Here's a short clip from the debut performance of Kids Climb Trees. It was an honour & a joy to play live for the first time at the wedding party of my friend, Dr. Buzzerz.
We performed 2 songs- "Earth Angel" (Buddy Holly) and "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" (Frankie Valli)- with me picking up guitar & the good Dr. crooning out the words to his beautiful wife. During the first song my hands were claws of clammy tension gripping too tightly to the chords & I missed the change exactly where I thought I would. One leg tapped the beat the other shook with uncontrollable nerves.
By the second song I'd warmed to the whole thing & by the time I was encouraged to play on into this brief encore I was ready to play all night- however the rest of my repertoire consists mainly of Smiths songs, not ideal for weddings.
I even attracted some groupies, although not quite the kind I'd hoped for when I first picked up a guitar.
Friday 4 March 2011
Departures
Dr. Buzzerz left yesterday- east to west.
I first met him when I first came to Japan, he was conducting a training day & all the other attendees had been waylaid or else had decided not to bother. I was assigned a task which highlighted my inabilities & inadequacies but Dr B., as any good teacher should, helped me find the way.
Since then he has been my mentor, my confidant, my friend, my brother & sometimes I've even managed to return the favour.
This picture came back from the lab the day before he left- poignant perhaps? It could've been taken on any one of a hundred nights & it sums up a lot about our friendship- While the rest cannot be captured in words or pictures.
I went with him to the airport; departures always seem to close in too quickly. We said our goodbyes & I hope it won't be long before we strike a chord on our guitars, crack a street tin and share laughter at the good times even in the bad again.
Departures are worst for those that are left behind.
As I walk through the departure lounge I think about all the people I've said goodbye to & know that my own departure is long overdue.
I first met him when I first came to Japan, he was conducting a training day & all the other attendees had been waylaid or else had decided not to bother. I was assigned a task which highlighted my inabilities & inadequacies but Dr B., as any good teacher should, helped me find the way.
Since then he has been my mentor, my confidant, my friend, my brother & sometimes I've even managed to return the favour.
This picture came back from the lab the day before he left- poignant perhaps? It could've been taken on any one of a hundred nights & it sums up a lot about our friendship- While the rest cannot be captured in words or pictures.
Departures are worst for those that are left behind.
As I walk through the departure lounge I think about all the people I've said goodbye to & know that my own departure is long overdue.
Wednesday 2 March 2011
A tweet in the tale
A pretty high school girl with a crooked eye types away on her pink phone, a bespectacled boy runs by & stirs the woman from a painful sleep
This was my 140 character long Twitter short story. It started as a way to wile away time on the train, too lazy to reach for my notebook. The idea was then encouraged by fellow scribe, 'Julia' who then when on to create her own...
It's a nice idea- kinda like a post-modern prose haiku for the ambiently aware. Look out for this trending soon...
It's a nice idea- kinda like a post-modern prose haiku for the ambiently aware. Look out for this trending soon...
Saturday 19 February 2011
Thursday 17 February 2011
Friday 11 February 2011
Wednesday 9 February 2011
Wednesday 26 January 2011
The Saddest woman to ever hold a Martini... (Nov 2006)
Another Shinjuku evening. Women teetered past on slender legs & thinner heels, their beauty only revealed in the moment of their passing; the dark luxury of their raven hair or in the pouting lips set amidst those fine, porcelain features. The rest remained a mystery, hidden behind the saucer-sized sunglasses, worn, unhindered, after dark. All the reflections of the big city were contained therein; a microcosmic universe's history, from Big Bang to extinction, played out in the ever changing constellations of light as they moved through the night.
Other women, more conservatively dressed, cut from corporate cloth, laughed as they shared a night of letting go. Others that had found something in someone trotted along on the heels of husbands & boyfriends & those that just might. Whatever they felt or hoped for it seemed that holding hands was out of fashion.
Behind them, beyond them, in this procession of night staggered groups of older men; arms drunkenly around each other, ties loosened, the hierarchy of the company & the austere face of Japanese business left at the bottom of a sake glass.
At the edges of this ocean of life were those who'd washed up on its shores, huddled in the shadows; men, who were barely more than silhouettes themselves, unfolded cardboard boxes in which to sleep. Their own economy capsule hotels set up alongside their hoards of empty cans- collected by day, guarded by night & cashed in somehow, somewhere so that maybe one day they could scrape together enough to swap their cardboard Hilton for a blue tarp with a park view. They ignored the rest of the world as they too were ignored.
And then there was everybody else. It's here that I am found, standing at a crossroad both physical & metaphorical.
"In here?" said Rumjuggler, pure rhetoric but it stirred me from my observations. We'd reached that point in any Tokyo night where decisions needed to be made; flee into the night & the welcoming arms of home on the last train or remain at large with the lost & the desperate, which is all that would remain on this non-descript Tuesday night. I'm still not sure which category we fell into. The streets were still crowded. Although the general consensus seemed to be station-bound, here & there individuals or couples or the occasional small group pushed against the tide & headed, with drunken or lustful determination into the night, into Kabukicho.
I noticed we were further from the station than we had been. I guess decisions had been made.
