Simple Solutions to Everyday Problems

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The next evening (Friday June 20th) I went down to Toyoda station for a long awaited trip to my favorite musical bar with my favorite musical girlfriend. Things had kind of ended on a flat note when we last split at Tachikawa station so I figured I’d take things off on a more dulcet tone and after a quick dinner with Takashima-kouhai (whose wife is now 8 month preggers I found out) I went out on a stroll over to Tamadaira market and sent an email asking her what she was wearing and what color was it. She said, her yellow blouse and why? p.s. she had to go to the hospital so she was going to be a little late. I said, no reason, see you soon; and yellow rose over at the flower shop and sent an email to Master over at the retro and lined up a playlist. Mostly the usuals: selections from “Dirty Dancing”, Momoe Yamaguchi, a request for something jazzy and- -oh yeah, Hall and Oates. She was twenty minutes late arriving at Toyoda, and I spent the interval watching the paramedics deal with an Old drunk man who took a nasty spill down the stairs and wasn’t moving very much—A preview of the winter to come in Montreal, I suppose…

Montreal… Every so often there are those reminders of the life I will have to return to every year when that muggy August season shows itself. As a policy in adventuring, I try not to think too hard about what’ll happen when whatever. Don’t get it twisted and think I haint learned that my actions have consequences, I just mean to say that I view things like my returning and the changing of seasons (and possibly feeling) as inevitabilities and that there’s no meaning in worrying about future events you can’t control. From my past experiences I know I can deal with it. Whatever happens, happens. —As I am so fond of saying.

It is the kind of adage that most people tend to agree with when of spoken, but very few people actually trust in. And I know few men and even fewer women who live their lives by that philosophy, and most of them are chronically, single, drifting, complaining with a sardonic grin on their face, or creating unknown art. She and I both know sooner or later this is going to come down to the payoff pitch. For the time being, if she throws me any curveballs on the subject, I’m going to just keep fouling them off until I can reach a decision. She walked up the stairs at about 8:30, and I ducked in behind some commuters so I could sneak up behind her. She went into a 7-11 and I watched her browse around for various items from the window, trying to guess the melody she was humming while she smiled. She saw looked out into the street from the register after paying and saw me standing there, rose in hand, jacket in the other and I had succeeded in completing another John-Cusack-romantic-comedy moment for her. Or was it for me?

She came out of the store and I noticed a big splint on her right hand, and we walked about 15 feet before she asked me. ‘Aren’t you going to ask?’
‘About what?’
“Kore” she said and proudly raised her medical dressings towards me.
‘You’re always injured so I figured you just got hit by another car on the way over.’
‘You’re such an as*hole.’
‘Relaaaax sweetheart. Well you said you went to the hospital, I figured they re-xrayed you and put a splint on.’
“Sonan, chau yo…”
‘Well than what?’
‘I started a sculpting class today, we had to use a chisel and hammer on concrete.’
We came to the stairs of the retro.
‘And you cut you’re hand up that bad?’
‘Everbody else did too’
‘…’
‘I hate you.’
‘What?’

This is what most of our conversations sound like. We tear into eachother for a while and engage in a contest to see who can push the furthest without upsetting the other’s unstable ego, and then when we’re alone and it’s dark I say something sweet and we kiss and she tells me she loves me and all the problems of existence in a humanist universe are gone until tomorrow morning. This situation seemed at first to have way to many echoes of dates with Yuki and not enough from dates with Yumiko, but slowly and without my notice, somehow she had grown on me. She and I sat on the same side of the booth holding hands, and I’d knock out a single when I though nobody was looking, and staring into those small, pretty brown eyes of hers I asked her,
‘When did things get this good between us?’

