Gaijin Kagema: Male Courtesan

Reno let himself into the Shinjuku-sanchome, Tokyo, art gallery hallway and quietly went from room to room, running along the left of the hallway from front to back, to make sure that Haruo had closed down everything properly. Haruo's better innings were past him. He seemed to be deteriorating more and more each day. He had suggested that Reno might want to go back to New York before his year's sabbatical was over in the fall, but Reno had avoided discussing that. He knew, though, that Haruo was embarrassed how what his illness had affected their relations, but they weren't discussing that either. The man was seventy; it was to be expected.

Reno, though, was only twenty-nine and in his prime. He couldn't help but expect certain things as well. Haruo seemed particularly aware of that. It was something else they weren't discussing.

The first, largest room, the Japanese woodblock print sales shop, was dark and looked in order. Haruo Nakisone's art gallery specialized, for the general public, in post-World War Two woodblock print artists, such as Joichi Hoshi, Seiichiro Konishi, Haku Maki, Nakiyama, Kiyoshi Saito, Junichiro Sekino, Ryohei Tanaka, and Sadao Watanabe. These were artists whose works held—and increased—their value well. He had to turn off a light in the next, smaller sales room, which was not directly connected to the gallery in front. This is where the rarer block prints and specialized works of other visual art forms were kept, the base of the collection being from much earlier than the war period. Primary among these was the collection of Nanshoku art, the male-on-male erotic art that was concentrated in the Japanese art world from the medieval period through the nineteenth century. This was the real reason for the existence of Haruo's shop, which was called Okama, a term for gay men. Shinjuku-sanchome was a principle gay district in Tokyo, and art collectors of Nanshoku art knew to come to the Okama Gallery for the best selection of this underground art.

The third room was the art studio. Haruo was an artist in his own right, specializing in the modern versions of the Nanshoku art, and he taught and produced this art, using male models, of which Reno was one, in the studio at the back of the shop.

All was in order here, so Reno climbed the hall stairs leading to the second and third floors. The offices and store rooms were on the second floor. The third floor was where Haruo lived—and where Reno was living as well while on sabbatical from the Smithsonian Institution's Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where he was an assistant curator of East Asian art. Curiously, he hadn't known about Nanshoku art before he'd come to Tokyo, but now he certainly knew the art form intimately.

He stopped in the office at the front of the building on the second floor, fired up his computer, and established a Skype connection with his mentor in Washington, D.C., Clifton Weldon, senior curator of art at the Freer and an art professor at Georgetown University. It was 2:30 in the morning in Tokyo, but it was 1:30 in the afternoon of the previous day, Friday, in Washington, D.C. Reno checked in with Weldon three times a week via Skype, when Weldon was available. In the early months of Reno's sabbatical, Weldon had been there for every call; in recent months his availability was more uncertain. The fifty-one-year-old Weldon had let Reno take the sabbatical in Japan, but he hadn't been pleased to let him go. More than Reno's mentor and art teacher, Weldon had been Reno's lover in Washington, D.C., and, in many ways, his patron and financial support since their teacher-student days at the university.

Reno, whose name wasn't really Reno—that went with the American cowboy persona he had established here in Tokyo—had been an art student, in the name of Daren Van Sant, from Manhattan, at Georgetown at the age of twenty-one. His family was wealthy and he'd gone to all of the best schools. He also was athletic, six-foot-four, and a reddish-blond hunk with blue eyes and a sparkling smile. He was gay and a power top, both of which Weldon had made it his business to find out and, subsequently, had used. Weldon took Daren, his favorite and very promising student, bar hopping, seduced him, and promised the young man the world in the highly competitive art profession. In the process he had found out that Daren was very, very good in bed, randy, a quick reloader, and as constantly good to go as a rabbit. He had installed Daren in his Georgetown apartment and looked after him in the art world ever since. It was he who initially wanted Daren, known as Reno in Tokyo, to stay in constant contact.

