3 Day Weekend-Day 4: Reborn

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Read Day 1 activities here.
Read Day 2 activities here.
Read Day 3 activities here and here.

I was drowsily roused from sleep by two girls whispering about my shirt.

“That’s a pretty funny T-shirt.”

“No, eww, it’s gross.”

“No, don’t you get the joke?”

“Of course, I’m not, like, stupid…”

I was probably awakened by this enlightening conversation because it was in English; sometime during the few weeks I’ve been in the country I’ve learned to tune out J-conversations because 100%!i(MISSING)nvolve people saying “Yabai!” (loose translation: damn!), “Maji!” (OMG!) or “Kawaii!” (cute!) over and over and over.

I slightly cracked open an eye, two high schoolers, probably half-Asians going to international school.

I closed my eyes again but not without surprising the high schoolers, “Actually, I’m really fond of this shirt.”

I could feel both of them jump and stare at each other in shock. I smiled, my eyes still closed.

Suddenly, the train cruised to a stop. I needed to get my bearings. Time to get out.

I tried keeping both my eyes closed getting out but I had no clue where I was going (I should give more props to Stevie Wonder). Resignedly, I peeled open half an eye and staggered out, not before giving the highschoolers a parting wave and some hypocritical advice, “Don’t be rude to your elders.”

Keeping just one eye open, I managed to find a bathroom in this vast station despite the lack of depth perception making it hard to navigate the early morning crowd.

I went to the sink and squinted both my eyes open, aware my dried contacts were making my eyes bloodshot. My breath smelled like rotten kimchee mixed with stale beer mixed with whiskey mixed with slut saliva. Dried alcohol caked half my face. My lips were chapped. Zits were popping everywhere. The chunk in my chin had fallen out. Something resembling 5 o’clock shadow topped off my features.

I stared a little longer at my reflection.

How the fuck did anything resembling this pick up such a hot girl?

And why the fuck did I pass up sex with such a hot girl?

The first question was impossible to answer. I had no idea. Ex-girlfriends and admirers have always mentioned some vague concept (“I just knew” or “Your character”) when prompted for the reason they fell for me.

The second question was easy enough. Guilt. And I have a recurring habit of ditching hot women interested in me.

And I still love Chiaki.

Fuck. Chiaki.

What do I do now?

I stood there a bit longer, but my reflection wasn’t giving me any hints.

Fuck.

I closed my eyes.

Fuck.

I fucked up so bad. I started shaking my head.

FUCK!

I reared back and threw a wild punch at the mirror, opening my eyes just in time to see my fist slam into the mirror

I got lost in the beauty of it; it felt like a slow motion scene. My fist hit the mirror, it buckled for a split second, then started cracking into a spiderweb-like pattern and finally, a few shards popped out, twinkling as they fell to the floor.

Then the spiderweb started slowly filling up with blood.

Transfixed, I stared as blood slowly trickled down, splattering onto the sink.

Oh wait…that’s my blood. Fuck.

Now I was bleeding everywhere and my arm felt numb. And I had just destroyed a mirror. Fuck…I needed to get out of here fast…

I sprinted out and grabbed the train.

Nursing a bleeding hand, my throbbing knuckles kept me distracted enough in the train that I didn’t think about Chiaki until I had cleaned my hand, showered and lay in bed. But my body mercifully whisked me away from my depressing thoughts as I quickly passed out.

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I woke up completely disoriented, squinting my eyes to glaring…darkness. I blinked a few times, but it was still dark.

What time is it?

I groped for my cell and squinted through my glasses-less, contact-less vision at the 2 inch LCD screen.

7:30 pm.

Damn. Wait, what day is it?

Monday.

For a second I panicked. Work. But no, this was a three-day weekend…

Chiaki.

It hit me. I buckled in bed, my cell falling from my grasp.

It was over.

2 years. 2 fucking years and I had messed it all up with one night of pointless inebriation, cockiness and debauchery.

It was over.

I lay there, not willing to believe it. There was something lacking. It can’t be true.

But it was.

“The blatant ‘hitting’ clinic you showed at the bar, the almost-kiss you did in front of everyone, the race to the bathroom followed by a suspicious walk to the bathroom with Hot Girl and her two minions.’ All signs pointed to the band rumor mill spinning like a drug dealer’s rims. “You fucked up.”

Everything pointed to it being over. There was no way it wasn’t. But I didn’t feel it. My unbounded optimism, my stubbornness, the broken logic reverberating through my head that something this big couldn’t end due to something this trivial.

She was the overarching goal...the pot of gold at the end of my fucked-up rainbow life. Despite the mention of countless girls I've been infatuated with, the many different settings, the never ending problems assaulting my life, she tied them all together. One could even say she is the theme for the whole blog and maybe for all of my writing. And my writing is my life.

It was over. I knew it was over. But for my writing—for my sake—I had to lie to myself it wasn't. I had to pretend it was fine.

