A sigh washes out of me. Grief asks: “Now?”
My tears say yes.
That emotion cools during the weeks after the breakup, but I refuse to speak to him, and he avoids me.
My mother calls. “Is this a good time?”
I sigh into the receiver. “I just ended things with Kazuya the other day, and he told me he’s HIV-positive. I don’t know what to do.”
“Let me get your stepfather on the other phone.” My parents both volunteer at a community for people with AIDS.
“Hey, Bri.”
“Hey, Bill.”
My mother breaks back in: “Are you getting tested?”
“I just broke up with Kazuya, Bill. And then he told me he was HIV-positive.”
He lets out a low whistle. “Jesus Christ.”
“Do they have testing there?”
“Yes, Ma. There’s a place in Tōkyō with anonymous testing. But you have to pick up the results in person in case you need counseling.”
“That’s good.” My mother and Bill chorus.
“It is, but I am about to leave on a business trip. I won’t see the results until I return from Europe.”
“Are you OK with that?” Bill’s voice echoes my mother’s concern.
“Maybe. We haven’t been intimate since January, and even before that, we weren’t anally inclined.”
Bill softens, chuckling at my turn of phrase. “Was that lack of sex why you ended the relationship?”
“There were other reasons. A friend helped me realize that Kazuya manipulated me from the beginning.”
“And has he moved out?” My mother shifts from concern to urgency.
“Not yet.”
“Do you think he was telling you the truth?” Bill raises a new concern.
“That he was positive?”
“Is it possible he’s still manipulating you?”
“God. I suppose it’s possible, but what a thing to lie about.”
A practical finality enters my mother’s voice. “Listen. If you’re traveling, don’t have sex, at least until you have the test results. And even if Kazuya told you the truth, he still needs to move out.”
Bill speaks up. “There’s grief when people get a positive diagnosis. And that brings a lot of reactions.” I hadn’t considered Kazuya’s grief, but Bill’s explanation makes sense.
My mother agrees. “He might want to control you even more. Don’t give in to him. Especially if there’s a chance that he’s lying to you.”
Work sends me to Europe for two weeks with a delegation touring the Japanese embassies and consulates in Paris, Bonn, London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. I have my supervisor’s permission to spend five days beforehand in Vienna, too, and leap at the chance to travel on my own.
On the morning of my departure, I leave a note for Kazuya in the entryway. “I’ll be gone for three weeks. Move out before I return.”
In Vienna, my Mozart fantasies keep me distracted. I scamper through churches and museums, buy sheet music, and sit in cafés, a slice of Sachertorte or a plate of Kaiserschmarrn at my right, an Einspänner at my left.
Schönbrunn Palace beckons, and after a tour—“Did Mozart ever perform here?” I ask a docent—I walk the gardens, piano sonatas playing on my Discman.
I take the train to Paris two days before the delegation’s planned arrival, and I check into a tiny hotel a few blocks from Gare Montparnasse. Breakfast arrives as a cup of café au lait as big as my head, and I bounce through the Louvre that first morning, willing myself to keep forgetting Kazuya. Willing my ongoing grief to wait.
Last year’s delegation trip to the US was tightly scheduled, but sightseeing forms the emphasis of our time in Europe. The embassy in Paris takes us to the Musée d’Orsay after our session with students interested in working in Japan ends. In Bonn, we while away an afternoon boating on the Rhine. We experience high tea in London, and in Edinburgh, we tour the Castle and Holyrood Palace before trying haggis. The library at Trinity College awaits us in Dublin, its glories unfurling before my eyes.
The return flight to Tōkyō leaves in a gray Irish drizzle and panic awakes as the plane touches off. Has Kazuya moved out?
Anxiety worsens on the train home from Narita Airport. “Please, please, please,” I mutter. “Let him be gone.”
I open the front door and slip the backpack from my shoulders before finding the light switch. My note remains on the entryway floor, but I see Kazuya’s handwriting beneath mine.
“I found a place with a friend. The move will take a few more days. I’m sorry it took this long. I’ll remove the last of my stuff when you’re at work.”
He spared me a confrontation, and I sigh a thank you. I sleep most of the next day before returning to my work routine on Monday morning. True to his word, Kazuya’s computer and the last of his books have disappeared when I come home Tuesday night. His key sits on the entryway floor—he slipped it through the mail slot.
In November, I receive my negative HIV test result at the confidential clinic in Tōkyō I told my parents about. The result doesn’t surprise me, but I welcome the relief. I nod to my grief, and let myself cry among strangers as I take the train home.
I dial Brent’s number. I owe him an apology and want to check when the next International Friends meeting will be. I know Masa won’t be there—I have to assume he’s back in Canberra and I’m kicking myself for never asking for his address—but his notion of splash damage, of the self-inflicted wounds my closeted emotions unleashed on me, sticks with me. Kazuya is gone from my life, but I still wonder: Maybe the lesson from both Kazuya and Masa is to accept that which frightened me the most; grief could still lead me to an unknown darkness, but avoiding that hadn’t helped me. Welcoming grief let me also welcome anger and joy, and those unfamiliar emotions offered new companionship, the kind I’m not immediately thrilled to host, but I know they will steer me into a longer term relationship with myself.
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