The building seemed small, half hidden in the looming shadow of its Shinjuku surrounds. The large glass front reflected the fractal neon patterns of the city, leaving only 2 dark outlines, voids that denoted our presence. Whatever lay beyond the glass was so dimly lit I wasn't even convinced it was still open. The words "Whiskey & Cocktails" were written across the window in an old-fashioned font that evoked the kind nostalgia & tradition that had only ever been imported into Japan & yet was so well loved.
I shrugged & followed him inside.
Neon after images still flashed across my retinas & my eyes struggled to readjust to the heavy gloom within. When they did the interior didn't give me much to work with. Maybe those girls had a point with their sunglasses?
The walls were of some dark, paneled wood. The tables too, their outlines only vaguely described by the buttery yellow lamps at their centre & the ghostly, half-faces caught around them. The long, dark slab of the bar defined from the rest of the room by the brass beam that ran its length & the glittering array of bottles that sparkled & shone behind it. Between bottles & bar a waiter polished glasses. His shirt & tie absorbing what little light there was & reflecting it out again through his shirt. I'd stumbled into a cliche.
Another waiter, a clone of the one tending bar, appeared as if by magic & ushered us to a table with thinly veiled disdain. We settled into deep leather chairs (dark leather, naturally)) & I realised too late that we were financially outnumbered. Unperturbed, Rumjuggler casually flicked open the menu & pointed at the first thing on the menu & banished the waiter back into the gloom to fetch them. I fumbled in my pocket & tossed the contents onto the table, bringing into this venue of refinement & Bubble-era recollections a crumpled packet of Mild Sevens & a disposable lighter. The table almost flinched in disgust.
The waiter returned with 2 glasses of "whiskey mist", placing them on paper coasters so expensive looking I doubted we could afford even the table charge. Raising our glasses in a silent, smiling toast I took a sip of the drink, a preparatory wince already at half mast upon my lips. I was pleasantly surprised; I'd expected a numbed tongue & burned throat where everyone else has always found the flavours of peat & oak & malt that I could never discern but the whiskey slid into my stomach & sat there like a warm, friendly ember. I slid a cigarette from the packet, straightened it & eventually allowed my own plume of pale blue smoke to join the fugue that haunted the place.
We didn't belong in a place like this, it wasn't our scene. I was sober enough to notice but drunk enough not to care.
Settling into my chair & my drink I allowed my gaze to wander around dimness. That's when I saw her; She sat precariously at the bar, leaning on it for enough support to show she was already drunk enough. As I watched she slid the remains of some intimate, pink cocktail down her throat & immediately ordered another. She set the empty glass down with drunken misjudgment; a little too forceful. Embarrassed, she looked around to see if anyone had noticed, her smile half-cocked. The eyes of strangers are like magnets; yours, theirs or both instantly pushed aside the moment they meet.
When hers found ours though they stayed, swimming around our periphery at least, and her smile broadened. We smiled back. She was a suit but something about her spoke volumes, placed her somewhere above & beyond the normal salary drones but at the time I couldn't have said what. With nothing else to do we raised our glasses in her direction & she returned the gesture with the cherry-blossom drink that had arrived in her hand. She leaned perilously in our direction & spoke; a mixture of Japanese & English perhaps but thick with alcohol soup. She spoke again & this time it came through clearer;
"Where are you from?"
It wasn't so much a conversation as a mess. She'd cast words our way in a mixture of languages & together we'd try & put the pieces together without seeming impolite, trying to work out a meaning where there probably wasn't one. During this short discourse we managed to finish our drinks & she hers. She could drink. Not willing to abandon our new distraction to the night & with nowhere else to go now we ordered some more whiskey mists & she did the same. Somewhere in my brain I wondered how I was going to pay for this. I was barely sober enough to notice & more than drunk enough to care.
Drinks arrived & she took a long, deep pull of her drink with the determination of someone with a serious desire to be drunk. Her attention waned, swam with her eyes around the room, around her head, for a moment before she remembered us. More garbled language. A question? A statement? A joke, apparently; she started to giggle like one of those Sailor Moon schoolgirls.
Fighting distance, the drunk & the disorderly background music of overly cautious jazz, I invited her to join us but she frowned & shook her head. I can't say I blame her. She drained her glass & asked for her check. Her attention on the attentions of the barman I turned to Rumjuggler with a raised eyebrow & my own inebriated attempt at a wry smile. He smiled back & lit another cigarette just as one of the monochrome monoclones materialised at our table. He was holding our tab & gesturing at our new-found barfly. It seemed that our mysterious & incomprehensible companion was to be our patron; she was offering to pay our tab. We resisted, of course. We got to our feet, dictation of our English politeness, but she was insistent & handed over a metallic-looking credit card. Our half-hearted protests tumbled into thanks on our tongues & we attempted jerky, unfamiliar bows all of which went unnoticed as she replaced the card to her purse in a fluid motion & turned to us and said "let's go!"
I couldn't even question it before she had linked her arm in mind & dragged me in the direction of the door. I didn't resist.
(I had given myself over to the night)
Rumjuggler drained his glass, grabbed his coat & followed after after us.
As he caught up to us so did the whiskey & all that had gone before. The night was cold & it cut across our merry band as we all linked arms. The light & the sound that never sleeps fractured my senses; everything blurred at the edges, time became meaningless, elastic. Decisions were being made without me.I smile, I'm giddy, I start to laugh.
"So, what do you do?" she asks, suddenly lucid where I am not. We tell her, we lie.
"Oh, so you're poor?" That, at least, is the truth. It's rhetorical but it's right.
