So I did the only thing I could think to. What I coulda sworn she wanted.

Grasped her by the neck—firmly enough for her to feel it, gently enough to not leave a mark or obstruct her breathing, just like she’d taught me—and pinned her to the wall, leaning in to nuzzle her ear.

She grabbed my wrist. Hard.

Said No.

Not here.

Not in front of people.

Not unless I say to.

•

Around 2 a.m.

Big Indian dude I didn’t recognize, hovering in the front room. By the piano.

Swaying slightly.

Looking lost.

“My guy,” I said. “Doin arite?”

He looked at me surprised, like Me?

Yeah you, pal.

Oh yeah, me, doing great.

“Fuck yeah!”

“…”

“Drink?”

I poured him and myself a shot of the sake I’d brought, that I’d been lugging around, then lost, then found, then was lugging around again.

He looked around skittish, eyes bulgy and unfocused.

We cheers’d.

“Yo so you Indian, huh?”

“Yuh.”

“Lit. Born there?”

He told me he was born in Baltimore. Where his parents immigrated to.

“Ah,” I said. “B-more.”

Made a Wire reference.

Side bae entered the front room, looking tired.

Gave me a cryptic, mostly frustrated-seeming look.

Went upstairs with her bestie.

To re-up, probably.

“Well here’s to our respective Asian brethren. Holding down our respective motherlands,” I said, pouring and shooting another shot.

Started rolling a cig.

“Y’know,” I said. “I was actually born in Tokyo. Lived there till I was five. Been back a few times since.

“Recently, as I learned more about my family history—white dad’s dad a U.S. Air Force pilot, mom’s dad’s entire fam besides him bombed out and merked by U.S. planes—I started to wonder why my mom moved us. Why she let me lose my Japanese. Why she let me get so detached from Japanese culture.

“Can’t even speak to my baba hardly!

“But what I realized—,” I began.

Before side bae started tugging on me again.

“This way.”

I looked at Indian homie like in slo-mo.

Like ‘Nooooooo!’

Like ‘Brrrrrbbbbbbbb!’

He receded past the wall and out of sight as I fell back, through the middle room, into the kitchen, and out the back door. Down the back steps, to the backyard. Where side bae fed me more drugs.

Commotion in the front room, when I returned.

Front door wide open, wind billowing up the curtains.

Weird contrast between the fluorescent streetlight outside, emanating off the snow in the yard, and the blacklight of the front-room dance floor.

“Starboy” blasting again.

Forged ahead, to close the door.

Partiers adjacent to it, talking like discussing versus talking like flirting.

Not closing the door.

Why weren’t they.

Right when I was about to, Indian dude came barging in.

“Ayyy, woah,” I said, arms wide in welcome before, a split second later, realizing this wasn’t one of those barge-ins.

This was a different kind.