"I want dissipation, to destroy myself in dissipation. I want to see to what point unhealthy desires and pleasures can be pushed." (Nagai Kafu)

I'm having so many Life Experiences lately. God, I'm sick of it!

But seriously folks. Naw. It's been a nice week. Went to a farewell party for the junior high school I used to work at, on Tuesday. Held my liquor admirably and gave a pretty good speech in Japanese. Didn't spill anything. Ate ice cream with chop sticks. The new P.E. teacher and I hit on each other for about an hour, to the collective shock of all the other teachers. Went for smoke breaks with my old buddy the janitor. When I finally left and stepped into an elevator, who should be standing there but K, an old co-worker I last saw in January, drunk on a train, when I convinced him to join us for a mad night of clubbing and strife in Shibuya. "We meet again," he said. This Phillipino girl who was also in the elevator screamed, "Why are you fucks always speaking English? I'm fucking Phillipino, desho!" He asked if I wanted to go to a dance party but I didn't; we ran to the station together anyway, split up cuz I needed to go to the toilet, then randomly bumped into each other again on the platform. He turned melancholy and said, "You never looked me up on Facebook even though you promised to." I went home.

Went to the gaygaygay bar with a co-worker on Thursday night. I had a hideous problem with my foot that I won't go into here and couldn't dance; stood at the sidelines with hooded eyes, chainsmoking and drinking beers and looking like what Danorama would have described as "a tired old queen." Some boys came up and showed my co-worker and I various pictures of hot men, asking us to select the hottest; we did and it turned out the pictures were of themselves and then they asked to sleep with us. We drifted away.

Friday night I met up with Mr. Vice for some sexy adventures. Orgasms and political documentaries and then as usual I couldn't sleep; stared at the fish transcedent in their aquarium at the head of the bed and thought, Who am I who am I who am I? Didn't figure it out but it was okay. Sex in the morning, he made me breakfast, sunlight and that hazy May feeling where the cicadas haven't quite been born yet but you feel they're about to be and it puts a smile on your face, there's a vibration in the air that lets you know they're coming. Limped all the way back to Baba on my fucked-up foot for a joyous reuinion with Sage -- FINALLY she's back from Australia! Caught each other up. For hours. Went to a bbq at Prince Harry's, where I smoked intense cigarettes with intense people and ate fish and salad and sipped Corronoas dreamy-eyed and not altogether there; locked in my own head, an internal choreography.

"I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet / When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid." (Allen Ginsberg)

Tired, tired, tired: why do I go for salad and wine after work? Wine makes me tired.

Today I woke up at 3:30 a.m. Unable to sleep. Smoked cigarettes. Checked my email. Read Murakami Haruki for a while. Stared out my bedroom window at the abandoned building, at the sky beyond, black then grey then blue. Reflected on men I have lost, men I have never found. Made coffee. Didn't put Kahlua in it because it's Monday, a work-day. Had a shower. Listened to a remix of the Killers' "Mr. Brightside," emailed to me by Prince Harry after he heard it for the first time at a gay bar in the wee hours of Sunday morning, struck speechless as he watched two men he had recently, separately, slept with meet for the first time and become enamored with each other. Read the news. Chopped onions and broccoli, sauteed them, added two eggs and cheese. Watched an NHK morning news program, dead-eyed announcers, beautiful shots of Tokyo coming to life on a Monday morning. Brushed my teeth. Got dressed. "Jealousy / Turning saints into the sea." Walked to Takadanobaba station, my iPod playing Justice and Nirvana. Descended into the creepy depths of the subway, thousands of black-haired salarymen shuffling mutely along the concrete. One exception: a 6-foot tall Japanese punk with ragged jeans and dyed hair. He stood beside me on the train and every time it swerved he bumped into my shoulder; he had a hoarse, sexy cough and I wanted to hear it every weekend as we woke together naked and sex-drenched in his hovel of a Shimokitazawa apartment, reaching for pineapple juice and Communist newspapers. He disembarked at Iitebashi and I spend the remainder of my journey missing him and reading "The English Patient." I reached my station and walked through the turnstile and up the steps to the sunlight and the traffic and the cherry trees, blinking like a mole. I don't like the subway but will say this: few things in life can make you feel like a mole, and you learn to treasure them. Walked to work. Stopped en route to smoke a cigarette in a parking lot beside a Chinese restaurant with dusty red paper lanterns that I love and look at with pleasure every single day. Walked the rest of the way. Took the elevator up to my office and said good morning to everyone and poured myself a mug of coffee and sat at my computer. I've switched jobs; I'm a technical rewriter now and spend my days coaxing beauty from sentences describing aerogel synthesis or architectural business management theories. I don't even know what this shit MEANS, but I love this job. Reminded myself, as I do every day, not to become a yuppie. It would be easy enough, even expected, but I'm just not built that way: the clothes I wear are only a costume, and even if I wanted to I couldn't get certain things out of my head: couldn't forget oceans, or alienation, or old men selling me their haikus in Shibuya, or Moloch's familiar and uneasy presence just next to my heart, or drunken mistakes with men who kiss me beside rivers and then vanish from my life, or vice, or childish tantrums where I stomp off stages or or out of kitchens or out of bars to drink alone, convinced that nobody loves me. Couldn't trade that in to love money or status. So I worked all day, happy and absent-minded, then walked back to the subway, listening to John Lennon. Now I'm at a cheap restaurant eating cheap seaweed salad and drinking cheap red wine. As it should be. Frenchy's had a crisis and I'm meeting with him in a little while; Sage will be back from Australia soon; through the magic of Google Images Prince Harry now knows about both clitorises and felching; Butterfly is so pristine and so pretty, arm around my shoulder on drunk Shibuya Friday night; SuperHiro may move to Africa; Mr. Vice broods in Yokohama. All is right.