Just got back from karaoke with Jude the Obscure. I didn't sing any Pixies.
Today my 11-minute train ride from Shibuya to Takadanobaba was far more interesting than usual! No sooner had I stepped aboard and flipped open my phone to send the myriad texts did a highly drunk old man with not many teeth zero in on me and start up a conversation. While this is to be expected, I was very exhausted from work and just about to ignore him when I saw a couple of expensively dressed Harajuku girls laughing at us. So I put my phone away and gave him my full attention.
He turned out to be a mad artist, and showed me scrapbook after scrapbook of amazing pastels as our train hurtled down the Yamanote Line. Most of them featured a cat, in various scenarios, most of which involved gestating in the womb of a mermaid or staring, forlorn, down darkened alleys lined with existential restaurants. He gave me one of the pictures. He asked where I was from. We discussed jazz: I favour Charles Mingus, while he leans more toward Chet Baker. When my stop came he tried to give me his entire duffel bag full of works. I declined -- MUCH AS I WANTED THEM -- because I reckoned he was too drunk -- 5 pm Wednesday -- to know what he was offering. Came home to see Frenchy's room empty and a touching goodbye note on the kitchen table, written on the back of a pristine white envelope. Went up to my bedroom and contemplated fragility. Had a shower. Ate leftover soba.
Ha ha, okay, embarrassment on two levels, one, I found this on perezhilton.com, and two, as Perez himself says, it's got to be the FILTHIEST song to be released in quite some time, but, I can't help it! Weirdly cool. Check out I Like to Fuck. And listen to the lyrics. "Pretty bitch lights on / Ugly bitch lights off" kinda fascinates me.
So it turns out that whole razor-blades-in-the-Halloween-apples scare back in the 90s was just a FABRICATION on the part of one ANN LANDERS! She wrote a column warning against this practice and drew widespread criticism from most media outlets because there have been no documented cases of poisoned Halloween candy, EVER.
What could her motivation possible have been? I assume it was a dare.
This afternoon I was smoking a cigarette and this old woman came marching grimly up to me and I thought Oh shit, she's going to tell me off for smoking outside a junior high school, but instead she GAVE ME A CAN OF COFFEE! Old people absolutely fucking rule.
(1)
NATALIE: And they just grow up so fast and I'm just doing my best to try and appreciate every single second!
SAGE'S MUM: That's what motherhood is really all about!
ME: Really? I thought it was about guilt tripping and failing to provide your children with an adequate sex education.
SAGE'S MUM: [stunned pause] [followed by a wonderful big laugh] Well, maybe sometimes.
(2)
JUDE THE OBSCURE: If I have kids I am totally going to beat the shit out of them if they misbehave.
ME: Huh. I have mixed views on spanking. On the one hand --
JUDE: No, I don't mean spanking. I mean beating the shit out of them.
ME: Oh.
JUDE: Nobody gets anywhere in life unless they've had the shit beat out of them -- regularly -- from a young age. It toughens you.
ME: Really. So if you wind up with daughters, that's what you'll do.
JUDE: No way. If my daughters misbehave I'll call them fat.
ME: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
JUDE: "You fat obese pig! Oh my God, why are you eating! You're turning into a cow! Why aren't you on a diet!"
Tonight was Monday so Sage came round and we cooked shrimp and tofu and zucchini and tomato and mushrooms and carrot and cheese, and slathered it all over rice. Accompanied by a bottle of white wine. Frenchy was lolling about the kitchen smoking cigarettes and waving his expressive hands to illustrate various points, and the three of us chattered about family, cock sizes, and Japan. Jude the Obscure came later, briefly, and we watched Kids in the Hall, which he didn't find amusing. Americans never find Kids in the Hall amusing. It's raining. There's a typhoon coming tomorrow. I wrote about sex for a couple of hours this afternoon, and am pleased with what I came up with. Considering becoming a pornographer. It's so hard to become a pornographer when you know about Anais Nin and are just intelligent enough to recognize that you'll never be as good as her. I look into the terrified eyes of babies on trains and see my own terror reflected back at me and this is a solace somehow, I dunno, almost like a saxophone solo I guess. I see old men drinking sake from a jar at 8 o'clock in the morning, leaning against the outside wall of a convenience store, and it calms me because I know, finally, that I can never commit suicide, not when there's men like this drinking sake from jars like this -- if I was gone, I'd worry there'd be no one to fucking WITNESS them -- so I stay and I'm happy about it and I still hate birds and I love my Converse sneakers and I walk down the street to the station grinning and then worrying that I've forgotten my KEYS, or I don't know, my CIGARETTES or my PEN or something like that.
Womb last night turned out to be a bit of a disaster -- great fun at first -- excellent DJ, good friends, dancing and drinks and all the rest of the window-dressing -- and yet somehow at 3 o'clock in the morning I was roaming the streets of Hatagaya sobbing and getting rained on. There's nothing really open in Hatagaya at 3 o'clock in the morning: just one izakaya (which I couldn't go back to), a karaoke place (which I didn't *want* to go to), and a few combinis. Wound up washing my face in a weird underground toilet and then buying a notebook, pen, and several cans of beer at 7-11. Collapsed on the pavement of a bike park -- a gutter, really, let's be honest -- still sobbing -- and writing fiction for 2 hours, waiting for the first train back to Takadanobaba. I actually started to have a kind of good time -- until dawn, when the harsh sunlight illuminated me, bedraggled, and also the three empty cans of beer at my side, and the dozen crushed cigarette butts. I was a little bit appalled. Thankful that my father wasn't anywhere near to see me reduced to such a state. (There are no angels.) Then got on the first train and my stop was only two stops away but of course I fell asleep for a fucking hour and then had to travel an hour back.
