Why gays make good roommates
Hayato, 23, a good-looking young fellow with a neatly-trimmed beard, awaits the arrival of Yumi, 26, on the street. She appears, and the two head off together, chatting animatedly, appearing to all the world like an ordinary young couple. The two live together. But, points out Aera (6/12), this is not your everyday, plain-vanilla, male-female type relationship.
Hayato is of the gay persuasion.
That notwithstanding, the two became roommates — but clearly not bedmates — a year ago, when Yumi began working at the sports shop where Hayato was already employed. Finding they shared many interests in common, the two hit it off, and several months later, while in the company of a mutual friend, Hayato came out of the closet.
“I was sort of under that impression already,” Yumi recalls. “So I wasn’t particularly astonished when he told me. Afterwards, sometimes I let him stay over at my place and finally we decided to live together.”
Yumi had wanted to move out of her parents’ place to avoid a long commute to work. Hayato was living in a decrepit student boarding house. So the two pooled their funds, splitting the tab for rent on a one-room condominium — equipped with an upper “loft” — and victuals down the middle. Since both are tidy people, the toilet and bath are spanking clean.
On weekends, they fix meals together.
For a working gal like Yumi, one major advantage to having a gay male for a roommate is clearly the added sense of security. On her way home at night, she’ll use her cell phone to call him one station before she arrives and he’ll go to meet her.
“The street’s dark, and it’s not safe for a woman to walk alone,” she says.
Actually Yumi had been going out with a guy. He came onto her energetically enough, but at times when Yumi wanted to go out with him, he’d beg off, claiming he had to “go out drinking with my boss.”
“He’s got too many bosses,” advised a suspicious Hayato, who, being male, could easily see through the other fellow’s excuses. “You should dump him.”
Usagi Nakamura, a well-known authoress, took her friendship with a gay male all the way to the altar.
“He understands women’s feelings far better than heterosexual men,” asserts Nakamura about her hubby, a Hong Kong Chinese. “He has an extremely well-developed empathy for the contradictions in a woman’s life, such as the problems of maintaining a balance between a career and love.”
After all, Nakamura points out, gays must deal with a similar situation.
“They’re forced to conceal their sexuality,” she tells Aera. “Their position in society is a lot like engaging in ‘costume play.’ I understand their feelings.”
Nakamura’s first marriage, in her 20s, ended less than two years later in divorce. To get over the experience, she worked like a proverbial draft horse. But as age 40 approached, she began feeling anxiety over growing old alone.
“There are lots of hardworking single women in their 30s and 40s,” she says. “Gay men, too, as they don’t have families, realize that they’ll be living alone. They also get involved in romance; but as they get older they become subtly detached from the romance market. I see lots of similarities between the anxieties and loneliness felt by gay men and single women, and this makes them compatible.”
“Since there was neither love nor sex in my present marriage right from the start, if you ask, then why get married at all, I’d say it’s to provide each other with emotional support, to share the material costs of living. If the ultimate goal of love is marriage, then a marriage ends when the love dries up. My idea of a good marriage is to live with someone who’s agreeable.”
Still, such arrangements have their limitations.
Since Nao, her roommate, was gay, Hisami, 28, knew she couldn’t marry him. Too bad: he was a great cook, excellent housekeeper and pleasant companion.
“I could have a chance at happiness, but I asked myself if I’d chosen a path that didn’t lead to anything good,” muses Hisami.
So Nao moved out. Not long afterwards Hisami ran into an old flame whom she hadn’t seen for three years. She soon began noticing qualities in him that she hadn’t observed before.
“Nao taught me a lot of things,” says Hisami. “Even now, I’m grateful to him.” (By Masuo Kamiyama, People’s Pick contributor)
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