Tim Anderson - Tune in Tokio

Normally that is no way to talk to someone who’s just spent over a thousand dollars on a plane ticket for you, but I can’t deny he has a point. I’ve been away for over a year now in one of the world’s most neon cities while he’s been back in sepia-toned Raleigh living the life of a starving artist, dealing with a cocaine-obsessed roommate, and constantly fielding questions about me from friends that he has trouble answering, like, “How’s Tim doing?” and “Is he ever coming home?” and “When is that cheap fucker gonna fly you over there?”

I do owe him. He’s been very accommodating of my oat-sowing. He deserves a vacation, and he’s going to get it. There will be temples, there will be shrines, there will be many, many Japanese pancakes.

“I know, I know. Listen, you’re coming, and we’re going to have a blast. I’m so excited!”

“No you’re not,” he deadpans.

“Yes I am!”

“Whatever. Anyway, is there anything I can bring? Do you need deodorant or magazines or anything?”

“Yeah, can you bring me a Cajun chicken biscuit from Bojangles? And some of the spicy fries? Oh, and some Pillsbury strawberry cake icing?”

“Sure.”

I can’t wait to see him holding that sweet, sweet pink frosting.

I remember fondly our last night together, the night before I left Raleigh. We’d gone for a romantic dinner at the Waffle House, the one downtown on Hillsborough Street where people go to get shot. We sat, ordered our burgers, and then I had a nervous breakdown. Have you ever cried and eaten greasy hash browns at the same time? If you ever plan to, bring extra napkins.

But though I was seriously losing my shit, my brain aflame with last-minute panic, Jimmy was holding up pretty well. When we first got together two years before, he quickly figured out that I had a bit of wanderlust in me that would eventually need to come out. (I think it might have become evident when I said, on the morning after our first night together, “I hate this fucking town; God, I can’t think of anything worse than staying here for the rest of my life!”) An army brat, he’d had his share of moving around the world, uprooting his life every few years, and was now completely uninterested in pulling up stakes again. Like me, he was desperately poor with no health insurance, but he liked being in one place. He was working on his art and enjoying his new job at a frame shop. Leaving Raleigh made no sense for him. So he’d resigned himself to the idea of my leaving. But because we’d drifted so effortlessly into each other’s lives, we both knew we wanted to stay together through my Tokyo jaunt.

So there we sat at the Waffle House, two years down the road, and I was leaving the next day. I don’t think either of us was convinced that it was realistic to try to maintain a long-distance relationship since I’d be gone for over a year. But that night we vowed to try. With the help of regular phone calls and some good porn.

As I sat sobbing and causing a scene like a toddler who hadn’t had his nap, a group of painfully upbeat teenagers in hipster garb walked in, sat down, and then one of them, presumably their leader, headed to the jukebox.

“Oh my God, Jimmy, if that skinny bitch puts on the ‘Waffle House Song’ I’ll just die!” I blubbered.

“I’ll slap her. Are you gonna eat your pickles?” Jimmy said, comforting me.

“Nmph. Tkmh,” I said, my mouth full of mucus, soggy red eyes bulging. I hadn’t touched my cheeseburger. He’d cleaned his entire plate.

There was an understanding here. He was being strong for both of us. He was holding it together because he knew I couldn’t. My system was too overwhelmed. And though his was too, he’d decided to take the reins and not allow us to sink into maudlin dramatics.

“You need to wipe your nose…God, get a napkin or something,” he said, laughing. His emotional bravery was heartbreaking.

The waitress arrived with our extra order of scattered, smothered, and covered hash browns. No doubt she cast her sympathetic eyes over us as we struggled to keep it together, our last night together, our farewell banquet of grease and butter.

“I’m gonna enter some stuff into the New American Paintings contest next month,” he said, trying to remain strong.

A fresh harvest of silent tears burst from my exhausted eyes. I began to make embarrassing noises when I inhaled.

Jimmy let my tears run their course, deciding at this point that silence was probably golden.

“Your burger’s getting cold.”

A few oceans of tears and mucus later, hunger finally gripped me and I downed the thing in three bites. As I chomped, he sat staring at me, his gaze a mixture of love, irritation, and acid reflux.

When Jimmy and I got together, we had both pretty much given up on finding a guy to spend our lives with who wasn’t a complete disappointment. We’d both been around the block several times. Jimmy came out when he was fourteen and was promptly sent off to a mental institution by his loving, hysterical mother who makes Piper Laurie from Carrie look like Barbara Billingsley; he then developed into a serial monogamist, having one unfulfilling long-term relationship after another. And me? I’d been around the block more in the sexual sense. (Is it considered a one-night stand if they kick you out of their bed before daybreak?) By the time our paths crossed, we pretty much immediately realized we were two potential peas in a pod: we shared a mutual love for Purple Rain -era Prince, tuna noodle casserole, Gore Vidal’s bitchy smugness, and Pedro Almodóvar’s use of primary colors and trannies.

Even better, we hated many of the same things (giant poodles and local gay bars being the first two among many). When I was able to convince Jimmy that Siouxsie Sioux could wipe the floor with Grace Jones if the two were ever to come to blows, our relationship was taken to the next level. I had a feeling it was true love when Jimmy, describing Alanis Morrissette as she performed on Letterman , uttered under his breath one of the finest and most apt similes I’d ever heard: “Plain as homemade soap.” And I knew I’d found the man I’d spend the rest of my life with when he smacked me in the face with his dick one morning-not as an overture for sex but just to say “good morning” as he was leaving the bedroom to make coffee.

Always a man of very few words and an effortlessly agitated artistic temperament, Jimmy, when he does speak, tends to create the wrong impression when he meets new people. He just doesn’t try that hard to make people like him. Not because he’s an asshole; he just doesn’t think about it. He once told my friend Dani that her quiche was “delicious, almost as good as mine.” He complimented a friend’s band one time by saying they “sounded so much better than the last time I saw you guys.” And when he first started coming to family dinners at my parents’ house, he would sit quietly and respectfully through dinner and then as soon as he was finished, he’d get up, wash his plate, put it in the dishwasher, and then plop himself on the living room sofa with my parents’ Parade magazine before anyone realized he’d left the table.

“They have lots of good drugs-you know, medicines-for depression now,” an aunt visiting from California who came to one of these dinners once said. She was convinced Jimmy was clinically depressed. But she’d never had the opportunity to see how his face lit up when talking about Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown or Law of Desire . She’d not witnessed him singing along to Prince’s “Pussy Control” in our living room. She didn’t know that sometimes he laughs and says the word “turd” in his sleep. He’s not depressed. He’s just artistic.