There's a jump cut & a vague recollection of impossible stairs. The next thing I'm slumping into a wooden both under harsh chlorine lights. There's a wholesome looking girl in a kimono holding a frosted glass of Asahi smiling out at me from a poster. I need to regroup. I need something to eat.
3 glasses of poster-worthy beer are set on the table while our enigmatic benefactor converses with the waiter after a dismissive glance at the laminated menu. He checks her order uncertainly. I'm not sober enough to notice, I'm wasted. I don't care.
I swig at the foamy beer & think twice about a cigarette. I manage to regroup long enough to join the dots & realise there's some missing;
“すみません、あなたのなめは何ですか？” I manage, aware that we still haven't been introduced. She smiles sympathetically at my weak Japanese & tells us. Now that were all introduced she smiles at me over the top of her beer glass & it's in that moment that I always remember her.
Under the buzz of these cold, cruel lights I get my first real look at her; short & slender, no surprises. Attractive but not beautiful. Her face framed in a stylish bob. She had a great smile that cut from between her slightly pouting lips. A few lines had begun to show around her eyes, road signs directing her out of her 30's. Yet there was something youthful, playful almost, about her; in the way she sat, leaning forward, resting on her palms. Something in the way she spoke. But there was something else.
"How about you? What do you do?" Rumjuggler asked but she only looked into a distance that didn't exist in this small place. Distracted. Bored.
We hang on her answer. When it finally comes she says; "Calligrapher, in New York" & then she laughs with playful mischief.
"Let's go!" She says, draining half her glass, "This place is boring!"She started to rise.
Rumjuggler puts out a hand to stop her. "Whoa! We haven't even eaten yet! Let's wait for the food" His ever present & unfaltering smile on his face. She sits but crosses her arms, the playful child replaced by a sulky teenager.
The food arrives: 4 slivers of sashimi atop an elaborate dish of dry ice & frippery, it takes me a moment to distinguish food from decoration, and a huge, whole crab. I lay into the food ravenously, hoping it will soak up some of the booze & strangeness that has infected this evening.
Between crustaceous mouthfuls we chase answers around the table; her responses are quick, impulsive but there's not a truth amongst them, or if there is they're too well hidden amongst the lies; contradictory stories; distractions. The more we try & find the truth the more lost we become.
Is her sexuality heightened by her inebriation? Or is it just mine?
The meal in ruins, the check arrives. The waiter hands it to Rumjuggler, he glances at it and I see the rictus set in his smile while the light dies in his eyes. He hands it to me. I don't take in the full glory of the total, I only count enough zeroes along to realise that we can't cover it. Together we make vague, futile movements toward our wallets but our sponsor has already produced her silver card.
We thank her again, it's sounding pathetic now. Again she's not listening but already through some force of will hustling us out the door.
Back on the street & I'm once again struggling to keep up. A modicum of sobriety has returned but it's her; she's too much, too erratic, too intense.
"Where are we going?" I don't remember who asks it.
"My favourite bar" she says. It's a statement. Decisions are outside my realm, apparently so are choices. She's already flagged down a cab.
"Where exactly is this bar?"
"Shinjuku's boring. Too boring, yes?"
No?
"If you're bored you can go to your hotel?" I think she's giving me a way out but I need to see how this story ends.
(I had given myself over to the night)
It's only much, much later that I remember that she said 'we' & that the story could have ended very differently.
She already has the cab door open. She promises us a cab home later. Choice had already left this narrative.
The door closes & the streets begin to disappear in streaks of sodium light.The city folded in around us. Inbetween places; dark & empty . Me & Rumjuggler are sat in the back, our captor up front. She speaks to us over her shoulder;
"Tokyo's so boring! It's so safe! Safe is boring!" It's strange to relate, after all, here is a woman who has picked up not one but two drunken foreign men, unabashedly & unafraid, & yet I feel suddenly very afraid. I look over at Rumjuggler, his unfaltering boyish grin, symbol of his charm, is fixed to his face with gritted teeth. When he looks over at me I see my own fear reflected there. The diatribe continues on the mundanity of safety, Rumjuggler hisses "Where the fuck are we going? We could wake up in North Korea!" & then we laugh. We laugh at the absurdity & in our fear as the cab carries us to parts of the city I don't know & have never visited. I think of Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" as back lit signs recite the litany of the city; 7-eleven, AMPM, Family Mart, Lawson, Sunkus...
I have no idea how long we were in transit but at some point we stopped & were deposited in the middle of what at first glance appeared to be a major highway. The cab disappeared into the night & left me there looking for landmarks or signs of life beyond our own. There was nothing; only the acid-washed glare of yet another convenience store amidst the ugly, hulking grey ubiquity of the city. This could be anywhere. Funny, it felt like nowhere.
Retuning my attentions I saw Rumjuggler dash after our companion as she marched without care or caution across the highway. Despite the late hour it was not without traffic. We ran after her. Stop. Go. Stop. Run. Making it across drenched in exhilaration & fear, our lives flashing before our eyes at 50 miles per hour. The lady was unruffled.
Somewhere in my brain I started connecting dots...
Across the road we took up an arm each in the hopes of protecting her from herself. We allowed ourselves once again to be guided by her will first to one bar (closing) & then another. More impossible stairs, the descent of which would doubtless end in disaster, & we were finally seated above the street in a bar that looked like something from a Kurasawa movie; nostalgia befitting the nation.
