A Difference in Experience

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I last left you readers just as I turned down the closest I will ever get to a “sure thing” and boarding a jet to Chicago.

One may ask, why Chicago?

In a nutshell, Europe and Japan were way too expensive but I had enough money to go somewhere…and I wanted to go somewhere I had never gone before. When my aunt’s family moved to a Chicago suburb because of work, I easily found a good excuse. Minus layovers in O’Hare, I had never set foot on the only city in the Midwest worth going to. And then when Teddy told me he was going to be in Chicago, it became a no-brainer.

Why not try some baseball in the best place to play baseball?

They call it the Windy City cuz of the weather.

I call it the Windy City cuz bitches blow.

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I met my aunt and her husband in the terminal and they drove me to their house. My aunt (on my mother’s side) is the stereotypical Japanese housewife that would be funny to observe from the outside but since she’s “family” its kind of sad. I feel pity for her. She’s constantly nagging her husband to buy her brand name shit, she probably hates her relationship, she takes shit from everyone (her two children are both males) and she’s had a few affairs. Stereotypical dumb Tokyo skank who complains about everything…but doesn’t mind getting stepped on by her husband and sons (and you wonder why both of my parents severed almost all ties with their families).

The push for equal rights for women in this household isn’t helped with the husband present either. He’s straight from Kansai, treats his wife and kids like shit (while loving them dearly) and drinks a few cans of beer, a few shots of whiskey and a few glasses of red wine a night even though his liver is literally exploding and his body is racked with alcohol related diseases. To top off his drinking habits, he smokes over a pack of day to calm his agitated drunken self and to make sure his body deteriorates faster.

The older cousin, K-Gay, dresses in a ridiculous style that would normally be considered extremely feminine (especially in the Midwest) but out of all my cousins, he’s probably the most down to earth, nice, funny and easy to hang with (he was one of the two cousins in the streaking story). But he dresses like a fairy.

The younger cousin, Sho-Gay, is a smartass who I don’t interact with that much. He’s nice and cordial to me, but he talks so much shit to his mother that I wanna sock him in the face with the 19th Amendment. He also dresses like a fairy.

Obviously, I love them all since they’re family and my writing style tends to gloss over the good points of people while making sure to point out every single bad attribute of a person in the most shocking and awful way possible, so take this (and all other character representations in my blog) with a boatload of salt.

Their grandfather from Kyoto is visiting them as well. Unlike everyone else in this messed up family, he is fucking baller.

He has an easyflowing Kyoto accent, wears three piece suits at every single opportunity, digresses into hilarious stories and is a World War II veteran. A fucking World War II veteran from Japan! Considering how many people died in the war or from old age, his survival is as unlikely as discovering an underage age girl representing China on the women's gymnastics team...oh wait...

However, all of them at times provided me with entertainment of some kind (whether intentional or unintentional is in the eye of the beholder) and made my stay in Chicago enjoyable. In all seriousness, Chicago is a great city…but a tad too small for my liking. I felt like I had exhausted a lot of it within 3 days and I just spent time doing random suburban stuff with my cousins: bowling, ultimate Frisbee, shopping at strip malls and driveway basketball.

It was in this latter activity that I was truly entertained.

As I have easily confessed to many times in this blog, I am not athletic by any measuring stick. Give me a ball and I can calculate its volume in a split second, but ask me to throw it through a hoop or throw it 60’6” across a pentagon or kick it into a large net and I will undoubtedly fail in the most spectacular way possible. I was once pitching in Little League and released the ball way too late, it went straight down, bounced off the mound and nailed me in the face.

I got a black eye. I told my dad I got into a fight.

But my two cousins were horrific. They’re both super amazing at soccer, but in basketball I was schooling them like a textbook. I crossovered (switching dribbling hands) and they broke their ankles. I did a head fake and both my cousins immediately turned around trying to locate the rebound.

I easily beat both in 1 on 1, then to make things competitive we started playing one on two. It was at this point that a little kid on a bike stopped and asked us to play. Considering it was a 1 on 2 game, we quickly formed teams.