Tonight, I was taking her on the obligatory “have your friends judge you’re new girlfriend tour” (the same one she took me on a few weeks ago) and I introduced her to the staff , various assorted drunks including Mick Jagger and Billy Gates (as I call them, I have no f**king clue what their names are or when we first met) and that bomb chick I whose number I grabbed back in week one (and subsequently never called)—who is apparently engaged in a long term relationship with Billy G on the other side of the table. They live together. Tomorrow was Soon-Mi’s concert in Tachikawa. She’s in a ska band called “Skank Laboratory.” No I’m not making that up. The pun is the Japanese pronunciation of “skank” contains a double entendre on “ska” and an allusion to “skanking”—the type of dance one performs while listening to “ska”. …Genious. Nobody in the band had any idea of the alternate meaning of “skank” (直訳：「やらしい女」) until, I had pointed it out. Which was fairly depressing for the band-master, who had spend hours coming up with the name and was exceedingly proud of it. A few of the barflies said they’d be in attendance, and it was late, tomorrow was early for both of us so we called it a night.

I woke up on Saturday (June 21st) and played basketball with the regulars and afterwards went for a drive to the batting cages with Shou in his new car—a purple Nissan Skyline, which he’d spent all of last year training 100hours a week for a promotion in order to be able to afford. He had returned to the former pleasant, humorous, arrogant Shou I had known back in ’06, instead of the never-there, not-answering-your-emails-or-phone-calls Shou I had known in ’07. It’d been forever since we’d seen each other so I asked if he didn’t wanna go see a rock show with me to which he agreed and then retreated to go make himself pretty while I napped. We met Taku-bo at the station and after a another prime dinner at Makudo we went looking for a bar down a shady cabaret-club filled alleyway. Shou (like me I s’pose) is an off and on Kyaba-kura addict, and a self proclaimed expert on the West-Tokyo paid-consort night life.
‘Yo Ted, this one’s only ￥1,500 for 30 minutes. The show doesn’t start for another hour’
‘Don’t temp me Shou-chan, I promised my girlfriend I wouldn’t go.’
‘Haha! You p*ssy! Whatever happened to Mecha-H?’
Over a beer in a pub, I explained how I went from a tireless, lying sleazebag to a closeted tireless, lying sleazebag on a leash. He just laughed at me and said he missed the Ted who grabbed the phone number of a waitress while his date was in the bathroom (Rie and Lou respectively). Quite frankly, I miss that guy too sometimes.

We grabbed seats against the wall in the cramped the basement concert hall. “Skank Laboratory” sat in the corner opposite of us, and warmed up their brass and woodwinds while the three of us drank more beers, admiring their choice of uniforms. They were “high school themed” which meant high-cut sailor-uniforms for the girlies—of which there were 6 (of a total 9 members) and they were all hot. Basically this was turning out to be the best day of my life. I love ska. I love Japanese girls. And I love short skirts. Combining them all creates a combination more excellent than Leonard Nimoy and salsa. I was stoked. Pretty soon I was pretty drunk. And then I was skanking my ass off (alone) out on the floor, showing all the god-damn sitters how we do at a ska show back stateside. This was not just out of courtesy either, these guys were amazing. As a college student in Montreal, I have been invited to see so many sh*tty bands play in trashy hipster-bars on the plateau that I’ve almost given up on contemporary rock/alternative music entirely. But “Skank Laboratory” had the power to restore my musical faith in humanity.

I bought beers for the band and their special guest singer “Abe Uta-Hime” and her rando sidekick—costing me a total of ￥6,500 (roughly $65) and dropped the hint that the three of us weren’t doing anything later on tonight so to the after party so Shou and Takubo could hit on Soon-Mi’s band-mates. However, when Soon-Mi came up to offer then invite Shou decided to be a joker:
Soon-Mi: ‘Hey so what are you guys doing right now?’
MechaS: ‘I don’t know I discussed it with Taku-bo and I we’re going to the cabaret club. Are you coming Ted?’
MechaH (me): ‘C-c-c-c-cabaret club?! (with ironic, forced enthusiasm) I don’t know…should I go?’
I turned around to shoot a smug grin at Soon-Mi, and laugh at her rolling eyes, but all I caught was the back of her head as she was now storming off angrily down the street towards the direction of her friends.