Tonight's meeting over the computer covered much the same topics that it had for the past month. Reno's sabbatical was coming to a close. Cliff Weldon said he wanted the young man back in Washington, D.C., and at the Freer, and in his bed. The other topic was that he wanted to know if Daren was keeping himself clean and safe sexually. He knew that he was staying with the Japanese artist, Haruo Nakisone, in his Tokyo art gallery, but he didn't know what Haruo's art or sexual interests were. Daren had put his concerns about sexual interest to rest, by letting him know, truthfully, that Haruo was seventy and impotent. He didn't tell Weldon that Haruo hadn't been impotent when he'd first offered Daren the living arrangement and that Haruo's apartment only had one bed—still had only one bed.

For three months of Daren/Reno's sabbatical he'd paid his rent by fucking Haruo regularly. Now that the artist no longer could get it up, he'd sworn off having sex, but he hadn't asked Reno for rent as long as he was willing to be a live-in companion and sometime model.

After turning off the computer and being as noncommittal as he could be about returning to Washington directly at the end of his sabbatical, Reno climbed the stairs to the third floor. Haruo's apartment was outfitted in traditional Japanese style, tatami matting on the floor and the living areas—just a living room area, bedroom area, and combination dining area and kitchen—divided off by rice-paper covered shoji screens. Only the bathroom was walled in.

Reno moved as quietly as possible, using the bathroom and then removing his clothes—tight-fitting, low-riding worn jeans; a chambray silver-studded Western-style shirt; a fringed calf-leather vest; fancy cowboy boots; leather bikini briefs, buttoning at the side; fringed leather wrist bands; and a ten-gallon cowboy hat. This way of dressing was the source of his Tokyo name, Reno. In Japan, taking advantage of his height, muscular but lithe body, and sunny good looks, he'd taken on the persona of a cowboy. He was known throughout the Tokyo art world and gay district by this persona.

Moving, naked, into the bedroom area, he folded his clothes and laid them in a drawer of a low rosewood bureau. He placed the boots beside the bureau—he'd taken them off at the top of the stairs; no shoes could be worn on tatami matting—and laid his cowboy hat on top of them.

It wasn't unusual for him to come in this late at night. He had wanted to learn the woodblock printing technique while here and Haruo had gotten him a four-hour nightshift, Tuesday through Saturday, at a specialty printing shop.

The bed was a double mattress laid directly on a low platform on the tatami matting. Haruo was in the bed, snoring lightly, but he woke as Reno pulled the covers back and climbed in.

"Was it a busy night?" Haruo asked, his voice sleepy. He turned toward Reno, who was on his back and placed the palm of a hand on the young man's belly.

"It was busy. It always is on a Friday night," Reno said. "An exhausting night." Haruo didn't know the half of what Reno had been through that night. He was, in fact, tired, but he mainly had mentioned being exhausted so that Haruo didn't feel the necessity to give him attention—sexual attention. Still, the elderly man's hand moved down through Reno's bush and enveloped his cock.

"You don't have to do that," Reno whispered, but he hardened up. Constant hardening up wasn't a problem for Reno. Ignoring the young man, Haruo began to slow stroke him and periodically to move the hand to Reno's balls and to roll and distend them. Reno was horse hung and had balls the size of lemons. But, in fact, it was true that Haruo didn't have to pay this attention to him on this night. Reno easily could forego it.

"I worry about you and I regret what I am unable to do any more," Haruo murmured.

"I'm fine," Reno said. "I can take it or leave it, and we've discussed this before. I don't want you to stew about this impotence and your loss of libido. We can just let it go."

"I haven't completely lost my libido," Haruo said. "And I enjoy the intimacy with you. And I don't want you to think that you need to get it out on the street now." He continued stroking Reno's cock and playing with his balls.

It really wasn't necessary, Reno thought, with slight irritation, but he wouldn't fight the man. It was rough for Haruo. It was a no-win situation. Resigned, he murmured, "Arigatou—Thank you," sighed, and lay back on the mattress, giving control over to Haruo's hand, staring at the ceiling. and concentrating on engorging and getting it over with. If Haruo only knew how difficult it was for Reno to get it up when he came home at night . . .

Reno did manage to get it up. He was young and virile. He involuntarily began to move his hips against Haruo's hand, moving in the loose sheath Haruo's fingers provided. He warned Haruo when he was about to come, and the elderly, but still flexible—and quite presentable man for his age—artist moved down, slid his mouth down on the cock, and took Reno's load, surprisingly sparse, in his throat, Haruo thought, for what he knew Reno could produce in the early days of the sabbatical when they were able to ride each other hard.

