Queen of Love

“Ah, the single life. I miss it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I do! You know how long it’s been since I went out with friends? On a Tuesday night?”

“Who’s doing that, anyway?”

“Now my biggest excursion of the week is taking the kids to Mom and Dad’s on Sundays. Live it up for me, would you? Do something crazy. Get drunk and wake up hungover tomorrow.” When Aya scrunched her nose in distaste, Mari said, “Oh, I know! Say hello to a stranger and sing karaoke with them. God, I used to love doing that.”

“Would you stop making it sound like you’ve died?”

A chorus of excited shrieks hit the kitchen. Through the opened doorway into the living room, Aya caught her niece and nephew pushing each other to the floor and declaring different corners as “Sho Land” and “Hisatopia.” Mari remained utterly unchanged as she watched her own sister stare off into the distance with disbelief.

“I’m not dead,” Mari said when the chaotic fervor died down in the living room. “I’m numb!”

Aya couldn’t help but feel that described her as well.

There were no plans to do anything “fun” or “crazy” that night. Honestly, when Aya departed her Meguro apartment for the northern suburbs of Saitama Prefecture, she assumed she would stop to get a bite to eat on the way home and spend the rest of her evening watching movies and doing her own laundry. This is a wild night in at forty. Yet her sister’s words haunted Aya as she rode the train back into the city. When was the last time she went out to meet people? When did she last track down some old friends?

Sad thing? Last she remembered was before the pandemic when a few more places were open and people were more likely to leave their bubbles for more than work and school.

Ladylike is dead. Aya had brought about the bittersweet end of that era. There aren’t many places left. Gay, straight, neutral… every time she got comfortable somewhere, be it a girl bar or her neighborhood dive, it either closed up or the government panicked about hospitalizations. Aya had spent the past two years keeping her nose down at work and foregoing any personal life beyond her parents and sister.

Maybe it was time to do some market research of her own.

She opened a map of Shinjuku on her phone. Before it loaded, she had already transferred train lines. What’s even left these days? Although Aya had prepared a list of “like businesses“ for Genevieve, she couldn’t say what was actually the kind of place she, an experienced lesbian of going on twenty years, would hang out. Everything off the top of her head was either a burnt bridge or still closed down. Not that there were many girl bars left.

Ah. Sure enough, the only neutral-but-active place left was open again. Since it was Saturday night, she might find someone to talk to.

I hope I don’t feel too old in there. Aya liked to think she didn’t look too old, especially when among her own people, but she sure as hell felt it. Dating apps went over her head. Hell, she barely understood the chat apps her old friends and sister had roped her into using. The last time Aya had an actual date was when she was set up by a mutual friend. The craziest she and a girl from Osaka got that night was some kissing and heavy petting – before the other woman threw up in Aya’s bathroom and went back to her hotel room.

Shinjuku Ni-chome was certainly livelier on a Saturday night than during a weekday afternoon, but it still didn’t compare to the heyday of Aya’s youth. Back when you’d see tourists packing the first floor bars and locals overflowing from the fourth floor of the same building. A few signs were only temporarily dark, but many more had burned their last bulb.

At least the cigarette smoke was as thick as ever.

“Irasshaimase,” the bartender at the dark and neon-infested first-floor bar said. “What would you like to drink?”

Aya ordered her highball before fully entering the bar, where a small group of friends sat in one corner smoking cigarettes and a single woman occupied the stool at the far end of the bar. “Anything good happening tonight?” Aya asked the bartender, a younger woman she had never seen before. Yes, I’m officially old now. She remembered when she knew half of the bartenders in the neighborhood, and that included the boy bars.

She was greeted with a shrug and a watered-down highball. She paid ten bucks for the pleasure. “You tell me, eh?”

Aya couldn’t be mad. Most of these bartenders barely made minimum wage, and tips were not a thing in that part of the world. If they weren’t talking to friends, then they were barely functioning. Only difference now? Aya no longer dominated a bartender’s attention when she entered a place like this.

She sat two seats away from the woman at the far end of the bar. Aya would have struck up a conversation with her, but the woman with long hair and a longer skirt had her nose buried in her phone, only occasionally coming up for air to write something in a notebook. Aya attempted to steal a look at the woman’s notes. They were not in Japanese or English.

She wasn’t quite sure what it was. Maybe Chinese. Either way, she had to stop snooping before she was caught.

What a dud. No wonder the bars were closing. This was one of the only places open, on a Saturday night, no less. Yet Aya struggled to feel like she belonged anywhere. When she debated if this meant she was simply getting older, or if things had really changed, her memory kept bouncing back to those nights when she would walk into a bar and spot at least two acquaintances who were ready to drink and gab. If she didn’t know anybody, she made friends with whoever was there.

She’d blame it on getting older and no longer being in the scene, but when she looked around, she didn’t see the same level of banter and commiseration that had existed ten or twenty years ago. The group of friends in the back corner was quieter than the music playing over the speakers. They could have been holding a business meeting for all Aya knew.

“Oh, good,” said someone in English. “I was hoping someone like you would drop by and answer a few questions for me.”

It took Aya a moment to realize that was directed at her. She had fired up her phone to read a web novel when her brain made the connection between English and Genevieve Liu.

“Surprised?” The woman at the end of the bar pushed her hair out of her face. Sure enough, it was Genevieve. “Honestly, I should be more surprised to see you here. You’re not the one doing market research.”

Aya swallowed the lump in her throat. While there was little doubt left about her sexuality after their last conversation, Aya was not to be caught in a gay bar by one of her agency’s clients. Even if that client was opening a lesbian bar in one of the gayest neighborhoods in Japan. Implying…