“Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken.”

-On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, 

John Keats

So I may or may not have invited myself on his holiday. After one date and several weeks had elapsed, my curiosity had not abated. Some people have that effect on me. 

This time was quite unexpected. I met Max* on my last night in Tokyo, before being swept away to Hong Kong for a few days. My suitcase was packed and my mind was already across the water in a different metropolis. 

A short date like this was an afterthought in the context of these long, much-planned and highly anticipated rendezvous throughout my trip. One I almost did not accept, as my attention was allocated elsewhere. But I’m glad I did accept this date with Max. Life does have this way of bumping into us, nudging us into some incidental magnitude, occasionally. 

No matter where I am in the world, the structure of each of my meetings is on the surface, similar. The process of first contact, discussion and planning a date may look the same to an outsider, but nothing beyond the most superficial aspects has ever been repeated twice. As Nina, I am never, ever in the same territory twice. Each connection is unique and potent. 

Yet I am now trying to pinpoint what was so special to me about this date, that would lead me to volunteer myself so assertively.

From first seeing Max I thought him quite handsome, and I liked his glasses very much (a weakness of mine, which I made sure to tell him). I found him to be a wonderfully puzzling blend of contradictions; shy, but also bold and refreshingly self-disclosing, both reserved and passionate, adaptively conformist but pursuing an idiosyncratic life, cute but also seemingly quite serious. A unique person, somebody I had not encountered before, I thought. 

He was also very open about himself, questioning things without then snapping each question shut with a neat and foreclosed answer, like so many of us do. I like people who can bear uncertainty, because you can go anywhere with them. 

Perhaps this is part of why I did find myself returning to that evening again and again, like a favourite page in my memory. He did not deliver answers, only opened up a lot of unfinished business. Whether Nina’s or my own, I could not tell. 

I also wondered what I would have thought of Max had we not been plunged into this unique intimacy that only really occurs in these two roles; companion and client.

Outside of these few curious and sensual hours, what would my perception have been of him, or his of me?

Men in finance do not have a good reputation amongst arty, bisexual women, perhaps because we find it uncomfortable that so many of us move to New York and end up marrying them. So I do not know if I would have been swayed by some heuristic, judged him without cause and therefore missed out. 

Max is just my type in the ways that are meaningful and not my type in all the ways that are not, and he presented both excitement and threat.

My curiosity veered thrillingly close to the dangerous territory where my companion persona and the rest of me overlap. A dangerous escarpment, or the softly roving line of shadow where the sun chases the fading moon. 

Rather impulsively, I texted him, “Next time I come to Tokyo, please abduct me.” 

It was well received. With the shy ones, sometimes it serves to be a little forward. 

And so a playful back and forth began, but within me also there was an internal tussle, between my professional and unprofessional sides, which I characterise as; (my moon) my reluctance to insert my own agenda into a relationship built on somebody else’s wants and (my sun) the blunt and uncompromising nature of my own curiosity and desire.

It really was quite enjoyable to feel these two sides of myself have it out. I worried that it might be terribly confusing to him, receiving these occasionally forthright, unprofessional correspondences. “Teasing,” he called it.

Which I suppose meant that he liked it. And I’m glad that he did, because I did not stop. Sometimes I thought him quite lucky.

But no text exchange has ever sated this kind of curiosity. I knew that I had thumbed that page in my memory too often and as time went on, the curiosity had only grown.

Once he had made it clear that my desire was mutual, but that our travel dates did not align, the only rational option was to invite myself on his trip. He accepted, as any rational man would.

Too many weeks and a great deal of teasing later, I hopped on a plane with a suitcase brimming with lingerie to somewhere I had never been. I was not at all nervous, even though I had known him for only a few hours in person and many more hours in my mind. My intuition was confirmed.

We wandered humid, lantern-lit streets, ate well and got so lost in one another that I forgot to take any photos (unprofessionalism won out in that regard). By the end, my cheeks were sore from laughing, my curiosities and desires sufficiently sated (for now), my body pleasantly exhausted. I felt renewed on some deep level, having spent a few days of unadulterated joy and playful intimacy with somebody quite remarkable. 

There is nothing quite like living exactly as I please, one chapter at a time. If the price of living ambitiously is a little confusion, I’ll take it. For now, I am indifferent as to whether the sun or moon shines on new terrains, I only care that they are illuminated.