He hoped that Reno wasn't drifting into the same condition he now had. The beautiful American was far too young for that. Maybe he was worried about the impending end to his sabbatical. Haruo knew that the man Reno worked for back in Washington, D.C. had no idea that Reno was becoming an expert in Nanshoku art—not only assessing, collecting, and selling it but also rendering the modern version of it, both as artist and model. There most likely wasn't a gallery section for it at the Freer.

When Haruo straightened out in the bed again, Reno turned toward him. He pulled Haruo's increasingly frail body into his chest, the elderly man's buttocks nestled into Reno's groin. In the early days they would kiss, Haruo would stroke Reno's cock and tease his balls until the young man was fully erect, and then they would nestle together late in the night, like this, Haruo's buttocks cupped into Reno's groin. Reno would slowly enter Haruo and side split him in this position, driving deep up inside him, and Haruo would move on the cock, pulling an ejaculation out of the young man while Reno slowly beat him off with his hand. Now they just cuddled as they both drifted off to sleep.

Reno knew there was more seriously wrong with Haruo than impotence, but the two didn't speak of it. Neither would Reno speak of the change in their sexual relations. He didn't think of it as a change in intimacy, though—he still felt a unique intimacy with the Japanese artist, and he hoped that Haruo still felt the same with him.

* * * *

The Japanese men, one an old graybeard, the other quite young, his sleek black hair in a bun high on the back of his head, sat on a low platform covered in tatami matting. The graybeard's head hair was set in a tight bun, as well. Both were partially covered with richly patterned, flowing ceremonial kimonos, folded "just so" to show the stark contrast between where the men were covered and where they weren't. The old man's kimono was in rich green and golds, the young man's in pale blue and white. The young man was being held close into the graybeard's lap, the inference being given was that the old man's cock was buried inside the young man. The old man's bare legs, giving the contrast to how formally and richly he was covered above, were spread and bent, hinting at dishevelment and wanton entangling. The young man's bare legs were spread and hooked over the old man's knees. The expression on the young man's face was pained, yet dreamy. The graybeard obviously had a commanding shaft. The old man, leering lecherously over the shoulder of the young man, had an arm around the young's man waist and was stroking him off.

The old man's cock wasn't really in the young man's ass and the young man's cock wasn't erect. The two had been in this pose for more than half an hour and were about to change costumes and positions. The artists gathered around the platform, with its palace balcony backdrop, would clearly depict male-on-male coitus and would give the young man an enormous erection in what they were drawing or painting. The small area not covered by the folds of rich material of the robes, the area showing human flesh, would be the young man's hole, balls, and cock with the root of the old man's shaft buried in the hole.

Reno pulled himself out of bed two flights up a bit after 10:00 in the morning. After a quick breakfast of coffee and a sesame-paste roll—Reno couldn't face the morning rice or fish gruel that Haruo and thousands of other Japanese had breakfasted on—he pulled on his cowboy garb and came down to stand in the doorway of the art studio to watch a class on Nanshoku art. The artists were refining, not learning, their art in this class, and most of what they produced would be sold in the gallery's exclusive collection room.

One artist worked on charcoal sketches, two with watercolors, two with oils, and Haruo, himself, drew sketches of individual elements that he'd later render in a series of carved wood plates, each plate used for a different color in the art, to have rice paper blocked over each plate in turn, building up a traditionally produced woodblock print. Although the techniques of the art would be different, they'd all stay within the limits of Nanshoku art—an erotic rendering of an older okama, a gay man, ceremoniously and with restrained refinement fucking a wakashu, a younger man. Some would have an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century air to them and some would be thoroughly modern, even abstract perhaps. What would sell would depend on what appealed and aroused the buyer.

Reno arrived as the two on the platform were changing costume—the older man in navy blue, with silver designs, and the younger man in a different design of pale blue and white—and rearranging their stance on the platform for a second setting. As they did so, the young Japanese man gave Reno a plaintive look and Reno, leaning in the doorframe and drinking from a mug of coffee, nodded to him.

