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.