I collapsed into the couch & wished I could've stayed there forever. We were the only people in place. It was sometime Wednesday morning. I was hardly surprised. The barman brought over 2 beers & the largest Martini I've ever seen.
She took a sip & then, jumping from her chair, crossed to the window. The window was large & opened out onto something that could've been a balcony but wasn't. A car hissed past below.
"Let's go out onto the balcony!" She cried, gleefully.
Out of our chairs in a heartbeat we managed to steer her back to her seat & conversation.
Another dot...
I smoked a cigarette. She talked. Rumjuggler asked. I listened. Most of what she said made no sense & while she still evaded our questions I got a sense now that we were seeing something more true. When Rumjuggler went to the bathroom she told me he was cute, when I went to the bathroom she told him I was cute. Maybe they danced. She told us about her husband;
What does he do?
"He's fat!"
oh.
"Would you like to meet him?"
Er... no.
She smiled, playfully girlish again but something was missing; the light no longer gleamed in her eyes. Only sadness stared out from the dark.
"He has lots of friends.."
Here, finally, was the sound of the minotaur of truth, calling out from her labyrinthine lies.
"..I don't have any" she said sadly to the olive in her empty Martini glass.
We placated her with proclamations of friendship & ordered another drink that we didn't need & tried to lighten the mood. Rumjuggler disappeared to the bathroom again & one of those awkward silences settled over us; swallowed up our conversation leaving only an insurmountable & inexplicable hole. I smiled & sipped my beer somewhere between a lost Tuesday & an unfound Wednesday.
The saddest woman to ever hold a Martini lent across the table toward me & held out a slender hand as if for some suitor to kiss. I took it in my own & just held it awkwardly.
"I'm not beautiful" she said, sadder still. Her eyes glistened, wellsprings of sadness.
I deny it, I tell her she is. It doesn't matter, we both know it's a lose-lose situation but maybe it's what she needs to hear. She just smiled weakly, suddenly tired. Her years betray her now & so does the truth. She's lonely, emotionally abandoned by a husband who once promised to love her forever. And all the money she has can't buy her happiness. In that moment I get a sense of what all this, tonight, might have been about & I feel something for her; compassion, understanding, empathy? I couldn't tell you. But I think she just needed someone to make her smile, to share a drink, to tell her she's beautiful & to hold her hand just so she could feel it, so she could feel present, real.
Sometimes we all do...
Rumjuggler returned, his inevitable approach interrupted by a minor collision with a chair. He's unhurt but the moment is shattered. Her hand slipped from mine so softly I barely noticed.
The barman appears, it's past his bedtime. It's past all our bedtimes. Once again the bill is paid in platinum while Rumjuggler smokes one of my cigarettes. Something is written on a napkin.
The door is bolted behind us & our story is almost over. The black sky of night blushes a deep velveteen blue. Nothing much is said as we walk back to the highway. I'm thinking about the moment that was, maybe she is too & all the moments before & all the moments after? Rumjuggler smokes.
A taxi glides to a stop in front of us, I didn't see who hailed it, it might even have been me.
The door opens & the woman starts to slide inside. I hold the door & wait to follow her, recalling somewhere that she promised to get us home safely. She stops, placing a gentle but restraining hand on my chest. She produces the napkin from the bar; "My card" she says smiling but all I saw was the sadness in her eyes. With that she lays a soft kiss on my cheek, another on Rumjugglers, then she & the cab, disappear into whatever remains of the night. She casts a last look from the rear window, a pale ghost. I wave, uncertainly.
Abandoned by the side of the road in part of the city that still felt closer to nowhere than anywhere. We picked a direction & began the long walk to anywhere.Trains weren't yet running but a bit of bargaining & good will secured us another taxi. The sun was coming up, it was going to be a beautiful day. We each stared out of our window, too tired to talk, somewhere between drunkenness & sobriety but close enough to neither. We watched the city unfold itself around us, repeating again its litany of convenience.
"What did she write on the napkin?" Rumjuggler croaked sleepily. I slipped the crumpled paper from my pocket & found but a single word written there. I frowned & showed it to Rumjuggler. His eyes met mine & then, too tired, returned to his worlds view, the message as meaningless to him as it was to me. Another mystery for another day.
Song.
Other women, more conservatively dressed, cut from corporate cloth, laughed as they shared a night of letting go. Others that had found something in someone trotted along on the heels of husbands & boyfriends & those that just might. Whatever they felt or hoped for it seemed that holding hands was out of fashion.
Behind them, beyond them, in this procession of night staggered groups of older men; arms drunkenly around each other, ties loosened, the hierarchy of the company & the austere face of Japanese business left at the bottom of a sake glass.
At the edges of this ocean of life were those who'd washed up on its shores, huddled in the shadows; men, who were barely more than silhouettes themselves, unfolded cardboard boxes in which to sleep. Their own economy capsule hotels set up alongside their hoards of empty cans- collected by day, guarded by night & cashed in somehow, somewhere so that maybe one day they could scrape together enough to swap their cardboard Hilton for a blue tarp with a park view. They ignored the rest of the world as they too were ignored.
And then there was everybody else. It's here that I am found, standing at a crossroad both physical & metaphorical.