The second setting followed the form of Nanshoku art in showing the contrast between the rich background and robing to limited sections of nakedness, arousal, and passion. The graybeard was kneeling and leaning back, with his buttocks on his ankles. His robe was draped around his body in luxuriant folds except where the small paunch of his lower belly, a rampant pubic bush, and his enormous and erect cock were showing. The body of the younger man, his buttocks resting on the older man's lower thighs, was streaming away from the figure of the older man toward the matting. The younger man's torso was lying, akimbo, on the tatami matting, arms bent and outstretched, the traditional pained and dreamy expression on his face and only his tight lower belly, silky-haired pubic bush, and cock showing. The two men were fused at the groin.

The finished art would show the root of a magnificently thick okama graybeard's cock buried in the wakashu younger man's hole and the graybeard masturbating a well-endowed young man. Their cocks were tinted a blush red to draw attention to them.

This sketching period lasted thirty minutes. Reno came into the studio and sat at the back, with two other men, who were just observers, but who beat themselves off at some point in the session. They were investors in the art gallery who Haruo humored with this voyeur privilege. At the end, the younger Japanese model helped the graybeard disrobe and ran out of the room. The graybeard took up his place, naked, among the artists.

"Now, if you would," Haruo said, turning to Reno, who had stayed around because he'd agreed to model for a session—not of Nanshoku art, which required two, both Asian, but nonetheless as art to be sold in the special collection room. "Just the boots, vest, wrist bands, and hat, if you please," Haruo said.

Reno stripped to the requested costume—or lack of costume—and arranged himself in a sexy pose on the tatami-covered platform. He stretched out on his side but leaning back to give the artists a full view of his stretched-out body, propped his head up on a bent arm, and cupped his cheek in the palm of his hand. His backstage, left leg was bent. He effected a half-amused, "come hither, I can do you well" look on his face. Haruo produced a long stalk of oats for Reno to hold in his mouth.

"Very good," Haruo murmured. Only he could direct Reno's poses. "Now, if you could masturbate yourself, please. You have a magnificent erection. Let us see it. None of us will need to exaggerate it."

Reno lay, stretched out there, pulling on his shaft, while the artists, some of them with only one hand available, rendered him in their individual art style, and an increased number of backbenchers ogled him and beat themselves off. Reno did not bring himself off; he was saving himself, although recovering most definitely wasn't a problem for the young man. He was extraordinarily virile and in control of himself. He most definitely was a prime example of man in the prime of his life, and he quite obviously knew he was and was exercising his power and popularity while he had it.

Reno only stayed around for the next session of the class long enough to see it being set up. This was to be a study of a subsection of the Nanshoku art form. An important aspect of the ancient samurai, or military, tradition in Japan was that of master and student, a mentoring one that included pederasty. The nenja, the warrior, the one "loving," was responsible for training the chigo, the young trainee, the one "being loved," in all things, including the initiation of sex. The chigo was responsible for submitting to the nenja in all matters.

The posing in Haruo's studio included one of the artists, a very well-developed Japanese man in his thirties and a newly arrived young Japanese man, a flighty, giggly, silly little thing, who was not a favorite of Reno's. The giggler wasn't underage for the current world, but he looked close to it. Haruo maintained full documentation and signed permissions on his models to remain on the tolerated side of the law.

This subsection of the art, known as shudo, relaxed the rules of Nanshoku a bit in terms of robe coverage. Samurai robes were abbreviated for conflict; they weren't the flowing, bulky robes of a tea ceremony.

The sexual position was more or less a straightforward doggie style. The younger man was on all fours and three-quarters turned toward the artists. His dark blue robe was loose, giving the traditional feeling that he was dressed as a chigo, a nenja's ward, adherent, and student. The robe was more a yukata, a simply cut robe, than the ceremonial kimono. What it exposed was the young man's flanks and a view of his upcurved erection hanging between his thighs. The expression on his face, turned toward the artists, was the traditional pained and dreamy visage.

The samurai warrior was crouched over the young man, dressed in scarlet warrior garb, the front of his costume pulled over to show the manliness of his chest. He was embracing the young man under him, but he was arranged in such a way that his groin was uncovered, his wildly unruly black bush glowered at the observer, and his huge, angry-red cock was buried in the young man's ass. Two samurai swords, one long, one short, were laying, crossed, the long sword on top of the short one, in front of the fucking pair.