Marriage in Las Vegas
How a couple find that they were in deep love when they get married in Las Vegas

By Pierre Coda

Minako was not what you would call the "all-Japanese girl" if there is anything like that in the first place.  Her father was a diplomat so she was widely traveled.  Her parents came from excellent backgrounds - she told me that her grandfather was a minister for many years in the Tanaka cabinet and her mother's family owned tea plantations in north.  Naturally, she had a huge ego and her attitude was not the friendliest either.  She caught my attention only because she was different.  I did not think of her as attractive in the way I like women (they have to be feminine without being meek and docile), but she carried herself very well, had a fine taste in western clothing, dressed very elegantly in Japanese clothes, which I admired, and was just a lot of fun to be around.  While a lot of non-Japanese men were absolutely charmed by her and she would often flirt with them, I knew I had no chance with her since I was not like any of her admirers.  I guess my obvious 'lack of interest' did not go well with her.  She resented the fact that I did not show the same level of interest in her as all other men did.  In fact I realized that she did not like me for that very reason.  She wanted to feel that she could ignore any man she wanted if she wished so.  The more I ignored her, the more obsessed she became in winning me over.  Since she was otherwise a wonderful person, I had no problem with having her as a good friend but it helped me define the relationship on my terms.  I was her friend not because she had charmed me but because I was convinced that she was fun to be with and I enjoyed hanging out with her and eat some delicious Japanese food.

Over the next few months, we spent so much time together that everyone thought that we were actually in a relationship.  In reality though, she was sleeping with a Belgian guy named Philippe.  Having an open friendship with me allowed her to share some of the things with me that she could not with her admirers who were good enough to flirt with.  Her biggest problem was lack of confidence in her beauty (she thought she was too masculine looking - her body was too hairy, her hands and feet were too big for a woman, and she thought her hips were way too prominent, deflecting attention from what she thought were her other good attributes, like her long hair).

~

Boyfriends came and went from her life as if she were just a train offering them rides.  In fact I learned that when I first met her during the fall term, she was dating an English guy in Boston.  To spend time with him, she would be gone all weekend.  At some point, I learned, the guy thought he had had enough of her and virtually threw her out of his life.  During the winter term, she was single and that is when the flirting increased.  Since she was good at it, she scored some big wins.  But nothing lasted too long.  Fernando, the compulsive philanderer, gave her two days of charm, and left her to move on to someone else.  Brad drove her around for a few months in his Porsche, but realized she was not classy enough for him. 

Philippe was in New York only for one term and she trapped him towards the end of his stay.  She gave me a hint of what was going on.  During that period, however, for days I would not hear from her.  When the phone did ring after two weeks, she was crying and asked me to come down to her place immediately.  She had an intense night with Philippe, but then he left for a long weekend - she just could not believe that he would take off on his trip without either inviting her to come along or canceling it all together especially after she had given him everything that she could.  To make things worse, he did not even call the first night of his departure and that is why she called me.  So it was my job to listen to her tearful story and console her that Philippe might not have thought it appropriate to bother her during the weekend or just did not realize that he had to call her.  I knew what Philippe thought but did not want it to tell Minako.

When Philippe returned, he behaved as if nothing was wrong.  Minako indicated to me that he was polite to her but did not show any more emotions than that.  She was emotional about the whole thing but he just thought of it as an evening in which things went a bit too far and that is where they should end.  She was devastated after hearing this because all along she had been hoping that he would abandon everything for her and they would live happily thereafter.  He had never hidden the fact from her that he had a steady girlfriend back in Brussels and he was returning to her in 3 weeks.  I tried to convince Minako that it was better to just think of it as a one-night stand and move on.  Once Philippe would leave, there would no more reminders of him either.

~

Things went along without much change as we both started to work - she was desperate to find a long-term relationship with a guy that she could bring home to so that she could convince her parents to let her marry a man of her dreams - blond, long hair, blue eyes, tall, and with a job that would let her spend all the money she wanted.  Her parents were, on the other hand, going through the usual omiai (literally translated as arranged marriage) route to find a suitable match for her - computer whiz kids, investment bankers, management consultants, with excellent family background.  As her parents were getting increasingly desperate, Minako was equally stressed out trying to find her own suitable boy.  Her plan was that if she could come up with her selection before her parents did, she could pre-empt their plans and then convince them to do what she wanted.  Too often she would go on dates that would turn out to be disastrous or just get laid if she thought the guy was her type, hoping to increase her prospects, but to no avail. 

She was getting lonelier and would often share with me her frustrations with guys who did not want to commit anything.  As soon as she thought she was making progress they would want to run away.  I was getting tired too with her stories and had to often ignore her.  The stories were actually getting stale - nothing much changed except the guy involved.  Even their characters were same - good looking, wealthy, American or European, single, but not seeking a committed relationship with a Japanese girl.

