N:  The first story is AOKI Soh's "Sex, Gossips, and Polaroid," a charming little high-school romp. Kurosaka is the school kisser-and-teller, who takes Polaroids of every girl he sleeps with (sometimes nudes), then shows them off to his friends. (The girls all seem quite cheerful about it.) Kakihara, the pretty class president, is offended by this sort of vulgar behavior, and feels it's his duty to put a stop to it. Like a good sempai, he takes Kurosaka under his wing and tries to civilize him/befriend him. Kurosaka goes along for a while, but eventually makes a pass at Kakihara---he's been fascinated by Kakihara for a while, so this has just been an opportunity for him. Kakihara is confused by this, but lets it slide until he overhears Kurosaka talking to a friend, planning his next conquest--- that "homo Kakihara". Kakihara then beats the crap out of Kurosaka. Then, being the good sempai he is, he carries the battered Kurosaka home to nurse him back to health. Whereupon Kurosaka jumps him (wow, they both have hairy legs). Cute, sort of angular, playful art; I like this artist.

J:  Pretty close. As readers of the translation will have noted, Kurosaka is making a play for Kakihara from the start as part of a scheme to make the prudish class president look ridiculous. Screw first, then take the Polaroids and hand them out. So he starts hanging around him and inviting him home to meet Gran and confessing to being gay. What turns it around is Kakihara hearing Kurosaka's friend telling him to jump Kakihara like he always does and take those homo photos that will make him a laughingstock. After getting himself beaten up, Kurosaka begs Kakihara to take him home- not to his house, but to the famous apartment where he's supposed to carry out his seductions. Where he jumps Kakihara, but it's 'on' not 'in'. And admits to himself afterwards that the polaroid plan was just a little lie he was telling himself in case he failed to get Kakihara- 'Didn't really want him, was only playing a joke with Suzuki'- because his own feelings for Kakihara were scaring him.

N: The next is ADZUMI Moka's "O-tentou-sama no iu toori", whatever an otentou is... I'm fuzzy on the plot because it's very text-heavy, without furigana, and it would take me a while to translate it. Something about a gruff samurai meeting a charismatic young village doctor, and feeling very put out because the doctor is more popular with the ladies than he is, although the doctor is less manly and prettier (i.e., more biseinen---he doesn't know much about what ladies like, I think...). At the same time, he's attracted to the doctor himself. Some weird complex misunderstanding happens, and the two end up as guests in the home of one of the more powerful families in the village. They're given a room for the night which has one large futon and two pillows. Guess what happens.

J:  'As the Lord of Heaven decrees' (='that's the way God planned it, that's the way God wants it to be.') You have to have watched jidai-geki for years to get most of what's happening here. Rigid right-thinking samurai, Tatsunosuke, runs the local kendo establishment and is annoyed because his little sister has a crush on the local schoolteacher, Iori. Note that both are of the samurai class but both are, equally, ronin making their livings in an acceptable but unsamurai fashion. In fact Iori comes from the lowest level of society. His parents were wandering actors who died; he was adopted as a baby by the local doctor. (And is currently teaching because he quarreled with his foster father.) This may be what gives him his common touch, that so perplexes Tatsunosuke. Checking out what kind of person it is teaching his sister, he first finds him holding hands with an obvious 'nentei'- the junior partner in a relationship, as shown by his uncut hair- then when they go drinking, having a flock of low-level prostitutes greet him familiarly. 'Circumstances differ for everyone,' Iori tells the disapproving samurai, 'and they're not always of one's own choosing. It's not for anyone else to judge how someone lives their lives.'

