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SAGA OF AN ASIAN BADBOY
PAGE 7 of 7
| "We come here naked and we're leaving naked. In the end we're all going to go naked." |
It's hard not to admire the cool self-possession of this 25-year-old. Kita has taken charge of his own media machinery without a protective manager on his side. He has also set his life on a course no other Asian American has yet successfully negotiated. He is a pioneer.
"I do know one thing," says Kita when asked about his willingness to put himself out there. "No matter what, I have one thing and that's my pride as a human being. Money's nice, but if I don't have it I'll still be happy. There are people who are always trying to build an empire. We come here naked and we're leaving naked. In the end we're all going to go naked."
Even a Tomi Kita must have his fears. For example, I know he has a dread of being thought uncool from the iciness with which he condemns Summer of "geeking out" by repeatedly saying, "I'm stoned" during an earlier night's party. I ask Kita what other fears plague him.
"I'm afraid of eating my own father," he says after a moment of thought. I take that in a metaphorical sense, of course, though one can't be absolutely sure with a guy like Tomi Kita. I push him for something a little more quotidian.
"I'm afraid of love," he offers after some soul-searching. "I think love comes to me every ten years in my life and it stays with me for a very very long time. I still feel the person I was in love with ten years ago. Miss Guam. Right now I am in love with a girl from Sweden, but I know that we're not going to be together. I was with her for about a year. She found god, found religion. It was her way or me going my way. She felt she didn't care about anything else except giving herself to god."
photo by Chuck Goodenough
I can't help wondering what role Kita played driving her to embrace religion. It doesn't take a runaway imagination to see something of the devil in Kita's blend of cool self-possession and infernal sexuality. My imagination gets another boost when, a few days later, he coolly tells me about a former girlfriend, a beautiful girl who had just bought a brand-new Mercedes. She stopped her Benz on Highway 101 near downtown and threw herself into oncoming traffic. What gave me the creeps was the message the girl had left on his answering machine the day before her suicide: "Have a nice life."
I'm not suggesting Tomi Kita possesses satanic powers. What he does seem to have is a talent for igniting people's imaginations. In the end that may be his most valuable weapon in the crusade to set the world on fire.
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