"In here?" said Rumjuggler, pure rhetoric but it stirred me from my observations. We'd reached that point in any Tokyo night where decisions needed to be made; flee into the night & the welcoming arms of home on the last train or remain at large with the lost & the desperate, which is all that would remain on this non-descript Tuesday night. I'm still not sure which category we fell into. The streets were still crowded. Although the general consensus seemed to be station-bound, here & there individuals or couples or the occasional small group pushed against the tide & headed, with drunken or lustful determination into the night, into Kabukicho.
I noticed we were further from the station than we had been. I guess decisions had been made.
The building seemed small, half hidden in the looming shadow of its Shinjuku surrounds. The large glass front reflected the fractal neon patterns of the city, leaving only 2 dark outlines, voids that denoted our presence. Whatever lay beyond the glass was so dimly lit I wasn't even convinced it was still open. The words "Whiskey & Cocktails" were written across the window in an old-fashioned font that evoked the kind nostalgia & tradition that had only ever been imported into Japan & yet was so well loved.
I shrugged & followed him inside.
Neon after images still flashed across my retinas & my eyes struggled to readjust to the heavy gloom within. When they did the interior didn't give me much to work with. Maybe those girls had a point with their sunglasses?
The walls were of some dark, paneled wood. The tables too, their outlines only vaguely described by the buttery yellow lamps at their centre & the ghostly, half-faces caught around them. The long, dark slab of the bar defined from the rest of the room by the brass beam that ran its length & the glittering array of bottles that sparkled & shone behind it. Between bottles & bar a waiter polished glasses. His shirt & tie absorbing what little light there was & reflecting it out again through his shirt. I'd stumbled into a cliche.
Another waiter, a clone of the one tending bar, appeared as if by magic & ushered us to a table with thinly veiled disdain. We settled into deep leather chairs (dark leather, naturally)) & I realised too late that we were financially outnumbered. Unperturbed, Rumjuggler casually flicked open the menu & pointed at the first thing on the menu & banished the waiter back into the gloom to fetch them. I fumbled in my pocket & tossed the contents onto the table, bringing into this venue of refinement & Bubble-era recollections a crumpled packet of Mild Sevens & a disposable lighter. The table almost flinched in disgust.
The waiter returned with 2 glasses of "whiskey mist", placing them on paper coasters so expensive looking I doubted we could afford even the table charge. Raising our glasses in a silent, smiling toast I took a sip of the drink, a preparatory wince already at half mast upon my lips. I was pleasantly surprised; I'd expected a numbed tongue & burned throat where everyone else has always found the flavours of peat & oak & malt that I could never discern but the whiskey slid into my stomach & sat there like a warm, friendly ember. I slid a cigarette from the packet, straightened it & eventually allowed my own plume of pale blue smoke to join the fugue that haunted the place.
We didn't belong in a place like this, it wasn't our scene. I was sober enough to notice but drunk enough not to care.
Settling into my chair & my drink I allowed my gaze to wander around dimness. That's when I saw her; She sat precariously at the bar, leaning on it for enough support to show she was already drunk enough. As I watched she slid the remains of some intimate, pink cocktail down her throat & immediately ordered another. She set the empty glass down with drunken misjudgment; a little too forceful. Embarrassed, she looked around to see if anyone had noticed, her smile half-cocked. The eyes of strangers are like magnets; yours, theirs or both instantly pushed aside the moment they meet.
When hers found ours though they stayed, swimming around our periphery at least, and her smile broadened. We smiled back. She was a suit but something about her spoke volumes, placed her somewhere above & beyond the normal salary drones but at the time I couldn't have said what. With nothing else to do we raised our glasses in her direction & she returned the gesture with the cherry-blossom drink that had arrived in her hand. She leaned perilously in our direction & spoke; a mixture of Japanese & English perhaps but thick with alcohol soup. She spoke again & this time it came through clearer;
"Where are you from?"
It wasn't so much a conversation as a mess. She'd cast words our way in a mixture of languages & together we'd try & put the pieces together without seeming impolite, trying to work out a meaning where there probably wasn't one. During this short discourse we managed to finish our drinks & she hers. She could drink. Not willing to abandon our new distraction to the night & with nowhere else to go now we ordered some more whiskey mists & she did the same. Somewhere in my brain I wondered how I was going to pay for this. I was barely sober enough to notice & more than drunk enough to care.
Drinks arrived & she took a long, deep pull of her drink with the determination of someone with a serious desire to be drunk. Her attention waned, swam with her eyes around the room, around her head, for a moment before she remembered us. More garbled language. A question? A statement? A joke, apparently; she started to giggle like one of those Sailor Moon schoolgirls.
Fighting distance, the drunk & the disorderly background music of overly cautious jazz, I invited her to join us but she frowned & shook her head. I can't say I blame her. She drained her glass & asked for her check. Her attention on the attentions of the barman I turned to Rumjuggler with a raised eyebrow & my own inebriated attempt at a wry smile. He smiled back & lit another cigarette just as one of the monochrome monoclones materialised at our table. He was holding our tab & gesturing at our new-found barfly. It seemed that our mysterious & incomprehensible companion was to be our patron; she was offering to pay our tab. We resisted, of course. We got to our feet, dictation of our English politeness, but she was insistent & handed over a metallic-looking credit card. Our half-hearted protests tumbled into thanks on our tongues & we attempted jerky, unfamiliar bows all of which went unnoticed as she replaced the card to her purse in a fluid motion & turned to us and said "let's go!"