Now this kid (his name was Chris) was around 4’10” had strange googly eyes and had the mindset of an 8 year old. Whenever he got the ball, he shot, no matter how far away he was from the hoop. When his teammate had the ball, he screamed for a pass until your ears bleed from his shrill voice and you dropped the ball to cover them. When the other team had the ball, he stood near the foul line and didn’t help. Despite everything pointing towards him being an eight year old asshole who doesn’t know shit about sharing and team sports, he told us he was 15 going on to 16 which was confirmed by my cousin.

Ok, this is one of the special kids who needs to be led along.

The first game was me and Sho-Gay versus Special-C and K-Gay. We romped them easily-21 to 15. The crazy thing was, Special-C was bombing threes and making a good portion of them. Yes, no one tried blocking his shots because we were afraid he would start foaming at the mouth and start biting us, but it was still impressive.

The second game was me and K-Gay versus Special-C and Sho-Gay. It was a slaughter. Me and K-Gay are easily taller than the other two so we just kept throwing down layups. However, once again Special-C rained threes while playing absolutely no defense or rebounding.

The third game, obviously, had me and Special-C teamed together. I had won every single game up to this point and I didn’t care who was on my team. I was going to win (despite being ridiculously bad at sports, I am irrationally bent on winning. Quite a combination).

I was hustling my ass off. Rebounds, defense, shooting. I had to do it all as little Special-C screamed for me to pass. Problem was, Special-C wasn’t hitting and my two cousins were doing quick one-two’s to poke holes through my defense.

And they both realized they could easily block Special-C’s shot so they played a roving double team. Double team me…then if I passed, both would go to block Special-C’s shot. We could easily get around it if he just passed back to me but he was hellbent on shooting every single time.

“Motherfucker, just pass the fucking ball!”

“Don’t curse at me!”

“I’ll curse all I motherfucking want! Pass the ball or play some fucking defense, bitch!”

“No, I want to shoot!”

I was really close to pummeling him, but instead I realized that was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Suburban white neighborhood, 20 year old Asian kid decks a retarded 16 year old white boy. Front page news as it bumps Father Edward's winning pumpkin at the state fair to page 2.

So I gritted my teeth. But I was getting ridiculously tired and pissed off as I had to jump for every rebound, defend two players at once and watch him just stand around and bitch until we had the ball.

After running around in circles chasing my cousins for the umpteenth time, I exploded.

“Yo, play fucking defense or we’re going to lose this fucking game! I don’t care if you have the mind of an eight year old, just try to pass or defend or fucking rebound! I don’t care if your parents sniffed too much crack while you were in your mother’s womb, just try to pass or defend you stupid little motherfucker! Even Jason McElwain plays fucking defense!”

He left.

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After chewing out a 15 year old with autism, my conscience felt a little bad but I justified it by drinking a triple of whiskey with my aunt’s husband at 10am and becoming a 20 year old with an acute alcohol problem.

I napped for a few hours to make myself somewhat presentable and after taking the train for over an hour and a half, I managed to meet Teddy at his hotel. It’s been a 4 month hiatus between us, so naturally I used the one man-hug I allow myself per year when I met his crazy ass in the Park Hyatt lobby.

We caught up…or rather we just told each other about the two weeks we haven’t written in our blogs yet. For my part, it was relatively easy as I’m single and I haven’t gotten laid in the last two weeks, so all I said is, “Nothing happened and I’ve got no prospects…hopefully something crops up in Montreal.”

His summer was a lot more complicated, and took significantly longer (read it on his blog). And as I listened to him recount things in a way that only he can, I noticed he had changed since the last time I saw him in April. Or rather, maybe it was me who had changed.

When I got off the plane from Texas and met my father after an eight month hiatus at LaGuardia airport’s parking lot, instead of his usual greeting when I haven’t met him for an extended period (“How many girls have you had sex with?”), he stood voiceless for a long time staring at me. And then he quickly said, “You’ve changed.” He silently started up the car and blasted the radio at an abnormally loud volume.

As we crawled through New York City’s crowded highways, parkways and streets, I tried figuring out my father’s two word enigmatic observation.

