4 comments/ 6856 views/ 1 favorites Down at CoCo's By: alex_d Down at CoCo's, it's getting busy. It's only a small restaurant and sometimes it's hard to get a seat but today I'm alone so I squeeze in between two businessmen and take a menu. The group to my right is leaving. I listen to their conversation and wonder if I'll ever learn enough of this language to get more than a beer and a bowl of noodles. The air conditioner blows hard up above and I feel a chill at the back of my neck as the sweat starts to dry. There's something about Tokyo in August, the saw-saw noise of cicadas and the heavy feeling in the air, the moisture of rain that never really falls and the faint smell of metal. The sky is grey but the heat is everywhere. It always feels like something's about to happen. And maybe it will, today. I'm excited already. I pore over the pictures on the menu, colour shots of white rice on one side of the plate and a pool of curry over the other, the few prawns or bits of chicken drowning in the liquid brown. I know I'll pay the price for this indulgence later on when I'm slumped across my desk, trying to mark student homeworks in a carb-crash haze, but I'll deal with that when it comes. I check my watch. It's almost one o'clock. He'll be here soon. It started a few weeks ago, the first time he sat beside me and I caught his eye. He smiled and looked at what I ordered and then got the same thing. Prawn curry with the smallest rice, only 3 on the curry scale. Even that seemed a lot for him, the way he grimaced at the slight burn. We didn't speak but his knee rested against mine under the counter and I watched him eat in the reflection of the mirror behind the servers who bustled around in front. Since then, he's been here almost every time I've come, and we've been working up the heat level on the curry. Today, it's time for the 10. Japanese blokes like a challenge. At least that's what I've come to believe by watching the masochistic shows on TV where they humiliate themselves on a regular basis in ways I'm not close to understanding. The server approaches me but I motion that I'm not ready to order yet, even though I know what I'll get. I'm waiting for him, hoping the seat doesn't fill up. One of the servers is wiping the counter. He refills the tub where they keep the ginger, checks the napkin dispensers, straightens the chairs. I sit back and smooth my palms against the wooden surface and then the door opens and I look around and smile. It's him. He's not like the others who come in here, groups of same-suited businessmen on their lunch breaks. I guess that he's a student at the nearby university, but I find it hard to work out people's ages here. He's about the same height as me, slim but strong-looking. His hair is thick and black and sculpted into a spiky style. He looks straight at me and his face breaks into a sunny smile. He sits down beside me and takes a menu. There's a piercing in his nose and his lower lip. I watch his tongue push against it as he looks down the menu. His elbow is so close to mine I can feel the small hairs against my own. Then the server comes over and I place my order. The hottest curry on the menu. I don't know if I'll even be able to eat it. The last one nearly blew my head off and I had to run to the 7/11 and guzzle down a yogurt drink afterwards. But that's what we've been building up to, and he orders the same. We sit, so close together, and he cracks his knuckles and pours a big glass of iced water. I do the same. We smile at each other. So far, we haven't spoken a word. He's wearing a new watch. It's loose around his wrist. He plays with it for a second, puts his mobile phone out on the table. It doesn't take long to get served. The curry arrives, immaculately ladled over the heap of rice in a perfect half-moon pool. They've given me extra rice, maybe since they see me all the time, or maybe they think I need fattening up. The curry looks the same as ever, a dim yellow brown with the requisite four prawns, never more or less. I take a spoon and look at him. He takes a spoon and grins. His knee comes to rest against mine, then we turn to the plates and take deep breaths. The heat doesn't hit until a few seconds after I've taken my first mouthful. It's an eye-watering, nose-running blast and I clamp my hand over my mouth and breath in some air, trying to cool my tongue. I can hardly taste anything at all, my taste buds have been shocked into submission and I take a gulp of water, and a piece of ice to suck. He's grimacing beside me, his head at an angle, his eyes squeezed shut. But I don't give up. When my mouth is numb with heat and ice, I take another spoonful, then another. He matches me for a while but eventually we both put our spoons down and grab for the jug of iced water at the same time. I let him take it first. He pours another glass and gulps it down. There are beads of sweat on his forehead. I feel like I'm boiling in my mouth even though the air conditioning is still cold against my neck. Then I pour a glass and suck in a mouthful of ice. Yogurt would be better but the ice is good enough for the moment. A few agonizing spoonfuls