Man Who Doesn’t Take Off His Clothes 1

Narise Konohara – June – 2006 – 2 volumes
this is a novel

I always thought this was a silly name for a BL novel, because of course he takes off his clothes, and I was willing to bet it happened relatively quickly. Fujiwara lasts all the way until the end of the book, though.

Actually, a better name for this would be “Deformed Genitalia, part 2.” June calls it part two of the “Don’t Worry Mama” series, though it has very little in common with the first book aside from occasional appearances by the seme as a side character (he’s friends with the seme in this book). The other thing they have in common is that both the ukes seem to have abnormal genitalia, for some reason, and both times it’s blown off as a minor plot point. I have no idea why it’s part of the story in either case. In Don’t Worry Mama, it was an uncircumcised phimotic micropenis, which is a difficult thing to get around in sex scenes, especially when it’s very often described in great detail. In The Man Who Doesn’t Take Off His Clothes, turns out Fujiwara doesn’t take off his clothes during sex because he doesn’t want anyone to know a dog bit off half of his scrotum when he was younger. This is less of a problem in the context of a BL novel, and kind of hilarious since it leads to lots of dirty talk about Fujiwara’s singular scrotum.

Writing books with that plot device in common almost makes me want to meet Konohara, because she is clearly taking pleasure in writing BL novels around that theme, and it makes me laugh. But the other thing I like about her writing is that she appears to avoid non-con (in all three of the novels I read here as well as in About Love), something I very truly appreciate in the work of a BL writer. In the novels I read, there are definitely some situations that come close to crossing the line, but in every instance the uke is undoubtedly consenting. Here, Fujiwara only agrees to sex because he’s drugged by a third party, but he is consenting when he begs a reluctant Kaitani to help him get off to avoid the pain.

I was actually a little baffled by this book, because the plot goes to great lengths to set up situations where Kaitani and Fujiwara despise one another all the way up through the end. Fujiwara is Kaitani’s high and mighty boss, and the two simply do not see eye to eye. Kaitani has a very casual attitude towards work and dress, and Fujiwara can’t help but take him to task severely for what he perceives as a bad attitude and slovenly manner of dress. Kaitani is generally shamed in front of an audience, and when Fujiwara takes him to task in the restroom one day for washing his hands improperly, Kaitani decides to put a plan into action to get blackmail material from Fujiwara.

The blackmail is ugly, but I did like the fact that what would have turned into a rape scene in any other BL novel merely stayed as an ugly chapter of character development for Kaitani. I know that’s sort of faint praise, but seriously. I hate that plot device, and I appreciate seeing it avoided.

The blackmail turns all sorts of wrong when Fujiwara starts fighting back and one of Kaitani’s coworker friends witnesses what he assumes is bondage play between Kaitani and Fujiwara. From that point on, Kaitani has to blackmail Fujiwara into faking his way through several awkward social situations in order to cover his bad behavior, one of which ends poorly when a third party “helps” Kaitani by drugging Fujiwara in order to get him to finally agree to sex.

Actually, yes, lots of ugly and terrible things happen to Fujiwara here. But Fujiwara is definitely not portrayed as sympathetic, or even very accessible, until towards the end of the book. Strangely, Kaitani is written as sympathetic, but it’s difficult to really feel bad for him when he goes to such criminal lengths to get his revenge. Still, the writing keeps Kaitani fairly sympathetic, and Fujiwara inexplicably complicit with his blackmailing, so it stays readable all the way through, and I wound up really enjoying it. It sidesteps yet another BL plot device at the very end, too, and an unfulfilled love story carries over into the second volume. It’s sort of an unusual book in its approach, and it has all the things you would expect in these novels, so it’s worth reading for anyone who enjoys these as much as I do.