Day 1
Twelve hours in the air and surprisingly I felt great!
Garrett and I booked seats in the first row of economy, right behind the curtain that separated us from the people who paid three times more for their tickets.
There were no seats in front of us so Garrett could stretch his freakishly long legs all the way out. Garret was 6’4" and always wore knee high compression socks under his athletic shorts, which kinda made him look like an oversized preppy school boy. He was deeply paranoid about getting blood clots after his uncle had a stroke last year.
When we landed in Tokyo, we were herded through customs and funneled into a long white hallway, where we were handed little plastic tubes. Saliva-based PCRs to test for Covid. No biggie. We'd done this a million times since 2020.
Thirty minutes later, a masked woman in full PPE handed us a paper and said, "You both tested positive for Covid. Because you're traveling together, you will be quarantined together."
And with that, our high school graduation trip turned into a ten-day lockdown.
The quarantine hotel room wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either.
It was small and sterile and only had one queen sized mattress.
"Well," Garrett said, dropping his bag with a thud, "I hope you like spooning."
We skimmed the welcome packet: Ten days. No leaving the room. No visitors. No room cleaning. Three meals delivered daily. Trash in sealed bags. If symptoms worsened, call the number by the landline.
Fuck.
This sounded agonizing.
We turned on the TV, our only source of entertainment aside from our phones, but everything was in Japanese.
The TV shows were wild.
We watched a few minutes of a drama featuring a woman and what we think were her three ex-husbands all living under one roof. Watching it made me feel like I was having heatstroke.
We flipped to a news station delivered entirely in Japanese Sign Language. Garrett actually paused. His cousin Ethan is Deaf. I caught him trying to parse what was being signed.
"You understand any of it?" I asked.
"Not a single word."
Eventually we landed on a documentary about a family of cats living in a temple. That one stayed on.
We started unpacking. There was no use living out of a suitcase if we were gonna be here ten whole days. Garrett hung up his button-downs like we were staying at The Four Seasons or something.
I stumbled over Garret's carry-on and something rolled out of the bag and clinked against the floor.
A long and narrow glass tube with a cap on the end. I bent to pick it up.
"Don’t touch that," Garrett said, way too fast.
I froze. "What the hell is it? It looks like... a bong?"
"It’s not a bong," he muttered, clearly embarrassed.
"Well it looks exactly like a bong. How'd you get it through security?"
He sighed and dragged a hand down his face. "It’s a portable urinal."
"Oh. Really? You mean... for, like, road trips and old geezers?"
"No," Garrett sighed. "For guys who wake up with such intense morning wood that they can’t bend their dick down to aim into a toilet. You angle into the tube instead."
My mouth opened just a bit in awe. "So you wake up with such a full-on rager that the only way you can pee is into this thing?"
"Yes," he groaned. "Can we not talk about it?"
"Oh no, we are absolutely talking about this. That’s hilarious."
"It’s not. It’s a medical necessity."
"You brought a boner pee tube across the Pacific."
"It’s better than pissing all over the floor or on the seat."
I picked the tube up between two fingers like it was a biohazard and placed it on the dresser. "I'm gonna be forced to think about your morning wood every time you go pee now."
"You’re welcome."
We laughed for way too long, both of us half-delirious, probably from the virus incubating inside us. But even after we moved on, I couldn’t get the image out of my head: Garrett, stiff and sleepy, inserting himself in this ridiculous tube first thing every morning.
The fever came on hard that afternoon. I felt like I was melting out of my own skin.
Garrett looked even worse than me.
The heat was unbearable, made worse by jetlag and the stale air in the tiny hotel room.
We both kept peeling off layers of clothes but could never get comfortable. Eventually, we couldn’t take it anymore.
We stripped down to just our boxers and stood awkwardly under a freezing cold shower together, desperate for relief. The space was tight, barely big enough for one person, but neither of us wanted to wait. The cold was shocking, but it helped.
We’d been on swim team together since we were kids. So we'd shared plenty of time in speedos, stretching on pool decks, sitting around in wet towels. But we'd never seen each other fully naked. Our high school had decent locker rooms with individual shower stalls, so most guys kept to themselves. You change quick, you don’t stare, you mind your business. That was the code.
We honored the code in the hotel room, too.
We wrapped towels around our waists and dropped our wet boxers to the floor, then flopped onto the bed without bothering to put anything else on. The towels would have to suffice for tonight.
"We've gotta sleep head to toe, dude. I can't be this close to your face," I said.
"Obviously. You get the foot of the bed. My legs need somewhere to go."
I rotated and slid down to the end of the bed. My head ended up inches from Garrett's bare shins. His legs were covered in a thick layer of dark hair. I could barely see the skin underneath.
"Dude," I said. "Your legs look like a fucking werewolf. And your feet are as furry as Frodo Baggins'..."
"That’s what happens when you don't have a swim team to shave for anymore."
"I never realized you were this hairy," I said. "I guess we always have been shaved down for swim season. Since puberty. Didn't really leave time to grow anything."