It's not over. You still have a chance with Chiaki.

It was useless. I'm smart. I know a blatant lie when I see one.

But if you say a lie enough, it becomes the truth.

I've never, ever talked to myself. It's lame, it's stupid, it's what insane white people do in movies that star the likes of Edward Norton.

I took a deep breath, and then swallowed.

In my smallest voice: “It's not over. You still have a chance with Chiaki.”

It still didn't feel true. And the aching, cut and bloodied knuckles on my right arm were a constant, throbbing reminder of the truth.

If you say a lie enough, it becomes the truth.

A man who has a decent chance with the girl of his dreams wouldn't be huddled in the dark talking to himself.

I turned on the light. Cranked up some Dirty South rap. Hummed along.

My phone rang. I spun and grabbed it.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?!”

“Um...home. Wait who is this?”

“Yu! Don't you remember we were going to a nomikai tonight?”

A nomikai. A drinking party. The same shit as the fucking night before. I sat down and turned the rap down a few notches.

“Look, Yu...Um...I don't...Um...”

If you say a lie enough, it becomes the truth.

I sighed.

If you say a lie enough, it becomes the truth.

“Oh yeah! I totally forgot, sorry! Where was it again?!”

---

I swaggered into the meeting spot of Ueno Station. An hour late. Red fitted, gray tee and baggy black pants.

“Yo.”

It was a collection of about 10 Asians. Not surprising when this whole country is yellow-skinned, slanty-eyed math geniuses, but it was just that: Asian, not Japanese. Most of the crowd were college students over in America or Canada who's roots extended from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam And Taiwan.

I have no idea how Yu managed to befriend so many eclectic characters (one was a Taiwanese girl from Mississippi who was attending MIT, for example), but then again I have no clue how Yu manages to breathe without choking herself so I quickly threw aside my random thoughts.

After admonishing me for my tardiness and introductions were made, we went to one of the many izakayas littering any Tokyo neighborhood. A round of beer was ordered, kampai and then everyone took a big swig...

The beer hit my lips and my thoughts were suddenly hurtled from whatever stupid joke I was going to make. The binge drinking at the start of all the madness yesterday was an innocent jockey of beer in a Korean restaurant. The same Asahi super dry. And all the alcohol afterwards had led to my debacle with the Hot Girl. And now my loss of Chiaki.

I carefully placed the beer down to gather myself before my thinly veiled happiness crumbled like an Oklahoma City Federal Building. Perhaps it was time to give up alcohol. It had been the root of all my problems in the past four years when I was introduced to it on my first night at college.

My hands were clasped around the beer in front of me and I was staring down. What the fuck is going on? Get a hold of yourself. Tell a lie enough, and it becomes a truth.

I was breathing hard. My eyes blinked rapidly. Shit. Shit. Shit.

I was sitting at the extreme right of the table so my contemplation/nervous breakdown/unintentional call for attention/being white antics were lost to all but one.

“Hey, is something wrong?”

I looked up. A hyperactive, short, insanely cute Vietnamese girl whose name I had already forgotten.

“Um...yea.”

She looked quizzically at my obvious attempt to cover up whatever I was thinking but she was Asian so didn't press the way an American would. But she was still curious. So she attacked from another angle.

“So...why aren't you drinking?”

I looked at the beer I was still holding. I raised it to my lips, hesitated then took a small sip. I put it down.

“You drink like a girl.”

This girl (I'll call her UV, for Untitled Viet...and alluding to her harshness), was fucking infuriating. She was fucking grinding my gears like a skateboarder in a clocktower. Fuck, if she only knew the problems I was fucking facing. I wanted to strangle this fucking bitch.

And then it hit me. She didn't know them. In fact, no one did. Not a single person in the entire fucking world knew it.

I hadn't spoken to Teddy in months. D-German as well. Soon Hae (who might arguably be my closest friend in Japan right now), had been passed out during the entire debacle. My blog was over two months behind.

No one knew.

Every single problem I had faced until now, I had confided in someone for advice, help, a sense of direction. This was the first major obstacle I had hit without support. I was alone.

I needed to tell someone.

I looked at UV. She didn't know me, she didn't know Chiaki, she didn't know anyone. But I couldn't tell her. I had met her ten minutes prior whose name I had already forgotten. A complete stranger.

And then I realized what I had to do.

I smiled wanly at UV, picked up my jockey, chugged it back, took hers, chugged it back, pressed the button for the waiter, ordered two more jockeys, leaned back and sighed as I waited for the refills to come, her usually overtalkative character completely shocked into silence.

“Let me tell you a story that starts over two years ago in a fireworks festival in Tachikawa...”

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Photos

Drunk Asian Boys
I think it took 1 beer, combined, to get us like this

I'm too fast for cameras
Clockwise from top: Me, Yu's friend, Yu

Weird Asians
Sums up Yu's crowd

Drunk Asians
UV is the girl at the extreme right