I couldn't even question it before she had linked her arm in mind & dragged me in the direction of the door. I didn't resist.
(I had given myself over to the night)
Rumjuggler drained his glass, grabbed his coat & followed after after us.
As he caught up to us so did the whiskey & all that had gone before. The night was cold & it cut across our merry band as we all linked arms. The light & the sound that never sleeps fractured my senses; everything blurred at the edges, time became meaningless, elastic. Decisions were being made without me.I smile, I'm giddy, I start to laugh.
"So, what do you do?" she asks, suddenly lucid where I am not. We tell her, we lie.
"Oh, so you're poor?" That, at least, is the truth. It's rhetorical but it's right.
There's a jump cut & a vague recollection of impossible stairs. The next thing I'm slumping into a wooden both under harsh chlorine lights. There's a wholesome looking girl in a kimono holding a frosted glass of Asahi smiling out at me from a poster. I need to regroup. I need something to eat.
3 glasses of poster-worthy beer are set on the table while our enigmatic benefactor converses with the waiter after a dismissive glance at the laminated menu. He checks her order uncertainly. I'm not sober enough to notice, I'm wasted. I don't care.
I swig at the foamy beer & think twice about a cigarette. I manage to regroup long enough to join the dots & realise there's some missing;
“すみません、あなたのなめは何ですか？” I manage, aware that we still haven't been introduced. She smiles sympathetically at my weak Japanese & tells us. Now that were all introduced she smiles at me over the top of her beer glass & it's in that moment that I always remember her.
Under the buzz of these cold, cruel lights I get my first real look at her; short & slender, no surprises. Attractive but not beautiful. Her face framed in a stylish bob. She had a great smile that cut from between her slightly pouting lips. A few lines had begun to show around her eyes, road signs directing her out of her 30's. Yet there was something youthful, playful almost, about her; in the way she sat, leaning forward, resting on her palms. Something in the way she spoke. But there was something else.
"How about you? What do you do?" Rumjuggler asked but she only looked into a distance that didn't exist in this small place. Distracted. Bored.
We hang on her answer. When it finally comes she says; "Calligrapher, in New York" & then she laughs with playful mischief.
"Let's go!" She says, draining half her glass, "This place is boring!"She started to rise.
Rumjuggler puts out a hand to stop her. "Whoa! We haven't even eaten yet! Let's wait for the food" His ever present & unfaltering smile on his face. She sits but crosses her arms, the playful child replaced by a sulky teenager.
The food arrives: 4 slivers of sashimi atop an elaborate dish of dry ice & frippery, it takes me a moment to distinguish food from decoration, and a huge, whole crab. I lay into the food ravenously, hoping it will soak up some of the booze & strangeness that has infected this evening.
Between crustaceous mouthfuls we chase answers around the table; her responses are quick, impulsive but there's not a truth amongst them, or if there is they're too well hidden amongst the lies; contradictory stories; distractions. The more we try & find the truth the more lost we become.
Is her sexuality heightened by her inebriation? Or is it just mine?
The meal in ruins, the check arrives. The waiter hands it to Rumjuggler, he glances at it and I see the rictus set in his smile while the light dies in his eyes. He hands it to me. I don't take in the full glory of the total, I only count enough zeroes along to realise that we can't cover it. Together we make vague, futile movements toward our wallets but our sponsor has already produced her silver card.
We thank her again, it's sounding pathetic now. Again she's not listening but already through some force of will hustling us out the door.
Back on the street & I'm once again struggling to keep up. A modicum of sobriety has returned but it's her; she's too much, too erratic, too intense.
"Where are we going?" I don't remember who asks it.
"My favourite bar" she says. It's a statement. Decisions are outside my realm, apparently so are choices. She's already flagged down a cab.
"Where exactly is this bar?"
"Shinjuku's boring. Too boring, yes?"
No?
"If you're bored you can go to your hotel?" I think she's giving me a way out but I need to see how this story ends.
(I had given myself over to the night)
It's only much, much later that I remember that she said 'we' & that the story could have ended very differently.
She already has the cab door open. She promises us a cab home later. Choice had already left this narrative.
The door closes & the streets begin to disappear in streaks of sodium light.The city folded in around us. Inbetween places; dark & empty . Me & Rumjuggler are sat in the back, our captor up front. She speaks to us over her shoulder;
"Tokyo's so boring! It's so safe! Safe is boring!" It's strange to relate, after all, here is a woman who has picked up not one but two drunken foreign men, unabashedly & unafraid, & yet I feel suddenly very afraid. I look over at Rumjuggler, his unfaltering boyish grin, symbol of his charm, is fixed to his face with gritted teeth. When he looks over at me I see my own fear reflected there. The diatribe continues on the mundanity of safety, Rumjuggler hisses "Where the fuck are we going? We could wake up in North Korea!" & then we laugh. We laugh at the absurdity & in our fear as the cab carries us to parts of the city I don't know & have never visited. I think of Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" as back lit signs recite the litany of the city; 7-eleven, AMPM, Family Mart, Lawson, Sunkus...
I have no idea how long we were in transit but at some point we stopped & were deposited in the middle of what at first glance appeared to be a major highway. The cab disappeared into the night & left me there looking for landmarks or signs of life beyond our own. There was nothing; only the acid-washed glare of yet another convenience store amidst the ugly, hulking grey ubiquity of the city. This could be anywhere. Funny, it felt like nowhere.