After I started to work, I made several friends and had a wonderful group of colleagues to hang out with.   I had also been enjoying my new job and did not want many distractions.  Thus, I would hang out with my new friend Karen often but did not necessarily want to commit myself to a serious relationship with her yet.  My family was very supportive of what I was doing with my life and there was no pressure at all to meet any of their expectations.  Karen was probably in the same situation.  She liked me a lot and we had a solid relationship but we were not talking marriage yet.  This gave me ample time to hang out with (or should I say listen to her story) Minako whenever we could.  I was always hopeful that she would have something funny to tell me about another disastrous date. 

I was a reasonably good cook and enjoyed cooking my own dinner.  She was not into cooking and would often drop by to join me.  Occasionally she would cook some Japanese noodles for me and I never thought she was a bad cook (though she had been told by her family that her cooking was awful - maybe I had not eaten enough Japanese food).  Since she and I had a casual friendship, and were great friends on every level, we talked freely about almost anything.  We even slept in the same bed when either she or I were visiting each other.  Nothing ever happened since we were both getting enough intimacy from others in our lives.  We walked around in our sleepwear (Related:  Miranda Kerr cute sleepwear), and even used each other's clothes when either one of us did not have a change of clothes when staying overnight.  In my opinion, there is no better relationship than the one with a person of the opposite gender but without the commitment required and the tension involved.  Thus, she got to hear a man's opinion on almost anything while I got to do the same.  I would often get a woman’s perspective before I would say something of consequence to Karen.  And I provided her with lots of advice on how to deal with men.  We were just great pals - I mean I could do stuff with her that I was too shy to do in front of even my male friends.  I guess she felt the same way.  The more time we spent together the more familiar we became with each other, even forgetting that we were of two different genders.  I think at some point she no longer treated me a like a male friend and I followed thereafter.  Thus, we no longer engaged in usual courtesies that we were both used to in the company of the opposite gender.  This strengthened our friendship to a point that I felt much closer to her than I had ever felt towards any other woman.  My relationship with her was built on appreciation, understanding, love, and trust but she could have been a man and it would not matter to me.

~

I was hanging out at her place on a Friday evening after work and we were planning to go out for dinner.  As usual she was trying on outfits to decide which one to wear even though we were not going on a date.  Since I was around, she wanted my opinion.  Not that I am an expert in women’s clothing, I was still able to successfully sound like an image consultant.  "Why don't you just look the other way when I change so that I do not have to go into the bathroom every time I change?  It will save me a lot of time," she proposed.  I just swiveled in a revolving chair in her tiny apartment as she got in and out of several dresses within half hour and created a big mess on the carpet in no time.  Finally we agreed on a red evening dress as I approved it while watching the weekend report on the stock market.  When I asked her to turn around, I saw that the dress was cut too low at the back and the bra straps were showing.  She did not have much taste when it came to lingerie - I guess she genuinely liked wearing comfortable, cotton underwear and did not care if the men in her life found them to be ‘awful’, as one of her admirers admitted to me after several beers.  When I pointed out that she should either go braless or switch to a more elegant piece of underwear, she replied that she did not believe in any frilly stuff, and thus, had none, and would instead go braless.  As I teased her for her poor taste in lingerie, in anger, she quickly unhooked her bra, made it into a ball, and shot it at me like a missile.  "Let's go," she shouted, as she dragged me.

~

Dinner was great and Minako was cheerful than I had seen her in recent weeks.  She did not have the usual tension of a date.  With me she was just enjoying her angel hair pasta with spinach and mushrooms.  I always had lots of question to ask her since I thought that her life was far more interesting than mine.  After all she had too many guys in her life to talk about and I only had one girlfriend.  She was trying to cope with a new job, a colleague was giving her a hard time, her relationships were going nowhere, and Mom was sending her photos and bio-data on a weekly basis.  In fact a Tokyo investment banker was coming to New York and she was directed to join him for dinner in a week's time.  His picture had horrified her.  While she generally took pride in her roots, she was not a big fan of salarymen.  As she described the glowing remarks in her mother’s letter, I gave her a hard time teasing her about her future husband.  She did not know how to get out of the situation.  I strongly advised her not to run away from the hotel lobby after secretly seeing him as she hinted to me she was planning to do.  I think this whole game of finding a suitable match for her by her parents was just hard for her and like many Japanese she was trapped between two cultures.  On one hand she was totally westernized, but on the other hand, she did not want to hurt her parents who still wanted to follow the traditions of rural Japan.  For them to even entertain the idea of marrying a gaijin was heretical.  In the end, I convinced her to enjoy her date with her prospective husband.  Who knows she might fall in love with him right then and there, I teased her.

We went to three more bars after dinner and had a great time flirting with whomever we met.  While everyone thought of us as a couple, we actually sought out other people, and in the process, definitely confused many.  And whenever we got a moment, we compared notes.  She introduced me to a cute girl that she thought was my type and I brought her to a guy I ran into in the men's room.  It was past midnight when we decided to head home.  Not only were we both tired from partying, we were drunk too.  I did not even have the energy to take my nightly shower.  I let my slacks drop to the floor and threw away my jacket on the sofa as I slumped in the bed.  I guess Minako took a cue from me; she too slid out of her dress and let it fall off her shoulders.  I could see her standing with her back to me dressed only in her gray, cotton bikini briefs, loosely hugging her big butt.  She turned the lights off.  "Do not try to see in the dark.  I have no energy to find a T shirt, so I am just going to cover myself with a sheet," she said as I drifted off to sleep.