Tatsunosuke, troubled by these odd little symptoms like the way his heart beats when he sees Iori's bare chest, keeps seeking his company. He goes so far as to spend the night with him when Iori, drunk, falls asleep after knocking the stuffing out of some louts who were harassing the bar's hostess. So he's there next day when the young boy appears whom he'd seen before and half-assumed was Iori's lover (until his little sister, who knows everything, sets him straight.) The boy is an apprentice actor, and a wealthy merchant has invited him to dinner at a high-class restaurant used also as a house of assignation. The implication is clear. Iori gives the boy his blessing to take the merchant as his patron and lover, and to sever ties with Iori. Tatsunosuke is thinking about this, and about Iori's subsequent low spirits, and about how he'd gone full-tilt into the fight at the bar, and realizes what Iori intends. He and the boy, whom he runs into at Iori's house, rush to the restaurant, and seem to find their fears realized, because Iori is in the middle of a brawl in the merchant's room. Actually Iori came to ask the merchant to hold off on his intentions until the boy becomes firmly settled in his profession, because a new affair now will distract him from his art. But the merchant's guards are the ones Iori took on a few days earlier, and they want their revenge. However the merchant unexpectedly puts a stop to the fight. He says he's too old to be playing about with young actors, and wants only to be the boy's patron in the arts. When the youth agrees, the merchant leaves with his men, telling them the evening is on him. But the boy goes after him, leaving our heroes alone. And the bedroom, naturally, is set up for two together, since the house's owner had assumed what everyone else did. Doesn't take long for both our guys to find themselves in each other's arms with Iori making a drunken confession of love into Tatsunosuke's neck. 'Only-- am I the uke?' 'Of course!' Tatsunosuke bellows. 'But- how come?' 'Cause that's the will of God!' Which is fine, but Tatsu has no technique and Iori promises darkly that next time he's the one will be on the bottom.

N:  The next is NOMO Marino's "Okubyou mono no koi". Again, I'm fuzzy on the translation. A guy named Kodama who had a bratty, cute little friend (not sure whether he was more than a friend) in high school is reunited with him two years later, only to discover that in the meantime puberty has hit with a vengeance, and little Noguchi is now 17 cm taller than he used to be---putting him 6 cm taller than Kodama, much to Kodama's chagrin. Naturally, now being taller, the once-uke-ish friend attempts to jump Kodama a few times (quite sweetly and awkwardly). Kodama beats him up a little. No sex, but very sweet, and the art reminds me a bit of Ogura Miki.

J:  A Coward's Love. Sidestory to the main action in the manga 'PRECIOUS made ato hanpo.' Kodama was a champion high school runner in love with his friend Kaneshiro Tomoe- a guy, btw- who turned him down. Two years later he's in university and can't run for reasons we aren't told: 'Love never goes the way you want it to, just like this leg of mine that sometimes just won't move.' His kouhai from the track team, Noguchi, who's a 'ronin'-- taking a year off and going to cram school to try to get into a good university-- comes round on Sundays and hangs around the apartment and cooks for him. He's taller but still the same puppy character he always was. One day he tells Kodama he's run into Tomoe in company with a classmate of his own, Baika. 'They weren't in the same year but they always got on well.' Baika's the guy Tomoe turned Kodama down for. Noguchi tries to kiss the stunned Kodama and gets Kodama's fist in his face.

Next day Noguchi turns up at Kodama's university- 'Couldn't go to class with my face like this. Think I'll try to get in here, so you can show me around the place.' And who should be there but Baika who wonders why Noguchi isn't at the athletic college that accepted him last year. Kodama goes home in a snit because Noguchi lied about being a ronin, Noguchi follows and stands outside Kodama's door, threatening to make his earnest avowals where all the neighbour ladies can hear. "The truth is that ever since high school you've been the only one I've ever lov---" "GET INSIDE!" Noguchi says he turned the college down because he realized he was growing too fast to stay a good runner and what he really wanted was to be with Kodama. Makes his little passionate plea, jumps on Kodama, begs 'Can't I take Kaneshiro-san's place?' and gets Kodama's fist in his face again. "Nope. You can't." Not because he isn't a 'cool beauty' like Tomoe but because he isn't a uke. And because Kodama isn't ready to take the next step out of his empotional paralysis.

N:  Then my personal favorite---"Trouble in Paradise," by YAZAKI Tatsumi. Two too-cool sports dudes---one a surfer, the other a skateboarder---each with his own kawaii uke lover and a phalanx of admirers, have been friends/rivals since childhood, each constantly trying to out-testosterone the other. After they both wipe out in their respective sports one day, they run across each other in the elevator, and accidentally swap groceries. To their horror, they must actually talk to one another in order to get their groceries back before their ukes come home. Talking leads to painful confessions---they're both upset at having lost their respective contests, failing to live up to people's images of them, lots of guy-ish angsty concerns. One begins to cry. Consolation sex. Then they tease each other, of all things, about having male lovers. The otokorashii implications of this elude me. Anyhow, never admitting they're actually friends, they go home---but each of them has left a kiss mark (hickey, in Noraland) on the other. Marking territory, I suppose. Their ukes are not amused, and the guys scream like wussy little girls when the beatings begin.