later, I admit defeat. It's all I can do to stop myself from running out of the restaurant to the 7/11 like I did last time. He notices that I've stopped and grins. As if to prove his point, he finishes off the curry with a quick shoveling motion and another mouthful of ice. I wipe the sweat from my forehead and upper lip and shiver as the curry taste radiating around my mouth starts to fade until finally, it's bearable and I know I'm not going to throw up or run out of the restaurant. His lips snarl in an involuntary movement and he closes his eyes and grips the counter for a second then whatever he's feeling passes and he relaxes and puts the spoon in the centre of his plate. Then, for the first time, he turns in his seat and faces me. His knee slips in between mine and he smiles. He lifts the menu again and points to the number three, and nods. The next time will be mild. I laugh and nod back. Then there's that feeling again, maybe it's the clouds outside, ready to burst with rain that never quite comes, and I feel the same inside. I don't know how to take this anywhere but the curry house. I'm embarrassed to speak my Tarzan Japanese to him so I look at him and keep smiling and hope what they said at work isn't true. For a moment I remember Janet's leaving party at the karaoke club we often go to after work. She was a big Cockney girl with a mass of red curls, and she liked her gin and tonics. "Dahling," she told me as someone belted out a tuneless dirge that sort of resembled an Amy Winehouse song, "If you want a Japanese bloke, you just have to go and grab one. That's one of the reasons I'm getting out of here. There ain't no facking cock, not for us girls. Japanese blokes are so facking shy." But my curry house guy isn't shy. He takes my bill and his own and pays for both of them, then pulls at my shirt, motioning to the door. I scramble my bag onto my shoulder and scrape the chair back and follow him outside. Spits of rain dot my face, and I feel hot with the burn of the air conditioning leaving my skin. Sweat is already starting to prickle on my back. We cross the main road and turn down into a small street, past some vending machines and I look up at the black spaghetti of the electricity lines stretching from pole to pole. It's a nondescript little street, small apartment buildings with those tiny bricks and yogurt pot gardens out front. He stops at a slate-coloured building halfway down and pulls a set of keys out of his pocket. I rub my hands on my trousers and watch him open the door, check his mailbox, crumple some pizza shop fliers into a ball and stuff them into his bag. He smiles at me and points up the stairs and I follow him up. His apartment is tiny, just six tatami mats and he hasn't put his futon away. It's lying crooked on the floor with a sheet crumpled up at the bottom. There's a pot in the sink filled with water, some glasses and dishes sitting around. The walls are cream and decorated with a solitary poster of New York City. There's a bookshelf in the corner weighted down with some heavy academic-looking tomes, and his laptop's open on the floor beside an empty can of coke. The room smells of laundry detergent. He slips off his shoes and I do the same. I wonder if I should say anything but I don't need to. With a gleam in his eye, he steps closer to me and takes my hand. Then he kisses me, and the dying heat from our recent curry experience fires up again, this time in my belly, my groin. My hands come alive and I stroke his face, his hair, his neck, and suck on his tongue for a second. Then he steps back and pulls his t-shirt over his head. His skin is smooth and hairless, and there isn't much fat on him.. His jeans are slung low on his hips, and his boxers are sticking out the top. He looks at me and I can see his tongue playing with his piercing and suddenly I'm hungry, even though my belly is full. I pull off my tie and unbutton my shirt and he watches, then steps forward to push it from my shoulders. Like him, I've got little body hair. This seems to surprise him and he runs his hands over my chest and shoulders then pulls me in for another one of those hot curry kisses that sends my head spinning. We collapse together onto the futon. It's soft and smells of him, and he rolls on top of me and I feel the heat of his skin against mine, the faint breath of the air conditioning unit flows over my arms as my hands travel up his back. I feel the bones in his spine like keys on a piano, the hardness of his crotch against mine. We've never spoken but I know what he wants, and I want it too, so much. His mouth leaves mine and travels to my ear, making me shiver with the feel of his tongue, then he kisses and grazes his teeth down my neck and down to my nipple. When he nibbles on it, a jolt of arousal makes me arch my back and gasp. My cock's so hard now, it feels like it's going to bust out of my trousers. He mutters something then fumbles at my belt and zipper and I wriggle until I'm free, then cast off my trousers into a heap. I'm breathless, looking at him, lying on my back propped up on my elbows. He licks his lips then pushes me onto my back while he