"Don't say puberty. It's weird."
"But seriously, your legs are like a dense forest..."
He laughed, sounding half-dead. "You should see my ass. That took the longest to shave. Total jungle."
"Why did you even bother with shaving your ass?"
"Aerodynamics. I did it for the team."
"That's why you were our captain. Anything for the team."
"I was dedicated. You try squatting over a mirror and shaving it with a razor. You learn things about yourself."
"Like what?"
"Like how flexible you aren’t. And how horrifying your butthole looks in good lighting."
"Well I have a naturally smooth and perfect butthole, thank you very much."
"Sure ya do," Garrett said and then sighed. "Sarah always hated that I had to keep my whole body shaved. She said it made me look twelve."
"But then you grow it out and girls call you a caveman. Can’t win," I said, just guessing. No girl had ever taken enough of an interest in me for me to know what they'd think of my body hair.
"The thing about Sarah is, she never trimmed her pubes at all. It didn’t bother me much, but damn, every time I ate her out I always had to stop a few times to pull her stray hairs out of my teeth. I felt like a cat getting a hairball."
I wrinkled my nose. "Gross."
"That's why I keep mine trimmed still. Gotta be considerate of the ladies," Garrett said.
"Totally."
"Speaking of... Have you hooked up with anyone yet?"
"You know I'd tell you the minute it happened, if I had," I confessed, which was true. I always told Garrett the second anything even remotely interesting happened to me.
"Have you even kissed a girl yet? What about Allie? I swear she was trying to get at you at prom..."
"Still no."
"Dude."
"I know."
"We’re fixing that. You’re kissing a cute Japanese girl before we leave Japan."
"We'll barely have time to leave this hotel room before we have to leave Japan."
"Yeah..." Garrett's voice trailed off.
For a while the room was quiet.
We laid there for a while, too hot and tired to move.
I broke the silence.
"Wait, so how long does your morning wood last if you need the tube so desperately? Like… would you still be hard when you came to school? Cuz that's crazyyyyy."
Garrett laughed. "First of all, my doctor said it’s perfectly normal. That he was jealous, even. I guess some guys just wake up more amped up than others. But yeah, there've been mornings where it lasted, like, two hours."
"Damn, dude. So you were just bricked up in AP Stats?"
"Thank god for the waistband holding me in place."
"Amen, brother."
It was the last thing we talked about before drifting off to sleep.
I felt even hotter than before, but I wasn’t sure it was just the fever anymore.
Twelve hours in the air and surprisingly I felt great!
Garrett and I booked seats in the first row of economy, right behind the curtain that separated us from the people who paid three times more for their tickets.
There were no seats in front of us so Garrett could stretch his freakishly long legs all the way out. Garret was 6’4" and always wore knee high compression socks under his athletic shorts, which kinda made him look like an oversized preppy school boy. He was deeply paranoid about getting blood clots after his uncle had a stroke last year.
When we landed in Tokyo, we were herded through customs and funneled into a long white hallway, where we were handed little plastic tubes. Saliva-based PCRs to test for Covid. No biggie. We'd done this a million times since 2020.
Thirty minutes later, a masked woman in full PPE handed us a paper and said, "You both tested positive for Covid. Because you're traveling together, you will be quarantined together."
And with that, our high school graduation trip turned into a ten-day lockdown.
* * *
The quarantine hotel room wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either.
It was small and sterile and only had one queen sized mattress.
"Well," Garrett said, dropping his bag with a thud, "I hope you like spooning."
We skimmed the welcome packet: Ten days. No leaving the room. No visitors. No room cleaning. Three meals delivered daily. Trash in sealed bags. If symptoms worsened, call the number by the landline.
Fuck.
This sounded agonizing.
We turned on the TV, our only source of entertainment aside from our phones, but everything was in Japanese.
The TV shows were wild.
We watched a few minutes of a drama featuring a woman and what we think were her three ex-husbands all living under one roof. Watching it made me feel like I was having heatstroke.
We flipped to a news station delivered entirely in Japanese Sign Language. Garrett actually paused. His cousin Ethan is Deaf. I caught him trying to parse what was being signed.
"You understand any of it?" I asked.
"Not a single word."
Eventually we landed on a documentary about a family of cats living in a temple. That one stayed on.
We started unpacking. There was no use living out of a suitcase if we were gonna be here ten whole days. Garrett hung up his button-downs like we were staying at The Four Seasons or something.
I stumbled over Garret's carry-on and something rolled out of the bag and clinked against the floor.
A long and narrow glass tube with a cap on the end. I bent to pick it up.
"Don’t touch that," Garrett said, way too fast.
I froze. "What the hell is it? It looks like... a bong?"
"It’s not a bong," he muttered, clearly embarrassed.
"Well it looks exactly like a bong. How'd you get it through security?"
He sighed and dragged a hand down his face. "It’s a portable urinal."
"Oh. Really? You mean... for, like, road trips and old geezers?"
