New Yorker Fiction Review #314: "Hatagaya Lore" by Bryan Washington

 Review of the short story from the March 31, 2025 issue of The New Yorker...

"...to feel even this connected somewhere, for a moment, was a gift."

It has been a while since I read a short story by Bryan Washington; about five years, to be precise. The last one was "Heirlooms," which I reviewed on this blog back in Aug. 2020. Apparently, that was just long enough to forget who Bryan Washington -- an American writer born in 1993 who already has a novel, a short story collection, and six New Yorker stories under his belt -- was and that I had read "Heirlooms" at all. To be honest, I probably could have forgotten in a much shorter timespan than that, but I digress...

While reading "Hatagaya Lore" I got that sneaking suspicion that I had read something very similar before. As we know now, I was right. Like "Heirlooms," the short story in question here deals largely with the tensions between a young gay couple who are living together but whose relationship is fraying. The story in question starts out that way, but then moves well past that.

In "Hatagaya Lore," as in "Heirlooms," there is not a plot so much as there is the unfolding of a series of events in the life of the main character. In that sense, it's a lot like life and, frankly, if there is a such thing as a talent for keeping the reader engaged despite the lack of a readily discernible plot, Bryan Washington has it. Does every story have to feature a murder, a robbery, or some kind of pre-determined structure? Absolutely not. In fact sometimes the lack thereof can be refreshing.

In "Hatagaya Lore" the main character -- an gay man about whom we get astonishingly few biographical details -- reluctantly moves from Texas to Japan with his lover, Craig. We assume he is in his mid- late-20s when the story starts, but we do not know for sure. We never learn his first name, and we also do not learn until near the very end of the story that he is black. Anyway, the process of adjusting to life in a foreign land causes the two lovers to drift apart. After about a year, Craig wants to leave but the narrator wants to stay, and so he does. 

What follows it a sort of forward-moving carousel narration of the main character's adventures on the dating scene in Hatagaya, a neighborhood in Tokyo, and the surrounding area, as well as his process of making friends -- short term and long term -- while time passes and he matures into adult life. With each dating encounter the main character has, we see a different angle on gay life and -- as is probably the intention of the story, to the degree there is one -- it becomes apparent that gay life is not some kind of monolithic experience but rather something that's as unique and intricate as the individuals who live it. 

In our culture we love to categorize people. There is the "Black experience," the "Jewish vote," the "Latino community," etc. etc. and despite our best intentions we apply sets of characteristics to these groups or these experiences. Life for gay men is not something that can be commodified any more than it can for lesbian women, transgender individuals, or any other group. As much as we now see LGBTQIA+ characters in film and fiction now, people who live these lifestyles are still seen as "other" in many ways. I think, regardless of plot or whatever, a story like "Hatagaya Lore" is important because it shows that there is not one "gay experience." And life for gay men is just life. 

In the process, the story is about the passing of time and what it means, or doesn't mean. Time and the passage of it, and what we do within the ever-present knowledge of it's passing, comes up frequently in the story. 

When the main character's friend Juro tells him his Japanese is improving, he replies:

"Bullshit, I said. I'll be useless forever."

"Nothing is anything forever, Juro said. Not even nature."

When, a few paragraphs later, the same friend tries to get the main character to work behind the bar as a bartender, he uses the following logic:

"The time passes anyway, he said, ya know? Sitting water rots."

Later, an older friend named Tatsuki says to him:

"This is a good night. You have to appreciate those. You might think they're infinite now, but they're not."

Tatsuki dies a few months later. 

Closer to the end of the story, a West Indian woman named Sherry, who befriends the main character, echoes exactly the words of his friend Juro from a few years earlier:

"The time passes anyway, Sherry said. I've lived here for what, thirty years?"

The main character participates in life and watches the lives of others move on with a sort of removed, somewhat disconnected clarity. Is this because he is in a foreign country? Is it because he is -- as we find out later in the story -- a triple minority? He is a foreigner, and gay, and black. 

One particular paragraph of the story really stuck with me. 

"I'd been living on the block for years now. The grocers knew me. The pharmacists, too. I'd seen vintage stores and yakitori stalls and flower shops come and go. I could recognize the tint of dawn on the road. Had seen the neighbors' kids take their first steps, and then later walk themselves to school. Knew that I probably would never feel completely a part of it. But I also knew this was a lot to ask for: to feel even this connected somewhere, for a moment, was a gift." 

This paragraph does not have to do with being black, or being gay, or being anything except a human being. This is something we all feel in one way or another, at various times in our lives. And it is, in the end, a profound statement of the narrator's gratitude for simply being alive.

Illustration by Kotori Mamata