Retuning my attentions I saw Rumjuggler dash after our companion as she marched without care or caution across the highway. Despite the late hour it was not without traffic. We ran after her. Stop. Go. Stop. Run. Making it across drenched in exhilaration & fear, our lives flashing before our eyes at 50 miles per hour. The lady was unruffled.
Somewhere in my brain I started connecting dots...
Across the road we took up an arm each in the hopes of protecting her from herself. We allowed ourselves once again to be guided by her will first to one bar (closing) & then another. More impossible stairs, the descent of which would doubtless end in disaster, & we were finally seated above the street in a bar that looked like something from a Kurasawa movie; nostalgia befitting the nation.
I collapsed into the couch & wished I could've stayed there forever. We were the only people in place. It was sometime Wednesday morning. I was hardly surprised. The barman brought over 2 beers & the largest Martini I've ever seen.
"Let's go out onto the balcony!" She cried, gleefully.
Out of our chairs in a heartbeat we managed to steer her back to her seat & conversation.
Another dot...
I smoked a cigarette. She talked. Rumjuggler asked. I listened. Most of what she said made no sense & while she still evaded our questions I got a sense now that we were seeing something more true. When Rumjuggler went to the bathroom she told me he was cute, when I went to the bathroom she told him I was cute. Maybe they danced. She told us about her husband;
What does he do?
"He's fat!"
oh.
"Would you like to meet him?"
Er... no.
She smiled, playfully girlish again but something was missing; the light no longer gleamed in her eyes. Only sadness stared out from the dark.
"He has lots of friends.."
Here, finally, was the sound of the minotaur of truth, calling out from her labyrinthine lies.
"..I don't have any" she said sadly to the olive in her empty Martini glass.
We placated her with proclamations of friendship & ordered another drink that we didn't need & tried to lighten the mood. Rumjuggler disappeared to the bathroom again & one of those awkward silences settled over us; swallowed up our conversation leaving only an insurmountable & inexplicable hole. I smiled & sipped my beer somewhere between a lost Tuesday & an unfound Wednesday.
The saddest woman to ever hold a Martini lent across the table toward me & held out a slender hand as if for some suitor to kiss. I took it in my own & just held it awkwardly.
"I'm not beautiful" she said, sadder still. Her eyes glistened, wellsprings of sadness.
I deny it, I tell her she is. It doesn't matter, we both know it's a lose-lose situation but maybe it's what she needs to hear. She just smiled weakly, suddenly tired. Her years betray her now & so does the truth. She's lonely, emotionally abandoned by a husband who once promised to love her forever. And all the money she has can't buy her happiness. In that moment I get a sense of what all this, tonight, might have been about & I feel something for her; compassion, understanding, empathy? I couldn't tell you. But I think she just needed someone to make her smile, to share a drink, to tell her she's beautiful & to hold her hand just so she could feel it, so she could feel present, real.
Sometimes we all do...
Rumjuggler returned, his inevitable approach interrupted by a minor collision with a chair. He's unhurt but the moment is shattered. Her hand slipped from mine so softly I barely noticed.
The barman appears, it's past his bedtime. It's past all our bedtimes. Once again the bill is paid in platinum while Rumjuggler smokes one of my cigarettes. Something is written on a napkin.
The door is bolted behind us & our story is almost over. The black sky of night blushes a deep velveteen blue. Nothing much is said as we walk back to the highway. I'm thinking about the moment that was, maybe she is too & all the moments before & all the moments after? Rumjuggler smokes.
A taxi glides to a stop in front of us, I didn't see who hailed it, it might even have been me.
The door opens & the woman starts to slide inside. I hold the door & wait to follow her, recalling somewhere that she promised to get us home safely. She stops, placing a gentle but restraining hand on my chest. She produces the napkin from the bar; "My card" she says smiling but all I saw was the sadness in her eyes. With that she lays a soft kiss on my cheek, another on Rumjugglers, then she & the cab, disappear into whatever remains of the night. She casts a last look from the rear window, a pale ghost. I wave, uncertainly.
Abandoned by the side of the road in part of the city that still felt closer to nowhere than anywhere. We picked a direction & began the long walk to anywhere.Trains weren't yet running but a bit of bargaining & good will secured us another taxi. The sun was coming up, it was going to be a beautiful day. We each stared out of our window, too tired to talk, somewhere between drunkenness & sobriety but close enough to neither. We watched the city unfold itself around us, repeating again its litany of convenience.
"What did she write on the napkin?" Rumjuggler croaked sleepily. I slipped the crumpled paper from my pocket & found but a single word written there. I frowned & showed it to Rumjuggler. His eyes met mine & then, too tired, returned to his worlds view, the message as meaningless to him as it was to me. Another mystery for another day.
Song.
Tuesday 25 January 2011
Pre-Fab
I take the train around the outskirts of Tokyo; there are boundaries, a place where the city starts & ends but you'd never know it & you'd never find them if you looked. The city is endless; buildings rising & falling with the sun. An undulating topography in concrete chaos; metastasizing out into the sea 'reclaiming' land that it never really owned, never quite reaching the mountains that seem far, far away.