I turned to look at Shou and Takumi. It was really awkward. I tried to downplay it and act like she didn’t just walk off the mound in front of a packed house and both of them suddenly remembered they had other things to do and we headed to the station while I tried repeatedly to get Soon-Mi to pick up her phone and after about 6 calls she answered.
“Moshi moshi.”
‘Hey where’d you go? We’re wondering if we can’t come chill with the band right now.’
“Ah sou?”- -‘I thought you three were going to the cabaret club.’
‘Baby, that was a joke.’
‘It’s always a joke with you.’ “Jya ne.”

When someone hangs up on you in America, the line crackles for a while and then suddenly goes dead, and you can spend a few hopeful, awkward seconds calling her name into the darkness of telespace, rebounding your sorry signal off of satellites, into the furthest reaches of the universe, never to be heard by anyone. In Japan the hang-up is followed immediately by a cold, dull *BEEP BEEP BEEP* - -to conveniently notify you that your conversation is officially over.

I did the same thing I did that day that Gen called me and told me Yuki had asked him on a date. I threw my cell phone at the ground and then pretended everything was fine. Shou and Takumi excuased themselves and went home and I waited out in the pouring rain for another 40 minutes trying to get Soon-Mi to pick up. I almost punched a bitch out when she came up and asked me if I’d like a massage (**Note: 50/50 this is not an actually a massage, keep this in mind when travelling the sketchy alleyways of Japan). She finally answered and agreed to meet out in the street to talk.

‘You can’t take anything seriously can you?! That was embarrassing for me- -to have my boyfriend announce he was going to a cabaret club with a big sh*t-eating grin on his face instead of come hang out with me.‘
‘Embarassing for you? It was embarrassing for me for you to walk off in front of my friend—whom I just introduced you to—and then hang up on me all over a stupid ongoing joke. If it bothered you that much why didn’t you say something sooner, instead of letting it building and then going “Hiroshima” on me in public?’
‘That’s not f**king funny! Don’t you ever joke about that, I know people who were there- -‘
‘- -Oh yeah, well I know people that were at Pearl Harbor- -(wait, that’s so far out of context for so many reasons…)’

She’s jealous. I’m a pervert. She’s too sensitive. I’m insensitive. She doesn’t communicate. I never listen. I throw my phone again and motion to walk off in the rain and turning around I'm met with a fat Salaryman in his late forties chuckling at us. I promptly threaten to smash his face in, only to have him ignore me walk off snickering like Muttley, twirling his unopened umbrella leisurely in the downpour. The tension was effectively broken. I turned back to her and took a long look into her apprehensive, brown eyes, staring back questioningly at me through her rain-soaked bangs, and I had enough clarity to know this would never each a solution while we were both drunk and angry, so I decided to bury it.

I told her that I loved her. That I wanted her to travel with me July and come home with me at the in August and that I wanted to try my hardest through the winter and get into Grad-school in Tokyo and be with her. And then I kissed her and the fight was over. During the moment I said it, I had every intention of making good on it, but no way of verifying I could, nor any faith that my parents would give their blessing to mine returning with a promissory oriental trophy bride.

‘Really?’ She asked me?

What was I supposed to say here?

×　No, just kidding, see you later bi*ch.
〇　Really.

I reassured her and we kissed some more under my umbrella and returned to the restaurant where I drank cheap champagne and talked vinyl with Koubaken and a few of the horn girls, and then Soon-Mi and I rode home together in a cab.

I knew at some future date, I was in a lot of trouble with someone, but for the time being we were alone together and the future—which everyone tells me is your friend when you’re young—didn’t come until sun rise the next morning. And that was time enough for both of us.

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Photos

SL in Concert
Note the drunk white man dancing alone in front of the stage.

Yukue Fumei
The Headline band.

Guitar Hero
Ted and (fake) JSG's Rocks out to the guitar Stylings of Yukue Fumei's Kinta Kikuchi

My poor cell phone.
After several girlfriends, my phone has taken alot of abuse.

Comments

[C-Bizzle]

HAHAH
I love the Hiroshima bomb you dropped. HAHAHA I rofl'd... and then played with my dog. As for the Montreal commentary... dude man it's going to be so awesome to see you and fucking INSANE! We can go hit on broads at the Jello Bar and then get into a fight or something. let's see if we can get into black clubs without shitting our pants or dying. And remember Newton: for each and every action there is a reaction...