Chasing Endorphins

where Japan and my writing life intersect

Today was one of those rare mornings.

An admittedly grainy photo I took on my old Canon during a Japan visit in June of 2006. This might be my only photo of Tōkyō Tower.

I woke from an enchanting dream in which I revisited a place I had only ever been to in other, older dreams.

I don’t know how common it is for your subconscious to create a place specifically to delight you and then return to that place in a subsequent dream. But it happened this morning.

The location felt familiar like somewhere I could drive to in my waking life, somewhere nearby in Washington State. And yet, the town itself, nestled in the foothills and centered around a Buddhist temple, was distinctly Japanese. Hiro, who was gratefully with me in the dream, and I visited stores and bought snacks, speaking in Japanese the entire time. The snacks themselves were Japanese: treats with red bean paste and rice cakes coated with a sweetened soy sauce glaze.

Most importantly, I was happy there. And that happiness remained with me after I woke.

(And according to my real-life Hiro, that starkly contrasts with the dream I experienced Thursday night. I have no memory of that dream, but Hiro says I twice cried out fuck you while dreaming, and my whole body shook with what he took to be anger. He worried that my arms might lash out—during one dream more than a year ago, I struck Hiro as he slept beside me—and Hiro toyed with the idea of waking me up to prevent another body blow.)

Both dreams are understandable, despite my not remembering the anger of Thursday night.

My writing life has been stressful. When I query agents, the ones who respond—about half have website disclaimers that note that agents only respond when interested—do so in the negative. Their form letter rejections usually include the cryptic message: this wasn’t a fit for me. I get it. Agents don’t want to offer concrete feedback on a project they won’t take on for fear of inciting a writer into a spiral of revisions.

And I also, to some extent, understand the lack of fit. My memoir’s narrative weaves three timelines—the ten years I spent in Japan, the flashbacks to my fat, gay childhood, and some moments of perspective I gleaned as I wrote and revised the memoir—and includes citations from medical, historical, and literary sources that flesh out the context of the memoir—the panic over HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s in both Japan and the US, the history of same-sex relationships in Japan, articles on Tōkyō gayborhoods and on US bathhouses, and more.

And the structure—the short chapters that reflect my mind’s flickering inability to focus on thoughts or emotions for long periods of time when I first arrived in Japan and eventually grow longer as Japan teaches me how to take those emotions out of their respective closets—is somewhat, although not utterly, unique, too.

But when I had a rejection from a publisher I very much admire a few weeks ago, I fell into a funk. It’s been nearly four years since I started writing. I’ve queried dozens of agents along the way. But thankfully, I had the wherewithal to reach out to a writing friend and an editor friend.

My writing friend told me, as I asked him to, to calm the fuck down. I took my foot off the pedal for all the revisions I had planned after receiving the rejection—eliminate more dialogue, lengthen the chapters—and decided (for a few weeks) to leave the manuscript alone.

My editor friend, bless her, had even better advice.

…let's assume you send out a manuscript tomorrow to a university press, and that press decides to accept it. The process being what it is, you're a solid two years away from traditional publication if the action you take tomorrow bears fruit. And, as I'm sure you've noticed, we're nearly 60 years old now. So if the point is to tell the story and have it heard, I recommend a full-court press. Query the next tier of agents. Send the manuscript over the transom to smaller presses. Start writing the next book rather than coiling yourself tighter and tighter around this one. Pick one or two events a year and really do them. All that stuff. Try to choose your spots to maximize what you like about not just writing, but being a writer, integrating this way of being into your identity the same way you live your queerness, your love for Hiro, and other foundational things about being Brian.

Emphases are mine because, dammit, she’s right (as she nearly always is). And the next book she mentions? I have some ideas….

And then I had the great good fortune of having coffee with another old friend this morning. We talked about publishing—she recently co-authored an incredible book on the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan—and she offered an interesting suggestion. Start working on the Japanese translation of your memoir now.

The market in Japan for expert opinions on queerness is growing as public opinion continues to improve on everything from rainbow identities to marriage equality. In the back of my mind, I knew that a translation of my memoir was on the horizon, but I may need to move that up on the timeline, too.

I need to keep dreaming about Japan. About retiring there, certainly. About publishing there, definitely. And about all the ways Japan has made and continues to make me happy.

Speaking of happiness, one of the reasons I wanted to return to Japan in June of 2006, despite knowing how humid it would be, was that I knew the irises would be in bloom. It was pouring the day we visited Kyōto, but I still took my Canon to Heian Shrine because the iris garden there is lovely.

After waking from my dream this morning, I saw that Hiro had emailed me a link. (Are we the only couple who emails each other while the other spouse sleeps?) He found a hot spring resort he wants to visit during our next trip to Japan, on the southeast coast of Wakayama (roughly a four-hour train ride or drive from where we want to stay). The cool thing about this resort is that several—yes, several: the resort has so many different bathing areas they offer you a passport to collect stamps from each area you visit—of the hot springs are located in caves! And there’s even a cave hot spring that opens onto the Pacific. I instantly imagined watching the sun rise while soaking in a hot spring…. The video he sent me is here, by the way. I’m as much in love with the grittier retro Japan in the video as I am with the modern, cutting-edge Japan.