J:  A little more complicated than this. We start with two young guys saying That's it we're through, and two older-looking guys going 'Huh?' Slam goes the door and 'It was just so *sudden*.' Our older guys are out in the hall muttering to themselves- Wha'd I do? Why's he mad?- when they realize the other is there. They don't actually know each other, they're just neighbours who don't think much of the other one. And of course they start doing guy stuff- 'Was that your girlfriend slammed out of here just now? Dumped you, did she?' "Who's talking? *Your* woman just walked out, right?' "She's-- she's gonna be a great surfer some day so she has to practise for this big meet!!' 'Mine's gonna be a star too. But I wouldn't make her practise alone in the ocean in the middle of the night!' This is heading in the direction of a fight, but along comes what else a neighbour lady and both have to go grin-grin bow-bow to avoid talk. (Ohhh the *neighbours*, the curse of Japanese life. Remember reading an article by a Japanese stationed in Paris who reported as if he'd gone to Paradise with its 70 virgins 'You don't have to talk to your neighbours in Paris. They don't *want* to talk to you!')

Guys go off- 'Gotta find my sweet little Betty!''I'm worried about my cute little Honey!" but-- "A week passed and 'Betty' and 'Honey' didn't come back." Surfer moons around his surfer goods store while customers ask where's Tomo-kun he's why I come here. Skateboarder moons around the club while the guys he coaches wonder howcum Minoru-kun is cutting practice that's not like him. Surfer goes out to get a big wave, boarder goes out to try a steep wall for the next meet, worrying about their boyfriends (Something wrong with my **technique**??/ Has he met **someone else**??) they both wipe out and come home bruised and bandaged, too hurt to notice who the other guy in the elevator is they're making polite noises at. And realize, and drop their bags in shock, and snarl at each other some more until oh yes a neighbour lady gets on the elevator. At home both are wondering howcum they mind so much their boyfriends have gone, reach for a beer, find it's the brand they hate, and go back to get their own groceries. When who should pass but two neighbour ladies who see the two yelling at each other in the doorway. Boarder pulls surfer inside to avoid any more gossip, and both hear the women saying 'You know, those two both got walked out on at the same time.' The truth being out, the guys start drinking together. Surfer gets drunk on one beer and begins sobbing about Tomohiko. Boarder can't stand guys crying like Minoru always did, kisses surfer, jumps him, and has to listen to surfer going 'I'm older I'm taller I got my own store I'm national no.4 surfer howcum **I** wind up under this ape?' Indignant boarder then tells surfer 'No wonder your guy left you- you're arrogant, you're full of yourself, you're so wonderful he musta felt he could never live up to you.' Surfer is struck by this home truth, and succumbs to boarder's talented sexual technique.

Boarder then falls asleep at once, snoring. Disgusted surfer finds the picture that falls out of boarder's wallet- a guy! And listens to boarder talking in his sleep about Hey Minoru one more time aww come on you know you love me hunh hunh?? Surfer shakes boarder awake and says he's about to return a few favours. 'Your sex is great, I admit it happily, but overall the experience sucked. You ever think of anyone but yourself when you screw? Jumping a guy's fine occasionally, but sometimes you want to set the mood.' And proceeds to seduce boarder slowly, while boarder realizes Gee Minoru always used to say I love you but I don't think I ever said it back.

'I want to apologize to him' both guys conclude as they lie in each other's arms. 'If only it's not too late.' Not at all. Next day as guys leave their respective places, who should be there but their sad-faced ukes. Happy reunion, our guys apologize and promise it'll be different- and then their much shorter ukes see the hickeys on their semes' necks. Semes go scream at each other about what kind of stupid ape would do a thing like that I told you no you were just too turned on to listen blah blah. Screaming semes become aware of black-faced ukes taking all this in, but what happens next depends on what the action word BAKII conveys. Me, I think it's the ukes walking out again, yelling 'Beast!' and 'I don't believe it!' respectively.

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