Back home I drank a bit more and then passed out. Awoke to a text from Mr. Vice, informing me that he had just slept for an hour amid the dirt and trees of Yoyogi Park. Naturally I invited him 'round, and sexy adventures ensued.
MR. VICE: Why do you even like me?
ME: Cuz you're intelligent and you're an asshole. I like the combination. Why do you like *me*?
MR. VICE: Cuz you're intelligent and you have a nice ass.
After, we returned to Yoyogi Park because there was a Jamaica Festival going on. Loads more beer, lots of good reggae, Jamaican food, dancing. Basically I have the tolerance of a state-of-the-art MACHINE.
(1)
ME: Muhammad finally stopped calling. Thank God!
SAGE: I wonder how many people get to say that sentence.
(2)
ME: Let's play English Shigitorii! First letter! 'B'!
13-YR-OLD STUDENT: Book!
ME: Great! Book ends with .... 'K'!
STUDENT: King!
ME: Great! And, 'G'!
STUDENT: Good!
ME: Next is 'D'!
STUDENT: Domestic Violence!
ME: .....
(3)
NAOYA: So your parents are Christian, but you aren't?
ME: Yes.
NAOYA: Why?
ME: Well, I was a Christian when I was younger, but church was really, really boring.
NAOYA: [fascinated] Are you serious?
ME: [confused] Um ... Yes ...
NAOYA: Japanese people think church is really interesting.
ME: ...?
NAOYA: We do! We think it's hilarious that people go and tell a man in a little room about all the horrible things they've done!
ME: Oh ....
NAOYA: Japanese people would never do that. Or we would lie.
Moving Day was around a week and a half ago, and it totally rocked!
I wasn't particularly sorry to leave Hello House, as I've never liked the house that much in the first place, plus the current group of people living in the West House are not close friends (though a couple could be in the future), but I *did* get a little sentimental about vacating Noborito, and my amazing room. My room started out as a 3-month Slum-It-Up Adventure and then rapidly became a prison cell with loads of fights and crying and broken promises -- fuck it, I should totally have thrown dishes! but it didn't occur to me at the time, and also they probably wouldn't have smashed properly on the tatami -- and then it underwent a transformation and I started calling it not ROOM but WOMB -- which is cheezy slurred baby talk, totally serious metaphor, and an homage to my favourite nightclub in Tokyo all rolled into one. So it was odd to see it all empty and to smoke a final illicit cigarette out the window and remember all the food eaten in that room, all the various drinks, the different men and the different words written and the different thoughts hashed about and the tarot spreads read and the plans made and the despair staring up at the ceiling and the joy staring down at the floor. Thank you, Womb. Miss.
The movers arrived. I was quite looking forward to their arrival, cuz I've never had anybody move FOR me before, and I intended to smoke cigarettes and laze about while they carted my stuff everywhere. Which I DID, but also these guys were absolutely awesome aside from the doing-work-instead-of-me! Jun was a 25-year-old Japanese with fluent, colloquial English, who dropped out of school at 15 to roam around Asia getting into Trouble and drumming in rock bands. And he has his pro-fighter's license! The other guy was Francois, a 20-year-old French guy with long, long dreadlocks and small silver piercings all over his face. Needless to say, I fell powerfully in love with both of them, almost immediately.
They drove the moving van from Noborito to Takadanobaba -- about an hour -- and I got to sit between them in the front of the cab, listening to Red Hot Chile Peppers and discussing (at Jun's instigation) globalization and (at Francois') noise rock. Beyond perfect! I hardly ever get to travel along the streets of Tokyo, cuz I'm usually on a train. And being in a truck with working-class men gave me warm, nostalgic memories of driving around with my father, so I didn't actually want to reach our destination, ever. I wanted to ride along Tokyo highways and back alleys with Jun and Francois for the remainder of my days, smoking cigarettes and tapping them lightly into the built-in ash trays, rifling through bootleg cd's in the glove compartment, and just sitting quietly every few minutes to focus all of my attention on the vibration of the engine through the seat, and the faint scent of oil and sweat, and the click of the turn signal. In fact, when we reached my new apartment I said nothing as Jun drove obliviously past it, but the truck had one of those stupid GPS navigation systems so he noticed and we turned around and went back anyway. Technology is always fucking up my deluded fantasies!
Get your hands on a copy of Weezer's new single "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived." Rock! Rock!
-- Salarymen in the Mist
-- The Complete Idiot's Guide to Emotional Manipulation
-- So You Want To Be a Communist Superstar ...
-- Are You There, Slog? It's Me, Orkion.
-- Your Palms are Lilac Because Your Lilacs Look Like Palms
-- If You Wanna Be Completely Fucked Up, Go For It, But Don't Blame It On Me, Cuz All I Do is Read