Glory Holes

I’m hiding behind a sign on which FOREIGNER is written in stinking black permanent ink. Only a little bit of me sticks out: sometimes my pink face, sometimes the other part, also pink.

As for them, they’re behind signs that say JAPANESE—it isn’t written out in full—and when we get drunk together, well, we’re both drunk!

Amazing how much sex you can have, even with 97% cardboard. Hardly gets in the way at all. You just put your mouth down to the little hole. “Pardon me, honorable sir, is there some piece of you, you could send over here?”

Shoulder to shoulder in the gutted factory: what’s left of the machines is covered in rust and jammed with bones.

Doesn’t work? Doesn’t need to work! You’re getting 6,000 yen an hour, mister. Pretend it works.

The classroom is shared. The answer to number one?

We think it’s A.

No, Elana says it’s C. Next!

Number two? C?

No Elana says it’s B. Next. . . No Elana says it’s B.

No, Elana says. Elana says!

(No, I don’t know what’s up either, Takashi. And, sorry, no, there isn’t time for questions.)

The pretty coffee girls . . .

The pretty coffee girls at my kissaten have been replaced by pretty coffee boys. Not a bad way to start the day! Still, I miss the girl who, after seven months of Tuesdays, said, “the usual?” Confessions like these are illegal under the Constitution. (MacArthur hated being asked, “The usual? He wanted to be all the time new, and tall, our MacArthur.) She may as well have ripped off her head scarf, her head

Now she’s been taken away and boys sent to distract me. Boys! Indeed it is hard to think past them. These boys will never say “the usual?” Never, in any language, will these boys admit to knowing or to being known. Even some (rather formal) fellatio would be more likely. At least in my system of hoping.

(April 4, 2007, Tokyo)

I Really Am Doing Well

I really am lucky.

I am. It's not true I don't have friends. Acquaintances should count as friends. How cruel to think otherwise, how inconsiderate of them. I have polite acquaintances who can be invited for meals. I have a good job which gives me money and status within my community. I can have whatever I want for lunch. I have as much health is typical for my age.

My job is easy. Actually my job would be very difficult to do well. I should have to keenly exert myself. Fortunately, effort is not praiseworthy. It is not looked upon well. I am mediocre at my work. Everyone is pleased with me. My mediocrity is commendable.

Above all, I am comfortable. Did you know I can set my bathwater to the precise degree that I desire? Even the floor is heated during winter.

A city where strangers never speak is highly conducive to reading.

Actually it's typical for people my age to not have many friends. This is not college. People are focused on their families, on success. I am very lucky, of course, to have neither of these things. It gives me a lot of spare time. Think of all the money I save, just by not having children!

I am not alone. I'm lucky to not be alone. I have a good husband. My good somnolent husband. I'm quite good myself. At least I am not evil. Being evil, at least in an obvious way, would entail making an effort. Evil is not something I need. I am a salaried employee. Pay day is the 20th of the month. It's direct deposit, you don't have to DO anything.

Isn't that lucky?

It's very lucky.

And so it is very embarrassing, very guilty liberal, very adolescent that I feel myself verging on tears as the bus arrives at the airport and I have to clamp my lips together to trap the pernicious weeping cheering voice that wants to shout:

Escape from the land of death!

Escape from the land of death!

Insurgencies / 2

On my way out of the park which surrounds Senzoku Pond, I stopped in shock at the street corner. Two workmen, their heads wrapped in pastel dish towels, stood painting an apartment house. One man’s paintbrush was steeped in red, the other’s steeped in blue and together they were painting over twenty years worth of gray. That gray which is the official color of industry, despair and Tokyo.

The apartment house was the usual jumble of haphazard angles, but now the curb and first storey were blue and the staircases on both sides, red. A triangular outcropping which jutted toward the street had turned an uncompromising green.

The remaining gray, commandeered on the second storey, served as a charming accent beneath the blue eaves. The mismatched angles of the apartment house, which had seemed ugly and careless, had been rendered as awkwardly appealing as a child’s set of building blocks.

In order to survive Tokyo, a secret internal reserve of color must be maintained. The small park at Senzoku Pond is an essential cache. For the red shrine, the iridescent pigeons and the orange carp. In this season for the yellow gingko leaves pressed to every path.

Now, however, it appears that color is spreading.