When I opened my eyes in the morning, it must have been mid-morning at least, as I could tell from the amount of light outside.  My head felt quite light considering how much alcohol I drank the previous night.  Minako was still asleep at the other end of the bed with her back towards me. I could only see her bare back as she lay there with her face buried in the pillow. 

I think it must have been the aroma of coffee that woke her up.  I offered her a cup and watched her wake up as I sat on the sofa flipping the pages of the Sunday edition of The New York Times.    As my eyes wandered through the room, they caught the sight of the bra that I had left behind on the carpet as we headed out the previous night.  I bent to pick it up, rolled into a ball again, and threw it at her.  "Wear it,"  I said.  "You need the support".  "Not really.  They are pretty tight still.  I think having small bust does have some advantages.  While I might not attract enough attention from guys who only want just one thing, I am still as pretty as I was when I was a teenager," Minako retorted.  "Oh yeah, let me take a look how tight they are,"  I teased her as I always did.  As I turned the page of the Book Review, and readied myself to read the bestsellers list, Minako was sitting in the center of the bed with the sheet now wrapped around her legs.  I guess that is the advantage of being in New York.  It was that our relationship had now taken a significant turn.  We had been pretty open to discuss our private lives and mention of the body parts was done pretty casually if it was relevant to the story.  We did not make a great deal about our bodies too but we still kept our privates covered.  We still did not walk around fully naked in front of each other.  Minako had changed the rules of the game.

~

Over next several weeks, we continued to see each other.  Karen knew Minako very well and on several occasions we hung out together.  Karen knew my relationship with Minako was intimate but did not know the specifics and did not seem to care either.  She respected the fact that Minako and I had been friends for so long and she was also very confident of her relationship with me.

Minako's date with the investment banker from Tokyo did not go well.  He was wealthy but that is where the point of attraction for her ended.  Minako even skipped dessert, her favorite part of the meal, just to run away from him.  Her mother had not given up and continued to work to schedule more dates for her.  As Minako tried to get used to the idea of going through a modern version of an arranged marriage, she was spending more time with me - I think I was increasingly starting to look like her last hope of an intimate friendship with a male prior to her marriage.  She appreciated the fact that I was always there for her and I liked the fact that I had a friendship like none other.  While Karen and I had a regular relationship, there were so many things that were taboo with her.  We did not discuss intimacy, though I have to admit she was very good at it.  She would always flip the channel if I were watching one of those naughty programs on late night cable TV.  For these things, I think I found refuge in Minako.  I did not need intimacy - I was getting that in plenty from Karen.  But I needed Minako for her free-spirited personality, vivaciousness, and an open mind to share with me anything that she wanted and allowing me to do the same.  After we had shed our inhibitions imposed by clothes, we had developed even more respect for each other.   We would now even leave the bathroom doors open and clothing was a matter of comfort. 

Minako was becoming more dependent on me as news of her search for a suitable boy spread among her admirers.  Her calendar was now increasingly full with dates with handsome, successful Japanese men who would have been delighted to marry her as much as Minako's family would have been pleased to grab one of these successful professionals.  When she would get tired from mindless conversations with these prospective grooms, we would still get together and hang out.  

~

Minako had asked me to come over on a Sunday night to do dinner and a movie.  She had joined a cooking school in Queens to learn to cook some Japanese dishes and wanted to try some recipes at part of homework.  I offered to join her but brought some Chinese takeout anyway - just in case her dishes turned out to be inedible.  As I helped her with the cooking, we consumed red wine and munched on edamame (Japanese snack).  She looked great in her outfit - a white gown made from stretch lace that hugged her body and clearly showed the white thong that she was wearing.  Of course there was no bra and I think she did not need one.  While the food cooked in the oven, we sat on the carpet watching TV.  I don't think we watched any movie as such since Minako kept flipping the channels.  In fact we could not agree on what to watch.  Dinner turned out to be better than either one of us expected.  It was a bit dull for me but I liked the taste of something different.

By the time we were done with dinner, it was late.  I wanted to leave but Minako stopped at a movie that was just starting at Showtime.  When the ratings came up:  Mature Audiences, Minako pleaded, "It's our kind of movie.  Please stay.  Let us watch it together.  I don't know if my husband will let me watch such movies."   As we watched the movie with couples making out on television, very soon Minako and I came another step closer to becoming lovers.

~

As we walked out of the Las Vegas Marriage Bureau office, Minako called her Mom on her cell phone.  Without even a greeting, she said, “Mom, I have some news for you.  I got married this morning in Las Vegas.”   I did not understand much of what else they talked as we walked along the Strip in Las Vegas.  Maybe some day I will learn to speak Japanese? 

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