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pretend to be her brother for just one day. I looked at her silver fox coat and her crimson nail polish and her miniskirt and her long, slender legs and naturally agreed to help. She took me to a riverfront building, where the yakuza had an office on the seventh floor. He was a huge guy in his early sixties with a bull neck and seven young punks working for him. Some of the punks had tattoos. The guy said, “He looks awful healthy for a kid with heart disease.” Then he slapped himself on the chest and said, “Anyway, just leave it to me. I’ll pay for the operation.” “We don’t need your money,” I said. “My sister’s not going to be your mistress, and that’s all there is to it.” His sidekicks got pissed off at this and started shouting, and two of them pulled knives out of their belts. I stood in front of the woman to protect her and said, “If you’ve got to kill somebody, kill me.” Then I made up some stuff about how our parents had divorced and we’d been raised by our grandmother and she’d died four years ago and now it was just me and my sister and we’d promised each other to stick together through thick and thin and that someday we’d find a way to be happy no matter what. Deep down inside, as it turned out, the yakuza was a real softie, and by the time I’d finished he had tears in his eyes and was mumbling, “Okay, you win.” The woman was thrilled. To celebrate, we had a full-course dinner at a French restaurant, where she poured me some red wine and whispered, “You’re quite a guy, aren’t you?” Afterward, she took me to her place. It was a big open-style condominium, the kind you see in the movies, with a king-size bed right in the middle of it. The woman giggled and said, “I’m going to take a shower. Don’t go away!” and disappeared into the bathroom. I kept telling myself, Keep cool , keep cool , but I didn’t know what the hell to do and just sat there pulling the zipper on my pants up and down. Eventually she reappeared wearing a see-through black negligee and said, “You don’t know how grateful I am. Tonight I’m all yours... I know that’s not enough, though... so I want you to have the Jag as well... It suits you perfectly...”
    At least, that’s the story I made up for my friends when I got back. The truth is a little different.
    The first thing I did when I reached Hakata was take in a triple bill of porno films. Then, after a bowl of noodles and some fried pork dumplings, I went to a strip show in one of those hole-in-the-wall sort of joints. It was past 1:00 a.m. when I left there, and as I was strolling along beside the river, an elderly pimp—a woman—approached me and said, “Like to get your pipes cleaned, son?” I gave the old crone three thousand yen, and she took me to a grimy little inn where a woman with dark rings around her eyes, like a raccoon, called out “Good eeev ening.” Looking at the raccoon’s round belly, I thought of my mother, who right at that moment was probably in tears, worrying about me. I began to feel like crying myself, and suddenly losing my virginity didn’t seem so important, but I let the raccoon help me off with my clothes. She was obviously in a hurry to get it over with, but I just couldn’t get it up. “It’s no use,” she said finally. “I’ll spread my legs and let you look. You can do yourself.” It was the first time I’d ever seen what she showed me. It wasn’t that big a deal—not as big as the ten thousand yen she took off me when I told her to pack it in. I left the place in a mood of black despair and continued walking along the river. Half my money was gone, so I decided to sleep in the waiting room at the station rather than stay at a cheap hotel. I asked a salaryman type in a suit and tie which way the station was. When I told him I was planning to sleep there, he offered to let me stay at his apartment. I was pretty miserable, and it was nice to be shown some kindness, so I went with