throws off his own jeans. Then we're naked together and kissing again, and I open my legs. He slips in between them and grinds his cock against mine as I clutch at his head and kiss him until I can hardly breathe. Then he slides down my body, dipping his tongue into my navel and trailing it past my weeping dick down, down, down until he's sucking at my balls and I feel his finger probing at my asshole. He pushes inside me and sucks some more and my heels dig into the futon. Then his long fingers find that spot inside me that sends another tingling bolt of arousal straight up my spine. My hands are balling the sheets and I bite my lip, trying not to cry out because it's a small apartment and I know that the walls are thin. I hear my neighbours shagging all the time and it's hard to look that demure little housewife in the eye when I put out my recycling in the mornings and she's on her balcony hanging out the washing dressed in her suit and looking as if butter wouldn't melt. He's stretching me, opening me up, and looking up at my flushed face with one of my balls in his mouth and a smirk on his face and I half-smile and half-groan as he tortures me some more, ignoring my dick completely. The sensation radiating from my insides is intense. He's groping under the futon, then he's got a bottle of lube in his hands and slicks it over his fingers before plunging them back inside me and finally, he takes my cock into his mouth and it's hot and he has another piercing I hadn't noticed before, in his tongue. That smooth little bead of metal dances on the underside of my dick until I'm biting my fist and whimpering, then he sits up and I look at him through a haze of arousal. His cock is dark and hard, pointing at me from its thick black bush. He pushes my legs up and I feel it resting against me, pushing a little more until it pops in through the ring of tight muscle and then he's inside me. Totally bare, I realize, but I don't care. It feels so good, stretching my hole with just a pinch of pain that adds to the pleasure as he sinks inside and then kisses me again and we breathe each other's breath, forehead to forehead, and then he starts to move. Slowly, he fucks me, grazing my prostate with that thick cock and I meet him, thrust for thrust until he takes his weight on his hands and looks down at where our bodies meet, at my cock which is weeping into my navel, at my balls which slide around as he fucks me harder and harder. His face is flushed and red and starting to look puffy and I know he isn't going to last long. My hand finds my dick and tightens around it and I jack myself in time to his thrusts, watching him reach the edge, getting jerky and the twitching starts in his thighs, then he looks into my eyes. His gaze is full of something like lust and that final connection between us sends my eyes rolling back into my head for a second as my hips roll up and my cock starts to squirt out all over my stomach and chest, and I get that squeezing feeling in my throat and brain as all the thoughts get deleted from my head. I haven't come so hard in a long time. He's not far behind me, and he cries out and freezes for a second and I feel the hot gush inside me and the tremors in his body, then he falls forward, slipping out of me far too soon but it's ok. I wrap my arms around him and listen to his breathing, his face buried in the pillow beside my head. Then he rolls over and lies beside me and when we've caught our breath we look down at my splattered chest and then at each other and he grins again. "Number ten," he says, and suddenly I can't stop laughing, and neither can he. He puts his hand on my stomach and snuggles in close. My body tingles pleasurably, and idly I grab a tissue from a nearby box and wipe the cum off my body. I have to go back to work soon, but not just yet. He's curled beside me, all sleek and satisfied like a cat. I feel a bit like purring myself. We lie together for a while, then I sit up and hunt around for my clothes. He watches me with a lazy smile on his face. "Shigoto," I say, proud that my brain is working enough to tell him I'm going back to work. He nods, and I get dressed. My legs are a bit wobbly and my asshole is stinging but it's a nice feeling, like I've just had a workout. Which I have, of course, but it was a hell of a lot more enjoyable than the gym. I glance at my watch. I'm going to be late, but I don't care. The school where I teach isn't far from here. I blow him a kiss at the door. "CoCo's?" I say. "CoCo's," he repeats, and blows me a kiss. I'm walking down the small street, the cicadas are singing and I'm feeling good. There's a spring in my step and a grin on my face. When I get back to work, I find out my student has cancelled for that evening. Everything's going well, life is good. I ease myself into my chair and pull out the pile of homeworks I have to mark. My housewives have written a piece about their favourite food. There are even some pictures, recipes and illustrations. None of them mentions curry. Rani sees me grinning off into space like a moron. "Hot lunch?" he says. I turn away so he can't see me laughing. "Something like that."