The streets are a flea-market of architectural design; grey, modular buildings, real Moonbase Alpha stuff, Insectile glass hives, cheerless apartment blocks, flourishes of continental villas, slate-roofed houses invoking a sense of history in a country where buildings over 10 years old are deemed ancient, buildings so obscured in smog & shadow that no other definition or design could be determined. Form may follow function but Sullivan is lost in translation, or I am.
The sun on my face I lean my forehead against the cool, greasy glass. I feel the thrum of the train & the city beneath it. It's sunny, the light strobing through the breaks between the blocks. At the stations & along some of the streets there are yellow pathways that look like the tops of Lego blocks; they're there for the blind. Maybe the whole city's really made of Lego?
The train rises up above this sub-suburb & I look out across the city. Four Tet's "you could ruin my day" is the soundtrack for this scene. Then there's Fuji, beautiful & imposing. Winter skies are crystal clear here. The city doesn't quite get there & never quite will. I hope.
Then it's gone behind the towers & aerials & hoardings & windows & stations. Yet somehow it all seems (& always has) like a scale model; a finely crafted construction of balsa wood & forced perspective, the kind that Godzilla would tear through in his rubber suited glory; a pre-fabricated pretense of a city. Fuji is the painted backdrop & if I could reach beyond the glass I could cross the city in seconds or pluck those buildings from the distance, no more than an arms length away.
A song for the city, a city song
The streets are a flea-market of architectural design; grey, modular buildings, real Moonbase Alpha stuff, Insectile glass hives, cheerless apartment blocks, flourishes of continental villas, slate-roofed houses invoking a sense of history in a country where buildings over 10 years old are deemed ancient, buildings so obscured in smog & shadow that no other definition or design could be determined. Form may follow function but Sullivan is lost in translation, or I am.
The sun on my face I lean my forehead against the cool, greasy glass. I feel the thrum of the train & the city beneath it. It's sunny, the light strobing through the breaks between the blocks. At the stations & along some of the streets there are yellow pathways that look like the tops of Lego blocks; they're there for the blind. Maybe the whole city's really made of Lego?
The train rises up above this sub-suburb & I look out across the city. Four Tet's "you could ruin my day" is the soundtrack for this scene. Then there's Fuji, beautiful & imposing. Winter skies are crystal clear here. The city doesn't quite get there & never quite will. I hope.
Then it's gone behind the towers & aerials & hoardings & windows & stations. Yet somehow it all seems (& always has) like a scale model; a finely crafted construction of balsa wood & forced perspective, the kind that Godzilla would tear through in his rubber suited glory; a pre-fabricated pretense of a city. Fuji is the painted backdrop & if I could reach beyond the glass I could cross the city in seconds or pluck those buildings from the distance, no more than an arms length away.
A song for the city, a city song
Tuesday 18 January 2011
awkward hearts
A smile of memory & empathy; those first loves; as defining as they are destroying; enormous in everything. Those teenage dreams are so hard to beat. Do we ever?
The bittersweet jealousy I feel for what they're going through pushes aside the cynicism or truth that life reveals in those formative years they've yet to run & I wish them well.
Their awkward hearts & awkward feelings in a country where such feelings cling only to the cuffs, as propriety demands.
I leave them to the train & as I alight I wonder; do we ever outgrow our awkward hearts?
Sunday 16 January 2011
...it could almost be Manhattan.
The day starts somewhere with snowfall on the edges of the city; the snow melting before it can lay it's gentle kiss & icy nose anywhere near the heart of the city. I imagine snowflakes buffeted on currents of warm air, expelled from aircon units; the breath of the city. Shrinking, disolving, disappearing before we even knew they were there.
We bundle ourselves into clothes upon clothes, anything & everything to keep out the cold. It's time for me to become both tourist & tour guide in this city once again; a river cruise, hot chocolate & a walk along the beach; Arm in arm, hands in pockets. A walk on the beach and it's a far cry from Thailand but from a certain angle it could almost be Manhattan.
We bundle ourselves into clothes upon clothes, anything & everything to keep out the cold. It's time for me to become both tourist & tour guide in this city once again; a river cruise, hot chocolate & a walk along the beach; Arm in arm, hands in pockets. A walk on the beach and it's a far cry from Thailand but from a certain angle it could almost be Manhattan.
Thursday 6 January 2011
Saturday 1 January 2011
1.1.11
The New Year is heralded in with the pop & flutter of a Party Popper which is a fitting metaphor.I awkwardly receive 2011 standing in my brother's living room, when I may just as well have been sitting. I never really got on with NYE, it's always just seemed somewhat anti-climactic, never seeming to really live up to it's own expectations. The best NYE I spent was 32000 feet above nowhere in particular; the new year arriving after I'd left & before I'd arrived. There was no announcement, no complimentary champagne toast; I was, as far as I could see, the only person awake. I smiled to myself, peeked out at the uncertain, twilight world far below & ordered another bottle of wine. There are no expectations in the time-less void of intercontinental flight...
2010 brought new friends & took some away, it brought new experiences that were good & bad, it brought a selection of dizzying high & crushing lows. I'm sure 2011 will be exactly the same in so far as it will be completely different.
I am lucky enough to have been let into the year without an empty heart. I hope you have too.
2010 brought new friends & took some away, it brought new experiences that were good & bad, it brought a selection of dizzying high & crushing lows. I'm sure 2011 will be exactly the same in so far as it will be completely different.
I am lucky enough to have been let into the year without an empty heart. I hope you have too.
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