Is it too dangerous to hope that color may be making advances, might be making inroads even here in this gray city? In clear December air, the color sweeps silently down from the shrine to the carp in the stream and out to the street and the color bursts unstoppable up the red staircase and into our lives.

Insurgencies

At 7:30 am there were already rebellions to report. The vestal virgins at jazz coffee passed me my order before I asked for it. From those starched whites not a word, a little grin, ham cheese toast and a pot of coffee.

How can I explain what this means? Ordinarily the same speech must be given, even if the customer appears at the same time every day and orders the exact same meal. But we broke the rule of anonymity. We admitted we were there, standing across the counter from each other, as we have been every Wednesday morning at 7:25 for months now.

(You must not forget the Law of Tokyo, the Law from which the life of Tokyo inevitably extends—Law #1: Let’s Pretend None of this is Going On!)

The second revolt took place in Iidabashi station, not far from the B3 exit. An old man had set up his easel and was engrossed in the task of painting, in water colors, with a pinpoint brush, the portrait of a vending machine.

How meticulously, how lovingly, he detailed every snack!

I would have embraced him, but the affectionate caresses of a strange foreigner would have no doubt caused his wa to capsize.

Ordinarily the painters are all in a gaggle around some vicious bit of cuteness. For example, that sickening little bridge in Shinjuku Park. No one looks at what is here.
(Please refer again to Law #1)

Ham Egg Pie

In Tokyo I have heroes to whom I can say hardly a word. First among these is the Bad Girl of Mister Donut in Senzoku who at fifty is thin as a reed and wears sleeveless camouflage half-shirts which showcase her navel. She is a very important role model for me. Whenever we meet at Mister Donut we grin and wave to each other like cellmates in the same exuberant asylum.

Today the illustrious Bad Girl bought me a ham egg pie, which she slid onto the table as she stopped by to pick up my point cards. I always save them for her and she exchanges them at the register for free promotional gifts, for plastic lunchboxes, day planners and rice bowls.

This exchange of pie and point cards was great fun, of course, because the people all around us looked shocked and appalled. I live for these moments of cultural levitation, when things that could never ever happen in Tokyoland go ahead and happen anyhow.

The Bad Girl strutted off and I was left with a ham egg pie.

Now, as an eater, I’m as finicky as a half-starved Labrador Retriever. Put it in front of me and I’ll woof it down.

But I loathe ham egg pie. The egg is soft-boiled, see, so that the yolk bubbles out as you chew. And it’s cold.

So I’ve got this ham egg pie in front of me. The gods are laughing so hard even a mystic trained at a weekend workshop could hear them.

Mother of the Universe, bless me to love those near to me as much as I love certain adored strangers. Because I would sooner die than hurt the feelings of the divine Bad Girl of Mister Donut in Senzoku.

I ate the hideous ham egg pie: the cold egg dribbled into my beard. I laughed and wrote notes and found that, after a long time away, life at last had returned to me.

(a version of this appears online at HITOTOKI. please visit!)

Devils.

Today on the train I watched two well-to-do Tokyo ladies choose seats. There were two empty seats beside me, a foreigner, and two empty seats across the way beside a purple-faced man who was talking aloud and was clearly either drunk or mad. Stumped, they stood in the middle of the train and then, just to be safe, they sat next to him.

Nagusami / 40

One thing I appreciate about Tokyo is that there are no extra friends. Every acquaintance is important. I can't afford neglect.

In California one might say: “Oh, we can’t really be friends—I’m vegan, she’s ovo-lacto.” Or: “My Buddhism is Zen, he’s Kagyu Kadampa.”

Whereas in Tokyo there’s only the delighted shock of recognition: “You drink beer! Ohmigod! I drink beer!”

Vegetarians are driven to befriend carnivores, even though it means they must subsist some evenings on nothing but green soybeans. Swedes and Texans swap accents. Driven to new heights of recklessness, Americans start learning languages.

Irritating people—such as myself—are nonetheless retained as friends. Quirks and compulsions pose no bar. There’s time to chat with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, to flirt with the Mormons. Some people even strike it up with Republicans.

Gratitude expands to fill the space dug out by loneliness; we learn to practice conservation of the human.

Friendship fed by shared relief. Here at last: a face that doesn’t slam shut at the sight of me.