"No," Garrett sighed. "For guys who wake up with such intense morning wood that they can’t bend their dick down to aim into a toilet. You angle into the tube instead."
My mouth opened just a bit in awe. "So you wake up with such a full-on rager that the only way you can pee is into this thing?"
"Yes," he groaned. "Can we not talk about it?"
"Oh no, we are absolutely talking about this. That’s hilarious."
"It’s not. It’s a medical necessity."
"You brought a boner pee tube across the Pacific."
"It’s better than pissing all over the floor or on the seat."
I picked the tube up between two fingers like it was a biohazard and placed it on the dresser. "I'm gonna be forced to think about your morning wood every time you go pee now."
"You’re welcome."
We laughed for way too long, both of us half-delirious, probably from the virus incubating inside us. But even after we moved on, I couldn’t get the image out of my head: Garrett, stiff and sleepy, inserting himself in this ridiculous tube first thing every morning.
* * *
The fever came on hard that afternoon. I felt like I was melting out of my own skin.
Garrett looked even worse than me.
The heat was unbearable, made worse by jetlag and the stale air in the tiny hotel room.
We both kept peeling off layers of clothes but could never get comfortable. Eventually, we couldn’t take it anymore.
We stripped down to just our boxers and stood awkwardly under a freezing cold shower together, desperate for relief. The space was tight, barely big enough for one person, but neither of us wanted to wait. The cold was shocking, but it helped.
We’d been on swim team together since we were kids. So we'd shared plenty of time in speedos, stretching on pool decks, sitting around in wet towels. But we'd never seen each other fully naked. Our high school had decent locker rooms with individual shower stalls, so most guys kept to themselves. You change quick, you don’t stare, you mind your business. That was the code.
We honored the code in the hotel room, too.
We wrapped towels around our waists and dropped our wet boxers to the floor, then flopped onto the bed without bothering to put anything else on. The towels would have to suffice for tonight.
"We've gotta sleep head to toe, dude. I can't be this close to your face," I said.
"Obviously. You get the foot of the bed. My legs need somewhere to go."
I rotated and slid down to the end of the bed. My head ended up inches from Garrett's bare shins. His legs were covered in a thick layer of dark hair. I could barely see the skin underneath.
"Dude," I said. "Your legs look like a fucking werewolf. And your feet are as furry as Frodo Baggins'..."
"That’s what happens when you don't have a swim team to shave for anymore."
"I never realized you were this hairy," I said. "I guess we always have been shaved down for swim season. Since puberty. Didn't really leave time to grow anything."
"Don't say puberty. It's weird."
"But seriously, your legs are like a dense forest..."
He laughed, sounding half-dead. "You should see my ass. That took the longest to shave. Total jungle."
"Why did you even bother with shaving your ass?"
"Aerodynamics. I did it for the team."
"That's why you were our captain. Anything for the team."
"I was dedicated. You try squatting over a mirror and shaving it with a razor. You learn things about yourself."
"Like what?"
"Like how flexible you aren’t. And how horrifying your butthole looks in good lighting."
"Well I have a naturally smooth and perfect butthole, thank you very much."
"Sure ya do," Garrett said and then sighed. "Sarah always hated that I had to keep my whole body shaved. She said it made me look twelve."
"But then you grow it out and girls call you a caveman. Can’t win," I said, just guessing. No girl had ever taken enough of an interest in me for me to know what they'd think of my body hair.
"The thing about Sarah is, she never trimmed her pubes at all. It didn’t bother me much, but damn, every time I ate her out I always had to stop a few times to pull her stray hairs out of my teeth. I felt like a cat getting a hairball."
I wrinkled my nose. "Gross."
"That's why I keep mine trimmed still. Gotta be considerate of the ladies," Garrett said.
"Totally."
"Speaking of... Have you hooked up with anyone yet?"
"You know I'd tell you the minute it happened, if I had," I confessed, which was true. I always told Garrett the second anything even remotely interesting happened to me.
"Have you even kissed a girl yet? What about Allie? I swear she was trying to get at you at prom..."
"Still no."
"Dude."
"I know."
"We’re fixing that. You’re kissing a cute Japanese girl before we leave Japan."
"We'll barely have time to leave this hotel room before we have to leave Japan."
"Yeah..." Garrett's voice trailed off.
For a while the room was quiet.
We laid there for a while, too hot and tired to move.
I broke the silence.
"Wait, so how long does your morning wood last if you need the tube so desperately? Like… would you still be hard when you came to school? Cuz that's crazyyyyy."
Garrett laughed. "First of all, my doctor said it’s perfectly normal. That he was jealous, even. I guess some guys just wake up more amped up than others. But yeah, there've been mornings where it lasted, like, two hours."
"Damn, dude. So you were just bricked up in AP Stats?"
"Thank god for the waistband holding me in place."
"Amen, brother."
It was the last thing we talked about before drifting off to sleep.
I felt even hotter than before, but I wasn’t sure it was just the fever anymore.