Nothing came to mind. Outwardly I might have added a few pounds from all the sports and eating…and I guess I was a little tanner…but nothing significant. Inwardly, I was the same. Still a pervasive sarcastic, dark humor and a deep-rooted concern for random things. Still an urge to find adventures, an urge to fulfill something…so what?

I couldn’t figure it out and I knew it was something I couldn’t ask my father to clarify.

Whether it was me who had changed, or Teddy, as I sat listening to Teddy recount his summer, I realized I couldn’t relate. I had spent the whole summer in Texas chasing tail and getting involved in my fair share of crazy stories.

Teddy had spent the summer in Japan, in a long relationship. From what I could tell, he didn’t have the crazy stories. Or if he did, it didn’t matter as these weren’t foremost in his mind.

I had almost no connection to Teddy’s story. My image of Soon Mi was the cute, impish girl I had met that night in a Japanese park and the one who came to Calgary with her Japanese posse. I know nothing about her other than her being a fringe character in the Chiaki debacle.

My image of a long term relationship is an ideal that seems infeasible (my longest was a tumultuous three month relationship that started souring after a month).

I had no bearing with any of the supporting cast or any of the stories he had.

For once in my life, this outspoken, highly opinionated author had no advice to give.

Perhaps this is what my father saw that night when I came strolling towards his car with my luggage. A difference in experience maybe.

In those eight months since I had last seen him, I had been involved in the whole Chiaki thing while trying to end my drought and progressively failing at every turn like a blind man trying to pick out a matching outfit. And then I got dropped in the most foreign place I could’ve chosen. I could’ve chosen anywhere else to go in the world and I probably would’ve felt more comfortable. I was at a pretty low point.

Instead, I landed up in Texas, convinced my life was going to suck (and it did for some time), but then I fucking destroyed it (and my drought in the process). When I got off that plane, I was brimming with confidence. I was healthy, I had been outside the whole summer, my higher ups all loved my work and begged me to return, my drought was over and I was convinced had it not been for a minor sickness, I would’ve railed two more and my bank account was full.

My father on the other hand, got smoked by a taxicab and was dealing with a torn ACL. He couldn’t walk without a cane, couldn’t work, wasn’t in shape and in a blow to his ego, watched his wife move up in her company while my brother moved up to college and my sister move up to high school while he sat around at home sucking back pain medication and reruns of soap operas.

Neither of us had changed much, but the relative difference was significant. Maybe that was the “change” me and my dad, and to a lesser extent, me and Teddy had.

But I still needed to think it through (and I still do), so I put it in a compartment to dwell on it later, and enjoyed the city with Teddy.

I watched Ichiro and the Mariners get annhiliated by the White Sox at US Cellular, then the next day watched a shutout by the Cubs as they romped the Reds 5-0 at Wrigley. After the game, my uncle drove me to a bar, got me smashed, I discussed women with him (“Don’t worry. Just keep getting laid so that when you meet the ‘one’, you’ll be ready to blow her mind.”), we picked up my bags and then I met Teddy at 9am. Helped his brother get set up in his dorm in Chicago and then after meandering through Chicago traffic, we took Teddy’s dad’s private jet to Montreal.

Took an Escalade cab into downtown, dropped my bags off at my apartment, got reunited with D-German and ate poutine with him.

Got back to my apartment with my stomach stuffed and as I lay in bed, the acrid smell of burning rope filtered in from the pothead downstairs.

Ahh…Another season of disappointment awaits in the Montreal Winter League.

Bring it on Montreal…I’ve got experience now, bitches!

I hugged my sheets into a ball to stay warm.

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Photos

Aunt and Her Husband
Their relationship summed up pictorally

My Cousins
Okama

My First Time in a Bowling Alley
Honestly, pretty exciting...but I won't admit it

B-Ball
America wins. Surprise.

Comments

[Cory Fuckin' Bensen]

no worries mate
Don't worry man, I feel the exact same way after being on exchange for several months... kind of like a long-term vacation while all my friends in Seattle and in Montreal are growing up, getting into relationships, getting jobs, and thinking like adults. I just want to party, and I have since January. So don't worry, if you need to places to party it up, we'll go full-out.

[generationk]

word
we'll go all out together. we'll tear shit up this semester