After reading Yuki Shimuzi’s Love Mode (Blu), I’m left to wonder just how some of these yaoi couples answer when people ask them how they met. I can just picture Love Mode’s Izumi and Takamiya on a double date with Hikaru and Shima from Shinobu Gotoh and Shoko Takaku’s Passion (DMP).
Takamiya: That’s a really funny story, actually.
Izumi: You tell it. I’m still kind of fuzzy on the details.
Takamiya: Well, you were really drunk. Anyway, I’d just moved back to Tokyo and was kind of lonely, so I hired an escort, and this guy’s working name was Izumi.
Shima: I see where this is going!
Takamiya: (Laughs.) Yup! So I was supposed to meet that Izumi in this park at the same time my Izumi was waiting to meet some hot girl.
Izumi: Who bailed, of course.
Takamiya: So I thought Izumi here was the escort, and he thought someone had played a joke on him by setting him up with me.
Hikaru: Wow, so it was like fate!
Takamiya: Well, eventually. So we went on our date, and we had a really nice time, but Izumi got really wasted, so I couldn’t really tell he was fighting me off when I had sex with him.
Shima: Coercive sex… boy, does that bring back memories!
Izumi: Hey, it could have been worse. Like those guys in the porn theatre bathroom. Or the rich punk at that party who shoved his –
Takamiya: Hon, don’t be rude. Shima was about to say something.
Izumi: Oops. Sorry!
Takamiya: You were saying, Shima?
Shima: Well, I met this little scamp when I was teaching at his high school.
Hikaru: (Blushing.) Oh, Sir.
Shima: During his senior year, he lured me into a classroom and forced himself on me.
Izumi: Wow, he must have really liked you!
Hikaru: (Grinning.) Guilty!
Takamiya: Literally! (All laugh.) Waitress, more sake!
Izumi: So did you guys start dating after that?
Hikaru: This is the best part!
Shima: Heh. See, I had some intimacy issues at the time, so I pretended to “punish” Hikaru by making him date me to make up for the rape thing.
Takamiya: Clever!
Shima: What about you guys?
Takamiya: Oh, I just stalked him for a while and got in good with his Mom.
File under “recurring genre tropes I could do without.”